online: 1 august 2010 modified: 31 july, 1, 3, 4 august 2010 31 july 2010 who is teaching who?
Hampstead Heath extension
...as i approached this seat a man i do not know kept pointing at something hidden from me by a mass of nettles... when i got near he asked me if an animal he was looking at was a rat or something else... it seemed big for a rat but it had a long thin tail so we decided that it was one... and then we spoke for some minutes of other animals and birds and plants in sight...and of the pleasure of living near to the heath...
...he pointed to what he said were swallows... i felt sure they were pigeons but i didn't tell him... however he seemed glad to learn the names of some plants and creatures that i knew and he didn't ... and when i mentioned that some people see squirrels as 'tree rats with bushy tails' he said 'oh, then everything's relative, as Einstein said'...
...and he seemed sorry that the names of things could be so arbitrary...
...perhaps he was responding to the recent opinion that relativity is not a scientific truth but a discredited 'political correctness' that has ruined education and has led to young people leaving school unable to read or write or spell or do mental arithmetic...
...and perhaps it has ... but i prefer to see precise literacy and arithmetic as nineteenth-century skills that are now being augmented or replaced by such abilities as operating digital software, relying on automatic processes, attending to tone of voice and body language, no longer working in production but in caring professions or service industry... and taking up danger sports, martial arts, and other forms of bodymind training...
...new capacities beyond those of a mechanical age and calling not so much for obedient accuracy as for wider vision, unexpectedness, and shared responsibility for what the professions used to impose 'from above'...
...the education of everyone(a fiction that begins on page 444 of the internet and everyone) includes re-educating teachers... and all the existing professions... yes indeed... and taking this meta-step (metaphorically from staircase to ramp?) is a part of the lifework of all of us who were born in time to experience, explore and to need new forms of education appropriate to the modern world...
...the modern age is not the same as the modern world. Scientifically, the modern age which began in the seventeenth century came to an end at the beginning of the twentieth century; politically, the modern world in which we live today, was born with the first atomic explosions*...
*Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1958, from the last paragraph of the prologue... To my mind the best piece of culture criticism since World War 2...
...(and perhaps also with the first automatic computers?)...
...as i continue to write in the sunset i'm watching people and dogs on a large playing field surrounded by trees and village roofs and a church dome and steeple... the people are teaching dogs to run and catch a ball in their mouths... or is it the dogs who are teaching this game to people... for none of the people could run 20 metres to catch a ball in their mouths before it touches ground... though cricket players sometimes do so with their hands... (perhaps one day there will be dogs who play some form of cricket!)
...now four middle-aged people are standing to talk while two dogs patiently sit or stand on the grass waiting for their owners to make a move...
...and now the people and dogs have gone and the sky beyond the trees has cleared with only a few thin streaks of pink and blue-grey cloud just above the horizon...
...i get up now to walk a mile or so in the woods before it gets dark... all is still and very beautiful (i would not normally use that adjective, or any, if i could avoid it... and i wonder who taught me to avoid adjectives... particularly 'beautiful', 'true', 'good', 'bad', 'ugly' etc.?)
...before going i notice that this seat is 'in loving memory of Linda Phillips'... one armrest is roughly carved with the name of Rhodri... and another with name of Mark... (perhaps they will reappear in the education of everyone if i can reactivate it with the help of these characters and thoughts)...
for comfortable line length please set the window to about half of the screen width
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial
purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you
respect the copyright of quotations.
If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please
send a copyright permission request to jcj 'at' publicwriting.net
(replace 'at' and spaces by the @ sign)
