Well, while contemplating the composition of edgeblog: the end, as promised in edgeblog 18 (and, therefore, while necessarily trying hard to hold back from the tempting parallelism of quoting Jim Morrison’s The End), I found myself battered by the number of events and incidents that seemed to demand a mention. And that is even allowing for the iron discipline that I insist on working to, that only issues directly relevant to TESOL and education more broadly should be included.
First, there were “the riots” in August, starting in London and then spreading across our major cities. The links to ‘firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions’ will seem pretty clear to many people. Perhaps that is not where I ought to edgeblogging, when Naomi Klein has made the points so eloquently, even though, as John Harris points out, one looks around too often in vain for voices being raised against the moral and ethical backdrop that politicians and bankers have provided for the education of the next generation.
And anyway, I realized that there would be no time or space to go into any of that once I had come across a line in a political commentary that really did take my breath away. Let me not be drawn into commenting on the suitability of the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, to be the next president of the United States of America (I fear there will be time enough for that over the next year or so). The line that struck me was the chilling: “If you are explaining, you are losing.” From the way it is used in this text, this seems to have become such an obvious truism in USAmerican political discourse that it passes without comment. I managed to trace its origin back to a column by Chris Bowers from the 2008 election. The key paragraph goes like this:
McCain has a new, stupid, false ad out about Obama where he claims that Obama has passed a law to mandate sex education for kindergarten. However, just because it is stupid and false doesn’t mean it won’t be effective. In fact, it might demonstrate a truism about contemporary American politics: if you are explaining, then you are losing.
I find that so strong, so explanatory, so threatening. It explains why I so often find myself out of tune with the zeitgeist. All this effort expended on the proposition that awareness will arouse a sense of responsibility and the motivation to learn more and act differently. No, buddy, if you are explaining, you are losing.
I rallied after a while, reconciling myself to the fact that something like this stance has always been around and that the creation of a new aphoristic way of expressing it does not increase its power, but only restates it. In the Roman imperial period, the reference to ‘bread and circuses’ as the way to keep the masses happy strikes a similar note. And public education remains democracy’s constant uphill battle against the contemptuous greed of the powerful. If I have frequently referred to my working life as ‘fighting the long defeat,’ that doesn’t mean that the struggle is not worthwhile. And so I thought, “Your new course, Julian, your Diploma in Counselling course, the way ahead, that should be the focus for edgeblog 19.”
Then, as I passed the university bookshop on the way to pick up my student card, I could not help but notice the proud slogan that it displays in each window: “The Knowledge Retailer.” My heart sank a little. On the university website, after having registered, I was invited to select the courses that I intended to take. Having identified them, I was instructed to place them in my Shopping Cart. Have these people not read, or even heard, of the power of ‘the metaphors we live by’ (Lakoff & Johnson 1990)? Bookshops sell paper and print; people construct knowledge. Students are not customers; they are certainly not always right and their fees only permit them to engage with a very different set of rights and responsibilities. Are these facts not important? On commenting to a colleague, “The enemy is within the gates,” I received her wise response: “The enemy has bought the gates and is dismantling them for future sale.”
Not that it ends there. There has been much debate recently about the abuse of the internship idea in professional and political life. Young people agree to work for nothing because they hope that the experience (and contacts) they gather will help them get a good job later. This suits employers, as the number of well-qualified young people desperate for work is large and rising. It also suits graduates who can afford to work without pay while they establish the contacts and gain the experience that will give them further advantage in the future. So, as sure as eggs, while university staff are receiving reminders that the window of opportunity for them to take voluntary severance will soon close, we are also being alerted to:
The Manchester Graduate Internship Programme (MGIP)
along with an informative little article entitled:
Have you heard how MGIP can help your staffing needs?
Oh dear, I seem to have drifted back to my earlier theme, and gone on much too long, and I still haven’t told you about the counseling course.
I have also come round to thinking that perhaps there will be enough common ground between edgeblog-as-was and my new role as part-time postgraduate student to make it worthwhile to see if edgeblog can stand on it. Encouragement so to do has also been very welcome and gratifying.
So, edgeblog endures. This is the last one I shall write as an employee of Manchester University. I have already apologized individually to those doctoral students to whom my departure means re-arrangements in their supervisory team, and I do so again here. I am very happy to say the new arrangements themselves are very strong and in each case bring in new and highly relevant skills that I do not possess. My confident best wishes go with them.
edgeblog 20 will be my first as a postgraduate student. Goodness, it has only just struck me that I am starting my second postgraduate diploma at Manchester University exactly 40 years after I started my first: the Diploma in Teaching English Overseas, 1971/72. Hmmm. We shall see.
Best,
Julian
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1990. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
