infed

Debate Michael Newman's arguments in Throwing out the balance with the bathwater.

SO lets debate Michael Newman's short article - i am the devil so you will have to decide what needs to be responsed:

So far i have...

What do i teach?

Why is it that adult educators are so keen to mystify their profession, every time i am introduced to adult education or an adult educator they attempt to mystify what it is they do? Is this an attempt to congratulate all and one for managing to (maybe they think) maintain this mysticism which they think surrounds adult education. Why not just say - i teach people to be difficult, to politicize everything (even in the face of outright proof that not everything is political); i teach people to accept that they have always been oppressed and to internalise what i have to say - my liberal democratic stance.

Defining the process

Newman argues that we must all 'defy anyone laying out an unwanted future for us' - hmm..what should i tell my boss at the factory? - sorry but i am not willing to polish the floors every evening because my wife wants me to put the baby to bed so she can go to her evening job and we can pay the mortgage etc. Newman obviously lives in the cosy world of permanent academia. Maybe what he is really proposing is a form of cultural hegemony?

Newman seems to be critical of the most common form of critical thinking but in reality maybe what he wants is a dictatorial kind - one where people are compelled to disclose aspect of their lives and existance which are not for public discussion. FOr the purile purpose of academic critical discourse.

He wants to teach people to think imaginatively - or does he mean fantasize?

He proposition that rational, enlightened thought has given the means to exploit people, squander resources and manufacture the weapons of war. As he starts his book with the happening of September 11th - by all means a religious war - why can't he then continue that its religion and greed which have created the most recent wars - not rational thought or enlightenment.

Insight

Apparently insight can only be sudden! Newman wants to create climates.

So often i think male academics are speaking in sexually repressed sub text.

Enlightenment can come from prolonged scholarly focus on epistemological, philosophical and maybe political study. It can also come from real life experiences which are so profound that putting them into words only serves to belittle them.

It seems he wrote this book in a rush.