Blog Archives
DO PERFORMERS CREATE OR OBEY?
Megan is a champion pole vaulter who self-coaches using phenomenology to identify potential for improving her performances. She is held back by event organisers who want close finishes to sell tickets and media advertising. Athletes are constrained by regulations and industry hype to provide crowd-pleasing performances and camera shots with the appearance of fair competition. The sporting juggernaut rolls through a season with athletics, soccer, gymnastics, cricket, tennis, swimming, golf, cycling, rugby and horse racing. Only horse racing has handicapping to obtain closer finishes but other sports prevent innovations by athletes who are paid to entertain.
When an Australian national sporting body tries to prevent Megan using an effective new training technique, developed by her partner Chance, based on his PhD research, they are opposed by levellers who want all ability levels to be able to succeed in competitions. Megan is an individualist who is prevented from doing her best by collectivists who subscribe to a nanny state that is running amok. The ethos of affirmative action is spreading to education, employment and arts.
The restrictions on Megan become intolerable during an outbreak of Covid. Faced with mandatory vaccinations, they lead a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience. If they succeed, future society can be individual, like brush turkeys, who live independent lives. But if they fail, collective living could assign them to slave-like worker roles, like honey bees. Which human destiny do people want? What action can you take to mend society? Turkeys Not Bees is novel fiction by Martin Knox. Available on Amazon. Reviews at martinknox.com
INDIGENOUS LIVING MATTERS
INDIGENOUS LIVING MATTERS
HISTORY
Australia’s indigenous people have experienced 4 phases in relation to the majority.
1. Mutualism briefly after Europeans arrived
2. Elimination, by disease, physical combat and genocide.
3. Assimilation of survivors
4. Incarceration of objectors
In 2020, indigenous persons were 3.3% of the population, and one in four were in prison.
INDEPENDENCE
Australia’s outback has retained some largely-indigenous communities from before European settlement and developed others since. These communities are stable and self-sufficient, with self-administered health and welfare services, police and education.
INTEGRATION
Indigenous living in Australia has a spectrum of integration, from dispersed living in cities, through partial ghettos, to integrated communities in outback towns.
GHETTOS
Leicester in England is one of several English cities where ethnic residents have adopted separate living in ghettos, condoned by secular authorities, bringing peace to the city’s suburbs. A research finding is that poor Somali students can accomplish more learning in ghetto schools than in better-off integrated schools.
SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT
Brisbane’s Hymba Yumba is an independent school where about 200 mainly indigenous students between Years 1 and 12 study selected school subjects across the national curriculum, presented in indigenous languages. Separate development of indigenous people encourages independence but could reduce assimilation.
APARTHEID
Racial segregation by territory is not present in Australia. Archbishop Tutu declared that treatment of Palestinians reminded him of apartheid, only worse. Israel’s repression of Palestinian citizens, African refugees and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is reported to have become more brutal over time with ethnic cleansing, land seizure, home demolition, military occupation, bombing of Gaza and international law violations.
CONCLUSION
Assimilation is partial. Independence, integration, ghetto-living and separate development are alternatives. No single development strategy is followed. Individual choice is limited by affordability. Social friction has been exacerbated by Black Lives Matter conflict in the USA.
My speculative fiction novel The Grass is Always Browner considers indigeneity in Australia 250 years in the future.
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
COVID19 CAUSING A PARADIGM SHIFT ONLINE
Interaction between people used to be face to face, by physical correspondence or by phone. Then began social media with online messaging, trading and dating,
COVID19 has disrupted physical interaction, with people in quarantine, self-isolated, socially distanced, stranded overseas, unable to travel, nor able to attend school or university, nor get together with family and friends, not able to obtain goods or services, nor go to work.
Online platforms like Skype and Zoom are substituting interaction using the internet, computers, pads and phones to convey audio and visual messages, with sharing of documents, photos, videos and whiteboards.
My intent here is to presage online revolution. A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions. Substitution online is proceeding apace and in some situations change could be permanent.
Some online meetings are so successful that travelling to meetings could end. Efficacy of the substitution could depend on the culture of interaction, its traditions, ability to adapt and needs for personal physical involvement.
Online interaction is radically transforming retailing, education and health services. Organisations going online could employ people in different roles, to code response algorithms and to serve customers from premises which could be altered or relocated. Consumers too could have different involvement, working at home or at centres, where online interaction can be complemented by personal interaction, for example, in education.
Curtailment of physical interaction by COVID19 is generating internet traffic. An online revolution could have benefits for some people and problems for others. Reduced commuting could free up time, empty roads and buses, congesting parks and public spaces. With home working online, dwelling in an outer suburb may not be a disadvantage.
Because employees could be redeployed, retrained or even lose their jobs, going online may be resisted. Technological and social changes, made temporarily for COVID19 without a masterplan, allow responses case by case that could shift familiar paradigms.
Can parents teach their kids in COVID-19 lockdown?
Parents are likely to find teaching school subjects to their own children quite difficult. A child may resist participating in an unfamiliar role. From my experience as a teacher of distance education and as a parent, here are some orienting comments.
Long ago, parents worked in the home, or nearby on farms or in mines. Children could be with them, learning life skills by imitation. When work moved into factories, youngsters were excluded and minded in schools. Education was by paid teachers. Learning was by cognition.
In 2020, with schools closed and parents off work due to coronavirus restrictions, it is possible for parents to home school their children. Individualised adult attention is different from sharing and comparing with age peers, requiring children to adjust.
Schoolchildren accustomed to professional teachers will have expectations about how learning and teaching should be done. A child could be disconcerted by a parent trying to teach them, departing from their familiar role as authority, rule enforcer, food provider and friend.
If schools are sending work home online or by correspondence, the parent role could be defined as supervising and possibly also tutoring student responses. Teaching traditionally requires curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. Ordinarily, when the child can go to a school, home schooling has to be approved by the education authority. A parent could teach in one or more of the various teaching styles, between authoritarian and student-centred, finding a locus of control that works, depending on the age and ability of the child.
Every student and every parent is different. Until the student and teacher have developed a productive rapport, not much learning is likely to occur. They need to respect each other and be flexible. When the situation is far from ideal and uncertain, as it is with COVI-19, the teacher has to create a safe, relaxed place for learning to occur. Students want success from every task they attempt.
Persistence is needed. Teaching a child effectively will be a wonderful experience for both.
