What makes for a "good education"?
As I've gone about my research for my EdD, one of the things that I've come across a lot is people telling me they wanted to make a difference. I've spoken to numerous people who told me that they want to make a difference to the lives of others. Many of them were inspired to do so by amazing teachers who changed their lives either by inspiring them or by providing them with the tools they needed to help themselves. A common themes was the idea of paying it forward. But today I was troubled by one story.
I was troubled by the story of a man who gave up his post as a university professor because, "Our universities are no longer interested in their original purpose. They are no longer prioritizing the search for truth, learning, and evidence over dogma. They are no longer protecting and promoting things like free speech and academic freedom. They are no longer opening and challenging the minds of their students. And they are no longer Ivory Towers."
In reading this man's book, it bothered me because here the idea is presented that truth, evidence and learning must be prioritised at all costs as should the right to free speech. Wouldn't this be a wonderful existence if truth was the only thing that mattered. Better still, speaking truth, supported by evidence, supported by the freedom to do and say whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, as often as we wanted and to hell with the consequences. I remember growing up in a world where I lived that experience and I can tell you first hand - it's awful!
I remember going to school and being bullied because my dad was in prison (shoplifting to feed his addiction - but still by most people's standards "a wrong un"). But those bullies were speaking the truth. My dad was in prison. When does speaking truth become bullying? When it works. For such is the pragmatist's view of truth.
I remember waking up hearing one parent tearing lumps out of the other for being a drug addict. Dad's drug addiction got him in trouble with the police more than once and I'm not going to wax lyrical about poverty cycles or the biological dependency brought about by opiate based pain killers. I'm sure whoever reads this can do their own research. But I remember one day in my twenties losing my temper with my dad, calling him a leech, a drain on our family's resources, in the most spiteful and aggressive way possible. What I was saying was true, both financially and psychologically, and I had a right to express an opinion - but did I stop to think for one minute about the consequences of my actions?
Repeating our version of the truth, over and over in order to persuade or influence others to subscribe our point of view doesn't absolve us of the consequences of our actions. You see our actions do have consequences. I didn't stop to think for one second to think about how, by speaking the truth in this self-centred and uncompassionate way, I was adding to his need for escapism, fuelling his need for drugs. You see when your brother is a criminologist you start to understand drug addiction in a very different way. You understand pleasure theory in a more critical way. Sometime taking drugs isn't about seeking pleasure, chasing the high, feeling good. Sometimes the pleasure comes from escaping the pain, escaping the horrors of the past, escaping the realities of a world that tells you you don't belong.
Admittedly, I was a young at the time. But my interpretation of the truth at the time was based on what I could see, what I had experienced and what I understood as the truth at that time, that I was bullied because of my Dad's addiction. But now, in hindsight, I can see that simply voicing my point of view I was making things worse, not better. I was making the real world even harder for him to cope with and fuelling his desire to escape all the more, I was fuelling his need for drugs.
You see, my understanding of what is true has now changed because my understanding of truth has changed. It was only after my dad died aged 47 (the same age I am now) from cancer of the esophagus that my mum realised that it's no-one's career ambition to be a junkie. No-one wants to to be a leech. No-one leaves school with the sole ambition of becoming a refugee, a thief, a wrong-un. No-one chooses that! But by othering people, by labelling people continually as a drain on society, we're making their world darker. Maybe we're adding to the problem instead of being part of the solution.
You see dad got addicted to pain killers because of an irresponsible GP who wouldn't refer him to the hospital for the chronic pain in his stomach, but instead gave out prescription painkillers like sweets. And it wasn't just paracetamol, it was dihydrocodeine, a highly addictive opiate based painkillers. Eventually when mum convinced dad to change his GP, he got the scan which showed a simple polyp that, once it was removed, solved the pain problem. The pain was gone. But one problem simply got substituted for another because the opiate based painkillers had left him addicted.
You see underneath the issues of addiction, theft, crime (or whatever category of socially unacceptable behaviour you choose to insert here) are real stories. Real stories which belie the experience of important issues that must not be lost or forgotten. So when we talk about uncovering truth, I remember my dad now as a man shunned by society, an embarrassment to his wife and children, considered by many a drain on society, and all because the NHS failed him. That's a very different truth to what I understood 30 years ago. But that's a narrative no-one wants to hear. Our family were forced into a cycle of poverty by the mistake made by one doctor who took the view that the only appropriate course of action was to prescribe opiates or leave my dad in pain. Faced with that advice from a professional, what would you do?
Now, let's be clear, I'm not writing any of this to embarrass my family or to have a jab at the NHS in any way. But this story serves to illustrate that the truth is not always served by generality, positivism, statistics, pragmatic rationality or even by the sight of our own eyes. Sometimes the truth of people's lives is hidden and messy and part of a complex and interwoven narrative where the actions of others make a difference. Sometimes the truth is only partially visible and the rest of the story emerges over time when people are ready to share it. My point is that sometimes we need to stop and think about the harm we might do before we speak or act on what we understand to be truth.
So without labouring the point, this was the first issue that concerned me. As a friend once told me, "Truth spoken without love can be brutal." We can choose to wield truth as a weapon, or we can choose to see that our understanding of the truth is partial, incomplete and influenced by context. And it doesn't always require your opinion.
The second issue that concerns me is the idea of universities as Ivory Towers. I quote:
"...universities are still often referred to as Ivory Towers, which in the Christian tradition is a symbol of noble purity. The Ivory Tower is a metaphorical place where scholars and students can cut themselves off from the outside world and feel free to pursue their interests without fearing consequences."
Now I've already discussed the issue of consequences. But when an individual is so far removed from the real world that they have no fear of consequence, that expresses and astonishing level of privilege, self entitlement and lack of moral compass. For the mere mortals below have to live with the consequences of whatever narrative such forms of scholarship create. However, what I want to focus on here is the idea that what scholars should be cut off from the outside world.
I have to say, it seemed ironic that the person telling this story was formerly a professor at a prominent UK university. It baffles me how a man who would interact with students (and by extension the real world) could argue that university scholarship should be conducted in solitude. Speaking as a college lecturer, my scholarship work is never (and should never be) cut off from the outside world because to indulge in such Marlene Deitrich like behaviour would deprive my students of the very knowledge and experience that educators are employed to share. Otherwise scholarship becomes a matter of massaging one's own ego while reinforcing elitism by ensuring that those who do not have access to the ivory tower remain in a position of relative deficit.
When we see the world as an open system then everything the scholar does has an impact on the world around them. In teaching, this is especially true, when our world view directly influences, or even comes into conflict with, that of our students. Perhaps more alarmingly, the idea of scholars sitting in their ivory tower studying the mere mortals below that have neither the privileged access to this metaphorical space nor the ability to consent to being studied is inherently objectifying and demeaning. I would argue there is nothing noble or pure about such a world view.
And all of this within the first chapter of this man's book.
However, when he goes later in the same chapter to explain that the remainder of his book deals with the issue of wokeness and its impact on universities I can actually feel my brain begin to spasm at some of the ignorance this man is spouting and the selective way in which he cites other academics who, incidentally, seem to all agree with and support his views.
In defining wokeness as an ideology, he quotes another eminent academic who describes wokeness as being completely organised around: "..'the sacralisation of racial, sexual and gender minorities'. In other words, it's a belief system that's completely focused on, if not obsessed with, its core, guiding claim that all racial, sexual and gender minorities must be considered sacred and untouchable and must be protected from "emotional harm", while the majority must be treated with suspicion, if not contempt, even by themselves."
Wow! I mean, just wow!
I've written in previous blog posts about my sexuality, the harm I experienced growing up, my journey of self-criticism and self acceptance and how difficult that was for me. At no point have I ever asked for special treatment, much less the sacralisation of my world view. At no point, do I regard others with suspicion unless they give me cause. And at no point do I expect anyone to engage in behaviour that encourages self-loathing or self-contempt. But with regard to my emotional harm, I simply ask that others don't add to it for I have enough of my own to be getting on with.
How can people with such high levels of intelligence not see that, what they call wokeness is simply an invitation not to be an a**hole. People from these minority groups have had to deal with awful experiences that people outside those communities couldn't possibly understand. So comments like this which frame such outsiders as the enemy of, "good education", don't help. I've sat in classes where I've had to listen to my own students make fun of gay and trans people. I've sat in churches where I've listened as homosexuality is condemned and the people around me had no idea I was gay, or didn't care. When one comes out of the closet one doesn't emerge covered in make up, glitter and a frock to make Ru Paul jealous, its done after years of living in fear and every step is taken beyond the closet is taken with trepidation because people voice their opinions with no care for the harm they could be doing.
So far I've read the first 28 pages of this man's book which I refuse to cite because it's so awful. But for someone who clearly know in his own mind what a "bad education" looks like then I'm happy to be a bad teacher.
Comments
Post a Comment