Another Brick in the Wall

Welcome to a new Reality

I was in a supermarket the other day when I heard Pink Floyd ringing out boldly with:

"We don't need no education"

I had just seen thousands of Italian high school students demonstrating for the right to go back to school physically and it made me think about discourse and how rapidly change can actually happen. 

Of course it is sad to think that we need a pandemic to understand how important education is, and how the social, interactional aspect is what the students miss more than anything. In any case, however, this incident made me reflect on the importance of discourse and how constructs such as education are socially created by the world we live in. Being forced to stay at home, spending hours on end in front of a screen is certainly a wake up call for those who want to "get back to normal". 

Protest in the past: "Teacher, leave them kids alone"

Whereas not very long ago the sentiments in the Pink Floyd album were quite widespread and ideas of education as being thought control, cruelty and "dark sarcasm in the classroom" were an attack on the power of the teacher in the classroom, and the education system as being just a conveyor belt that created workers who were to be fed into the "system".

Of course, it is undeniable that the traditional models of Western education systems were designed to create model citizens, who complied with the social norms of the time, it is also true that not having an education has never been an advantage. The myth of the uneducated, self-made man may hold true for a few but for many the road to future work, future social acceptance and a modicum of prosperity is certainly through education. Whilst the privileged regarded school complacently as "a bore", the less fortunate were crying out for access to school which is seen as a key to success.

How things have changed

It takes very little, however, for new discourses to appear on the scene and thanks to COVID-19 the discourse of positive education in the classroom is now coming to the fore. Students and teachers are united against the situation and what is fairly clear is the social nature of education. We don't go to school only to "acquire knowledge" which, after all we could do in a variety of ways. We go to school to interact, to learn, but to make friends and to partake of life itself. The social nature of the classroom underlined by Piaget and the constructivists is being tested in a crucible of fire and is proving to be essential. We are social beings. Take physical interaction away from us and we wilt. 

Rather than being just "another brick in the wall" you as a student are a thriving member of a social community where you have the opportunity to exercise your own agency in creating your own world.

Let's hope that we can all get back into the classroom soon, and that it will be a nurturing space where students can learn to be creative and critical as they acquire knowledge and build it in a continuing discourse. It's time to create a new educational reality.

Looking for a new year

Looking for a new year

Today was New Year's Eve traditionally a moment in the year when we feel the need to welcome in something new, something better a chance for redemption and fresh beginnings, but this evening looked sombre, grey and uninspiring as countless news channels almost seemed to be savouring the empty squares around Italy.

photocredit@Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

31st December 2020 at about 11.30 pm

This year, in fact, celebrations would be different. We were in lockdown with a curfew at 10pm and there was a strange silence in the streets as the evening wore on. I had decided to go to bed early but somehow found myself, as midnight approached, overtaken by a sense of expectancy and suddenly there it was: lights in the inky sky, coloured kites floating above the roofs of Verona and fireworks being launched from balconies and windows. From my bedroom I saw stars and lights of all kinds colour the night, something that I had never seen before and the magic of those lights in the sky seemed to be full of promise: much more so than the official offerings in streaming.

Official celebrations

Fireworks and shows had been promised in streaming all over the world and I had half thought that this might be the beginning of new rituals, new ways of communicating and celebrating our hope for the future in new multimodal languages. I had seen that various cities, such as Paris and Milan had organised extravagant son et lumière shows and so as midnight approached I turned on my computer hopefully to see what creativity was on offer. The idea behind the Milan celebrations was inspired: people had been asked to write their messages for the new year on Twitter and the words would be projected onto the cathedral, but the messages were quite long at times and it was hard to take them all in. Perhaps words rather than messages would have been more effective. This was followed by the most amazing, coloured images projected onto the cathedral but I felt that once I had got over the wow effect I was left wanting something more... 

The Dubai celebration spoke to me on a deeper level with images and video footage projected onto the Burj Khalifa tower. These had a greater impact perhaps because they were combined with music and spoke their own language. My thoughts, however, were more related to what technology could do and what we as humans are capable of. The wow moment here was that we were actually looking to the future and celebrating our world.

Lessons to learn from 2020

One of my favourite rituals at the end of a year, of course, is to look back and take stock, see what we have learned. Coronavirus has challenged is in so many ways and one thing that this year keeps reminding me of is the 'Allegory of the Long Spoons'. In this tale we visit Hell and see everyone seated at a table full of an abundance of food and drink but each person has a long wooden spoon and cannot these spoons are too long for them to bend and feed themselves, so they are starving surrounded by food. 

Heaven is the same scenario with one difference. The people there do not try to feed themselves but to feed each other. I realise that this is highly altruistic but it underlines the fact that the pandemic requires us to communicate with and support each other. When countries try to 'grab everything' for themselves, whether it be oxygen tanks, other medical supplies or vaccines, and when they do not help each other but build walls to shut one another out and every state plays by a different rule book, then the problem just becomes that much harder to solve.

A New Year

To return to Verona, the simple stars in the sky said more to me than the official celebrations because they were almost like a cry from individuals looking for hope in what has been a miserable end to a very had year. My hope is that we find a way to foster that hope and to talk to each other, to find the time to stop and listen to each other and to use the technology we have not to create wow effects but to feed each other with our own 'long spoons'.

In any case, I am a firm believer in rituals and mine involves, as I said, taking stock. I hope you find your own new rituals and that we can share in finding our way together.