I am unfortunate, my course has a low interest rate, students are quick to calculate returns on investment and place resources elsewhere.
Compared to other classes, learning a language requires considerable effort.
If you haven't built up socio-cultural capital over the years or generations, you start with a deficit.
Such deficits demand drastic efforts to compete, relocation even.
This little world.
Oh we have a joyous band of brothers in the English class.
'Tis a sanctuary against the rude elements.
"This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,-- This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."
William Shakespeare Richard II
Mythomanes, and bad actors find it easy to wax lyrical thus.
It is easy to focus one's attention on that little course for which one is responsible.
It easy to lose sight of the big picture.
We would do well do change perspectives.
Should we not see ourselves from the point of view of an administrator?
Of a region
Of a country
Of a public institution.
Of a multinational corporation within a globalised economy.
Should we not see ourselves at threat from vicious competition?
Should we not stop overestimating our importance?
Should we not only think of our value in market terms?
"But we're human beings with inherent value," I hear you whine.
"We have an important social and educative role," I hear you pine.
"Grow up! We're not living in Care Bear Land," I retort.
"This is serious business matey!"
We should be thankful that we don't find ourselves in a war zone.
("You do? Oh Sorry...Jolly bad luck.")
We should be thankful that we don't find ourselves in a zone for redevelopment.
("Don't be so sure.")
We should be thankful that we don't find ourselves threatened by flooding due to rips in the ozone.
("Just make sure you don't forget the sun-cream")
("That's just quack science.")
Market forces.
Intelligent teachers generally choose the best, brightest, smallest of classes which offer comfort, charming company, the latest in tech, intellectual stimulation, academic accolades.
Stupid, masochistic, naive, idealistic, dumb teachers, (I place myself in all these categories), don't choose the easier classes.
Poor losers, such as these kind haven't understood the business, the education market.
You have to fight for your piece of the glory gateau.
Simple arithmetic.
Those who count don't teach.
Those who count don't listen.
Those who count don't care.
Haggling in the souk.
It was rather a surprise to see him.
He hadn't been anywhere near a class.
He had only taken the unembodied form of intermittent, curt emails.
He was, I suppose, a virtual student.
I suppose I should have counted myself lucky that he had appeared in the flesh.
With the benefit of hindsight I would have counted myself lucky that he had remained absent.
At no time was there a real exchange between people.
This would be purely transactional.
He was a market vendor, I was a market buyer.
He was clearly trying to take me for a mug.
I didn't buy his spiel. I didn't like the tone. I shook my head.
He mumbled some vile about the quality of the course.
He folded his wares, and walked off in a huff.
Overseas, and far away.
I overheard the news on the radio.
French students were coming up short in comparison with the Koreans on PISA.
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A little girl reaches out towards the approaching coast.
Does she sense the tears which well up in my eyes?
She will walk for a first time on the land that her father called home.
I think of the people that lie there she will never know.
A little girl reaches out..
I wonder how far our humanity stretches?
Other journeys cross my mind.
I think of a four-year old child washed up on social media, on international press, on a beach in Greece.
Two children on average drown in the Mediterrenean Sea every day.
Without leaving my office chair, I OK Google searched the information.
It was a Virtually Connecting Hangout from the DML conference that got me thinking.
What does empathy really mean in a digitally connected world?
Can technology enable us to develop empathy more quickly?
Listening takes time.
The Friday before, I had spent over an hour in the company of Terry Elliott in a Kentucky.
I was speaking at lunch time, Terry had gotten up to chat at rooster time (early).
We had organised a hangout, and spoke of many things, some of which I wouldn't share here.
It has taken over two years of blogging, playing, writing poetry, speaking together for me to talk of things with him that I wouldn't share here. I consider him, a good friend. He is one among a few real friends that I have made online.
It helps us find our place in the world when we find people that we can trust, no matter where they are.
Between humans, sometimes listening is enough.
Sometimes listening is all that we can do.
.
No short-cuts for empathy.
So, I was watching a VConnecting hangout.
Howard Rheingold turned up wearing a hat.
Sometimes, someone's hat is enough to make you feel happy.
Mia Zamora mentioned the idea that it would be great to have an "empathy hat" so that we could understand other people's stories.
I am not sure that either listening or understanding are always enough.
There is something that Maha Bali said during the VConnecting session that had me nodding:
There are no short-cuts to establishing dialogue with others so as to develop empathy, friendship.
There is no question that working as a connected educator via blogging and social media has enabled me to gain a broader range of understanding of diverse contexts, diverse world views, diverse life stories. From this respect technology may indeed help us to widen circles of empathy.
Technology has helped me focus on individual stories through narrative research as a means to identify trends, as a means to broadly modify pedagogical action.
Nothing replaces the time taken sitting next to a person in dialogue.
Using technology in the classroom has enabled me to concentrate my energy on individual dialogue.
Emotional intelligence.
It is one thing to speak together in a private offline space, it is quite another to do so online.
Who do our data trails, which enable more pertinent "recommendations", belong to?
Let's call it "formative assessment" and watch while the panopticon laughs at how we did it to ourselves. #2016DMLhttps://t.co/eyyWA91oAd
I Google the word "verlan a French term for a secret backwards language used to speak privately.
"Many verlan words refer either to sex or drugs, related to the original purpose of keeping communication secret from institutions of social control".
I think of how English, of how the internet, is a means of social control.
While
this internet may appear to give us greater reach - informational,
relational, commercial, it demands that we question whose reach is most
enhanced.
Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions.
I am so fortunate with my internet connected Polish friends.
I immediately feel an increased identification with distant people.
This is progress.
I got to visit Auschwitz with my students.
It reeks of the death of empathy.
“We walked inside and saw these skinny people who were still living, and one of my enlisted men who walked in with me realized they were starving. We had nothing but some candy bars, which we got in a ration, and one of my men gave the candy bar to one of these people who grabbed it and ran away and gulped it down so fast that he became unconscious and probably choked on it when he tried to swallow it before someone took it away from him. These Jewish people and these Polish people were like animals. They were so degraded, there was no goodness, no kindness, nothing of that nature, there was no sharing. If they got a piece of something to eat, they grabbed it and ran away in a corner and fought off anyone who came near them.”
Samuel Glasshow, liberator of Woebbelin http://www.holocaust-trc.org/the-holocaust-education-program-resource-guide/oh-no-it-cant-be/
How far does our inhumanity stretch?
Most of the time our global media glut does little more than render us desensitised.
We see pictures of dead children, under heaps of rubble, washed up on the shore.
So many people, so many corpses, so many untold stories, not enough tears.
So what the fuck?
Passage to India.
I gawp with my children at yachts on the Cannes seafront.
Which celebrity will we spot?
We don't take a selfie.
There's a couple of elderly people drinking tea on a Bermudan boat.
Surely British...Ceylon Tea, far away from Frinton-on-Sea.
A swarm of red-tshirted lackeys are polishing the brass and scrubbing the deck.
It is coming up all ship-shape.
I make a note that many of the yachts at the quay are flying a red British Ensign.
What stories do these boats tell about our globalised economy?
It is a real struggle not to feel some sort of patriotic (jingoistic) pride.
What does this say about me?
What did my mother tell me about the flag waving at the Last Night of the Proms?
I think a moment about Britannia ruling the seas.
That imagined British community is beginning to make me feel sea-sick.
Whose passage paid for that Bermudan yacht?
I think a moment about the USA ruling the waves.
“The middle-class standard of the independent self has increasingly become the default American standard for how to think, feel and act in the world…this middle class self is not just a matter of individual attitudes or beliefs; it is an understanding of what it means to be a person that is built into and promoted by the social machinery – law, politics, education, employment, media, and health care of mainstream American society. Although the independent self is widely accepted as the cultural standard, it is not the natural, normal, neutral or even the most effective way of being a person. Instead, it is a privileged and culture-specific understanding of what it means to be a person that flows seamlessly from the resources, opportunities, and experiences linked with middle-class American standing in society.”
TOP SECRET RECIPE
A Touches of Sense post includes the following:
Courier Font
Absurd bits of bold text
(which appear for no apparent reason in the middle of a blog post) Dots.... (He forgot the dots - HA HA HA like a missing hologram - it's clearly a fake)
Life-affirming message/No message/Obscure message/Search the message(s)crypticism
An emotive narrative snatched generally from childhood or some dreary box or Cogdog.
Blood.
Sweat
Tears.
[LOTS OF TEARS]
Why didn't I protect my brand? Sh..........(t)
It wasn't as if I didn't have prior warning.
Stolen Cogdog photos in Iceland
Stolen Courosa photos in Canada
Stolen Cormier rhizomatics in Canada
Stolen Dogtrax poems in the Auvergne
Sh......(t) Cold countries! (The Auvergne is very cold in winter)
That's it. Beware Cold countries.
They spend more time on the net.
KimDoTCOM - cold Country.
He will have his MEGAcomeuppance. Sh...(t)
How did Cogdog know I was about to post about COFFEE?
How did Cogdog know I was about to post about COFFEE?
How did Cogdog know I was about to post about bored CROWS?
I have been hacked.
I have been counterfeited.
I have been COUNTERFêTED (note clever French reference)
