Why Michael Gove's invocation of Gramsci misses the point of his work | Peter Thompson For someone like me, who left a fairly "bog standard" comprehensive school at 16 with no qualifications and, as far as I can remember, having never read a book – let alone all the classics that the education secretary said we should return to in his speech to the Social Market Foundation yesterday – Michael Gove's choice of the Italian revolutionary Marxist Antonio Gramsci as an intellectual buttress for his views on contemporary education in Britain seems both fascinating and instructive. Gove started with a statement of sympathy for Jade Goody and the way in which she was an object of derision for her general lack of knowledge. Of course he then promptly blames the comprehensive education system for her failings, claiming that if only she had been taught "properly" then she wouldn't have been so stupid. Using Gramsci he maintains that a proper grounding in the basics is missing from the structures of contemporary education and that this lack is failing working class children.
Postmodern Theory - Chapter 3: Deleuze and Guatari Chapter 3: Deleuze and Guattari: Schizos, Nomads, Rhizomes We live today in the age of partial objects, bricks that have been shattered to bits, and leftovers... We no longer believe in a primordial totality that once existed, or in a final totality that awaits us at some future date (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: p.42) A theory does not totalize; it is an instrument for multiplication and it also multiplies itself... Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have embarked on postmodern adventures that attempt to create new forms of thought, writing, subjectivity, and politics. Their most influential book to date, Anti-Oedipus (1983; orig. 1972) is a provocative critique of modernity's discourses and institutions which repress desire and proliferate fascists subjectivities that haunt even revolutionary movements. Deleuze is a professor of philosophy who in the 1950s and 1960s gained attention for his studies of Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Bergson, Proust and others.
Splogs Rhizome Theory, according to Deleuze and Guattari : invisibletransmission One of the challenges that I highlighted in my research proposal is that it will likely be difficult to keep the structure of this project from deviating towards a hierarchical, or tree-like, model. It’s very easy to slip – Western minds naturally want to follow a hierarchical, ontological thinking process. A good way to prevent this from happening is to understand rhizome theory (although this, in itself, is difficult). Deleuze and Guattari break up the explanation of Rhizome into six main points: The Rhizome will always establish connections between semiotic chains, power structures, and the arts and sciences. Decalcomania refers to a process of copying or tracing. I am going to go out on a node here (because I can’t go out on a limb), and say that the rhizome map is not a representation of an object, rather it dictates that a node SHOULD exist simply because it CAN. – If the content is engaging enough, this principle should excite the system. To simplify this:
The pen is mightier than the sword Part 1 | Carping From The Side Lines – Iorek's Blog Handwriting is not dead. Despite reports to the contrary, despite a plethora of technologies for creating text, nothing yet matches the speed and immediacy of a quick note jotted down with a mark-making implement on a scrap of paper. It’s probably not a stretch to suggest that a handwritten letter or card remains one of the most intimate means of non-verbal communication of thoughts, ideas and feelings. It is certainly true that the majority of students hand write the bulk of their work, at least at primary level. With this in mind, it is frustrating to witness students struggle to master basic ‘stylus skills’ (a non-gendered alternative to ‘penmanship’). As with many things that we could do better in schools, a focus on improving handwriting sits comfortably with the concept of marginal gains, beyond the opportunity to clinch a couple of extra test points. 1. 2. 3. 4. This is part one of a two-part post. Like this: Like Loading...
Deleuze and Guattari, "Rhizome" annotation by Dan Clinton Positioned as the introduction to the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Rhizome principally constructs a model (a new map) for apprehending the constitution and reception of a book. As Deleuze writes, “the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with the world, there is an aparallel evolution of the book and the world” (11). This model, framed metaphorically around rhizomorphism, also extends itself within the text to the study of linguistics and politics. But what is a rhizome, anyway? Where the potato is the hero of this story, the tree becomes the villain. As such, “Rhizome” rapidly seeks to extinguish every last trace of Hegelianism, particularly from the object of the book: “There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). The prose is dense and schizophrenic.
535: Made for students. By students. Beginning of Visible Learning Beginning of Visible Learning On August 2 1999, John Hattie gave his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. You are what you eat. Have you ever been on a diet? There are the crash diets (or fad diets) - The Beverley Hills diet and Cabbage soup diet are 2 examples. Goldilocks Feedback. This blog is not about Assessment for Learning. Where's the evidence? I listened to a great podcast. The gentleman, let's call him Stephen, was heavily into the science of his craft. Tuck your shirt in! One of the many perennial questions that teachers have to field from pupils (and in some cases parents) is regarding school uniform. Supply or demand? As a young boy I used to spend time playing in the playground of my junior school.
Rhizomes, Memory, Deleuze and Guattari. « Eidetic Traces January 25, 2010 by Catherine Borders Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari criticize psychoanalysis for its reduction of everything to a fundamental Oedipal triangle (Daddy, Mommy, and Me). They say this promotes a conventional and repressive family structure, but, it also channels polymorphous desires into narrowly restrictive ones. A famous example is Freud’s “Wolfman” case. Desire is not lack! This is where they developed their theory of the rhizomatic underground root structure. Unlike plants with a single tap root, rhizomes spread in all directions, creating a chaotic network where one point can be connected to every other point. It is never the beginning or the end that are interesting; the beginning and the end are points. I think the same of memory. For instance, I think of a pen, which makes me think of paper, which makes me think of snow, which makes me think of ice, which makes me think of salt, which makes me think of anchovies, and on, and on, and on. “I can’t go on. Like this:
Is retreat the only option? - news Comment:5 average rating | Comments (8)Last Updated:31 January, 2013Section:news Arguments against the government’s planned GCSE replacements are coming from all quarters. Will Michael Gove continue to pursue his goals regardless or will he be forced to reconsider?, asks William Stewart Michael Gove appears to have done that rare thing in politics - he’s come up with a policy that almost no one supports. Teacher union opposition might be seen as par for the course for an education secretary wanting to shake things up; it might even be viewed as a political necessity for one wishing to keep the right-wing press on side. But classroom “militants” are not the only ones up in arms about Gove’s plan to introduce English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBCs) in core subjects as a replacement for GCSEs. Major doubts have been raised by the heads of the schools supposed to use them, the exam boards that will provide them, the watchdog that will regulate them and the employers that will consume them.
Rhizome (philosophy) "As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' "In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980.
Getting the scale right: attitudes before systems. After millennia of battle the surviving G’Gugvuntt and Vl’hurg realised what had actually happened, and joined forces to attack the Milky Way in retaliation. They crossed vast reaches of space in a journey lasting thousands of years before reaching their target where they attacked the first planet they encountered, Earth. Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog. Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I love this Hitch-hiker’s Guide story. 1. Short-term accountability pressures force us to be diverted from thinking about the heart of our business: the quality of teacher-student relationships and interactions. 2. Here we have a fleet of policies and systems, reinforced by OfSTED and the latest accountability drive. I’m a pretty good teacher. Here is my radical contention: If we burned or deleted all the Performance Management files it would be a long long time before any student noticed a difference. 3. But that is all.