Edubloggers as “Prisoners of the nation state.”

I never fail to be impressed by the “tragedy of the inertia of the mind” in education – by those educational conversations where we can froth about the networking available through the internet,  the participatory cultures possible through Web2.0 branded activity, and then continue to re-imagine how we might learn through the institution of “school”. 

We are not only prisoner’s of Ulrich Beck’s nation state, we are prisoners of the sequestered classroom way of doing school.   

I think that social and political theory is, to some extent, still a prisoner of the nation-state. Most basic concepts of the social sciences –sociology, the state, democracy, community- are connected to the nation and to the nation-state form. This relates of course to the historical development of political thinking and of the social sciences - both acquired their modern form in the 19th century in the context of imagining national communities. Most of the social sciences are still sticking to what I call the container model of society and politics. Ulrich Beck

Reflecting about education when reading the transnational thinking of Ulrich Beck  is not a good idea. 

“Because of new communication structures, new communication technologies, new transportation systems and so on, all different cultures, all different nations, and all different religions live in one present, even, if they live at the same time in different pasts and different futures. This is to some extent an integrated present, because the existing communication structures do not allow for the construction of rigid borders anymore.”

Beck made me realise how we have allowed ourselves to be compromised by the lure of edu_protectionism, how we we determinedly ignore the "integrated present" when we think about education.

All that froth over new communication structures and technologies in education, (and the “oh so casual” flinging of terms like 21st Century learners, digital immigrants/ digital natives, Web2.0, social software, systemic and sustainable change into the conversation in staffrooms across New Zealand), means nothing if we continue with closed shop practice when it comes to future thinking about education.

We have been seduced by our inability to imagine ourselves as superfluous to student learning.

When it comes to smart thinking about the future of education, Stephen Downes seems like a lone voice of reason in the edublogosphere – check out his exposure of the “boundaries of the past” in this elegant critique of School2.0.  School2.0, where everyone else is happily referencing new technologies so long as they can create structures that keep themselves in jobs.

There is no particular focus for this view of 'School 2.0'. The main point is that technology allows us to change our approach to education, from one where we segregate learners in specially designed education facilities (classrooms, training rooms, schools, universities) to one where learning is something we do (and what educators provide) in the course of any other activity.

The idea is that 'School 2.0' is the first step toward being non-school, and that our objective should be to use technologies to leverage our ability to personalize learning, and in so doing, facilitate students' learning while taking part as full citizens in the wider community.

When you look at it through Beck’s analysis, the New Zealand e-Learning Action Plan, is stuffed full of the rhetoric of the South Island high country fencers. The pages are bullet pointed with "Outcome:" and "Actions" describing the ICT equivalent of laying  out fence lines, digging fence post holes and position posts, filling the holes with concrete or soil, cutting and constructing fences with boards, wiring, chain links, posts, and putting together gates and hanging them in position. 

These barriers, security fences, retaining walls, vineyard trellises, and other types of fences and walls are intended to manage the web environments schools can access.  The MoE e learning rhetoric is all about containment – those “dedicated  networks” for education, and boundary building – those Advanced Network and Virtual Learning Network initiatives.

Even our “future proofed” (by newness and draftiness) Draft Curriculum  proves on closer analysis to turn itself inside out by stressing the importance of schools adopting the boundaries of the expectations of the past – grounding itself through “local communities” rather than exploring the openness of “global networks”

Quality education is a shared responsibility of the state, the community, the family, and the individual. The New Zealand Curriculum sets national directions for education. It is expected that when schools develop their programmes, they will interpret these directions in ways that take account of the diverse learning needs of their students and the expectations of their communities. Draft Curriculum P4

Beck uses the Muhammad cartoons as an example  of how new technologies and communication structures disallow the effectiveness of rigid borders in 2007.

You may remember the clash over the Muhammad cartoons about a year ago. Initially, this was framed as a Danish problem, addressing Muslims in Denmark and attempting to provoke a debate over their integration in Danish society. Almost instantly, this became a global problem. This indicates that even if you try to articulate an issue as a national issue, in many fields this is not possible anymore. Because of new communication structures, new communication technologies, new transportation systems and so on, all different cultures, all different nations, and all different religions live in one present, even, if they live at the same time in different pasts and different futures. This is to some extent an integrated present, because the existing communication structures do not allow for the construction of rigid borders anymore.

By the same reasoning it is  hard to argue that our sense of what an educational system “might be” should continue to be imprisoned by the rigid borders of the imaginings  of  local or even national communities. 

We need to think more boldly about learning opportunities that are freed from the classroom container, school container, secondary container, primary container, tertiary container, and even the nation containers.

I reckon Illich is a good place to start this thinking

“A good education system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.” - Ivan Illich 1971

If Illich could imagine a good education system – one that didn’t need schools and classrooms in 1971, why do we keep pretending we need schools and classrooms to learn in 2007?

Teemu Arina’s blog posting  Serendipity 2.0: Missing Third Places of Learning starts to develop the conversations that we should be having about  different ways of learning, different places for learning – different ways of doing school. Lets hope his thinking excites others to think without rigid borders about what learning might be.

Comments

[Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough)]

Good stuff Arti! I've become increasingly frustrated by the way that many "progressive" educators, edubloggers and educational technologists talk the talk about student-centred, peer-to-peer, constructivist, networked learning models, but when it comes down to it the behaviours they exhibit and the systems they set up indicate they either aren't getting it, or they just aren't willing to relinquish the control, quasi-authority and power base conferred upon them by their position as teacher in the traditional role.

Riffing off Mark Prensky's ideas of Digital Native/Digital Immigrant, Kim Flintoff has coined the term 'Digital Coloniser' to describe the type of educator who co-opts the new tools and the new rhetoric and tries to fit them into old structures and even tries to use them to reinforce the old ways of doing things and the old power structures - Prensky on the New Paradigm.

[Jeri Hurd]

A real Call to Action, and one I've been wrestling with more and more lately. I'm guilty myself of using technology as an extension of current practice, though that's changing the more I know. I think--believe--that will be true for most teachers. Without overdoing the technology-as-revolution metaphor, it's only natural that the initial stages of technology proficiency will mirror what teachers already do. As they grow increasingly comfortable with the tools and skills (and Will Richardson posted a great blog today about how we really MUST use these technologies ourselves, for our own learning), we'll begin to use them in more innovative ways. However, each school needs a "best practice" leader to inspire and motivate others, someone who stands aside and lets student learn in creative, collaborative ways. THAT'S going to be the hard part.

[Scott Wilson]

I think its amazing that Illich's "Four Networks" from Deschooling Society are still, for me, the fundamental building blocks of a learning infrastructure for 2007. Its refreshing to strip away some of the layers that have accreted on education to these core concepts, as we have so many ways of constructing the "Four Networks" that don't follow the old paths.

[lucychili]

The cegsa conference has been interesting so far.
http://waraku-education.wikispaces.com/IT+Students+online+community
Peter is a very open oriented teacher. Hoping to be able to wrangle something practical in this direction. He is thinking multischool, with connections to higher education and industry, mentoring from one sector to the next.

I missed this morning's keynote.
http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2007/07/19/gerry-white-opening-keynote-cegsa/

Michael Cowling talked about technology literacy as an exchange of skills with students. w00t.
http://www.cegsa.sa.edu.au/conference/2007/program/Program_07_final_v10.pdf

Stephen Downes will be beamed in tomorrow lunchtime.

Janet

[Artichoke]

The most interesting part when reading Beck's analysis was realising how little I know and understand when I try and think about education - and how this limits what I can imagine.

I am jammed in the edu_present when I think about learning - Is probably what Paglia alludes to in part when she claims "Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity"

Like you Scott, I find the fact that I continue to fall back on Illich amazing. Reading polymaths like Illich, provides something quite unique to how I understand the world - conviviality, shadow work, medicine, education, corruption, even the development of text. I feel the same way about writers like Koestler in The Act of Creation or The Sleepwalkers. People don't seem to write like this anymore - connecting so many diverse ideas across so many different disciplines and times to provide unique insight. Is why edu_bloggers who can think across disciplines like Stephen Downes are important to us - especially when their messages are uncomfortable

It is alarmingly apparent that I don't know enough about the past, about sociology, politics, culture and history to understand what is possible in education. I am guilty of contributing to an "impoverished educational dialogue" - a dialogue that ensures we will never re imagine education despite any developments in communication technologies. I just hope I am not party to too much digital colonising in the day job Sean. I suspect that I am.

[Leigh]

Who are these guilty edu bloggers? I think I know, but am paranoid that you might think me one of them.. I want very much to remain in your list, but worry that you are poised to scratch me from it... why am I worried that I am one of them, because I observe myself making compromises in my day job, and absorbing the institution's way. I certainly do want more radical ideas and practices, and have reckoned Illich as the lead for some time now. (I jump for joy everytime you reference Illich :) In my day job, I have been trying to encourage teachers to participate, in the hope that by participating they will see the falseness of formal education and see the need for change, but instead I am seeing a clear majority simply interpret these info communication tools through teacher minds, and use them to broadcast - "I will teach but not participate..." I think you should sharpen your critique, your post and comment from Sean leaves me wondering who are the guilty parties.

[lucychili]

Leigh we all are. We all contribute to a model which is formal and which requires its vision to fit into powerpoint piecharts when viewed from a national perspective. As with the TALO conversation, there is no bad third party, we are the fabric. Our choices have impact. Conspiracy and fences are about finding the villian in someone else and excluding them.
If youre about freedom and participation then we have to be about finding the villian in ourselves as system. How do we find better systems in ourselves?

I am not sure about how distributed communities with open participative practice work when you try to organise them at scale, but it feels like that is the nut to crack. What is useful from a unified standardised vision and what is useful from flexibility and diversity, slowness and messiness. And who says what is best. Learner, teacher, parent, policy, budget, employer, blogger, thief.

[Leigh]

Yes, I keep thinking back to Arti's last post about Illich, the one that referenced short essays from Illich's friends - the one with the Latin title.. the idea that institutionalisation is the problem. I think successful scaling is already evidenced in the popularity of socially networked media... its the fight with institutionalisation that will make or break all this... perhaps we should all step back from the effort to get these new practices endorsed by the institutions? Perhaps by pushing for that very thing, we are hurting it...

[roseg]

The only edu (or any prefix) people I trust are those who aren't sure whether they're the scoundrels. Sincere doubt is a fine thing.

[Christopher D. Sessums]

Arti,

While I have regularly admired your skepticism, I think you're being a bit presumptious in your attack of those endorsing a so called School 2.0.

Borders are both political imaginings and physical/social realities. Issues of power, culture, and change will always be with us and will always entail a majority/minority perspective. Perhaps a dose of Robert Frost (good fences make good neighbors) might do you some good (as well as some Freire, Marcuse, and Foucault).

While I clearly endorse tearing down schools as we know them, the rebuilding process is more complicated than anything Illich, Beck, Downes, you or I have ever written. What those who endorse a new purpose for schooling are really saying is what has been advocated since Dewey (at least), which I believe Illich proposed as well. However, we, writers, philosophers, skeptics, are not in a position of power or authority to make wide-scale change possible. Or are we? Perhaps all School 2.0-ers and critics should become school principals or build our own schools or what we imagine to be "a better way" (i.e., a means of educating communities of young and old).

Job security isn't the issue. Realistically fighting for change in a world so wedded to the past is difficult. Providing meaningful criticism is good, but meaningful action is better.

You've offered yet more critique without any meaningful suggestions or even solicitied for such. As such it appears the inertia of which you speak is still strong with you.

[Artichoke]

Leigh I don’t think you can ascribe guilt to behaviours and thinking that result from immersion in an environment as pervasive as schools and schooling. With the best will in the world we cannot undermine ourselves. Our thinking is embedded in systems of school. We are all complicit

By way of explanation I always imagine myself as Michio Kaku’s carp when I think about teaching and learning or even learning –

• I would ask myself a question only a child could ask: what would it be like to be a carp? What a strange world it would be! I imagined that the pond would be an entire universe, one that is two-dimensional in space. The carp would only be able to swim forwards and backwards, and left and right. But I imagined that the concept of “up”, beyond the lily pads, would be totally alien to them. Any carp scientist daring to talk about “hyperspace”, i.e. the third dimension “above” the pond, would immediately be labelled a crank. I wondered what would happen if I could reach down and grab a carp scientist and lift it up into hyperspace.

Other ways of learning – ways without school remain alien to me. It is what Janet captured so well in her “we are the fabric” comment. And because of this we (the edubloggers and the rest) find it impossible to imagine how new technologies for communication might change the way we learn.

I am trying to read three books at once at the moment – Turkle’s Evocative Objects, Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan and Rosenzweig’s The Halo Effect. I’ve not developed my ideas properly yet but somehow they all suggest that how we see the world and its possibilities is limited.

Taleb’s arguments fits this best – “we concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are therefore unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorise, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the impossible.”

I think we need to be bolder in the ways we imagine the connection between new communication technologies (Web2.0 if you like) and learning, but freeing myself from understanding learning in the same way that a carp understands The Japanese Tea Garden pond in San Francisco is difficult. Which is why I value the solitary voices that attempt this.

[Artichoke]

And Rose and Christopher – great comments - you are right in fingering me as a presumptuous scoundrel – am guilty as charged.

I agree that meaningful action is undoubtedly better – but can it arise without meaningful critique? – I’d like to believe that meaningful action requires meaningful critique but reading Taleb is making me wonder whether “meaningful action” is “a black swan event” – something unpredictable that we ascribe meaningful critique to after the event.

And then I am distracted by the thought that critique is not critique unless it is as Fisher and Scriven would argue “skilled and active interpretation and evaluation” – all else is presumption – which when I think about it is possibly what you were alluding to Christopher.

I have tried a bit of meaningful action in the day job – before Web2.0 was imagined - from home schooling to teaching kids at an alternative inner city secondary school to a year spent designing and lobbying the MoE, local schools and the community for a designated character school alternative for gifted students from low decile communities, BUT none of these endeavours (however innovative I/we imagined they were at the time – and we did have as you might imagine some quite different proposals from what was current about how schools might operate) looked at learning outside of the context of an institution.

My attempts at meaningful action in education revealed me to be a prisoner of the nation state

I don’t think these observations are anything new – Gatto captured the same sentiment without reference to Web2.0 when he observed - It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things.

I’ll have to go back to Carolyn Marvin’s “When Old Technologies Were New” where she exposes how the past does indeed survive the future in the context of electric communication in the late nineteenth century. Her explanation of the public reaction to the introduction of the telephone and electric light, probably offers us some useful ways of interpreting these more recent communicative technologies and their impact on how we imagine education. From the professional engineers trying to control the new media, to establishing a new barrier between experts and laymen, to the exercise of interpretive authority, and the visions of a “one-way, one- world homogeneity” [read flat earth here] – the “cognitive imperialism” that developed.

As for soliciting - I guess what I’d like to read, in the blogosphere, is more reckless imaginings about how new technologies might transform learning cultures. Posts that grab the carp scientist and lift it up into hyperspace.

[Karen Janowski]

Loved it when you said,"We have been seduced by our inability to imagine ourselves as superfluous to student learning."

It's summer. School is not in session for most kids. Has learning ended, gone on temporary hiatus? Not at all and we can't delude ourselves into believing that it has. In fact, I would argue that more REAL learning is occurring absent teachers and the four constricting walls of our school buildings. Because learning is grounded in engagement, motivation and fun. (Read The Neuroscience of Joyful Learning just published by ASCD)

Much to contemplate in this post. Too many factors contribute to the inability to perceive, imagine and promote real change - Education is BIG business!! (Publishers, unions, lobbyists, etc.)

[Bill Kerr]

I liked parts of Stephen Downes's article, further down, where he came up with an historical perspective on the growth of Schooling, as linked to the industrial age, and also his other suggestions of students doing meaningful social work.

Apart from that I don't really understand why edu-bloggers remain edu-bloggers when their social analysis points to a much wider social problem. I wrote clumsily about this in February:
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/02/distributing-future.html

[Artichoke]

Karen, Thanks for the nudge towards Joyful Learning – I have this alarming pile of must read and/ or and must keep close books that long ago passed simple descriptors such as towering and teetering. They spill in unseemly chaos across the surfaces in the corridor where I think – your recommended addition will not be lonely.

Your comment reminded me of another business model for teachers and I have just pulled Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men from the spill of books to re-read his description of bands of teachers who “wandered through the mountains, along with the tinkers portable blacksmiths, miracle medicine men, cloth pedlars, fortune tellers and all the other travellers who sold things people didn’t need every day but occasionally found useful”.

“They looked like tinkers but there wasn’t one amongst them, she knew who could mend a kettle. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked.”

Bill,
I think Stephen’s article identifies that we should be thinking about learning in terms of community based approaches. This is interesting in terms of what is happening in New Zealand

New Zealand has the poorest record in the OECD for the number of 15 to 19 year olds in full or part time education.

Twenty percent of our students have already left the school system before the end of compulsory schooling at 16.

We have 25 thousand 15 to 19 year olds who are not in education, employment or training.

I think you might enjoy Radio New Zealand interview with Stuart Middleton – he is provocative and active - the Manukau Youth Transition Services pilot - COMET City of Manukau personal learning path intervention worth thinking about in the context of Stephen’s social work suggestion.

As for edu_bloggers remaining ed_bloggers when their analysis touches on much wider issues Bill – I am thinking clumsily about this

[Bill Kerr]

hi arti,

One of the core issues in your blog is Beck's critique of the nation state. I was reluctant to comment on this because I haven't read Beck. However, I do have a general view of history (Marxist) which is at odds. My concern is in connection to how the argument evolves is that putting yourself right outside of the system can lead to or fuel a sort of despairing revolutionary sentiment that in practice leads no where. For this reason I had some sympathy with Chrisopher Sessums comments, as well as Stephen Downes, because I thought they were both grounded a bit more in the real world and suggesting some sort of non despairing path forward. Hegel once said, "All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real." This was interpreted by Engels to mean, "In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity." and "All that exists deserves to perish."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm

Sorry for lack of thoroughness but we seem to be reaching that point in the conversation, where our broad interpretation of history needs to be put on the table.

I came back to this after seeing a debate between Andrew Keen and David Weinberger in which Keen (who I disagree with) does at least put forward a real view of history, something that has been lacking in the web 2.0 discussion IMO
http://conversationhub.com/2007/07/09/video-david-weinberger-and-andrew-keen/

[Artichoke]

Thanks Bill – Like you I believe that Beck and “boundaries” is central to this post and to all those imaginings about what the interconnectivity and participatory cultures promised by Web2.0 might bring. And I agree with you about understanding more deeply if you have looked thoughtfully at the past as well as the present before imagining the future. I know I am guilty of shallow analysis – is why I keep the comments option open on the blog. If you can get hold of Caroline Marvin’s book I think you will enjoy Chapter 5 Annihilating Space, Time, and Difference – Experiments in Cultural Homogenisation – is a brilliant read wrt the introduction of the telephone, cinema, electric lights, phonograph, wireless and daily telegraph service. And much of the current discussion in the blogosphere wrt Web2.0 and new communication technologies seems to simply recapture this.

Where I disagree is that imagining learning without school and classrooms is a despairing path or merely revolutionary sentiment. We are surrounded by rich robust relevant learning that is happening for kids outside of schools and classrooms - it is happening in our "local" communities both real and virtual. And I think that we should look more innovatively at how we acknowledge and celebrate this.

I look at Karen’s observations about kids learning in holiday times, and listen to the learning adventures students report from their leisure time – be it Harry and Stephen’s chess initiative, gaming, film making, kicking around a ball, swimming, biking, or just hanging out talking with friends etc.

I am thinking of all the learning students could use as resources in our central business district in Auckland City - performing arts spaces such as the Aotea Centre & Town Hall, Art galleries and exhibition spaces, graveyards, churches, tertiary institutions, research facilities, Law courts, retail outlets, fashion designers, Auckland central libraries, green spaces such as Albert Park, Myers Park & the Domain, coffee shops, fast food outlets, City Council, The Auckland War Memorial Museum, waterfront spaces, such as the port, sport & recreational facilities, including swimming pools and the mentoring opportunities within the CBD – and then doing a mind shift to what could be explored in the suburbs - the list of learning potential is limited only by our ability to imagine.

I think of the theatres of science – those learning events where people cheered loudly and formed their own discussion societies in the nineteenth century and how easily we could recreate street performance as an expectation in the community.

I like Geetha Narayanan’s Project Vision ideas with their “Hubs or idea media centres” squeezed into unused and underutilised spaces throughout the city. When you add in Geetha’s sense of including significant expeditions, and I’d see kids mapping and journaling these for community use and Stephen’s social work options so that we can acknowledge the learning kids get from helping others at their parents homes and workplace - in local rest homes, dementia centres, libraries, supermarkets, vet clinics, sports centres, diverse workplaces, even the learning they get from organising a social event.

And then, and then connect these possibilities for learning through mobile technologies to learning opportunities available online, including “Teemu Arina like” third places of learning then I cannot see why this is despairing rhetoric.

The interconnectivity and participatory cultures available through new technologies means we could create individual yet connected learning adventures for kids that didn’t need schools and classrooms at all. And we would button all the button’s of the key competencies without breaking sweat – Participating and contributing, Managing self, Thinking, Relating to others, Language symbols and text

It seems to me that it our insistence of including the classroom in our rhetoric that is a despairing path – it limits what we can imagine.

I suspect it is not as much of an issue as we claim – that even within this post I misrepresent the importance of schools and classrooms in student learning – for even on simple measures it seems they are massively underutilised when you compare them with other potential learning spaces and community resources - operating (between about 8.40 to 3.20) for only 386 half days (primary intermediate) or 378 half days (secondary) out of a possible 1024 half days each year.

Even more interesting in this regard is a new publication from the NZCER The Hidden Lives of Learners by Graham Nuthal. Thinking about classrooms as places of learning may not be a warranted assumption.

The Hidden Lives of Learners takes the reader deep into the hitherto undiscovered world of the learner. It explores the three worlds which together shape a student’s learning – the public world of the teacher, the highly influential world of peers, and the student’s own private world and experiences. What becomes clear is that just because a teacher is teaching, does not mean students are learning.

[Bill Kerr]

> My attempts at meaningful action in education revealed me to be a prisoner of the nation state

hi arti,
I'm happy to drop the despair word. But I think a fair reading of the thread does suggest that there is some sort of emotional conflict between having a day job of working for a system which stubbornly resists significant reform, on the one hand, and having the imagination to see what would be possible if the nation state only got out of the way, in the sort of things you eloquently elaborate on. The thread makes me uneasy but as I explained I can't say too much (sorry) because I haven't read your readings. I think Andrew Keen is wrong about the future but like the fact that he reminds us that the nation state brought us modernity and there are worse alternatives.

[Teemu]

Illich is not writing about "educational system", only but the society as a whole. I know one society that is very close to Illich's dream. Go to Sweden.

[Luke]

Bugger me if you guys arent just on another stratisphere when it comes to educational knowledge. I have to read the blog about three times to understand it. I have to tab browse every link and then include it in my reading just to understand the whole perspective. Now I know about fence posts too !!. I am impressed that illich was both catholic and croation, a point missed by you theorists. This means through his blood ran a very hot (short) temper, alcohol, argumentative nature, sarcasim, and a willingness to prove a point even when proven wrong. These traits are common in us Dallies. BUT the most important thing I have learnt from the wiser Croatian ancestors is their ability to scrape back the excrement from things and get to the root of the problem and find a way to fix it.
My relation was involved in building the sky tower. They argued for weeks about how they would remove the dirt from such a big hole. This needed maths, logic and the biggest brains in the business. If it cost $1800 a truck to get rid of the dirt and 60,000 truckloads were needed. After all the consultants were put in one room with more engineers than you can poke a stick at, it took 1 croatian ditch digger, who left school at 12yrs old, to come up with a plan in 5 minutes. The room went silent when jerry explained how it was best done.
From gum diggers to Viticulturalists. Problem solving and hard work, and a tonne of swearing.

[Artichoke]

Bill there is a conflict - but I reckon conflict is essential for new learning - and I find artichoke blog a wonderful space to explore this undermining - Artichokes imaginings protect me from the torpor of self approbation in the day job setting.

And Teemu - loved this change in direction - thanks for broadening the educational and societal landscapes we are imagining with, it is hard to deny alternative ways of doing when they exist in other spaces and places.

Ha knew something was missing Luke but it wasn't until you posted this that I pinned it down - it was the impassioned Croatian input that has been lacking here -

Re: it took 1 croatian ditch digger, who left school at 12yrs old, to come up with a plan in 5 minutes this is just the joltingly reassuring insight I needed - kids learn without years of formal schooling - is I am certain what Illich meant when he talks about life long learning - which suggests our current interest in increasing the school leaving age in NZ may not be a smart move if schools stay trapped in text based learning cultures.