I see a dead trend

Actually, it’s not dead.  It’s alive and kicking.  Mike talks about it here.  We do not like to be offended.  We do not like to be different.  Ken talks about being different here.  Yeah, but no.

I suppose we should be grown ups, as Ken suggests.  I suppose we should protect the children, as Mike suggests ironically.  But why is being offended so negative?  It’s a part of life!  And why is being youthful so negative?

Edupunk has been described as being anti-authoritarian, as DIY education (pejoratively) and people have taken offence and told us all to grow up.  We need maturity to be teachers, to be in authority.  But what people see as immaturity, particularly in education, I see as  a joy in learning.  It’s the excitement of the new and the unknown that gets us, gets our blood boiling and spurs us on to greater achievements.

So too our offendedosity (and that is a real word).  It allows us to see other perspectives.  That’s important.  Very very important.

If we protect ourselves from offence, from being different and from new words, I think we well end up poorer, less enriched, no different, zombies in a huge melted pot of sameness.  I like edupunk (now that is a real word, it’s in Wikipedia (and that’s another new word (and how many levels of parenthetical asides can I achieve?)))!

I’d like to see a reverse of this trend to attempt to get sameness.  There used to be a song.  Actually, there used to be many songs.  But the song I’m thinking of was a call to difference, a call to be ourselves.  That song?  Australia, don’t become America![1]  I fear we are headed in that direction, the direction of easy offence, of sameness.  Reactions to this trend, our anti-trend, need to be heard more.  We need more edupunks and more offence, if only to keep people thinking.

And look on the bright side.  At least I didn’t call anyone a Nazi!

1. But I can never remember who sang it [↩]

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under EduPunk, Ramblings, thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.