ambling around / the garden centre

Tags

2013, angel, awareness, Buddha, clouds, death, elephant, eyes, garden, lion, muse, naked, path, philosophy, posture, sitting, sun, time, walking

 

 

 

                                                              ambling around
                                                              the garden centre

                the sundial pointed through time
                     on a shorts-cloudy day
                and the fossil curled its long death
                     round in millennia

                the philosopher contemplated unaware of
                     his own nakedness
                and the angel contemplated the edge of the path
                     dejected

                the lion slept on paws the elephant awoke with trunk
                     for to curl the way
                and the maiden all-forlorn was nonetheless aware as the
                     dress slipped

but the Buddha’s head just stood and the Buddhas sat and lay all iconographically wrong and more than they should
                     in the gravel
                                              eyes
                                              half
                                              open

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

awareness wormhole: sight / seeing
Buddha wormhole: between
clouds & eyes & time & walking wormhole: up here
death wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
garden wormhole: prologue-ing
muse wormhole: 1959
path wormhole: I will eventually drift tectonic
philosophy wormhole: teaching performance
posture wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
sitting & sun wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve

 

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teaching performance

Tags

performance, performance management, philosophy, resource, teaching craft

There is a delicate balance to maintain when walking into the classroom.   In one’s management of interaction during the lesson, just the right amount of humour, adjustment of the teacher’s responses, adjustment of the activity, responses to individual needs and conditions of pupils etc… needs to be finely judged.   The teacher, if s/he is to perform well, needs much more than the lesson preparation, they need the ‘performance’ which delivers the lesson with the sensitive response of a stage performer performing to a diverse audience.   If the teacher does not feel right – if they have travelled between sites, if they have no guaranteed break during the day (the week!), they are required to fulfil many other administrative/educational tasks in no extra time, if their subject is trashed by individuals, or school management or society, if the media has had a recent dump on teachers exasperated that children, yet again, seem out of control and unfit for the economy etc. – their performance will be off, they will mis-read situations, they will miss individual communications, they will over-respond to some and under-respond to others etc.   The teacher is a performer and needs to be nurtured if you want the care that teaching IS delivered.

~~~—‘o’—~~~

misfits’ miscellanysays: Yes, Sir!

mlr says: And don’t let me have to tell you again – I said I want applause when I have taught you a lesson!

misfits’ miscellany says: Listen for sound of one hand clapping.

mlr says: I am humbled

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

performance wormhole: I think I know why I don’t like teaching, even though I quite like teaching and am quite good at it, even if I do have to say so myself
performance management wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
philosophy wormhole: management and managerialism
resource wormhole: Structural Time
teaching craft wormhole: management and managerialism

 

management and managerialism

Tags

communication, management, managerialism, OFSTED, organic, philosophy, politics, pupils, results-led education, teachers, teaching craft

Organic management: starts from the communicative, human, open, compassionate, giving, listening, building, creative, containing, widening, eye-contacting, assuring, re-assuring skill/talent/craft of a teacher.*   The experience of practising this skill/talent/craft is pooled into the department – some become specialists, some become cementers, some become fillers, some become pruners, some become diggers, some become sowers, the HoD becomes the tender.   The departments become the areas of delivery which collectively are the profile of the school (the park, with 1600 hills that rise and valleys that bow, with paths that run and oaks that stay, with saplings that promise and bed plants that spread, with water features that sing and exotic plants that wonder, with perennials that deliver with happy, smiling faces), the headteacher is the organiser of the services provided (the architect, the boundary wall and the entrance).

Managerialism: starts with the politicisation of the service provided.   It starts by defining the idealised end-product of a service on a national scale as the needs/aims through which to run the service.   It puts in place an infrastructure to ensure that those needs are met (OFSTED, governors, school management) which drives the process of the service to guarantee that the needs/aims are met.   Anything which is alternative and incidental to the needs/aims is either pruned or left to whither.   Success is a list or a number – the measure of the needs/aims – which are applauded and rewarded; alternative is a failure, and is ignored.   The national needs/aims of the service are incorporated into the provision which inexorably becomes transmissive, cold, convergent, efficient, delivered, didactic, piling, provided, chanelled, propagandising, un-engaging, statemental, repetitive.   Pupils become consumers – they receive their education with little commitment and little response.   They become educated, but in an overgrown, tasteless and over-obvious way.   Once they leave education, they are over-qualified and naïve about work.

* Are teachers perfect simply because they are teachers?   No.   But they participate – to varying degrees of surfing and dancing – in a naturally perfect action: teaching.   Can teachers get better at teaching?   Yes, they can train themselves to ease out their insistencies and certainties, their presumptions and fore-clusions, which make their teaching gnarled, inflexible, preclusive and constrictive.   Do teachers need to be told how to teach?   No, they need to be nurtured.

~~~~—-‘o’—-~~~~

plexity says:

“They become educated, but in an overgrown, tasteless and over-obvious way.”

Like hydroponically grown, ‘forced’ vegetables, they are soft, lacking fibre in their cell walls, vulnerable to predation by insects, fungi and  infections.

The parallel is exact.

m lewis redford says:

… and this is because the ‘means’ of education – the means of achieving the figure-defined ends – is mere process.   To meet targets there is the urgency to not waste time and outcome on anything which cannot be regulated/controlled/driven.   So instead of leading our charges by the hand down the broad steps of acquiring/sorting/arranging Knowledge, of connecting/matrix-ing Understanding, of testing/questioning/playing Evaluation, we do all of the damn work ourselves and force-feed it to them like so much manure – “c’mon, finish up, all of it, it’s good for you!”.   Those that are good at remembering stuff score well, those that aren’t don’t.   We do not teach our pupils so much now as we educationally programme them to behave in a certain way.   ‘Educational behaviourism, it’s the way of the future, don’t bother with all that thinking and study, just sit there and receive.   Mouth open!   Good children.   Comes in glossy books with lots of little boxes.   It’s colourful too!’

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication & managerialism & teaching craft wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
management wormhole: Resource
philosophy wormhole: is Koestler important // ?
results-led education wormhole: Now, let’s think this through, shall we? The clunkish philosophy driving today’s education.
valley wormhole: King of the World

 

is Koestler important // ?

Tags

2011, 4*, being, identity, Koestler, life, philosophy

Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell (2010)

 

 

 

                                is Koestler important because
he models the build-up of whole passion and ideology and
                its congenital misalignment in the world
                                              its genealogy
                                              of adversarity
                                              which always
                                              condensed self
                                and other like water droplets
from the billowing steam centripetalled out
                                              from what was happening in the world
                and then found that they only shadowed a focus
                                they didn’t actually focus?

settled intellectuals stay with their ideologies and
                                              write thick books despite the loss of centre
                                Koestler at least showed the example of recasting himself with
                the billows

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: travelling
identity wormhole: p                        o                   i                             n                                                   t                            l                          e                                 s   s                                          n                                                         e                   s                                                                                                  s               all around
Koestler & philosophy wormholes: anxiety
life wormhole: evasion

 

anxiety

Tags

2011, 5*, anxiety, Camus, de Beauvoir, Koestler, loneliness, philosophy, pointlessness, Sartre, talking

 

 

 

                                     anxiety

                                     of a lost opportunity
                                     never had

                                     Sartre and de Beauvoir
                                     Camus and Francine
                                     Koestler and Mamaine
                                     went out and dined
                                     and drank and flirted and
                                     talked fine philosophical
                                     talk and slid in and out
                                     of their own legends

                                                                      relief
                                     when they all went home
                                     lost the buzz and felt
                                     tired and suicidal

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–
alone wormhole: preee- / senting // en- / senting
anxiety wormhole: but there …
loneliness wormhole: patronage
philosophy wormhole: anathema
talking wormhole: have got // can do

 

anathema

Tags

'scape, 2011, 5*, breeze, British Museum, classification, Enlightenment, evidence, experience, philosophy, question, rationality, religion, science, sound

 

 

 

                      anathema

                before the room maps
                of the British Museum

                      “and let thy feet milleniums hence
                be set in midst of knowledge”

                while people stand too close to see
                and photograph the maps
                      zoom-in out
                      adjust-focus       ‘qsh-nApp’
                to find their way

                a piece of fluff from someone’s coat
                shifts and rolls on the marble floor
                from time to time
                when nothing can be felt

                the Greeks explored the one behind
                      the many
                the Enlightenment collected and categorised the many
                      to make them one

                           rationality v. participation
                      classification v. belonging
                             evidence v. experience

                              science & religion

                the question always is:
                      how to go beyond what you know
                      in the face of what you don’t know?

                answer: you are the same statue
                      out of the stone from which you were carved

                ancient cultures – figures in everything
                modern culture – figures in cases

                neither better
                nor worse

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breeze wormhole: the next step
philosophy wormhole: Have
sound wormhole: jknht

 

Have

Tags

2010, 2011, 20th century, 5*, art, capitalism, film, growth, Have, hippies, history, music, philosophy, poetry, samsara, society, writing

 

 

 

                      where

                                              Have

all the poets gone who sung our hidden sex and soul under tight shirt collars and high-heeled shoes?   Where have all the hippies gone who simply placed the flower in the barrel of the gun pointed at us?   Where have all the socialists gone who testified a simple right again before Account and Product?   Where have all the rebels gone who choked on ‘why’ with their blue suede shoes having found – and lost – True Love?   Where have all the philosophers gone who waded – wastedly – across the currents whether there was a bank or not?   Where have all the novelists gone who picked the threads from the tangled ball and wove tapestries that lined our walls?   Where have all the movies gone that landscaped our journeys with the opening credits and close-upped how lost our lives had become?   The artists?   The visionaries?   The innovators?   The seers?

                      they were there during
                      the fin de siècle
                      during the 20s after
                      the War during the
                      30s as it all descended
                      during the 40s as it
                      all depressed during the
                      50s as it got all angry
                      during the 60s as it
                      blossomed during the 70s
                      as it …

… career the relevant universities industry are funding silent cuts the noise image message is USP wallpapered chic over fashion everything lies the agenda word point is question proliferated sound- diffuse bite to really semantic but focus the not idea needed is same blanked product because recession there bail is out ‘nothing…’ thank ‘new…’ you bought the package innovation market is forestalled price for outcome lack led of satisfaction purchase guaranteed

                      and the prophecies are not made
                      anymore because they’ve all
                      come true

                      who owns the word
                      who owns the air
                      who owns thought and speech
                      who owns song and care

                      I certainly don’t but I am aware
                      that somebody does when
                      I reach out and touch
                      and offer there’s always
                      somebody I have to pay usually
                      whole cadres of them

                      … they’re still thinking and
                      painting they’re still writing
                      and seeing they’re still
                      creating and knowing
                      I suppose, but

                      … they’ve all been
                      Had we’ve all been
                      Had where oh where is
                      everyone
                      now?

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

20^th century wormhole: warp and weft
capitalism & Have & history wormhole: bargain
film wormhole: ‘to all the film-makers today …’
music & writing wormhole: sit
poetry wormhole: this is not / a poem
samsara wormhole: Confession
society wormhole: angular hardened and defined