318 - 3.9.26 - 3: Fire fire
Met with Anthony yesterday. We talked for two hours and it felt like no time had passed by. We share our journeys. I think the last time I saw him was more than a year ago.
He looked great, as usual. We trade stories about parents and deaths. We chatted about ex colleagues and medical issues. We reminisced and wondered what would happen to this world. Both safe in the knowledge that we had, indeed, tried our best. We talked about our children. Oisin was 6 months old when I joined the RSPB. Anthony told me that his daughter was almost 40. I was in disbelief. I knew these children as, well, children.
While we talked, there was a fire and it turned out that it was a fire at the scrapyard of the harbour. It was nuts really. Apparently there was another fire there in May of this year.
Ghin cleaned the toilet and started with the garage. I tried gardening, but it began raining. I am tired all the time. This year has been a tiring year. I have only run four times since I've been here. I should run today - and every day till I leave to make up for the no running.
But it is sunny today. So sunny. Not sure what I'll do now. Clean the toilet and then do admin maybe. Then go for a run, then garden. Or just garden. And then go see Pauline.
I was supposed to go to Rathlin, but I've decided to not go today. I should have really. It's so sunny today. Maybe I'll go tomorrow. Autumn on Rathlin. I remember going there during one of our staff outings and standing in the corncrake field. Anyway. I told Anthony about the rough outlines about my relationship with Ahab. He said, I had no idea all this was going on. I said, yeah... And it was all amazing and good. Heartbreaking, but given what has happened, also just amazed that we had this time in this life. Not many people can say that.
Anyway, this was my rant. Apparently Norway is going back to a no tech classroom.
do not be lured by the shiny object. when i began my steiner teacher training quite a lot of my time was spend going, this is nuts. this is insane. but i continued because i was also curious. then i became a teacher and i took a leap of faith and i taught according to how i was trained. i was, ok human being have 4 bodies, they have these phases of life, as a teacher you have a psychic connection to the children, it is important that the afternoons are all about doing not thinking. no tests. sensory sensory sensory. actually now educationist are being turned on to this whole sensory thing now.
all of this is utterly negated by tech. can an ipad understand the connection a good teacher has with a child? can they be there for them and nurture them? can they ensure the child is seen? can they teach them how to knead bread or grow a seed? they can demonstrate it, but there is a massive difference. this kind of tech delivery is ok for an adult. for a child, the adult takes responsibility for their education.
in early years, we teach through imitation and we model what is good. in the lower and middle school years, we teach through beauty. in the upper school years, it is truth. a computer cannot do that. nor a very clever android - because they do not have a soul. it is also true that not everyone can be a teacher - it is a vocation. it is a calling. you need to have some essence of a teacher inside you. you can learn this, of course. but that is why teachers are so special.
sometimes i do wonder what kind of world it was when there were no teachers... because once upon a time there were not teachers. only the very rich had teachers. alexander the great and his noble friends were taught by Aristotle, for instance. in ancient mesopotamia, the children of nobles and priests were taught as well. by and large the children of the hoi polloi were left to work in the fields and serve their overlords as farm hands or soldiers. often new kingdoms sprang from a competent soldier who was able to rise through the ranks.
then we decided on universal education. universal education is a relatively new idea. probably an ideal which has only happened since the universal declaration of human rights - the idea that every child and person should have access to education and governments should do this. it was seen as a marker of development.
we are now slowly reverting to past times, when the children of the elite are given the opportunity to be educated by real human beings in tech free environments, while the children of everyone else is either given an ipad and let fall through the cracks. teachers everywhere being told that their jobs are on the line if they don't classroom manage instead of teacher with 40 children per class.
in the 1900s, an education movement arose - not just waldorf education by montesorri as well. there was an outpouring of idealism during this time. the industrial revolution have pulverised the human spirit and was giving rise to the gross accumulation of capital. education was seen as an important way of correcting this course by people who were interested in doing something. then world wars took place and much of the progress was swept away and it was back to the utilitarianism which dickens saw and documented so well - rote learning and obedience to authority - in hard times.
we need to realise that we are at war all the time with the people who do not want to share anything with the have nots. they have made massive amounts of money selling tech snake oil. the truth is that your terrible education cannot be ameliorated by tech. it can only be helped by better teachers, smaller classroom sizes and the willingness to let children be children while lovingly guiding them into a future which they are a part of.
sadly steiner education will not be funded by the government because education is generally thought of as a sausage making industry. but there is no reason why the curriculum cannot be adapted into mainstream schools either.
once again. enough is enough.
apologies for the v long post...
all of this is utterly negated by tech. can an ipad understand the connection a good teacher has with a child? can they be there for them and nurture them? can they ensure the child is seen? can they teach them how to knead bread or grow a seed? they can demonstrate it, but there is a massive difference. this kind of tech delivery is ok for an adult. for a child, the adult takes responsibility for their education.
in early years, we teach through imitation and we model what is good. in the lower and middle school years, we teach through beauty. in the upper school years, it is truth. a computer cannot do that. nor a very clever android - because they do not have a soul. it is also true that not everyone can be a teacher - it is a vocation. it is a calling. you need to have some essence of a teacher inside you. you can learn this, of course. but that is why teachers are so special.
sometimes i do wonder what kind of world it was when there were no teachers... because once upon a time there were not teachers. only the very rich had teachers. alexander the great and his noble friends were taught by Aristotle, for instance. in ancient mesopotamia, the children of nobles and priests were taught as well. by and large the children of the hoi polloi were left to work in the fields and serve their overlords as farm hands or soldiers. often new kingdoms sprang from a competent soldier who was able to rise through the ranks.
then we decided on universal education. universal education is a relatively new idea. probably an ideal which has only happened since the universal declaration of human rights - the idea that every child and person should have access to education and governments should do this. it was seen as a marker of development.
we are now slowly reverting to past times, when the children of the elite are given the opportunity to be educated by real human beings in tech free environments, while the children of everyone else is either given an ipad and let fall through the cracks. teachers everywhere being told that their jobs are on the line if they don't classroom manage instead of teacher with 40 children per class.
in the 1900s, an education movement arose - not just waldorf education by montesorri as well. there was an outpouring of idealism during this time. the industrial revolution have pulverised the human spirit and was giving rise to the gross accumulation of capital. education was seen as an important way of correcting this course by people who were interested in doing something. then world wars took place and much of the progress was swept away and it was back to the utilitarianism which dickens saw and documented so well - rote learning and obedience to authority - in hard times.
we need to realise that we are at war all the time with the people who do not want to share anything with the have nots. they have made massive amounts of money selling tech snake oil. the truth is that your terrible education cannot be ameliorated by tech. it can only be helped by better teachers, smaller classroom sizes and the willingness to let children be children while lovingly guiding them into a future which they are a part of.
sadly steiner education will not be funded by the government because education is generally thought of as a sausage making industry. but there is no reason why the curriculum cannot be adapted into mainstream schools either.
once again. enough is enough.
apologies for the v long post...
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