Friday, September 5, 2014

#key

Europe 1 

cue jingle.

JINGLE

WARNING!!
the following copy and paste is in #FRENCH (yikes) and a bit small to read:



- never mind, click below to read it yourself


http://www.europe1.fr/faits-divers/porteur-d-un-bracelet-electronique-il-est-arrete-pour-16-braquages-2200849#.

Please use GOOGLE translate if in doubt of meaning. 

We apologise for any loss experienced in translation.



So for those of you who don't follow instruction, here is a brief summary of the aforewritten veritable facts: 


Robber robs 16 shops while wearing a criminal #tag.

Conclusion; 

if you want to deter a robber from robbing, the scary idea of being followed around Paris by the Pink Panther sitting in front of his sophisticated control panel ain't working. 


What went wrong? 


Hypotheses:

  • Was Pink asleep each time the suspect was doing his business? 
  • Was Rob using sophisticated microwave blocking device?
  • Does Pink have a prostate problem which he is finding hard to admit to?
  • Does Pink listen too much to Europe 1 on the radio and ignore Rob?
  • Does Pink get paid by Rob?


We shall never know.

Crimewatch didn't investigate.

Meanwhile in the 'Justice Ministry' they're looking at their budgets and tearing their hair out. 

Too much crime, too many criminals, too much too young...

Violent crime is on the rise in France. 
(Oh GAWD! )

Solution:

Build more prisons. 

The problem with prisons is that young offenders who have been sciving school to rob banks, to pay for their dope and Call of Duty fee get the privilege of going to a proper and rather pricy finishing school, called #detention centre.  

Brilliant! 

Come to #detention centre, you get to meet a selected community of practice (#COP) who will simultaneously alienate you for ever from 'normal society' and give you an apprenticeship in more advanced crime! 

For Reference - watch The Prophet (it ain't me)

Meanwhile...
back at 'normal' school, teachers and kids are being put in well-designed 'educational boxes' (classrooms, schools), banned from using their mobile phones, social media, watching tv, and told off for looking out of the window or chatting with their mates about their Kill percentage on Call of Duty.

Scandalous! 

If you ask me they should increase sensory deprivation and take the solitary confinement (one teacher one classroom) further. 

That will stop them imagining, creating, cooperating, innovating, and generally limit all spread of dangerous sedition exemplified by the idea that in a connected world perhaps the idea of shutting up kids in a box for 8 hours a day isn't perhaps the only concept of education imaginable.


Stop and think for a moment.

How would you stop innovation in pedagogy, revolution in China, or kids playing Candy crush in class? Go on, go on... so?





No ideas? 

OK, here's mine:  You stop people talking to each other, you wear them out so they don't want to speak to other people and basically you try to follow them around while limiting their movement when they go off in the wrong direction. 

Bells, rollcalls, clothes restrictions, timetables, sport, uniforms, threats, rewards (limited) monitors....

Problem.
 

Government has less money to follow people around and shut them up in boxes. 

Solution

Private entreprise see opportunity in following tagged people around, selling the data to other corporations, shutting them in boxes for the....government? 

Question.
How do people get to be in the government? 
They have to raise funds....from? (I have no idea, just asking)

I digress...

So enclosure is for bad people?  

You ARE PUNNISHED if you are confined in a box.  

You are threatened by being sent to...Coventry (no one speaks to you, or you don't understand the accent) 

Or if you are really bad (Denis Rodman - he is so bad - he chose to go) you get sent to.... NORTH KOREA,  where they will force you to clap a fat man with an uncool haircut and a mania for serial murder. (scared?) 

WARNING BOMBS!


Enclosure is for rich people?

They have a problem at the moment, the French government.... 

Valerie spilled the beans after being serially-jilted. 

Merci pour tout, she said - I am sure I detect irony. 

No, I am talking about much less serious things...er immigrants. (scary African immigrants, or Afghan, Syrian, (#terrorist) or er the rest.)

The serious things....the immigrant issue is unsolvable....


Rihanna?




No, not Rihanna. You are getting distracted. Stop, read again what I was saying.

So we must post more guards around our borders protected with barbed wire fencing and scary dogs. 

If they don't have enough dogs they could perhaps try #decoy barking over loudspeakers.


I digress.
So they up there (God) are having difficulties with all the things, the people, the lack of dogs, the lack of North Koreas, the lack of #terrorists  to make you sufficiently scared to want to be in prison or rewards to make you build your own fenced condominium (er behind borders/bars etc). 

We need jobs, or a new version of CALL of DUTY to keep the kids off the streets.  (scared yet?)

Whatever.

The corporations who do Call of duty and prisons and fences and dog collars are happy, their investors sound. 

Bully for them.

What about school? 

Well might I be so criminal to suggest that it might need a revamp? 

Keeping people in boxes all day is after all expensive. 

Prison warders Teachers etc are pricy...they tend to go off on a tangent when you up there have organised a carefully researched educational 'path'.  (Fiddlesticks! They are not working how they should???darn! Back to the lab. Where's that inspector when you need him? PINK? PINK?) 

We could replace humans with R4DE (robot) or the unpopular amphitheatre drone with a MOOC (x) from Harvard. 

Researchers are working on that one.

I digress.

If we want to reimagine education, maybe we should start with a blank sheet of paper.

Questions:

Why do we put 1 person in a box with teenagers playing on banned smartphones?

Why do we try to enclose a Network?

Why are we scared of technology which offers us Wikipedia?

Why are we still thinking in terms of classrooms, regions, and countries when Amazon and Google don't? 

Why do we believe in democracy when the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, the wars uglier, the forests enclosed, exploited, the things we find (resources - people we do/don't care about) destroyed?

Have these people got the foggiest idea of what the f*** they are doing? (Yes, I know... don't answer that)

Proposal

We start thinking and educating ourselves in terms of complexity of networks, of chosen tags (or no tags), of emergence, of freedom of association, of respect for diversity, of free movement of ideas, creativity, innovation, justice, empathy, understanding, civic responsibility, planetary responsibility....

Please add your tag....your thoughts, your music, you pictures, your words, in the language and form of your choice on the blank page  here
(Should you wish. I have no means of enforcing this. This is not for credit/debt/cash)

#Key proposals for sustainable education


I have said my peace for now. 

I can go back to bed and sleep.




9 comments:

  1. My teaching world is an ironic one when embedded in this post. Most of my students have criminal records; all have been expelled from their schools and ended up in mine (an "alternative" school), some wear electronic bracelets; all are alienated or disenfranchised to some degree; 20 out of 22 are kids of color. Some of them came to the U.S. hidden in trunks, running from Central American violence. Others are homeless (about 20% of them) and come to school for the regular meals. Yet due to forward-thinking leadership at my school we are able to create whatever learning environments we want. The are working outside to clean up a pond, researching what that means and why. We have peacemaking Circles every day, community-building exercises that teach them how to be in a room with 20 others without violence. Your post has pointed out to me how complex these issues are and has reminded me how lucky I am to work in a building where we are challenged to do things differently than "they've always been done." We have a long way to go but we are squeaking our way along a winding, bumpy path toward something better. Our next two activities are competitive cooking and a visit to a working farm....I can't wait.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe we can connect and do sth?

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    2. Susan Thank u v. Much for this comment. It opens up so many lines of thought. I have immediately 3 ideas for cooperation. Would love to be able to do something.

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