Hello Moira, hello Marie, hello all,

I have been deeply impressed by what you are saying, and I am reminded 
of the work of Iris Marion Young, who speaks about greeting and 
recognition as a form of political action (Young, I., 2000, Inclusion 
and Democracy, Oxford, Oxford University Press). She says that greeting 
is a kind of public acknowledgement, a form of communicative ethics, 
and greeting is an essential aspect of acknowledging the other before 
any kind of meaningful discussion or sharing can take place, an 
essential condition of inclusive democratic practices. She says (page 
90) that a group consists of both the individuals in the group and 
their relationships. I have drawn on this concept a lot to help me make 
sense of my practice, of what I do. Maybe what we do has the same deep 
meaning of how we are. How we are with one another is what we do, our 
embodied actions. And how we are makes us who we are. Our identities 
are grounded in our actions. We literally create our selves and our 
identities. As you, Moira, greet each person I believe you are 
explaining publicly how you are, with that person and with yourself in 
the world. The intentional way you are, your intentional being in the 
world, is for me a form of communicative action. I love the idea that 
we can create the way we are, that life is maybe a process of creating 
the person we wish to be, not working towards an imaginary given 'end' 
but recognising this moment as the end and the beginning, the 
everlasting now, and any temporal 'end' is a manifestation of its own 
political 'ends'. How do we make judgements about how we are? This is 
the issue that is occupying a lot of my thinking at the moment, because 
I need to make some decisions about what I do in the next year, so need 
to bring some order into my thinking. How do I make judgements about 
how I am and what I am doing?

I wonder also whether how we say fare well is also a form of 
communicative action? In South Africa, people often say, 'Go well.' So, 
on this beautiful Christmas morning, which means so much to me, because 
it is a brand new day with its own special immanent promise, I send you 
love and joy, and hope we all go well.

Love

Jean

On 25 Dec 2006, at 01:10, Marie Huxtable wrote:

> Hi Moira
>
> I have been thinking a lot about what you wrote in one of your 
> postings - 
>
> How can I support my Voluntary Services Overseas colleagues in their 
> Action Research enquiries as they seek to clarify their values in 
> action? by Professor Moira Laidlaw, December 2006.
>
>
> .
>  I meant to respond before but I am slow to think and then the moment 
> has passed.  I am glad that this gives me the opportunity to revisit 
> it as it has been a lot on my mind. Can I just take two points from 
> the quote you gave from Bassey
>
>
> Conviviality has a profound meaning, concerned with the nature of 
> human life. A convivial person is trying to achieve a state of deep 
> and satisfying harmony with the world, which gives joyful meaning to 
> life...
>
>
> Striving for harmony with their fellows they seek to co-operate rather 
> than to compete with them; they neither exploit them or are exploited 
> by them: they try to live in concord with their fellows: to love and 
> be loved.
>
> Striving for harmony with the self, convivial people have sufficient 
> understanding of both their rationality and their emotions to develop 
> their talents effectively; by using their talents harmoniously in 
> relation to their society and their physical and intellectual 
> environment, they become self-reliant and thus experience the joy of 
> convivial life. (p.5)
>
> It struck me when I looked at the video and read your narrative it is 
> what I understand what it is to co-create a space of inclusion. I see 
> you you connecting with each of your students as they flow past, 
> offering them the gift of recognition. I see you invite Tian Ping to a 
> space that is both public and private to offer a particular 
> recognition. The space has been created not only in the moment but the 
> possibility for it to exist has been co-created with all your 
> students, as well as Tian Ping, in what has been and what will be. The 
> space is honestly open, invitational not impositional; the invitation 
> is open to being declined. There is a sense of a flow between you 
> where each is confident in the self and in the other and in that 
> harmonious productive flow comes a joyful meaning of life.
>
> If I could co-create a space of inclusion that I see in the video and 
> I read in your paper and narrative I would feel a warm glow of 
> pleasure as an educator being the educator I want to be. There are 
> other details I could pick up in your paper or in your posting here, 
> and I could draw on other examples from the collage that Jack offers 
> but I just want to leave it at that.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Moira Laidlaw <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Saturday, 23 December, 2006 11:30:44 AM
> Subject: Re: Judging Educational Influences In Terms of World Leading 
> Standards of Judgement
>
> Hello Jack. Hello All!
>
> Here's some thoughts on your posting, Jack. They mostly allude to my 
> own
> clip. I wish I had more time to respond to all the video-clips you 
> allude
> to, but I don't, unfortunately. First, though, a general comment:
> What comes through for me about the clips altogether is about the way 
> in
> which the juxtaposition changes the way you can view what you are 
> doing,
> and indeed, reality itself. Yes, I really think it does too, Barry. I 
> hope
> the following comments are in some way my own explication of what I
> understand form my own lived experience.
>
> You've said, in reference to my clip:
>
> 'I think Moira loves what she does in education and is expressing this
> love in her recognition of the value of her students as they flow past
> her.'
>
> There’s a tremendous amount in that. Linking this point to the one 
> you've  
> also made about how placing these clips together strips them of time 
> and
> linearity, is something I also relate to. In my sci-fi reading and Star
> Trek enthusiasm, I liken this quality of multi-media, multiple-moment
> representation as something like a wormhole in space. This clip helps 
> me
> to understand something I've intuited for a long time  about my 
> educative
> relationships and influence and the development of standards of 
> judgement,
> which I first put forward in my thesis.
>
> Although the distances between two locations (read also point-of-view,
> character, psychology, religion, faith-system, experience, race,
> ethnicity, gender, geography, background, history etc.)  may be 
> physically
> vast, in relativity theory a wormhole (curved space) reduces the 
> distance
> instantly to negligible proportions, so that one might travel from 
> star-
> system A to star-system B within moments instead of the years, 
> millennia,
> it might take in a three-dimensional universe. Wormholes in space to me
> are like metaphors of human relationships. Fragile, yet strong, simple 
> yet
> overwhelmingly complex, a turn of phrase might create a rift that 
> cannot
> be traversed over any period of time, or instantly heal a rift that 
> could
> not have been reasoned out (and there is the vast, measureless, 
> timeless
> spectrum between them too, of course). Any representation and meaning-
> making enterprise that captures this reality might indeed carry forward
> our understanding onto a new level of awareness and reality. It might
> render a three-dimensional reality into a multi-dimensional reality in 
> the
> blinking of an eye, so to speak! Such representations might genuinely
> catapult human reasoning onto a new level of evolution for 
> homo-sapiens.
> Such is the potential of what you’re doing. It’s taken me a long time 
> to
> see it. It’s the juxtaposition, for me, wherein lies the potential of 
> the
> work you’re engaged in, we’re engaged in. Am I making sense? And in the
> clip of me with my students in Guyuan in relation to those moments with
> Tian Ping, I think we existed in this wormhole, which holds both time 
> and
> propulsion in an apparently time-bound and single-space as meeting 
> place.
> We both moved towards each other overcoming all sorts of physical-laws 
> and
> boundaries, to co-create a space of inclusion. We are both human. We 
> are
> both valuable. We hold each other in genuine esteem. I, as educator,
> however, have an additional responsibility. It is ontological as well 
> as
> epistemological. I prevent this space between us from becoming wholly
> exclusive, as this would be against my core-beliefs of the ontological
> responsibility I exercise in those moments as authority-figure, as
> educator, as named person in that relationship. In addition, this space
> cannot exclude others because that’s like cutting off a body and only
> talking to an ear – I still reach out to and hold moments with other
> students as they file past: their presence must not be perceived as
> intrusive in this space, but as a welcome part of the whole flux – but 
> at
> that space/time the core of it is myself and Tian Ping. That quality 
> is,
> yes, an important one to hone into a  world standard, because it’s 
> already
> there! What do I mean? God, this is complex!
>
> When Tian Ping (I have permission to use her real name) makes to move 
> out
> of the classroom – thus out of a space/time that may hold something
> fruitful to our humanity – I seize that space/time (I don’t know what 
> to
> call it) and draw her in by expressing, non-verbally, my sense of our
> shared humanity, of my care for her as a valuable human being. I mean 
> she
> already is that – she doesn’t need my endorsement for it to be so - 
> but I
> sense that she needs to be shown that I see it (it’s that Yamamoto 
> (1991)
> thing about the necessity of visibility, especially for women and
> especially in a patriarchal country like China) – and I want the
> expression of that sharing value as human beings together to 
> characterize
> something between us. I want to enable her recognition of that space –
> expressly, not just implicitly. That’s why I reached out to her – with 
> my
> eyes, my smile, my hands. Any way I could ‘think/feel’ to get her to 
> enter
> that immanent space. Her slight smile, I take it of pleasure and 
> slightly
> shy self-awareness, and the fluidity of her movement with me aside to
> symbolize our moving together into this space, seem very smooth. Once
> there, all I have to do is emphasise what has already, essentially, 
> been
> done.  And I remember feeling that too at the time. I felt a surge of
> humanity flowing through me at that moment: the wormhole opening up, if
> you like. My educational life is characterized, as its best, by moments
> such as this: instinctively, through a kind of perfect pitch, I 
> perceive a
> singularity, and know how to connect it to the whole. I think that
> expresses well my specific educational talent. (I’m not boasting about
> being a good educator writ large, I’m saying I recognize that 
> particular
> aspect as constituting the ‘successful’ ways I sometimes interact with
> individuals, which supports the development of harmonious, productive
> relationships in the service of humanity, that’s all.) So, in 
> recognizing
> that possibility (the wormhole) I dive into it, taking her with me, and
> letting it blend harmoniously with those people around us so that we
> weren’t a canker in the side of humanity, but a burgeoning part of it,
> which has the potential to flow out and harmonise with others 
> convivially,
> so to speak. And then, knowing that the moment was, in one sense, time-
> bound, I released her from it and gently, gently closed that space, but
> not the time. The moment is in one sense time-bound, and in another
> timeless. That's the art. It's, as Eliot said, capturing the timeless
> moment with time.
>
> I am using the wormhole as a metaphor (and a reality too), but what
> enables movement into that space is love. The standard I'm deveoping 
> in my
> educational life is that of love, because, in my experience, it is only
> love which can overcome our physical, and metaphysical boundaries. It 
> is
> both the impetus and the way.
>
> I subsequently heard from her friend that this moment was one of the 
> most
> powerful for Tian Ping in her years of formal education. I received a 
> note
> from her peer, saying that this had truly given Tian Ping a sense of 
> her
> own capability. I wish I had the note still. I haven’t. Pity. But I did
> have conversations with Tian Ping herself, which alluded to this lesson
> and to this moment. And the words she spoke to me a month later: 'no 
> one
> has believed in me like this', I will never forget. They confirmed for 
> me
> something I already knew: this interaction was meaningful in a way that
> education is meaningful for the development of humanity. It’s a spark 
> from
> a myriad of fireworks. or a snowflake in a snowfall - each one 
> beautifully
> and precisely unique, yet also a part of the whole. Two drops in the 
> ocean
> without any limiting sense. All is one.
>
> I come back to the point: if the question is, how can we develop world-
> leading standards of judgement in our work as educators, then, I 
> believe,
> the answer has something to do with developing love in our 
> relationships.
>
> Love from,
>
>
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