My latest article with Emma-Louise Jay has now been published 'Phenomenologies of ‘social acceleration’: some consequences and opportunities for education studies in an unknown future'. This paper calls for educationalists to recognise the value of theories of social acceleration to gain a better understanding of contemporary educational practices and how the COVID-19 pandemic is illustrative of this. #openaccess
John Canning & Emma-Louise Jay (2023) Phenomenologies of ‘social acceleration’: some consequences and opportunities for education studies in an unknown future, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2023.2286999
A couple months ago I wrote a short post on drawing following a session on visual research methods led by my colleague Pauline Ridley. A couple of weeks ago I attended a session led by Professor Alison James from the University of Winchester who is, among other things, an accredited facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
Visual methods offer the opportunity to convey concepts that are difficult to communicate in written or oral forms. As I indicated in my last post, it is not the purpose of visual methods to interpret artefacts that participants have produced but to enable participants to use their artefacts alongside other methods.
In the session Professor James set the brief along the lines of building a Lego® model of our professional lives and the (not great) picture shows what I produced.
I am the character at the edge of the room, which is dominated by an elephant. I didn’t have a any particular views of what the ‘elephant is the room’ represents, but there always seems to be some elephant in any room I happen to occupy. ‘I’ am waving some Lego piece which seeks to represent a distance communication device trying to communicate over long and short distances. All, but one of the Lego® people have their backs to me. There is Baudrillardian sense of my trying to communicate while no else wants to listen. My audience, whether students, colleagues or potential readers of my research don’t seem to want listen while I am communicate things I think are important. They are interested in, or distracted by things like giraffes or giant penguins.
On reflection this representation is a highly egotistical one. I have set myself as the one with message to communicate while everyone else is just supposed to listen. I’m saying “Hey, look at me! Look at me!”, but no one is really interested in looking at me. There are more interesting (and possibly more attractive) things to be looking at. My audience is either distracted by more entertaining pursuits or, more probably, trying not to get eaten by the sharks that circle academia. In ‘real life’ everyone else is trying to communicate too, and perhaps to them I’m the one who is distracted either by the trivialities of my research interested or fighting my own sharks. Although wheelbarrow and sink unit represent my home DIY projects, the model is notable for the absence of any meaning outside academia. I can feel like a marginal voice in academia, but academia is itself invisible to wider word whether for seemingly legitimate reasons such as major economic and political events or the outrage about Zoella’s £50 advent calendar (now half price + 100 Boots Advantage points) .
There are those with no voice at all and no means to communicate. I sometimes get a persecution complex, but as a university educated white straight male I have my back turned to a lot more people than I am facing. The model clearly fails to convey my own privilege. Perhaps a fairer model would have millions of Lego® people standing behind me.
These words are sung by characters in a modern day retelling of the Good Samaritan by the Veggie Tales. In the Veggie Tales version the victim falls head-first into a hole and just needs someone to pull him out. The passers-by recognise his predicament and sympathise, but they are too busy to help –an apt parable for modern times.
This article in the New York Times sums it up pretty well and rebukes me. Being busy is a “boast disguised as a complaint”. And in these times of economic hardship we prefer it to the alternative. We seek to be busy getting involved in things to keep busy. We worry what we would do without it.
In university life it seems that we are busier than ever. Not being busy is a moral failure. We have reached the point where anyone who gives any hint of not being busy is not pulling their weight. We take on extra work and get involved in anything that is going on. We must be there. How could the workplace function without me?
I am a latecomer to the Smartphone generation but since I got my Blackberry I’m checking email from work every time I pick up the phone. I check twitter when I wake up and before I go to bed. I reason that twitter is a good way of checking is there is anything in the news I need to be aware of and my fellow HE tweeps will help me there. I have to fight the guilt the feel when not ‘working’ on one another of my projects, whether its spending time with my kids or watching some TV with my wife after the children have gone to bed. Is twitter really work? It sure keeps me busy.
The New York Times blogger observes that people in minimum wage job aren’t busy—they are tired. I should know this. I am busier than ever, but am I working harder than ever? After my A-levels I worked for three months in an aluminium extruding plant working day, evening and night shifts. Some of the guys (they were all guys) were working 12 hours shifts with chemicals, extreme temperatures, jagged pieces of metal and in the case of the presses levels of noise I’ve not heard since. Those guys weren’t busy, but they worked really hard –many had been there over 25 years. This really is the case for millions of people in the UK and millions of others would like the opportunity to work hard.
I resolve to find a better word than ‘busy’ to describe my life.
