It would be so much easier for you to helpfully locate my responses if you realize I am responding to the ways in which I believe you have misunderstood me.

Considerable stress ensues if one of us insists ‘no, I have understood you’ for asserting I nearly understand you engenders no power-language, but insisting on my understanding limits your ability to speak on your own account. Now we both are to wrestle for the same ground — and presumably the ground ought to be yours first.

In this our usage more closely relates to epistamai in Greek or oferstandan from Old English wherein our piecing together stands upon this (cf. http://www.etymonline.com, maintained by D. Harper).  The word picture is of a conqueror, not of a partner in discourse.

How better to dismiss another than with the words I understand?  To do such is to disinherit the other’s power of commanding her own words.

-

-

But if I assume we are wielding two competing misunderstandings, the bugle call to unending allegiance to what I probably did not intend dies away in favor of a chance to listen to you — to listen without immediate concerns of power.  We should become accustomed to the body postures which accompany the most harmful of misunderstandings — the shoulders of dismissal and the accompanying upturned lips along with the spinal tilt of self-rectitude and compare these with the relaxed focus necessary to give any worthy other a hearing.

Of course hearing is more difficult than non-hearing.  A ready mind must readily dismiss more than it accepts and so many misunderstandings may persist.  The commitment, daily, should be to unstop the ears quickly and with it to un-tense the neck so a positive misunderstanding might be attained.

A cloud not so figuratively separated me from this chance at redemption. Temporarily, of course, but I was n’t prepared for such a delay. So I listened to a few podcasts, read a few passages, and took sparse notes as I checked the boxes comprising my course responsibilities.

ominous NASA overview of the Icelandic sleeping giant

After several days I was finally transported. Opportunity. Fresh air. The promise of raindrops’ fall to heal my wearied optimism.

Ah, Oxford in the rain — I can imagine droplets on the Vines’ stones too easily

Strangely I was not only transported, but transformed. I became a morning person — a charge none would bring against me ever — rising before 7 each morning to blaze through 200-300 pages of reading at moderately difficult levels per day whilst dutifully implanting the earpieces. And the effects of this whittling began to show. For every 1,000 pages read or two hours’ lectures heard I felt the burdens lightening.

I processed 10 weeks’ reading and lectures in about the span of 3 weeks and could not have been more self-satisfied. The readings were largely dull as were the lectures. Little surprised me in the lectures either. These lecturers were more specialized than my previous professors, but I could n’t interact with them in this format. To be fair I barely interacted with my teachers in graduate school beyond maintaining something akin to eye contact and wincing at 85% of my classmates’ questions. There were few ‘hooks’ or insights I cared to deal with. I understood the majority of the readings and kept up with the lectures, but I was more checked out than I was in a physical classroom.

He’s not looking at me…

After over a week of this I began interspersing the West Wing with the listenings and readings. I never tried three at a time, but it was not unusual to attempt following an episode whilst straddling Facebook chatting and listening to the briefer podcasts. Needless to say, and partly due to my split attentions, my meaningful interactions with the materials were minimal.

—

On the other hand, I found my study exhilarating.  Breathe in — breathe out.  M. Whit happened to have written not only on Medieval Islamic philosophy, but on my preferred philosopher.  Though everything I tried was unpolished, he still offered his guidance in constructing an initial bibliography and tightening my research questions.  Our sessions continued to trim this focus in and by the end I had summarized the philosopher’s contribution, although I continue struggling with the best explanation of this, and become briefly acquainted with some important excerpts.  A non-expert I remained but I can speak meaningfully about this project because I was directly guided and I was heard.

My writing faults were laid bare to me insofar as they affected what I wished to communicate — if you want to say something miscommunication hurts.  Grammar and form not only guide, but serve meaning.

I miss my whiteboards

—

In my not-so-massive and not-so-open online course I was not heard.  I was to listen, and read, and finally take some exams and write.  I put some care into the book-reports, but barely studied for my exams and blagued my way through.  The final 28 hours approaching the submission deadline on the distant Pacific Coast saw me generate well over 30 pages of academic writing.  I breathed deeply — and I want to imagine it was raining as I escaped that small library, stole away home, gesticulated wildly as my email ate my work before finally obeying my wishes, and finally became one with that creaking chair.  As memory serves the result was in keeping with my GPA — unspectacularly in A-/B+ territory.

There was naught by way of feedback aside from the grades.  No helpful interactions.  No suggested improvements.  Take this and move along.

Elation wore away.  Optimism was served another cold blow and I marched three disgruntled steps closer to graduating — no better for the wear.

^^^

You may think my juxtaposition unfair.  I attempt to extrapolate the distance learning version of the lecture course, which sadly would ‘ve had little more by way of feedback or interaction, to massive open online courses or MOOCs.  But what I do n’t hear in Sams’ EPIC2020 prognostication or in many pro-MOOC/anti-brick and mortar establishment gushings is a thoughtful pedagogy.

I am first comparing the value of a teacher-centered model of learning, or lecture-based, with a student-centered one which emphasizes student aptitudes, learning styles, and skills.  TedEd, according to Sams, is matching the best lecturers (or best known) with the best design teams.  But a lecturing model is minimally effective — even when there is class order, the class is small, and the personality of the instructor is dynamic.  Eye contact and the opportunities for interaction are sacrificed in favor of the memorize-what-I-said framework.  Knowledge which can be expounded in this manner by an expert must necessarily be stationary, so the hearers can catch up, and containable — or reductive.

MOOCs mean everyone can achieve the back-row lecture experience

What types of knowledge fit such a pedagogy?  We should be little surprised to find it is basic mathematics or grammar.  And here I would point out a similarity.  Math is a language by which we analyze items around us through analogies (remember word problems) and models (e.g., xyz-planes/Cartesian coordinate systems).  It is useful, so long as the rules are followed.  A do-exactly-as-I-do approach is effective for a fair sampling of the populace, although student-discovery programs are valuable as well.  Basic grammar is quite similar — the ability to accomplish solutions in the real world without sequencing and order suffers with consistent errors.  Anyway, this model will work for some self-actuated learners whose learning styles match well with a lecture-based format.

But it cannot work well in teaching students to become masters.  And for this reason it will not replace, although it will certainly draw away from, campuses.  Knowledge would have to stop changing — but it is a moving series of boundaries whenever closely examined in any fine detail.  It’s why you can’t learn a language wholesale from a podcast, or a few movies, or from one lecturer.  You need to interact, receive feedback on the culture you ‘re failing to consider.

Language deserves its own full treatment, but it will have to suffice to say that so long as there are speaking-communities, so long as the language ‘lives’ words will continue to change in usage.  As such, their precise meaning cannot be fully ascertained by data-mining.  Instead spending time in a community is necessary to achieve mastery.  Knowledge of this sort requires familiarization with culture.  I fully realize few institutions adequately provide for real-language learning opportunities, but MOOCs are n’t close to the answer either.  In the coming years language-learning is going to be a driving force and the education needs can be served by tutors, whether in small or large companies, but not by MOOCs once the student reaches an intermediate (or more likely pre-intermediate) level.

Socialization and interpersonal skills will not ever be fully met through social media, insofar as social networking continues to mean screen-to-screen communication.  Decorum, true empathy, and the people skills necessary to succeed in any job which has clients or co-workers are best served by a mentorship model.  Part of the reason companies like to hire college graduates is they know a graduate at least had to live with other people in some capacity.  This could be achieved without an on-campus experience, but the value of working within social constructs will remain appealing to many portions of the economy.

Finally, critical thinking in the form of helpful arguments and top notch writing cannot be achieved alone.  At some point we all have to hear why our support is wanting, our repetitions clanging, and thinking clouded.  Writing is a practice best learned by finding something worth saying and then fumbling for the words.  My deficiencies were discovered in steps and at last I have found a voice I recognize akin to my own.  My distance learning courses were not part of the sharpening, but my being tutored was.  I could see what I was failing to say more clearly than what I was saying.  I needed to be heard before I could hear myself.

Peer-grading in MOOCs is not the answer if companies wish to employ articulate message-bearers.  Advertising, and fund-raising, and in-office consensus building require writing and reasoning skills not to be found through social media.  Do any need proof Facebook and Twitter are not the places to learn the value of logical reasoning?  They are, rather, reflections of what their members already are — or are n’t yet.

~~~

Lest any should think I am stumping for the general on-campus experience, I ‘m not.  The cost of education versus the return in marketable skills, quality of life improvements, and employability is horrifically mis-distributed.  Too much of future students are indebted in the service of new and unnecessary construction, new student recruitment, textbook suppliers, and middle management.  As a result class sizes grow while teacher-student interaction diminishes, teachers who bring research-grants or new students to the schools are rewarded while the best teachers//not lecturers//are easily overlooked or filtered out.  The goal of these education-institutions is easily too monetized and too little interested in the surrounding community or the students’ real potential impacts in their jobs.  So much for optimism.

MOOCs seem most likely to replace community colleges while the large scale universities crumble simply because the current model is unsustainable.

unless progress does n’t mean learner improvement

Tutoring centers and mentorships or research fellowships could well fill in the gaps for those seeking to develop skill sets.  Business writing and other skill-focused centers could supply the missing links as students hone skills and pursue mastery.  Instead of a Mozilla badge, or certificate of course completion, schools, MOOCs and tutoring centers will most hopefully provide portfolio pages which both laud demonstrated skills and suggest steps for improvement for the students.

Whatever shape the future will take, it is meaningless to simply predict what will happen.  It is far better to attempt to shape it with meaningful values guiding the discussion.  If education is to improve, it won’t be merely technological innovation — it will require varied pedagogical models, community- and student-focuses, and just enough optimism to seek continued improvement.  Or else we shall be left well acquainted with a knowledge cheaply bought, poorly summarized, and inappropriately suited to our purposes.  And that would n’t be worth teaching to anyone.

What value is to be found in such activity?

I ‘ve already mentioned I believed and sometimes affirm the idea yet that thinking is stimulated or collectable in these formats.  Channels is a good way to consider this.  But less time is normally used in finding and re-appropriating information than in floating down-river.  Take reading by this analogy: it takes concentration to find relevant landmarks — recalling them is another matter. or justifying the author’s choices.  For the majority of my television or internet intake, little is taken in and then put to any use.  But a surprisingly small amount of my reading proves useful in the long-term.  Each leaves a residue with some sense of ‘I like X about Y’ but little else.

More often much reading is wishing I had composed words in a like matter — or at least had proved to all my thinking’s superiority.  Moreso for internet browsing — most of that time was spent reappraising relationships, wishing I had gone places or had other experiences (true of narrative reading sometimes) to share or had achieved some status worthy of showing off.  All this while I wait for someone to engage in a round of messaging.  You will notice, I hope by now, I am speaking of dead or extremely passive actions in each of these three media.

Too much of my time is and has been spent re-thinking someone else’s thoughts, regardless of my immediate reactions.  Interaction is minimised while the intrapersonal dwarfs the interpersonal.

What I would pretend to want is critical engagement.  Why else do I read?  I read to find out my own mental positions.  But as these are reactions, their locations quickly fade from memory.  I am caught up in the stream and find myself after the browser is closed or there are no pages left between my right hand and the book jacket, almost nearly exactly where I was before.

Schopenhauer warned us not to read too much, but to formulate for ourselves instead.  Interesting that ‘browse’ meant to ‘feed on buds’ — absent critical or interpersonal engagement I find my appetite unsated.

As a monument to this insatiety, I have attempted several times to maintain a list of books read when there is so little to show for the effort paid reading them.  While I affirm reading classics is often useful, it is only when my mind is alert that the reading might prove useful.  Of course the physical page for focus’ sake is to be lauded in comparison to the online page — it is too easily to be distracted by the anticipation of the next bit of information.  If you must read online, your finger-tension on the mouse betrays your true feelings.  The allure of the television is what else might be on.

Now I have mentioned inter-personality as a value — and I would defend this position if the opportunity for mental activity in discussion is taken up.  And this is perhaps the lone remaining value for most of our internet intake — we share a few moments of having perused the same information and experienced a similar perspective.  But most is lost in a sea of unknowing.

And if our thoughts are bound to be swallowed by the waves anyway, whose thoughts should they be?

– breathing out reminds me I am alive,

and breathing out also foretells death.

But the camera throws a death unliving

while words may yet live again.

Fear demands answers but accepts none.  Strange that fear’s questions self-identify; that is, I hold its danger-cry as my own.  ’Answer me!’ I say.

But when the ambush subsides, I remain and fear is not with me.  Untrained I may misuse the safety mechanism to great harm rather than aim carefully.

The answer is to swim away towards what land might appear or to duck under the wave and hope it should roll past.  I may yet be swept away in it.

^^

And how am I to answer?  Fear in others arouses anger in me; a short-lived flame scorches my innards and strains my back.  But I am least able to see my own fears’ paralyzing effects.

I scoff at their impotence unaware I am choking myself — but the answer is to expose it to the air.  Let my fear not find a partner.  Let me uncoil and unclench my benumbed fingers.  To this extent the trap shall not succeed — no answer works elsewise.

This is the space — twelve to go and two to release.

“…and he never returned.”

A number of scenes arrange themselves, quietly seeking an attending to.  Tonight they are places I have once visited and largely forgotten since.  More than one of these are churches — a place I should prefer some invisibility — inviting enough though sure to prove their humanity with a little provocation.  In all ways it surprises me when I return to such a place; it feels a sacrifice of my intrapersonality.  Few thoughts could drive me further than ‘it seems a modest sort of place I could see myself returning to’.

It seems the one thing in common to places he never returned to — they were too easy to find.

A few other instances would be parties, but these are far less frequent for me.  Having one or two ‘deep’ conversations with another is verging on what matches this narrative.

Are these ghosts of a self I was trying to be?  Are they much different from interviews for jobs or similar enquiries?  It feels there is some mirroring going on — an exercise in the intrapersonal.  Not merely being ‘I’ but very much feeling the incongruities of summing up and pretending some coherent unity.  It is in conversing with new persons that we are offered the chance to meet with ourselves — to examine our impulses.

I can say little for why I have ever gone back to a place.  Many times I might describe the pull as interpersonally motivated.  It is the move from ‘could’ to ‘do’ whose causality is least explicable to myself.  The mirroring does not stop — it continues to question, and therefore relate, to itself — at least insofar as it is even a unity.  Even this seems a form of re-turning: turning back in until finally there is a going-out.

That seems the gap between the action pondered and its enacted non-relative, for the thing done and the thing not done are cousins in thought only.

##

He should have stopped there.  In fact, in many ways he did.

I realise self-talk is a normal thing — perhaps a normal thing grossly distorted in sleep or when this filtering mechanism is mis-trained or damaged.  I can’t recall not generating (or experiencing the generation of) these sort of odd narratives.  I say odd because they re-sort and ‘fix their grammar’ or tamper with memories.  Locating what prompts their change is difficult, but I ‘ll attempt considering it as self-protection in the form of ‘hearing oneself’.

Perhaps it develops as a largely defensive framework for conversing; I feel least lonely often when I am least conscious of its back-bringing.  Those are the moments when conversations or thoughts or actions shine brightest — when we are least aware of any underlying items.  There is simply the natural interrelatedness.  But self-talk is not to be despised — it can surely be trained.  I think it is through this that I attempt to hear myself, for I am most shocked when I discover some information lacking in my internal dialogues.  ’Oh, is that how you say it?’

####

Now comes the part of interest — how do you experience this?  For I experience you as part of this intrapersonality as well — the interpersonal is more of an ideal or a practice (and better a practice).  It is only by continually meeting, and being surprised at what confounds my expectations that the proper disjunction is maintained.  That is, in misunderstanding you I misunderstand myself and the way by which you misunderstand me is also a self-misunderstanding.  You should get that checked… or…

In case you fail to recognise the symptoms, at present I ‘m grading papers.  The long term applications of this work are minimal, yet this is the part that has to be done correctly — I can’t afford to assign a mark falsely only to have it overturned.  What a waste that should prove!  Both teacher and student strain the neck preparing for the blow to fall — not to fall unexpectedly, better to be proactive.  I should wish this would n’t affect my marking, but it does.  At best my marking is judiciously subjective — and in places justified, but there are surely places where I have been injudicious and shall be again.

So what is to be made of this all?  I mean to suggest that subjective is n’t a bad thing — so long as the word is spoken in the daylight its most sinister machinations fail to harm much.  It is when the guise of objectivity can be wielded with full naiveté that real damage may occur — for the student and teacher might well benefit from the other’s perspective.  We should do better.  Students should no more fulfill assignments than we should mark them complete — instead we should together build projects which draw on the other’s strengths.

In short teaching should grow with both student and teacher alike — it will need to prove itself as truly inter-active.

Life is spent in learning the meaning of great
words, so that some idle proverb, known for years and accepted
perhaps as a truism, comes home, on a day, like a blow.

Style (1897), Walter Raleigh

At the outset we should be clear in the goal.  There ‘s no graduation in learning, only maturation in fullness or, conversely, desiccation and decay.

Another tale of plagiarism un-covered.  Another.  Yet another.  The cycle won’t soon end.  Oh, it could be ended.  Simply.  Either give up vilifying dis-covered cases, hence admitting most writing is n’t worth being read, or re-move the titling and benefits of publishing.

But that is n’t what we want to hear.  Instead, we want academic members to prove their abilities by publishing and so most provide worthless, unreadable literature.  What else could we expect?  But this is n’t the only carrot rewarding the well-published; status and money are packed in.

Can’t they just be honest?  I hope you can answer that for yourself.  Of course many are, but truthfulness is either self-rewarding or slow-to-answer.

The best quotations, the best translations, the best
thefts, are all equally new and original works. From quotation, at least, there is no escape,
inasmuch as we learn language from others.  All common phrases that do the dirty work of the world are quotations – poor things, and not our own.

Raleigh, Style

Raleigh’s point rings clear: we learn by imitation.  ’Common knowledge’ is merely knowledge we can no longer recall the source for.  We ‘ve all forgotten where we placed it.

What makes a quotation good or bad?  The quality of our appropriation.  But poor writing is not ignored, not if the right strings are pulled.  But instead of recognising that the best authors steal well, our concerns are for protection of intellectual property.

I have no idea what those words mean.

Communication necessarily requires an attempt to speak to another.  There ‘s a releasing which is part of writing.  At some point you let it go.  The best authors are recognised consistently, according to T.S. Eliot’s “Philip Massinger”, by the quality of their imitation.

What do they do with it?  Simply, (via Nancy Prager’s ‘Good Poets Borrow, Great Poets Steal…’)

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

Eliot, T.S., “Philip Massinger,” The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com,   2000.

as cited by Ms Prager in her ‘Good Poets Borrow, Great Poets Steal…’

I believe Thoreau, in ‘Walden’, remarked that poets are ever stealing the sunset, regardless of who holds the deed of property.  Their plagiarism could be followed, but what does their smithery evoke?

Is n’t that the real question?  If you ‘ve tracked from my appropriation of Raleigh, the use is more important than the theft.

Again: “Quotations, conscious or unconscious, vary in kind according as the mind is active to work upon them and make them its own (Raleigh, Style).”

And finally,

Plagiarism is a crime only where writing is a trade; expression need never be bound by the law of copyright while it follows thought, for thought, as some great thinker has observed, is free.  The words were once Shakespeare’s; if only you can feel them as he did, they are yours no less than his.
Raleigh, Style

That ‘s where I have to lay my allegiance.  Simply by using words, you submit their appropriation to the other.  Wrestle over intellectual property so long as you wish, would n’t you be better wrestling over the proverbs and re-crafting your own ineloquencies by attempting to dis-cover and say something worth remembering.

For these words of Raleigh still resonate:

But writing cannot be luminous and great save
in the hands of those whose words are their own by the indefeasible title of conquest.

Alright, well that ‘s done.  That is, until I have to undergo another teacher observation or experience one of those awkward moments where I really feel I ought to be able to show exactly how my teaching is best.

Honestly (can you ever be sure in this blog?) I learned how to grow without a set ideal long ago — perhaps many still need them, but I hope not for long.  Of course improving is about setting goals, getting close enough to see how close you came and whether it was worth the effort… and resetting new goals.  The ‘perfect teacher’ is a way to keep the confidence deficient below ground and, more often, a self-justificating mechanism for the teacher-centred teacher.

[Shifting the Core

“We need to be provoked….It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure — if they are indeed so well off — to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever?”

– H.D. Thoreau, Walden “Reading”

I hope not.

I see the primary goal of the teacher to be un-educating the students (and they often need this).  This is no less true in my English skills classes than in maths courses.  Why?  Simply, knowledge is a moving target.  To mis-purpose a borrowed metaphor from Peter Elbow, writing (which is a means of communicating and re-purposing knowledge anyway) is like trying to hold onto Proteus in the midst of his shifting.

Having cleared, or actually perpetually clearing and finally teaching the students to clear away for themselves, the teacher ought to present opportunities for students to reach out and learn.  Creating experiences which are as near as possible to those truly encountered is my primary teaching goal (although I reserve the right to change this later).

[Who's responsible?

Oh right, and if student-centred learning is to be the way, students have to be made responsible for their learning.  Thoreau let loose an image which still breathes in my mind: students do n’t care about school because it was already built for them.  Instead they need to take part in the building of the school.

In fact, a school should be perpetually built (one could argue that this is the case due to entropy and narcissism anyway, or in many cases elitism).  If knowledge is ever changing, should n’t its pursuers shift with it?  As such, it certainly can’t invest in merely a few teachers, but learners ought to congregate.  Hence we may have our villages at last — but we may be fewer than hoped.

,;,

It ‘s as though I bought a frame only to find the picture looks so much less colorful, so much smaller, so un-real when affixed.  There ‘s really no one thing missing from the picture; it’s just I thought the frame would highlight it differently.

There ‘s been a sharp drop-off in reading for any purposes since the end of last term.  But I feel a little freer from ‘reading for’.  Some justification can be derived from Schopenhauer’s essays: too much of my thinking may have been mis-colored by my readings.  I ‘m no less bibliophile than ever, but I can almost see that books are worthless if I ‘m not a prepared dialogue partner.

/^

Elsewise I leave the dinner table filled with someone else’s erudition, spilling out aphorisms I half grasp and can use to impress but not to leave an impression.  Has anyone meaningfully conversed with a tape-recorder ever? I have enjoyed learning new ways to say things I had never conceived of, but was n’t the goal to catch concepts useful for me?  Who is my discourse for?

In discovering reading afresh, and finally the necessity of writing, I felt afraid of ‘not reading’.  But at last ‘reading for’ can be questioned — while I ‘m unable to lend full energy to a non-productive task I at last have to be selective.  I ‘m reading almost always, recalling little, and becoming, by such a small margin, a little more connected to what ‘s in front of me and less connected to the peripherals.

**^`

Anxiety remains: will I cut off the possibility of the thoughts I want approaching because I have n’t supplied the correct material — an Odysseus bidding the useful dead with gestures when he should use haemoglobin — if thoughts step into the light without our willful consent, what is the value of practiced thinking?

For no thinker I care for is so isolated as to be without peers.

So whenever I come across energy which can justly be spared, it shall be first employed in reflection, and only then in finding conversation partners (live or merely breathing).