• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: obligation

addictive

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2*, 2015, addiction, eyes, living, lurch, obligation, purpose

                it’s that damn eyes-
                shut-adrenalin rush-
                lurch out of should
                and purpose that
                congeals addictive

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

eyes wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
living wormhole: work
obligation wormhole: Clea

 

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Clea

15 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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2016, 5*, brick, circle, claim, Clea, direction, Dormammu, Dr Strange, eyebrow, fingers, fire, gaze, head, identity, looking, morality, obligation, others, path, play, rhyme, self, space, spell, stars, thought

                                                              Clea

                     she is made of circles and stars
                     but gazes only from brick-lined

                     tunnels that hang in space – portals
                     of thought – then eyebrows frown

                     to look, and fingers splay in fanned
                     direction; she will dispel the tiresome

                     play of self and other – claim to
                     claim, rhyme to spell – and obliged

                     a morality to stand firm on its
                     own two feet, despite paths that

                     lead in ribbons and head of open fire

 

through the portals hung in space from Strange Tales #s 126 & 127, by Lee & Ditko

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Dr Strange wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
identity wormhole: just one, open, nerve,
looking wormhole: let it all go
obligation wormhole: true nature
others wormhole: even / a second
path wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
play wormhole: Jericho
space wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
thought wormhole: time

 

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true nature

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2016, adult, balance, being, discipline, doing, dwelling, flower, hidden, identity, importance, love, naïveté, nurture, obligation, self, talking to myself, true nature, vague, variation

 

 

 

                                                                true nature

                                   of my personality, true nature
                                   of my self: to be vaguely and
                                   variously focussed on event

                                   mostly missing what is seen
                                   important and dwelling lovingly
                                   with what is hidden in plain view;

                                   since I have become the adult,
                                   as obliged, I have learnt to
                                   override my naïveté with

                                   dead discipline; my naïveté
                                   is a slight flowering of my true
                                   nature, it should be nurtured

                                   in order for ‘my’ to dwell in
                                   my own true true ‘self’ … or
                                   maybe I just haven’t being

                                   my true self all that skilfully?
                                   I haven’t done wrong, I just
                                   haven’t balanced all that well

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

balance wormhole: always
being wormhole: through
doing wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
identity & talking to myself wormhole: and that’s where I are
love wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
naïveté wormhole: because
obligation wormhole: the lines are not that straight / after all

 

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the lines are not that straight / after all

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2015, advert, Alan Moore, career, doubt, Eddie Campbell, From Hell, Have, houses, life, obligation, people, reading, society, streets, talking, time, walls, windows

 

 

 

                                                              during
                                                              months
                                              studying the walls and windows
                                from across the street; the lines are not that straight
                after all; you have to talk with people now and read
                                between all sorts of lines
                                              creatively and incredibly

                                                              there is
                                                              a crunch
                                              decades into a career
                                decades coming (all the while
                adverts growing out the ends of terraced housing)
                                puts decades of striving into doubt when
                                              pension is mooted

 

askance from chapter thirteen of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Alan Moore & life & society & streets wormhole: in desperation and worthless art
career wormhole: career came to naught …
Have wormhole: the 20th century
houses wormhole: September – silhouette of leaf // the / inside and the / outside
obligation wormhole: the four whores of the apocalypse
people wormhole: ‘never a dull moment …’
reading wormhole: step
talking wormhole: the streets just fill with business
time wormhole: darkness
walls & windows wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name

 

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the four whores of the apocalypse

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2015, 5*, Alan Moore, architecture, child, compromise, dark, Eddie Campbell, From Hell, life, mother, obligation, powerlessness, rain, relationship, society, speech, streets, traffic, twilight

                                a child searches for a mummy
                                among the sketches while the
                                streets outside fill with traffic

                                the strong lines of architecture
                                inverse to sketchy life, there are
                                dark lives behind twilight streets
                                there is no power in the rain

                                there are no mummies possible
                                in sketchy line they all end up ‘…
                                down the rabbit hole’ there is only
                                discharge and account remaining and
                                the four whores of the apocalypse

 

a little snippet from askance From Hell, askance from chapter ten of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, gwn’n’avvalook

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

architecture wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
Alan Moore & life wormhole: purpose
child & mother wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
compromise & obligation wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
rain & society & streets wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name
speech wormhole: ‘never a dull moment …’
twilight wormhole: September – silhouette of leaf // the / inside and the / outside

 

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1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

10*, 1959, 1960s, 2012, 2015, 99/1, abandonment, air, airport, America, anxiety, apricot, art deco, avenue, beauty, bedroom, birdsong, blossom, blue, books, branches, breathing, buildings, business, Carol, Central Park, charcoal, childhood, choice, clothes, clouds, coffee, coffee shop, compromise, crane, Dad, divorce, dog, dream, Eglinton Hill, evening, eyebrow, eyes, falling, fashion, floodlights, Ford Anglia, freedom, furniture, ghosts, glamour, Glasgow, green, grey, haiku, hair, Have, history, horizon, hotel, identity, life, lifetimes, light, lilac, living, London, looking, love, magazine, Manhattan, marble, Mini, mist, money, morning, Mum, music, New York, obligation, pastel, people, phone, pink, plane, posture, radar, reaching, reading, roads, sadness, sidewalk, sitting, sky, smile, society, sound, space, sparrows, speech, spotlights, Steely Dan, streetlight, sun, sunlight, talking, taxi, terrace, texting, time, traffic, traffic lights, train, travelling, trees, uniform, waiting, walking, walls, walnut, white, wind, windows, work, years, yellow

                                          1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

                                straight out from school to Heathrow on the M25
                                a network of lonely roads going nowhere, then;
                                waiting, studying coffee highlights in the green
                                lobby with blue spotlights and pillared space for

                                phones to pace up and down and talk it still is,
                                loudly; at the next hotel we wait with more spot-
                                lights in our eyes no matter where we sit; furniture
                                deco-curved and just off right-angle, held together,

                                material to wood, for decades with check-
                                pattern and slight stain; there is a locked-in-
                                ness in our world on all sides which only our
                                future eyes – that never look directly – betray

                                in their gaze; early flight tomorrow; in the
                                morning-effect light shifting, the mist hanging
                                around the base of the sky, land spread with
                                low buildings always on the horizon, flat and

                                matt, before the sun flanks their edges into 3D,
                                radar-spinning, floodlights turn off, arms of
                                cranes hold their reach, and … the control
                                tower; 3567 miles and I didn’t bring enough

                                books (you can never bring enough books);
                                I travelled for lifetimes to arrive in New York,
                                still the same person: roads scraped and pock-
                                marked, trees still reach and lean in front of the

                                sky, people still live city life breathing in and
                                out the power of my money, lights still go on
                                in the evening and in between traffic shoals
                                the sparrows bicker in the trees; in room 506

                                over Central Park, already I am familiar with
                                the lore of the branch, the places-to-go apricot
                                street lights, the white path lights, the traffic
                                lights and the ‘cheeps’ bounced off building wall

                                between the lmmmdmda-lmmmdmda – laersssh
                                through the rain-dusty windows, under grey-sky
                                steel-clouds and the slowly shifting charcoal; but
                                then there is always the next day, the ever-waiting

                                gulp-open and blue-chip sorry of impressionistic
                                sidewalk, the walnut marble frontages walking
                                south up into downtown in cold air between
                                buildings and didn’t bring enough clothes (I never

                                know what clothes to bring) – by Radio City ‘with a
                                transistor and a large sum of money to spend’;
                                everything created for living beyond subsistence
                                everything produced at cost through labour

                                everything earned through labour if you can get it
                                everything obtained at price and compromise
                                everything experienced at cost through trademark
                                everything Had, but no one left to have it …

                                everything that is uneasy in the modern day
                                was manufactured behind the half-closed blinds
                                of America – home of the Potential and Slave –
                                and yet … it is so sad-beautiful: the space sculpted

                                by façades of apartment blocks giant arm-widths
                                apart, communities of single window – italicised
                                nib–scratches – stepped upwards and backwards
                                the Avenues of Uprise reaching higher and

                                lower again and again and again; America has
                                so much condensed history since it braved the
                                conceit and responsibility, of choice: cleansed
                                by ethnically assimilating, pledged by conforming

                                allegiance; Someone had to make a stand against
                                all this equivocation and by God Almighty We
                                Made   that   Stand; `made continental infrastructure
                                out of it, far bigger far more reaching even than

                                law and democracy … … but there is such
                                width in your sadness – lilac blossom before
                                marble façade; such height in your sadness –
                                giddy out on the balconies looking eight floors more

                                above; such blank in your sadness – when you
                                skip my English joke and call ‘you’re welcome’
                                from the till; such sadness when you ask for
                                change outside Starbucks; even the trees through

                                the hotel window, even the wide sidewalk cleaned
                                for strolling and not curbing, even the smiling
                                doorman in brown suit … all Had; all kept
                                in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place

                                by gigantitude, (when I was young an image
                                of a building so many floors high pinnacling to a
                                turret roof on the pink cover on the blue cover
                                of the insurance policies that my Mum kept;

                                my mother is now dead the policies came to
                                nothing); 99: “for all the freedom and choice to
                                be Had, life is hard when you pay with your work
                                and no time left and no money to choose

                                leaves you tired with no sense of humour”;
                                1: “for all the freedom and choice to be Had
                                life is anxiety where you pay for with your
                                history and obligation, never stopped still-

                                enough to choose, leaves you always with
                                dyed hair; look, only on the fifth floor of the
                                Eldorado, a man at the window canary short-
                                sleeve shirt turns back into the room, traffic light

                                booms out on a long arm swinging slightly taxis
                                u-turn as the sun comes up from behind; women’s
                                magazines, waiting for Mum at the hairdresser’s
                                in the mid-sixties, illustrations, young tree avenues,

                                blossoming handbags, little dogs on leash, promise
                                of love, promise of life, promise of man’s jaw in
                                boardroom where cologne cinches the deal, slight
                                smile signs the papers: maybe later some chinos

                                and open collar on the terrace; there was a calendar
                                brought home from work (“not needed … we work
                                in London”) – buildings of Manhattan, can decorate
                                my room, make my world, all the stepped down

                                walls of windows up which b-e-y-o-n-d myself
                                giddy and beautiful, I cannot look up or down but
                                keep them high on the wall; going out in the
                                evening Daddy ‘have to’ ‘to do with work’ ‘can’t be

                                helped’ white shirt bow-tie, clean-cut neck cologne
                                ‘good for contacts’ ‘if I can, just’ ‘business’; there
                                was a new white Mini, a new white Anglia parked
                                outside on the hill over London, Matchbox models

                                to match for the boys, going into ‘business’ ‘make
                                a go’ Dennis & Dennis, home, evening drinks, meet
                                the family, the boys play Dennis G and Dennis P
                                for years after; ‘… Daddy is leaving, he will not be

                                coming back’; I had thought it was all pastel-blue-
                                and-grey beautiful but the glamour got to him first
                                and now I dream of falling off balconies and ledges,
                                (do I fall up or down); evening: ghouls from the

                                subway gaining and pushing but the top trees-only
                                gently leaning, hybrids swashing yellow down the
                                tarmac in schools while the thunder of a plane
                                descends; morning: eyebrows raise like coving, the

                                reggae lingers      then kicks in; a neat rhombus of
                                sunlight unconcerned across her cheek, a blind rolls
                                down, ‘I’ll just read a chapter’-fixed lashes, the
                                rhombus travelling now across collar bones between

                                her white collars; Carol reads far better than me,
                                she reads history as it happens, she is the ‘captain-
                                speaking’, she knows what time it is      in other
                                countries, she knows there is no airport in Glasgow

                                (she also bullshits when cornered); now I miss all of
                                this, I see only peoples’ posture contrary to their
                                eyes, and little else; I came to Manhattan and saw
                                your avenues of strange displacement your streets

                                of darkness and morning-side; I found I was there
                                a lifetime ago, but you left me and I have moved on
                                now and I shall not be back, there is no need;
                                I shall celebrate your strange beauty from afar;

                                Newark Airport: everybody here / is talking all
                                the time to / someone somewhere else; the control
                                room sits            overhanging on the concrete stem,
                                fingers of cloud float nonchalantly by, with no delays

                                today, two girls study magazines, swap articles,
                                a third texts constantly with fixed smirk; but you,
                                you are so beautiful with hennaed hair braided
                                neatly back because you are in uniform, you are

                                taking a break, ID and equipment around your
                                neck, clear dark skin, grey shirt and St. John’s
                                badge eating a bag     of crisps with eyebrows sharp
                                and eyes so white looking, not talking     looking

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

abandonment & streetlight wormhole: dawn
air wormhole: just
anxiety & Carol & crane & Have & lifetimes & London & love & pink & sky & train & travelling & white & work wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
apricot wormhole: only
beauty wormhole: smiling
bedroom wormhole: sunny morning
blossom & branches & waiting wormhole: I could step / more open
blue & grey & mist & trees & walking wormhole: right to be
books wormhole: a light rosé
breathing & life & speech wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
buildings & identity & society & space & windows wormhole: where the real action // always is
childhood & dream & Eglinton Hill & ghosts & green & looking & morning & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
clouds & light & posture wormhole: Buddha Amitabha
coffee wormhole: poised patiently for / hours
coffee shop wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
compromise wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
Dad & traffic lights & yellow wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
dog wormhole: silence
evening wormhole: lobby
eyes wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
haiku(esque) & hair & Manhattan & people & roads wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
history wormhole: 20th century / schzoid man
horizon wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
hotel wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
lilac wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
living & sitting & sound & sun wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
money wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
Mum wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
music & reading wormhole: sometimes
obligation wormhole: scattered
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sparrows wormhole: zazen in everyday life
spotlights wormhole: ‘the dining room …’
talking wormhole: – sigh! –
walls wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
wind wormhole: Christmas

 

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scattered

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

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2011, 5*, being, connection, finding, identity, living, meaning, naïveté, obligation, seeing, settling, talking to myself, time, writing

 

 

 

                                              writing is finding
                                meaning in things
                as they are

                                              is seeing
                                the connection between things
                that springs them from inertia

                                              is wearing
                                the 3D glasses that see things
                stood out

                                              is the word
                                that qualifies things dynamic
                and seceded from obligation

                                              I am not plotted
                                and structural I am
                adventitious and glimpsing

                                              it is my living
                                sews together all the
                threads eventually

                                              therefore write
                                just write       and live
                not books not essays    just relaxedly

                                scattered

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: rainbow
identity wormhole: a known from without the unknown
living & settling wormhole: breathe it all / in
meaning wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
naïveté wormhole: vagued
obligation wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
seeing wormhole: I could step / more open
talking to myself & time & writing wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger

 

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irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 5 Comments

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2013, 4*, agenda, anxiety, career, creativity, doing, identity, insight, marriage, measure, obligation, schmuck, self-esteem, smile, teaching

 

 

 

                                                                                 irretrievable
                                                                                 breakdown
                                                                                 of marriage

                                                              the anxiety
                of proffering
                                what I have to do or say – born of
                                              leapt insight
                                                              and creativity –
                                                              and it being
                                courteously passed in the corridor with a slightly
                                              over-long smile
                or curtly skipped to the next item –
                                 nothing to contribute                     look it’s not on
                                              the agenda                        important things to do –
                                                              stupid stupid stupid

                                and the punishment of being
                                              obliged
                                              relied on
                                              measured
                                              appraised
                                              defined
                                              developed
                                to contribute nevertheless
                                                                                 schmuck

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

anxiety & doing & identity wormhole: reversing the polarity
creativity wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
obligation wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
smile wormhole: letters to Mum IV – healing comes in smiling
teaching wormhole: no exit

 

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The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in teaching

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Academy status, capability, career, compromise, consultation, government, money, obligation, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, recognition, slogans, teaching art, teaching craft

Preface: the UK government is driving all sorts of misery right through the art of living in the name of preparing national life for the future and responding to The Economic Situation That We All Find Ourselves In!!!   Nowhere more so than in public service, and most keenly felt by myself in Education, where the reform seems to be aimed at disenfranchising the professional teacher from the very exercise of their own skill: teaching.   Schools are being put in a position whereby they have become reliant on providing an education service which can only run on various extra fundings (erstwhile specialisms); the fundings have now disappeared – ‘wail, what can we do?’ – and ‘never fear, we offer you … Academies’.   With what seems a lot of money – we were made an offer we couldn’t refuse.   However, legally, these Academies have now haemorrhaged from local authority control – big saving of money.   Management of Academies has devolved to the Academies themselves.   “Freedom,” bannered our school when it became an Academy at the beginning of this year (‘aha,’ I thought ‘this could be creative’) “… to all think along the same lines” (‘wail’).   Towards the end of this year the government has made proposals that Performance Management (through which a teacher is targeted and measured how well they do their job) and Capability Procedures (through which a teacher goes if their work is perceived as inadequate) should be grafted together into one procedure.   Our Review would henceforth start with the check to see if we are still capable, and that if there is the slightest question over any aspect of our performance our review would suddenly become a struggle for our jobs.   Our Academy would like to take this up.   We have a period of consultation.   The following is what I offered to the discussion:

Of course the government document highlights and emphasises that grafting performance management and capability is the way forward in management of teachers.   The ‘way’ ‘forward’ is to streamline the teaching workforce into a unified cadre of Education Deliverers and the only way to do this is to nullify teacher thought and experience – the very vocation that has moved a person to turn their life to teaching in the first place – to sterilise it by declaring it an obstacle to progress, to make it un-relevant.   But this does not fore-decide that we should do likewise.   We are an Academy now.   This means we have the freedom … (oh, ‘to all think along the same lines’, damn, I thought I had a good point there – even the opportunity to pursue a dialogue is now denied me).   In pursuing this ‘reform’ the school is demonstrating its willingness and determination to weed out those who are not ‘like-minded’ (as narrowly and ineffectively defined by the school), quite independent from whether they are good and effective teachers or not.   How ironic, now, that this would be performed under the aegis of what was formally known as ‘professional development’.   This move would simply make it easier to define individual teachers out of their jobs – it would complete the bypassing of the organic, sharing, collegiate creativity that is the craft and art of teaching.

‘FREEDOM … to all think along the same lines’ isn’t this the most oxy-moronic slogan to have been heard?

More and more, a career in teaching feels like life in a cult: the over-riding and rendering-irrelevant of the very basis and reference that formed an individual’s teaching identity in the first place.   If my thought and creativity do not comply with the ‘acceptable’ practice of the organisation I am immediately rendered anathema by the organisation which holds tight to the only means of endorsement of my work and identity: performance management.   My thought and creativity will be banished, excluded, rendered untouchable, polluted, much like the ultimate punishment of early societies – to be banished was to lose your very identity, it would have been far better to have just been killed.

This is not what I came into teaching for and yet I am obliged to have to respond to it.   I am obliged to have to conform in it.   And the proposed streamlining of capability and performance will complete the alienation from my own endeavour in teaching that has been making me ill, now, for the past decade.   How on earth can I be expected to believe that this is in the ‘best interests’ of teachers, let alone pupils or their parents?   When the proposal goes ahead – as it inexorably will – will my objections in this consultation render me ‘incapable’ unless I change them?   And will I then be ‘performance managed’ out of my career?

I will say it now, and I will say it here, (even though it will not have immediate sway over what is happening anyway, but being one in a million who marched on the streets of London in 2003 saying ‘NO’ to Tony Blair obliged him to become so ridiculous in his determination to go to war that it rendered him a liability, I can hope): government-nurtured management of education/schools/teachers is just plain, simple wrong.   This current proposal is the epitome of wrong management, of either people or public service.   It is demotivating.   It is mechanised only to identify the lack (or even just the ‘satisfactory’), it absorbs the good and immediately takes it for granted, rather than seeing how it works and cultivating it.   Teachers work hard now to cover their backs and stay out of hassle rather than culture their practice.   Lazy management just demands over recognising or understanding or nurturing; it doesn’t bother working out how to meet (and therefore manage) the demands itself.   It narrowly pre-defines success criteria – extracting from the whole community that is communication – reducing education to a process rather than a growth.   It practises outcome-led management to the detriment of value-informed practice, and in this way exploits endeavour rather than nurturing it.   Management does not recognise teachers as a resource but as mechanisms (reductio’d ad absurdum) to those imposed outcomes in which they have no investment and in which they had no decision.   Management has become dictatorial and inconsistent and determinedly non-democratic or non-nurturing.   It may be the way the government wants management to be, but it is wrong.   Governments are often wrong.

Am I saying all this simply because of my own experience of being ignored rather than managed during the last decade?   Yes.   Are my words therefore rendered irrelevant because of this?   No.   Unless the way I have been treated was all a very long-running mistake.   And unless the litter of other teachers’ careers I have seen discarded by the roadside, crumpled and shaking, was wrong as well (I have seen teachers with decades of successful experience reduced to ‘satisfactory’ and then retired; I have seen teachers hounded to cure a hastily diagnosed symptom until they became ill and left the profession; I have seen passionate teachers walk out of their career with no forwarding post, during a recession; I have seen teachers shift out of their job to become successful elsewhere where they were listened to; I have seen teacher’s whole legacy rubbished once they were retired; I have seen teachers dis-abled in their career because they hadn’t been practising the sudden advent of a new initiative for years previously; I have seen teachers shifted into teaching wholly different subjects as a reward for evading being made redundant; I hear, every day, the attrition of spirit every time an e-mail is opened).   Wouldn’t it be better for my career if I just shut up and didn’t express my unhappiness and reservations about this ordeal which is my career?   For the decade past, it makes no difference; if this proposal goes ahead: yes.

If I don’t send this, it is because I need to look after my health.   If I do send it, it is because I believed the word ‘consultation’ and because I shouldn’t be thinking only of myself.

(I did send it – it presumably got consulted, although I have not talked to any manager about it.   We hear the results on Monday 16th July – the week we break for the summer holidays.)

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

career wormhole: Child of Illusion
compromise wormhole: really
money & performance & politics & teaching craft wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?
obligation wormhole: the / pyrrhic / play
performance management wormhole: teaching performance
professionalism wormhole: responsible
recognition wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
teaching art: Resource

 

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the / pyrrhic / play

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2011, 5*, being, breathing, compromise, doing, game, growth, living, naïveté, obligation, pointlessness, sitting, society, talking to myself, thinking, vindication

 

 

 

                      the
                      pyrrhic
                      play

            to be a Big Player is to play
                      a very complicated game
                                selflessly-
                                selfishly
            to know how the game works
                      know when to relinquish my view
                                to obtain the compromise
            to get what I want (as
                      pursuit of the Greater Good)        the Ends

                                                      … chorus?

                      however

            I want to pursue my own self-
                      lessness I want to sit and gain
                                nothing
            but then I become fatally exposed
                      when I try to put some relief
                                found inside myself
                                ‘out there’ persuasive in the world
            and then it becomes part of the Game
                      which I- do-not-want-to-but-have-obliged-myself
                                to Play

                                … chorus?

            my activity should come out of clear naïve response –
                      a totally un-beguiled emptiness –
                                not my success of finding the point
            not my vindication not my self
                      (because then when I am necessarily ignored
                                I become a living death)

            … chorus: don’t
                      don’t ever Play the Game just breathe
            breathe and step
                      one square at a time
                                while the rest of the Game
                                          plays itself

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & doing & living & naïveté & talking to myself wormhole: inexorable       naïveté
breathing wormhole: wriving
compromise wormhole: the path / no echo
game wormhole: we play a game
obligation wormhole: p                        o                   i                             n                                                   t                            l                          e                                 s   s                                          n                                                         e                   s                                                                                                  s               all around
pointlessness wormhole: anxiety
sitting wormhole: the sea plant
society wormhole: holiday
thinking wormhole: anatta
vindication wormhole: poessay V: // writing / as practice while / writing

 

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