Leaving the Classroom

My constructionist roots are traced directly to Bruner [the man himself] with MACOS, something we did as primary school kids in of all places, Newtown Australia. So formative was this experience, likewise for all my classmates because we still talk about MACOS now, that I went to uni wanting to be an Anthropologist. Pity kids these days overburdened with NAPLAN and other high stakes tests. Just realised why Heidegger and Phenomenology never left me [What so Human about Human Beings? - Not Humans as my 5th teacher (RIP) always insisted]... until now!

What´s Human about Human Beings? The Task of Teaching as Seeing from/ with/ through Other´s Eyes

MACOS got rid fo the books, which was extremely helpful for a bunch of inner city working class kids i grew up with, not so unlike the pack from Welcome Back Kotter, where there´s always the trope of the CARING TEACHER who took a bunch of NO HOPERS and turn them into HOPERS (Snow from the Hunger Games: Hope is greater than fear).

https://www.nfb.ca/film/through_these_eyes/

Hatred & Love of Teachers

Unlike the 3 Wise Men of exCoCo, who I suspect harbour horrible school memories and would like to do a way with the teacher, and leave us with just the learner. Be that the draconian head master wielding 3 different types of canes (thumbstick size, medium and whip lash thin), the Latin teacher who taught a useless language, or the mid town boy who aspires to go the Ivies.

Reviving the Attentive, Caring & In Touch Teachers

I was fortunate enough to have the kinds of teachers who were celebrated in Kotter, To Sir With Love and Dead Poet Society. They cared, attended, and they touched (appropriately thankfully) by reaching out to our innate curiousities and naive ontologies which do have a place in our sense-making capabilities.

CLAPPING for TEACHERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmm3KTa601s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5OmavfOWg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64SctPKmqk

Best to play either 1st (Kotter) or 2nd (Lulu) youtube as background music to 3rd Youtube (Dead Poet Society).

It´s syrupy and pathetically nostalgic, but what do we have to look forward to?

The future in the present, the present in the past? Does anyone have memories like these anymore?

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

How did we go from taking inner city kids out of the classroom to burning books?

How did we get to the land of the blind where the one eye Long John Silver is the king in the land of the blind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUI_FRb4FZc

How did we get to scourging out the visions and eyeballs of the Inventor who either lost his touch (Metropolis) to the Inventor who lost his sights/ whose visions need to be gorged out (Blade Runner)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJs4qJPQ_M

When will the Baby Boomers hand over the factory keys to Gen Xer who have a memory that span between analogue and digital?

What we have is GEE whiz: I just discovered the rationales why my kid binge on videogames.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_0s8IZWkBg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfPdaKYOPI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRG2jlQWCsY

Gen Xers, like me, grew up with Vic 20, Commodore 64, Amiga whatever, LISA and MacIntosh. Now we have to contend with OOgle who own our tablets (try doing a factory reset like old school reformatting the hard drive in an Android, it´s worst than those asteRISKs screws).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901lYbPmqu4

How did we get from NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND to 99% being left behind?

How did we go from the once in the blue moon high stake test to the every day high stake test?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIdsjNGCGz4

Back to Confessions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkyXFzMj1pQ