Hi All and Hi Pip - Mutse Atsi and Kia Ora
To anybody new coming into the list, who hasn't written, who is testing the
temperature of the water before plunging in - let me say that Pip sure knows
how to write an invitational plunge-pool into existence. Mohsen knows how to
write the frothy waters of possibility with irony and love. Alon writes to
my memory of apprehension at the moment of taking the plunge: could be sharp
rocks under the alluring appeal of the surface waters. Barbara's water of
Ubuntu is a stream I've drunk from all my life and it has to do with
belonging and this is how Barbara's postings make me feel: belonging in
we~i. Alan writes his living and loving inclusional darkness into being
through the pores of his visibly white skin, a living irony of his
inclusional life. All this feels like Ubuntu in the way Mab Segrest in her
educational and life project of feminist strategies for a just world refers
to her search for an understanding of Ubuntu as belonging. I simply want in
a world riddled by anti-Muslim and other racisms to feel I belong here, with
you all, in we~i of peaceful and respectful acceptance. I am open to your
influence on the education of my standards of respect and care for others.
Those who are not my audience, and for whom I'm not theirs, I invite
peaceful acceptance in respectful silence in the shade of the pomegranate
tree. What Tariq Modood refers to as a 'politics of equality as respect'.
By audience I mean that I have a code of ethics of obligation to listen and
engage with what moves me productively and positively in my life, and to
extend critical discernment to those ideas that move me negatively. My
obligation of obedience (i.e., audience) has critical and loving discernment
for myself and others. Helping me to realize my humanity better is the alms
that only you can gift me (and i, you) and offering your alms in charity and
with a clean heart bursting with good intent fulfills Ubuntu. By this living
standard of almoner judgment there are clearly gifted and gifting almoners
on this list.
An endnote from the field - In a peer observation of a supervision with a
Masters student last week, my observing colleague wrote: 'this supervision
session was more like a meeting of equals, of partners in learning, and the
usual teacher student space was dissolved by two enthusiastic people working
together in closeness and critical care.' In my prep notes I cited my
Educational Ubuntu standard of judgement very starkly and simply: 'As a
descendant of once were masters~once were slaves (and held in the artistic
spirit of Coco Fusco) I want to support my student to develop his confidence
and skill in bringing his ideas into the academy of higher education in a
way that enables his personal sense of belonging and also ensures that his
ideas belong in the academy through the award of a Masters'. A key learning
outcome of the session had been to work with my student to explore his fear
and phobia of writing at master's level. He is the only Black British
student in a small university college of circa 800. He was unclear how to
integrate literature and the ideas of others within his own narrative text.
I do this rather effectively in my writing. So I had something important to
share. And my belonging need as Ubuntu is simple: I only want to 'beheld' in
my students gaze as a person and not merely a teaching resource or a
commodified teaching object.
Yaakub Murray
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