Causing offence

Morning all. How are you? You miserable bunch of…

Well, perhaps not. But yesterday evening Gandalf and I went to an English Subject Centre discussion about teaching potentially offensive material, what 'offence' might consist of, and how it affects our teaching practice. It was mostly the stylish young men of Birmingham City University, plus a senior academic from Keele and one from Newman (Birmingham's Catholic university).

True to form, Gandalf and I provided most of the examples from our wide repertoire of edgy teaching material (his Unpopular Texts module which examines taboo subjects, my Olivier Othello, Sappho, Rochester, Beauty, Freshers et al.) while the others provided the intellectual input, and the discussion was so good that we ignored the excellent buffet and carried on talking for almost three hours. I certainly picked up new perspectives and hopefully everyone else did too.

So over to you: have you taught or been taught anything which you found offensive, or feared that others might? What did you do? I certainly have. For instance, Rochester's poetry is deliberately crudely sexual - try being a young male lecturer reading that out to an all-female class.

Then there are the texts which I think are dubious. Samuelson's Beauty attracted a complaint of immorality because characters swear and look at porn. That didn't bother me: what made me very uncomfortable was the author's assumption that he - white, middle-class - could adequately inhabit the inner life of a young Asian woman, for whom he eventually decides that sending her back to care for her ageing parents constitutes freedom and the only honourable way to live. Faced with a class including many young Asian women, I worried about cultural sensitivity - perhaps needlessly. They split between finding the book true to life and laughably stereotypical, which was fascinating.

I could go on forever on this topic…

Meanwhile, could you contact your MP (via Twitter, faxyourmp.com or theyworkforyou.com) and ask them to sign EDM1185, asking the government to reconsider the closure of the Subject Centres - vital networks for sharing good teaching practice at university level, something the government apparently feels we no longer need?

The final whistle

It's all over: at Croke Park and on the English Subject Centre Early Career course. Both have been immensely stimulating: Ireland won the rugby and I've learned tons on this course. I'm feeling pretty thick of course, surrounded by these high achievers buzzing with energy, but inspired to do all sorts of new things.

Normally I'd be seething after two days in a bland seminar room, but this time I think I've caught Stockholm syndrome. Perhaps it's because it's not the partisans from The Hegemony imposing things arbitrarily but experts in my own field discussing not just the what but also the why and how of our daily practice.

Shame there aren't and won't be any more Early Career academics at my institution for years to come…

I just need a late goal from Stoke and I'll be happy going into the concert tonight.

Am yow alroight bab?*

Good morning from rainy, grey Birmingham. It's day two of the English Subject Centre's Early Career Lecturer's course. The words 'discourse' and 'structuralism' have already been invoked - rather too early for me, especially as last night involved several ales, a great Vietnamese meal and a reunion with Felix, here from Germany specifically to engage in shenanigans. He - and my gratitude is undying - provided several versions of wurst, which no doubt Neal will scoff before I get home tonight.

It's a big day - Ireland v. South Africa, Stoke v. Blackburn, and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius tonight, at Birmingham's Town Hall. Then, no doubt, further debauch with the German.

*How are you, in Birmingham dialect.

More from the chalkface

Still enthusiastic! Intimidated by everybody's grasp of theory… I get by, but just don't seem to have the time to really get down to some Deleuze and Guattari, for example. 

Anyway, lots of good bloggy things are going to happen in my classes from now on! But not to keep ILE happy. Grrrr…

OMG! BLE rocks!

Blended learning, done at The Hegemon, is a means of cutting down on staff, rooms and resources - a purely mechanical simulation of education - read Ritzer's The McDonaldisation of Education for a readers' guide.

Turns out, however, that technology supported learning can be creative and add substantially to the intellectual work done by staff and students - it can constitute symbolic exchange, to use the Baudrillardian vocabulary.

I can't believe how much I'm enjoying this course… Feel quite cut-off from the world though. What's going on?

Greetings from the English Subject Centre

I'm at Aston University on a course for early career lecturers (yes, I know, the way I'm going I'm nearer the end than the beginning, but you know what I mean).

Those of you who know me will be well aware that my usual modus operandi at such things is to sit at the back being sarcastic.

Not this time. I'm having a blast. I've already learned loads more about being a decent teacher than on my PGCE, the approach is collegiate and my fellow students are utterly delightful. Obviously they're all taller, thinner, more stylish and more learned than I am, but they're well-mannered enough not to remark upon it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the conference dinner - my German chum Felix is flying in for a weekend's debauch and, cool as he is, an evening with Literature teachers may not quite be his thing. In a coals to Newcastle scenario, I'm going to make him go to the German Market!

Must pay attention now…

I'm an academic get me out of here

It's hot, stuffy and boring. One of our number is being driven to scavenge Marks and Spencer rather than face the bureaucracy. Others are loosening their ties or have simply launched themselves from the window ledges. Nothing appears to be happening in the world - even in Iran - and all you student bloggers are obviously outside.

I'm reading the English subject centre's Benchmarks for English degrees. Amazing what you're meant to know by the end of it!

So to break the boredom: one of my favourite bands of the early 80s (though I was quite young then) - The Pale Fountains