Comments on: Dissenting Voices

By: Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education | Beyond School

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:19:36 +0000

[...] Cindy Barnsley, who worked on the project in Australia (with Shanghai and Serbia – it crashed, but not without lessons learned, so it wasn’t a failure), has taken me to task for damning my own baby, and she’s partly justified. The conceptual objective of the project was a more conscious, more critical, understanding of the students’ own, and their global peers’ “Other,” cultures. The skills? To use process writing coupled with the 6 Traits of Effective Writing to refine those writing skills, giving and receiving peer feedback from across the globe. [...]

By: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education - Revised | Beyond School

On Fear and Irrelevance in Education - Revised | Beyond School — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:29:24 +0000

By: durff

durff — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 03:14:28 +0000

Graham – I noticed the same difference between German and American attitudes. (I have German relatives).

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:36:52 +0000

Hi C, “Vanity publishing” – well-put. I think it’s fairly inevitable that the medium itself is going to put any participant through a series of psychological stages as she or he experiences it. How can it not? Millions of skilled writers around the world finally having that Marxist dream of having the “means of production,” and not having to play the publishing game. Suddenly their writing is attracting readers. It’s a heady experience.

But like all new things, the honeymoon stage passes and new understandings replace them. (Jeez, now that I think about how much time I spend with my laptop now, the marriage metaphor is quire apt: I even have little tiffs and petty feelings about my blogging life!) I’m only seven months old in all of this, and I can already see distinct stages in my psycho-evolution. I’m sure more will come – especially through conversations like these.

Parting thought: If those stages are inevitable, is there any reason to wait to jump in?

By: msbarnsley

msbarnsley — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:25:44 +0000

Hi Diane (dmcordell),
I hope I am also choosing my words carefully (blogging is often a late night activity so one can never be sure).
After months of reading different blogs (or lurking as it’s perjoratively known) I thought it was time I joined in. A colleague and I discussed blogging a few months ago and how it could be viewed as vanity publishing. There is an element of that I suppose, but I wanted to take the gamble that I had something worthwhile to add. I find that rigorous debate, even if it is between my own conflicting ideas, is a great way to expand my horizons. I also hope that writing, conversing and collaborating with other teachers (like this) will make my class a more interesting place for students

By: msbarnsley

msbarnsley — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:14:54 +0000

Hi Sylvia,
Thanks for your (witty) comment. I hope it’s true that in Australia there is room for sustained debate and a discussion of “uncomfortable issues”. The danger of being too polite or ambiguous in case you offend is that you end up saying nothing. I think defending and (when necessary) reframing your ideas is a vital part of “thinking through” new ideas.

By: msbarnsley

msbarnsley — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:58:18 +0000

Hi kwhobbes,
Thanks for your response. I agree with your comment that: “To grow we need to be challenged”. This encapsulates the spirit of the post. Clay (above) articulates what I was thinking – that “since we’re all putting our ideas out there and are presumably “life-long learners” valuing collaboration and growth, we should not just welcome dissent, but invite it.” The significance of “respectful dissent” (thanks, Graham) is that it broadens and enlivens the educational discussion and helps to encourage innovation. If we want people to be convinced that constructivist, inquiry-based teaching using that web 2.0 tools is the way to go we have to present clear and logical reasons for doing so.
When you ask: “But is there room for off-hand negative putdowns of other educators and their work? Do we have a responsibility to point out that people need to stay focused on the ideas? How?” – “Off-hand negative (personal) putdowns” are never very useful and are more often a reflection of the person making them than the person they are directed at. However, there is a big difference between criticising a person and critiquing their work. We should always be free, and encourage others, to be sceptical and to point out flaws in widely circulated information and research.

By: dmcordell

dmcordell — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:52:56 +0000

As a newcomer to the blogging arena, I choose my words – and my battles – carefully. My blog functions more as a brainstorming and collaboration tool than as a vehicle for learned debate. Although I enjoy reading entries from experienced educational theorists, my sights are set more on expanding my own, and my students’, horizons. One small step at a time…

By: Sylvia Martinez, USA

Sylvia Martinez, USA — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:18:34 +0000

I think some of this aversion to dissent is also an American export, and I’m going to make some grand generalizations now! I’ve traveled all over the world and met educators in many places, and have been a part of MANY spirited discussions, especially in Australia. It’s different than here.

In the US, with few exceptions, if you raise uncomfortable issues, you often get lectures about “tone” or how your message would be better received if you weren’t so “negative”. I think we don’t just infantalize adolescents, we infantalize adults too. The mere thought of having a strong opinion and having to defend it scares Americans.

Blogs, and the US-centric edublogger community is just a reflection of that. And hey, I live (and was born and raised) in the epicenter of banality, Los Angeles, the “we’re all just doing our own thing, man” capital of the world.

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:29:21 +0000

This is a good conversation for me, and actually made me post a semi-apology clarifying my use of a well-known video title as the title to a post attempting to “respectfully dissent.”

As for the value of dissent itself, since we’re all putting our ideas out there and are presumably “life-long learners” valuing collaboration and growth, we should not just welcome dissent, but invite it. I wish somebody would have bothered to criticize the 1001 Flat World Tales idea in January, so I wouldn’t have had to only see it’s fundamental “beeflessness” seven months later.

This is such a good, timely discussion. Please feel free to call foul on me any time my passions get the best of me

Further: I’m an American, but have never taught in the USA at all. Shanghai and Seoul: that’s it so far. Shanghai American School was Aussie and Kiwi-heavy when I was there, and I team-taught a lot as an ESOL specialist, so I had a front-row seat to observe the differences between national teaching styles. And I saw, in general, that “active learning,” cooperative group-work, and many other methods America is heralding as the “next big thing” were instead simply routines to the “Antipodeans.”

Also as an American teaching abroad, I’m hyper-sensitive to the power of American cultural influence on world (Chinese and Korean, for me) cultures. What to say about that, I won’t try for now. I’ll just say that it bothers me on many levels.

Now to check out that link Graham posted.