Target practice...

High up above a lark was singing joyfully.

I sat there in the bunker feeling rather smug, smoking.

Not only I had got out of games but I was being paid to do so.



We hardly noticed the 'tac, tac, tac' above our heads.

Suddenly a flag was raised and we raced up the butts to reposition the targets.

The ammunition was live.

The target practice goes on...

In 2001, in the UK,  40,509 kids were receiving military training, including weapons training while at school.

The Ministry of Defence funds a 'youth organisation' whose aim is to:

 "provide a disciplined organisation in a school so that pupils may develop powers of leadership by means of training to promote the qualities of responsibility, self reliance, resourcefulness, endurance and perseverance". 

but it acknowledges that one of its objectives is:

"to encourage those who have an interest in the services to become Officers of the Regular or Reserve Forces"

Source http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Combined_Cadet_Force

I remember going to see Peter Brook's film version of Lord of the Flies at school.

How relieved we were to be saved from our own savagery...


Whose targets?

In whose interests are 'our' 'educational targets' set?

EDUCATION-INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY-COMPLEX

Is education preparation for war?

Who are we fighting for?

Whose targets?

In whose interests are 'our' 'education targets' set?

WHY EDUCATION PUBLISHING IS BIG BUSINESS

REPORT: BIG EDUCATION FIRMS SPEND MILLIONS LOBBYING FOR PRO-TESTING POLICIES

NO PROFIT LEFT BEHIND

HIGHER ED's OBSCENE PROFIT SCHEME: SCHOOLS, BANKS, AND THE GOVERNMENT WIN - YOU DROWN IN DEBT.

HERE'S A BIG REASON WHY AMERICANS HAVE $1.16 TRILLION IN STUDENT DEBT.

Is education a market for companies to profit from our children?

Who are we endebted to?

Whose targets?

In whose interests are 'our' 'education targets' set?

PISA 2012: HAPPINESS OR PERFORMANCE?

Is education preparation for performance?

Who are we performing for?

Resetting targets.

What if we were to reset 'our education targets'?

What if we were better informed as to how these 'our education targets' are currently set?

What if we were to do some research...

• Who actually is in favour of war?
• Who actually is in favour of standardised testing?
• Who actually is in favour of massive student debt?
• Who actually is in favour of massive inequality?

What if we hypothesise that more people are in favour of peace than war?

What if we spent more money on research into solutions for peace rather than on preparations for war?

What if we spent more time encouraging cooperation rather than competition?

What if we looked to improve happiness more than to develop performance?

I thought about the United Nations Conference COP 21.

I looked at the list of ongoing conflicts on Wikipedia.

I thought of the massive demonstrations in the streets of Paris

I thought of the work of Daniel Bassill in Chicago.

I thought of Terry Elliott blogging on budget cuts in education in Kentucky.

Targeting Peace.

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war."
Maria Montessori

It so happens that I fell upon a report on French TV late last night into the concept of Altruism.

It highlighted an educational program which sought to reduce violence between kids at school through mindfulness training.

It featured an American academic Richard Davidson from Wisconsin.

It featured a French academic-become-buddhist-monk Matthieu Ricard.

If education is 'the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world' (Nelson Mandela) it is also a battlefield.

There are forces who have massive financial interests in maintaining education in its present state.

There are forces who have massive financial interests in maintaining violent conflict between people.

How can we counter greed?

How can we strive for peace?

Economists are not all convinced in the sustainability or desirability of current exchange systems.

“To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.” 
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

I am convinced that we can not remain indifferent to the use of weapons in our societies...

I hear much talk about 'accountability' in education.

I am not against some form of accountability.

There is 'numeric accountability'.

There is 'moral accountability.'

A birthday party.

That birthday party in the pub was probably a bad idea from the start...








First the choice of that pub was not to the taste of the wine bar crowd.

Then the animal-rights crew were complaining about the choice of pub food.

Then the bloody rock-climbers found nothing better to do than to start climbing around the pub lounge walls, having decided to attempt the first un-aided traverse from the bar to the toilets.

The landlord had to wipe the guys off the wall when he came to pick up the empty glasses.

Things were going from bad to worse.

Then they went pear-shaped.

John-Jo turned up half-drunk.

He started trying to chat up Samantha's girl-friend.

The inevitable argument broke out.

I had to act quickly.

I managed to get him out of the door without him actually hitting anybody.

Phew...

What on earth had I been thinking?

It was absolutely bloody obvious.

I was a complete idiot!

All these people had only one thing in common: they were my friends.

They all represented quite separate parts of my life.

They weren't supposed to meet.

They all (except John-Jo) stayed long enough to sing Happy Birthday.

I was touched.

A few years later...

I was reminded of this occasion, while reading a blog which spoke of on-line tension during #rhizo14.

I was thinking about how difficult it is for there not to be conflict in on-line interaction, even if it is not explicit.

There are the very different people who turn up to a course.

Then there are the varying levels of digital literacies which enable different levels of  participation.

Then there are the varying levels of competence in the languages used during the course.

Then there are the vastly different cultural backgrounds of the people.

Then there are the very different expectations of these very different people who turn up.

Then there are the very different life experiences of the participants who are attempting to interact with people who may be complete strangers.

Then there are the multiple interpretations possible of what is said, written, done, by the others.

Then there are the multiple interpretations possible of what is unsaid, unwritten, undone, by the others.

Then there are the pre-existing relations, tensions, between the participants.

Then there is the over-stretched course-host, trying to jolly everybody along, trying to put out fires...


Last orders..

Looking back now, it was a shame that John-Jo got himself drunk.

Maybe he would have liked Samantha on another day,  given time.

Perhaps, Samantha would have realised (given a long time) that he wasn't just an idiot?

I could have told her that he wasn't always as scary as he had appeared...when he had been drinking.

If he drank, it was because things scared him less...when he had been drinking...

There was no time to explain.

Thinking about it now, I view things very differently.

Those same people, those same events, have a very different message for me today.

Time changes things...

Maybe the guys climbing those pub walls were opening up a window to a different world for us?

Maybe those times of tension, of conflict were our most precious moments?

Maybe what was memorable, wasn't such plain-sailing?

Maybe it takes time to appreciate what we learn from idiots?

I don't regret that birthday party now.

One lives and learns...

Scrabble.

Things were getting serious.

Bob was eyeing up the last triple word score.

Jemima was about to place her blank letter to extend the word 'Quit' to 'Quite'.

That was that. She was going to win again.

Bob sighed, resigned to another pride-sapping defeat.

Jemima counted up the score.

"I think that makes 36 points, if I'm not wrong Bob?'

Jemima beamed proudly.

Bob humphed and added Jemima's score to the tally.

Was he ever going to beat that self-satisfied little Miss Annoying?

He placed four letters on the board.

"No that's no good Bob," said Jemima. "That word doesn't mean anything."

Bob was fed up.

Jemima always beat Bob.

Bob looked forlornly at the list of tallies in the Scrabble box.

Bob: 78
Sally: 256

Bob: 83
Sally: 246

Bob: 56
Sally: 238

It made for sorry reading.

He didn't bother turning over the paper.

Bob felt humiliated and stupid.

Jemima was clearly brilliantly clever.

Stop making sense.

Looked at together, the words placed on the board would have made no sense whatsoever.

There was not a single intelligible sentence to be found.

Nobody would bother reading it all anyway.

That was not the point.

These were just scores.

There was never any question of it making any sense; winning by the rules was everything.

That was something some of the family never seemed to understand.

They seemed to equate being good at Scrabble with understanding, with intelligence.

They were only partly wrong.

Being good at Scrabble was mainly about understanding a game, and having a very specific sort of intelligence.

To hell with making meaning, it was primarily about pattern recognition.

Any words would do as long as they fitted in on the board.

Bob was just about to add three letters (T,W,O) to the board when....

When Sally came to play.

Sally was bored.

"Can I play?", she asked.

"No, Sally, you are too young, and you are ruining my concentration," replied Bob grumpily.

"Buzz off."

Sally, aged four, took no notice of her brother and sister and grabbed a handful of letters off the Scrabble board.

"Hey, Sally stop you are messing up our game!"

"I want to play, I am going to make a house."

Sally was already piling up the seized letters into a leaning tower of meaning.

"Sally, put the letters back right now or I'll call Mum."

"No, I'm playing too."

"I'm making a house."

"Sally..."

With all the petulance she could muster, Sally flung the board on the floor.

"You're stupid. It's not fair, I wanted to play TOO!"


Ivory towers.

I sometimes have the impression that Academia is a very sophisticated form of Scrabble.

The expert players take it very, very seriously indeed.

They have developed their skills considerably over the years.

They practice daily, looking up ever more obscure words in Scrabble dictionaries.

They develop strategy.

They look to measure themselves up against the best.

They play in clubs and go to conventions with their peers.

Looked at together their words don't always make much sense.

They are very unhappy if little kids grab the tiles laid on the board to build towers of their own.

Noman's land.

The lines are drawn up, the roles are defined, the territories are determined.  At one side of the class-room, stands a teacher. The students are grouped together waiting for any lull in the content offensive to engage leisurely conversation.


The teacher draws up a plan of action for the new campaign on the board. The exercises are ready, the instructions are well-rehearsed, the number of future failures are statistically modelled. Survival is for the fittest. Success is for the elite. Cohorts of students are evaluated, streamed, trained, tested, decorated. Competition is good for the character, team-work is carefully regimented, unsupervised collaboration is suspect.


I was a reluctant RAF cadet, the uniform was scratchy, I was a poor shot, I loathed dehumanising drill. Taking orders from a teenage moron who gleefully made us march into a brick wall killed  off my Action Man dreams of becoming a commando...  


A breezy Anglican church school, the bravery of fallen heroes in the World Wars was celebrated here, the dates of battles were memorised; critical analysis was viewed dimly. 


Glorious were the victories on the rugby field, the cricket pitch,the hockey shore!


Somewhere else,further afield, Paolo Freire would write,


"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."


Technology plays a vital role in enabling the change of relationships in society. With the railways came massive industrial expansion, the public school, the public holiday. With the machine gun and heavy artillery came the trenches, the Somme.  With the railways came mass-mobilisation and monumental casualty counts. The 'in between' enemy lines, countries, or classes  would become 'No man's land.' 

• No man's land is a term for land that is unoccupied or is   under dispute between parties that leave it unoccupied due to fear or uncertainty. Wikipedia  

This space, allotted for daily butchery during the Great War was also spotted with odd outbreaks of peaceful dialogue. Bizarre truces would be negotiated when troops from the opposing sides would exchange presents, souvenirs and a passion for football. Such events remain eery tributes to the absurdity of a system. 

With new technologies come new challenges, new opportunities for transforming societies or maintaining conformity. Ubiquitous connectivity enhances peer to peer communication, disrupts old hierarchical organisations, blurs the lines between work and play, challenges the roles of teachers and learners. It is not sure that we are for the moment in any way freer.


If drones have replaced soldiers, shiny interactive tablets might deliver expertly conceived global uniformity to hungry pupils. Games which let you win engage. Such edutainment however seductive does not necessarily enhance independent criticism or creativity. If predictably achieved 'educational outcomes' are reassuring for the stake-holders, they may be useless to the individual in the long-term. Curiosity requires peace to develop. 


Should we venture into the Noman's lands which exist between individuals, between informal and formal learning, between physical and virtual presence,between generations and cultures, we might aim to imagine a more diversely sustainable future.


"Through dialogue, the teachers-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teachers cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-students with student-teachers."
Paolo Freire.


Learning together, Noman's land might just become Everyman's land. Lines can diverge~converge. Conversation, however leisurely will inevitably be more essential than content.


Paolo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1968