Fear of flying.

"When I say you have control, you say 'I have control.'"

OK. Roger.

"You have control."

"I have control."

I was a little heavy-handed on the joy-stick. 



The Chipmunk Trainer took a dramatic dipping turn to the left...

"Errrr, I have control."

OK.  Roger.

The instructor, audibly shaken, resumed a normal flight angle.


Fear of flying 

There is something unnatural about sitting in an aeroplane and knowing that you are about to fly over high mountain ranges, zoom across wide oceans to most probably arrive in some distant destination.

I am always brought back to footage of early attempts to take to the air.  

Man will never fly.

I can only imagine the hours of imagining, designing and building what now appear naive death-traps.

Of course, the machines invariably either stay land-locked or drop like bricks.  

I am somewhat reassured that repeated testing of materials, engines, pilots, makes an Air France journey less of an adventure - give or take one or two strikes. 

"Oh what's the point? I shall never be an artist." 

I was always pretty fed up with my mother's defeatist attitude to her art-work. I loved her 'naive' drawings, her delicate touch.  Of course an art-critic might not have seen genius but wasn't that missing the point?

"Je suis nul. Je ne vais jamais parler anglais."

I am always pretty fed up with my students' negative attitudes to their English abilities.  

They have been told that they are useless for so many years that I spend much time explaining to them why it is that they are not incapable of learning a language. 

We speak about the difficulty for an adult of accepting a loss of communicational competence, the need to learn to play with the language. 

We try to find ways that they can assess their progress rather than concentrate on their 'mistakes'. 

Little by little, they discover their voices, they gain confidence, they make large leaps. 

Of course an examiner for a certification may not take into account their transformation but isn't that missing the point?

"I am useless, I shall never find a job."

I typed and retyped the CV, over and over and over. 

Having convinced myself that I was useless, I tossed version 12 into the waste-paper basket.  

Months later, I plucked up courage to send one perfect CV, waited for three weeks for an answer. 

My hands were trembling as I opened the envelope. 

It was what is termed a 'rejection', I was devastated. 

Mulling it over.

As I dealt with the idea that my career had finished before it had started, I spent some time reading about the early 'careers' of brilliantly successful advertising executives.  

Far from demonstrating immediate genius, they often had spent years being apparent failures. A penny started to drop. Not knowing what direction to take was perhaps OK. 

Looking back, I am sort of amazed at how naive I was. 

Looking back, I am sort of amazed at how useless the experienced, sensible 'adults' appeared to be in encouraging discovery, how reluctant they appeared to be to admit their own vulnerability, their own doubts.

Mulling it over

I was reading a few comments on a #ccourses Twitter stream this evening.  

Here is one which caught my eye:

Gardner Campbell ‏@GardnerCampbell  2h2 hours ago

“If you’re not falling off it, you’re not really exploring the edge.” @hrheingold #ccourses

I like taking risks - that is why I love acting, adventure, rock-climbing.  

I love learning.

I am not sure that I would be a great 'climbing instructor'.

I am brought back to a near death experience at school. 

The teacher didn't check the descender was attached to the rope.

I saw the problem. 

If I had been too trusting, I would have had a nasty fall...

I would prefer rock-climbing instructors to be properly qualified.

Here is another one that caught my eye:

Terry Elliott @telliowkuwp · 2h 2 hours ago

I don't want my doctor exploring the edge.

0 replies

Yes, I would prefer the doctors who are called to operate on me, to have practised their delicate gestures repeatedly, to have sensitive hands.  

I would also like them to be able to recognise that my body parts are connected together to constitute a person, namely me.  

We can speak together. 

I would like them to be able to speak with me with sensitivity.

Fears of success and fears of failure

I am brought back to the ideas of success and failure.

I remember the hours and hours that we spent at school making paper aeroplanes, testing their flight, whooping with delight as the various designs nose-dived, glided, loop the looped.  

How are we to judge the success or failure of these childish test-flights? 

I would suggest that the real success lay in the community of play.

I remember the hours and hours that we spent at school doing exercises on paper, testing our grammar, irregular verbs and what have you.  

I remember little of the successful answers or the failed answers.

I would suggest that real success of education does not lie in getting the largest numbers of correct crosses on an answer sheet.

There are good reasons for enabling students to become qualified pilots, rock-climbing instructors, surgeons, aviation engineers.  

I don't believe that we can learn without making mistakes.  

I don't believe that it is a good idea to compare oneself with inaccessible models. 

I do believe that we can only progress through repeated and reflective work.

I do believe that we can waste hours arguing about completely different contexts as if they were comparable.

I don't believe that we can progress as communities, as societies, without play, without taking risks.

I don't belive that we can work with people as if they were disconnected parts to be machined.

I believe that we are in the dark ages of human social development. 

I believe we all must take  leaps of faith to reach out to distant destinations.

I am not convinced that our current instructors know how to avoid a nasty crash.

Postman's progress...

Do postmen deliver?

Yes! Everyday, they sort mail, deliver bills, brochures, and the odd postcard (becoming rarer) pretty reliably to the right door.

To reduce postmen to such a role however is to do them a disservice. Postmen have also often played an important but unheralded part in bringing human presence to the needy and lonely in our communities. Pat your postman on the back;  his days as an unpaid social worker are sorely counted.

In this age of climactic economic crisis, politicians have grand plans for our faithful posties. . .They are now also to  become...ECO-WARRIORS! They are on the front-line fighting for our planet's survival. Thanks to the latest techological advances their rounds are now becoming electric.

Out the noisy, smelly, polluting combusion engine, in the shiny yellow rechargeable minivans!

Progress indeed!

This is what first struck me when I came across the shiny yellow rechargeable minivan parked on my way to attending the conference Cyberlangues at the cinema in Marly le Roi last week. So impressed was I, I forgot my haste and I took three photographs of the thing.  This aroused the curiosity of the proud postman pilot of the aforesaid vehicule.

"Zero C02 emmissions! La Poste engages itself to provide a responsible mail service!" The slogan on the side of the van boomed out, accompanied by the World Wild Life Fund panda, in logo.

We started talking, Marcel and I, (we shall call him Marcel) about his new van.

"It's great fun to drive", he said, "Would be ideal for an older postman, or on certain rounds. But for me," he added, "I prefer a bicycle."

I looked perplexed, wasn't this yellow dream progress?

"You see with a bicycle, I can go right up to the house, put the letters in the box and have time to chat with the people. Oh yes, and  it used to keep me fit! With the minivan, I have to get out of the van, open the back, get a basket, walk to the house, post the letter, go back to the van, put the basket in the box, close the back, get into the driver's seat put my foot down on the accelerator and rush to the next stop. It's slower than it used to be on a bike.  I don't have time for people any more..."

"The managment only measure the number of letters  I post and how  fast I do my round...."

Do teachers deliver? 

Well, children are sorted into categories, their letters are checked and they are pretty reliably sent to the appropriate destination.  Children who are difficult to put into boxes get left in sorting offices or are sometimes lost in transit.

To reduce teachers to this role, is maybe alienating but it makes economic sense. After all the public expects a reliable education service which will take their children to the right employer's door.  Global competition, means that we are obliged to make sure that our rounds are up to standard.

Shanghai standards are the criteria by which our universities, for example, are to be assessed. Proud is the university president who can claim his entrance into this universally accepted top-performing league! Such educational institutions win a glowing stamp of approval.

Telegram!


It has come to our notice that French education is lagging behind the UK in the integration of shiny modern technology into the classroom.  The measure of this lag? The number of Interactive White Boards in classrooms. These are shiny, impressive, expensive (now out of date) replacements for the outdated chalk and blackboard . Catching up with the AngloSaxons is surely a must.

Progress indeed for some!

Certain universities currently pride themselves on their "personalised learning" allowed by  sophisticated "Virtual Learning Environments". Students follow cleverly defined, scientifically evaluated routes towards their final stamp of approval. I myself was able to share in the communicative satisfaction of a colleague at Cyberlangues who described this modern process.  She glowed with her university's recognition at Shanghai.

Didn't we feel impressed!

Telegram!


Elsewhere, thanks to political demand, iPads are flooding into the Corrèze, these new saviours of National Education, are to be touchy/feely digital satchels for new flashy digital textbooks. Brilliant, innovative, brave measures...

Do politicians deliver?

By which criteria should we evaluate their progress? Are we only interested in speed, economic efficiency, competitive performance? Wouldn't individual postmen on their rounds, or particular teachers in their specific classrooms not be better judges of the tools necessary to better perform their difficult tasks?  Shouldn't we be taking the time to stop, to  look, to listen, and  to talk, together?

How should we evaluate technological progress?

Do politicians deliver (what we want)?

Are we going to continue to allow politicians and people to stamp on the lonely, the needy, on the misdirected on their way to career success?

Shouldn't we be educating our children, to analyse 'progress' more critically? (I am just asking questions. I am just a teacher.)

This post arrived to your screen only thanks to Marcel, the critical postman.