JOHN BERGER: WHY WRITING IS NOT A SIMPLE JOURNEY.

‘My capacity as a writer. I can make words strong. But often I arrive at establishing their proper strength through at first making them over-strong. This is one of the reasons why I write so slowly, with such difficulty. My writing is often not a simple journey from perception to statement. Often what is finally written is the result of an overshooting which necessitates a return journey. This is because I have often conceived of writing as a substitute for action (or other forms of action.) If I were to overcome this by according to those other forms of action their true value and acting accordingly myself, my writing would become a simple journey. Writing does not need to be defended against life. In neither sense of the phrase. It should not need protecting. And it needs no apology. There is no such thing as mega-literature.” Winter ’74

John Berger , from an annotated copy of the first edition of his novel G)

Link: G at Good Reads

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NOTHING VIRAL. NO MATTER.

“It will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on”. – Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable (Photo by Brett Wilde).

Another day, another blog post. With the views limping towards three figures each day,

I am resigned to the fact that I will never go viral unless I unwittingly stumble upon some almighty scoop.

This doesn’t worry me especially since I started this as a personal project to write about whatever took my fancy with no desire to make any personal confessions.

What was once a vice is now a habit.

It has become the principle of the thing to post something every day.

This dogged perseverance (stubbornness) has meant that I have not missed a day since 1st January 2011.

Sometimes, though, I feel like the unnamed narrator of Beckett’s 1953  novel (“I’ll go on”) and I also gain a perverse strength from the same writer who, in his novella Worstward Ho!,  wrote: “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”.

There’s a bleakness in these words, but a spirit of resilience too; and a truth.

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FIVE REASONS TO LOVE OLDER LEARNERS.

A lesson for the youth of today – Nola Ochs graduated at the age of 95!

To mark the fact that next week (18th-24th May) is  Adult Learner’s week., these are five reasons why any teacher should welcome ‘mature’ members to their classes:

1. Many educators write as if all learners were straining at the leash to get their hands on funky tekkie tools in the classroom. I believe that students of all ages, and older students in particular, are more appreciative of well-prepared  lo-tech frontal lessons.

2. I have found  that the majority of adult learners (late 20s to early 90s!) are intrinsically motivated.  The same cannot necessarily be said of those in their late teens and early 20s.

TEN WAYS TO MEET LEARNER EXPECTATIONS

Following on from post of Jeff Bliss yesterday, I came across this video which crisply sets out ten expectations that need to be met if learners are to actually learn anything either in or out of school.

It’s based on the ideas set out in the book and website called Leaving to Learn by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski.

The fact that it has a foreword  by Sir Ken Robinson means that it’s almost certainly worth reading.

It’s a cool video and I have no quibbles with the content.http://lnc.hr/a1Gj6

EDUCATIONAL BLISS

David v Goliath acts of rebellion will always draw a big audience.

It’s no great surprise then, that the video of the articulate rant by Jeff Bliss against his high school history teacher should have gone viral.

Here’s what I’m talking about , in the unlikely event that you haven’t already seen it:

Spokesman of a generation? Jeff Bliss.

Once upon a time, such an outburst would  have prompted the moral majority to lament on how the youth of today have no respect for authority.

The reaction now is quite different and it proves that there’s a bigger issue at stake here which will remain long after the media circus has moved on to the next show in town.