One of the surprising things that arose during the course of my studies was the tendancy to seek for permission to think or some form of validation before I dared to write what I thought. After all I had gotten this far in life by using my noodle for more than a hat rest and a place for my hair to fall from ... or had I?
So much of our lives is already predestined by bureaucracy, (sub)cultural norms and marketing (is it "I am cool therefore I have an iPod" or "I have an iPod therefore I am cool"?) that much of what is called education is merely learning the dos and don'ts of the prevailing norms - not that is bad if that is what one seeks, it is not what I seek ... or so I thought. Certainly it is not what excites me. What gets me up in the morning it to be able to think as deep as I think deep is, which, as it may have turned out, not be all that deep at all. I have discovered an annoying behavioral tick of needing approval before I risk committing myself to an idea or approach - I want to be able to pin the blame on someone else in case a paper fails. However the strange thing is that the times I have stepped up to present an idea drummed out of my own head I have always been rewarded with higher grades than when I took the safer route of known ideas.
As I look around I can see other students pushing themselves to see what's out there. Mark is in his mindlab mixing Vygotsky and Halliday not because he read somewhere that these guys connect but because he's got a hunch. Another student took a WD question and changed the question (with permission of course you can't escape bureaucracy entirely) so he could explore a perceived pattern in movie reviews. Then there the crazies behind this BhamMash thing - as if they were not busy enough with the MA, work, and families - who thumbed their collective noses at the WebCT and figured out their own ways and means of connecting Bhammers in Japan (and now Korea!). I haven't entirely given in to permission seeking. In my SD paper I took the Francis-Hunston model of conversation analysis and applied it to the discourse in a private lesson because the discourse did not follow the discourse pattern in the Sinclair-Coulthard model of clasroom disourse.
If there is any one thing that distinguishes my undergrad learning experience from this present experience is the appearance of this questin of permission. [It wasn't that my undergrad university didn't value intellectual initiative (I'm very sure it does) but rather my goals with Bham are much more in focus particularly in reference to the quality of my learning experience because it may be the last opportunity for self-study before other priorities take over.] Have I always been like this? How can I move away from it, if I can? If I successfully move away from it, will I find myself in another permission seeking environment - this time of a higher order? And what is thinking anyway that makes it seemingly limitless (the apparent limitlessness of the mind is an interesting illusion created by the mind) on one hand and so vulnerable to control on the other?
It will take a while before I will understand my penchant to seek permission to think but one related area is teaching and how students can be similarly frozen. Am I freezing or freeing them? Mmmm reminds me of the time I got the strap in grade one. I'll write about another time.
Ｇｒｅａｔ ｐｅｒｓｐｅｃｔｉｖｅｓ
Hello M.S.
What a pleasure it is to read about your thoughts and the things you are learning. If you keep up this pace, we're looking at a book someday...
A satisfied reader
Collaboration gives me just the right kind of pressure to get lots done.
I salute you sir. There is
I salute you sir. There is one thing though that I would like to mention. In gaining from Bham, permission to change my last 3 essay questions, has proven to me a very valuable experience. For one, Bham has shown that they are willing to allow the students to go beyond what the course originally intended, because I'm sure they see that there are changes that need to be made based on the needs of the individual students. I have, in changing the questions, submitted rather lengthy reasons why I wanted the question changed and basically outlined my own question. It gave me time to prove that it was really the reason the questions didn't fit me, but at the same time I showed Bham that I just didn't want the question changed, I showed them there was a reason for change.
Since I am a private school owner, I have the luxury of change within my own school, based on the new knowledge I am acquiring. This luxury is the foundation of what can and should be done by other school owners. This MA course should be mandatory for all school owners simply because we have the power to change the market to what it should be. All my questions have been towards the changing of what I would hope to be something that would in some time, have an impact on whatever else is happening in Japan.
In private e-mail with someone from Bham, I apologized for changing the questions all the time. Mail came back with the reply; 'It is nice to see a student not just following the course, but making something out of it and not just jumping through the hoops.' I recommend making the MA entirely your own, going for the gusto, getting as much out of it as you can. Seeking permission to think may not be the right term, seeking permission to expand horizons and go for the cutting edge stuff may be what you are trying to say?? But at the same time, I agree, for the protection of the integrity of the course and for the protection of the student base, it is for the time being a wise course to make sure that if you want to do something cutting edge, it may be OK, but a check with the University certainly wouldn't hurt. Just make sure you can justify it.
When you finish the MA and you are out in the world with this new knowledge, then the cutting edge thinking will already be there and the freedom to make changes will make you become the person you intended to be upon entering the MA to begin with. I think that is what this MA is all about. Not learning new things, but learning how to take the already known and find ways to make it revolutionize the ever changing world of EFL.