Out of the shadows.

Out of the shadows they come, the bogeymen, the orcs, the foul hoards.

Nothing will stop their thirst for blood.








Their vile fantasies drive them on.

Their shrieks haunt your nightmares.

They crave darkness, they await the moment to be unleashed on the helpless.

"A depressingly long list of hateful attacks shared online since Trump's election."

Mordor is not some distant land, it lies in our hearts and minds.

There is a black wind blowing.

“Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone:
never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the dark lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.” 

J.R.R. Tolkien.

The devil has a debonair charm, he lulls us with his eloquence, his messages of hope, we drop our guards, we look up with shiny eyes.

It was ever thus.

The privileged have an easy way with words.

Give them enough rope.

The menu is tempting, the table dressed, we sigh in expectation.  

Not for us the shit, the blood, the last shudder of the beast in the abattoir. 

Nothing so fucking vulgar.

We are so fucking educated.

"In bourgeois society itself, all exchange of personal services for revenue — including labour for personal consumption, cooking, sewing etc., garden work etc., up to and including all of the unproductive classes, civil servants, physicians, lawyers, scholars etc. — belongs under this rubric, within this category. All menial servants etc. By means of their services — often coerced — all these workers, from the least to the highest, obtain for themselves a share of the surplus product, of the capitalist’s revenue.
But it does not occur to anyone to think that by means of the exchange of his revenue for such services, i.e. through private consumption, the capitalist posits himself as capitalist. Rather, he thereby spends the fruits of his capital. It does not change the nature of the relation that the proportions in which revenue is exchanged for this kind of living labour are themselves determined by the general laws of production."

Marx, The Grundrisse (1857)

We don't get our hands dirty.

We don't have a rope in the house to hang ourselves.

We'd have to settle for the fucking computer cable.

“I’m going to kill myself,” he told his wife more than once over the next few weeks.

One rainy winter day, he found a rope, tied a noose and threw it over a high beam in the barn."

Do we stop one instant and wonder how the meat got on our plate?
Do we stop one instant and have a thought for the source of our comfort?
Do we stop one instant and question the origins of the tools of our digital literacy?

We are so fucking educated.

We still believe in make believe.

If we have the easy life there are others who will pay the bill.

"The secret anguish of the French farmer."

We will live off the land, we have no sure footing,we are free like air.

"All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ..."

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)

Others will pay the bill.

We don't need to build a wall.

We already have walls in our minds.

They are so high, they are so historically thick, we have no time to tear them down.

Let the scum build the wall to protect our privilege.

We great nations, great democracies, land of the free.

"What is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. ...

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."

Marx & Engels, On Free Trade (1848)

We great nations, great democracies, land of the drones, the hell-fire missiles, the stealth fighters.

Let the uncouth go and fight our battles so that we may decorate them and offer crocodile tears.

We will smash all, we will terrorise all.

We are so fucking educated.

We will stand in triumph and light the fire for the forgotten, for the unknown soldier.

We will not weep the alien child.

Unfortunate casualties die in a war for our freedom.

These are not strikes, hits, or casualties, they are your fucking children.

I tuck into a hearty meal, I cut into the meat delicately, I engage in intellectual pursuits.

On the TV the French president is lighting the fire for the unknown soldier under L'Arc de Triomphe.

What is this fucking Triomphe?

Meanwhile men, women and children die in their fucking wars.

Kill the pig.

They will stop at nothing to amass the mobs, to smash the freaks, to preen their crass carcasses.

They are smug in their towers, protected by their gorillas, fawned upon by their lackeys.

They are easy in their life-long struggle for the dispossessed while speculating to accumulate.

You don't need to understand Latin.

DIVIDE ET IMPERA

DIVIDE AND RULE

TRUMP THAT BITCH

We are all so fucking educated.

We need to start questioning how it is that we are so comfortable while others are throwing ropes over trees.

We need to start questioning how it is that we accept to take our eyes of the real problem.

US

We are not free if we subject others to slavery.

You want it darker?

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game

If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame

If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name

Vilified, crucified, in the human frame

A million candles burning for the help that never came

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

I'm ready, my lord

There's a lover in the story

But the story's still the same

There's a lullaby for suffering

And a paradox to blame

But it's written in the scriptures

And it's not some idle claim

You want it darker

We kill the flame

They're lining up the prisoners

And the guards are taking aim

I struggled with some demons

They were middle class and tame

I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

I'm ready, my lord

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name

Vilified, crucified, in the human frame

A million candles burning for the love that never came

You want it darker

We kill the flame

If you are the dealer, let me out of the game

If you are the healer, I'm broken and lame

If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

Hineni, hineni

I'm ready, my lord

Hineni

Hineni, hineni

Hineni

You want it darker?

“Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.”

Bertolt Brecht

FASCISM INC

Distance learning.

'Distance learning' a term which makes me think...

A term which is often used to talk about increasing education opportunities, or more cynically and, no doubt simultaneously, increasing profit opportunities in education for distant capital.

Is 'distance learning' a nonsense? Can we really learn 'at a distance'?

Do we learn in order to distance ourselves?

Does distance between us mean learning with others viewed only as abstract objects, as avatars?

Does historical distance between us and our ancestors disconnect us to the contexts of our present?

If I ask these questions, it is because I watched a film on the flight from New York to London, as I sipped a sickeningly sweet Pepsi.

The film, it has to be said was as harrowing as it was compulsive viewing. I couldn't take my eyes off it. There was one character played by Benedict Cumberbatch (him of Sherlock fame) that I suppose, I uncomfortably felt compelled to identify with.

He was a nice man...

Compulsion, subjection, bondage, these are terms which are troubling me these days.

12 years a slave transports us into a not so distant reality. I implore you to watch it.

As I have been participating on and off with Hybrid Pedagogy's #Moocmooc online course on critical pedagogy, over the past few weeks, the subject of slavery has been framed anew.

I tweeted a photo of a child sitting on a dump of digital waste. I annotated the photo with a question.

What would Freire's attitude be to education of people dealing with our tech waste? #moocmooc pic.twitter.com/TfWqQZefbI
— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 25, 2015

I am sitting here typing comfortably on my laptop, having earnest conversation with my fellow critical educators around the globe via Twitter, Facebook, via this blog.

I confess that I am ignorant.  I am ignorant of the deal that I have struck with my fellow learners.

I imagine that there are unknown people unknowingly involved in the creation of this post.

I imagine they never will read it.

They will probably not find the time for something so futile.

They will be no doubt otherwise occupied.

I know nothing of the lives of the people who put this machine together
.
I know nothing of the people who will deal with its remains.

Do I really care?
Can I really care?

Would I be Benedict Cumberbatch?

He was a nice man...

As I said, this question is troubling me.

How far do we care?
How far can we care?
How far does my responsibility stretch?
What is the place of critical pedagogy in a globalised economy?
What is the place of critical pedagogy in a digitally connected world?

Does my local critical pedagogy deny the rights of others in distant parts to learn?

I remember when I lived in Manchester visiting the cotton mills, going to the Liverpool docks.

I admired the solid Victorian edifices.

I remember now a discussion I had with a student who came from the West Indies. We spoke about genealogy. I love history. We compared family trees. While my great grandparents were propping up the British Empire, his great grandparents were propping up the French colonies.  Many stories converge when we do a little research.

I have just read an article from the New Statesman, its title and a link to it are presented below:

Much of Britain's wealth is built on slavery. 

So why shouldn't it pay reparations?

The benefits of slavery have accrued down the generations, so why are we so nervous about the responsibility for the slave trade doing the same?

There is a quote from the article that I shall place here:

"Plantation slavery may no longer be with us in the same form but its founding principle has never really gone away – take as much as you can from the labour of the many and concentrate land and wealth among the few. A debate about reparations – and redressing historical injustice – can help us ask the question more starkly: for all the pious talk about “addressing inequality”, can capitalism really move so far from its beginnings as to be inherently fair? How can a system which won’t acknowledge its origins become “responsible” capitalism?"


Interesting to note that a number of major British banks: Barclays, HSBC built their fortunes on the slave trade...

Learning about that would bring a new twist to the banking concept in education.

I never learnt much about slavery at school, interestingly my student from the West Indies didn't either.

It is interesting how far school history strays from the questions which count.

I suppose we should let the bankers do the counting for us.

Maybe much learning at school is a form of distance learning?


“Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.” 

― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed