----- Forwarded message from [log in to unmask] -----
Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:25:20 +0000
From: Moira Laidlaw <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Moira Laidlaw <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: First gathering of the New Year 8/01/07
To: [log in to unmask]
Hi Jack. I wonder if you would send the following to Alan in resopnse to his
marvellous writing on how he came to his understandings of inclusionality. I
haven't been able to access the jiscmail stuff for a couple of days - still
having trouble in China with the servers.
Dear Alan. I read your testimony of a gifted child with great interest this
morning. Unfortunately I have not been able to access the list to answer you
on line (trouble with servers in China) so have asked Jack to forward this
letter.
Your account of your formative and more recent experiences really touched
me. I could identify to an extent with the pressures you were subjected to,
and that sense of never living up to expectations, which had the outcome,
like you, of weakening the natural course of my human potential and
disenabling my ablities from realising themselves more harmoniously. I was
also expected to live up to entirely external standards of academic
excellence from an early age. My abilities in music were seen as a sideline
and I was expected to conform to what I felt as cold and wholly external
forms of endeavour. From the age of three I was sitting at the piano and
making tunes, either from those heard or from ones I was creating in my
head. From an early age I could not understand the ways that the world I
found myself in operated. I felt and perceived always that there was some
sort of trick going on, but the parameters of power in my life subsumed my
natural inclinations into channels which parents and teachers could control.
I knew that certain things were true - i.e. that we weren't all separate,
that 'knowledge' (whatever that was) wasn't separate and exclusive, but
rather at some more profound level, never discussed, never shared, was
there, waiting to be experienced and understood. I knew this through the
influence music had on my life from an early age. Some music, particularly
the music of Bach, frmo the age of seven showed me a different reality from
the one always being harped on about. This different reality brought
everything together and harmonised perceptions and possibilities. It made me
feel joy. I coudln't articulate why, but now I believe it was because it
drew together all the disparate strands of me and my understanding into a
whole I could identify with. It also put me powerfully in touch with the
cosmos (whatever that means) in ways that have never left me and continue to
inspire me in my daily workings. I began to have the idea at that age that
'orogional sin' might have something to do with fragmentation. Fragmentation
has always horrified me, like a gash across creation.
At the age of eleven I failed the eleven-plus, proof to my parents of my
slowness and lack of academic ability, but my covert learning continued
until my more traditional academic abilities caught up. I went on to do
reasonably well at 'A' Level and first degree level and then became a
teacher, where I really started to use the learning I had made through my
more occluded perceptions. My classrooms became about the creation of safe
and yet challenging spaces for students to learn what was of interest and
value to them, as well as enabling them to pass examinations. When I
discovered Action Research it was like coming home, because of the overt
links being sought between inner and outer lives. It was a connection my
whole life had been waiting for. I oozed into that space as a penguin glides
through water. I've watched penguins a lot. On land they seem so awkward, so
stilted (they're not of course, that's just my biased view). Then, when they
reach towards water, suddenly they are transformed into miracles of grace
and style. There seems no disparity between penguin and water. They are one.
In my terms, in the classroom, I felt that immersion into my own element,
rather like the recognition I had of reality when listening to music with
perfect pitch and an innate understanding of how form and content are not
divisible. It all began to make sense. Add to that Action Research, which
enabled me for the first time to view that process of being inside and
understand what it means, and I had at last found a profound environment in
which to flourish.
When I first heard you talk about inclusionality I had little understanding
of what you might be meaning. I recognised, however, Jack's genuine interest
and intrigue with your ideas. I read some of your work. I attended meetings
at my twice-yearly returns to Bath, and then, gradually, like osmosis, I
began to click with it all. I realised that I was approaching your ideas
from an external position - as ideas - rather than flowing with them. Once I
had grasped that, my understanding of your ideas was transformed in a way I
now find daily helpful in coming to understand some of the values underlying
what I am trying to do in China. By flowing with my colleagues - either in
Beijing in the VSO programme office - or with my colleagues in Guyuan in our
action research work - I am more conscious of how the harmonising of space
and boundaries is a key factor in the success of our work. together. When we
separate ourselves from our fellows, in feelings, aims, pathways, concepts,
philosophies and so on, as a way of aggrandizing ourselves, then we are on a
short route to fragmentation and dissolution. Individuality isn't the same
as individidualism.
I wish I had more time to write, but I haven't. I just wanted to write and
thank you, Alan, from the bottom of my heart, for expressing what you have
so honestly, so lucidly, and so beautifully, in order to bridge those gaps
we are heir to.
I am hoping to come to the Monday group on 26th February. I do hope to see
you there.
Love and respect,
Moira Laidlaw.
Many many thanks and a happy new year.
<html><DIV>
<P><FONT face="Lucida Handwriting, Cursive" color=#ff0000
size=5><STRONG><EM>Moira</EM></STRONG></FONT><FONT face="" color=#9900cc
size=5><STRONG><EM><FONT color=#ff0000> </FONT> <IMG height=12
src="http://graphics.hotmail.com/emsmile.gif"
width=12></EM></STRONG></FONT></P>
<P><STRONG><EM><FONT color=#0000ff>'Be the changes you want to see in the
world!' </FONT></EM></STRONG></P>
<P><FONT color=#ff9900 size=2><STRONG>Mahatma
Gandhi.<BR></STRONG></FONT></P>
<P> </P></DIV></html>
> From: Jack Whitehead <[log in to unmask]>
> To: Undisclosed recipients: ;
> Subject: First gathering of the New Year 8/01/07
> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 16:09:49 +0000 (GMT)
>
> 5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8, 8 January 2007.
>
> Here's wishing you a most pleasurable and productive New Year and I'm
> looking forward to our first Monday evening educational conversation of
> 2007. If you have news to share about yourself and your activities to
> e-mail it in.
>
> Professor Kei Sawamoto from Japan's Women's University hopes to join us on
> Monday evening to share ideas on teachers' professional learning, together
> with a colleague from Japan who is studying for her masters degree at
> OISE.
>
> We also have Alan's latest posting in the BERA e-seminar on 'My Achilles
> Heel: Testimony of a Gifted Child'. (see
> http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rayner/armyachillesheel.htm ). Marie will
> also have a paper to share in response to the latest government policy on
> pupils' gifts and talents.
>
> I'm also hoping to show the potential of streaming video in visual
> narratives of world leading standards of judgment in creating a world of
> educational quality at
> http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/jwyoutubeimages3.htm
>
> Eden - responding to your thesis stays a priority until submission at the
> end of January.
>
> Keynote symposia proposals for BERA have to be in on the 12th January.
> Other proposal have to be in on the 19th January see:
>
> http://www.beraconference.co.uk/abstracts.html#keydates
>
> I'm hoping as many of us as possible will contribute to the Practitioner
> Day Conference on the 8th September immediately following the main
> conference. See:
>
> http://www.bera.ac.uk/news/newsdetail.php?id=104&PHPSESSID=12c2c4e4ca4c2e2b21d4941a9f521f73
>
> If you aren't already contributing to the discussion in the BERA
> practitioner-researcher SIG 2006-7 e-seminar on world leading standards of
> judgment from educational practitioner-research in creating a world of
> educational quality, do please access the e-seminar from the What's New
> section of http://www.actionresearch.net .
>
> Love Jack.
>
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