The tyranny of questions

My daughter complains to me that I interrogate every new friend/ boyfriend/ girlfriend who visits the house. "Have you always lived there?" "What do your parents do?" "How old is your sister/ grandmother/ hamster?" And so on. I suppose I am guilty of this, but I really want to know, and I like people to talk about themselves. I am just giving them that opportunity. Of course my daughter is 14 and my youngest child. I am ancient and embarrassing as a sort of default position.Whenever I ask her questions (which I like to do) she says nothing but rolls her eyes, sighs, or appeals to her mother to control me. Here are just some of the questions that my 14 year-old daughter has found deeply offensive:

• Are those your books on the sofa?
• Are you seeing Jess this weekend?
• Will you need picking up?
• What time are you going downtown?
• Could you take your washing upstairs? (Ok, I concede that one.)
• What would you like for dinner?
• Did you say you would like a cup of tea?
• Did you enjoy the film?
• What did you do at Jess' house?
• What did you learn at school today?

That last one especially. That one she meets with despairing silence, seething. 

I wonder why questions - any questions - are so offensive to her. Of course one key to this is that if any of us behaved at 24 the way we do at 14 we would be locked away forthwith. It's an age thing. But then perhaps we all hate questions no matter what our age. The thing about questions is that they are insistent, probing, prying, and they leave little space for thought. They don't do us justice either. I've often departed from failed job interviews resenting that they didn't ask the right questions - the ones I would have considered relevant. The ones I wanted to answer.

In lessons we teachers often launch a formidable barrage of questions at teenagers  with - if we are honest or sensitive enough - dispiriting results. Teachers' addiction to questions must often seem like a sort of miserable tyranny to teenagers. When we stand in front of a class and ask a question we normally get no response from most students. What is going on in their heads? All the following things are probably being thought behind the blank faces:

• I know that! I know that!
• I have no idea. Please god don't let him ask me.
• Who cares?
• Someone will know the answer.
• I refuse to dignify such a stupid question with an answer.

So, as we start a new academic year, I would like to propose a simple questioning manifesto. I at least will try to stick to it:

Here

I know where I am: I am in Crediton. However, since I spend a great deal of my time running up and down the M5 between 'here' and Bristol, and up and down the A303 between 'here' and Surrey/South London, I often feel confused about where 'here' is. The situation is complicated further by broader notions of 'here': do I think of here as a place (and a time) or do I relate it to other identities - opinions, networks, experiences, etc? If I tell someone I know where they are coming from, where do I think they've been? Last term one of my Year 11s asked me - cautiously - "Where are you from, sir?" I glibly replied that I live 200 metres from the school gates. "Yes, she said, but you're not from here, are you?" I know what she means if I am truthful and in one of my rare non-evasive moods. I often want to know where someone is from, and I want the answer to make GPS sense. I wonder why.

The other day I realised that my MOT was about to expire so I wandered round to the garage to see Mark. He also does a side-line in funerals. He told me about a fire that had happened in the town in my customary absence beyond the A303. I walked home and found more information about the fire on Twitter. I noticed that the tweet came from someone who is currently attending UEA where my latest child will be going. I went next door to thank our neighbour for looking after our cat and we discussed her extended family network in Crediton. This prompted me to phone my daughter in Bristol to inquire after her and my grandson. 

I suppose what I am teasing out is what do I mean by 'here'? Is it a place? Is it external to ourselves? Is it something frozen within? Is it a portable environment like a burka?

What prompted these ramblings was reading about MOOCs (massive open online courses) and their potential to give everyone access to the education they want. You can't be against these really (although some professors are) because they have such a broad definition. Even Hitler wasn't against something as broad as 'freedom'.

There is a great deal I would like to explore and develop in terms of 'communities of learning' and personal learning networks, but I will, for the moment, express my views in negative, destructive terms: I would like to see universities destroyed as 'suck in, spit out' institutions. I want to see them as part of the web of learning, not castles guarding its highways. I want to have no one attending full time courses physically 'at' universities until they are 26 at least. I want to see universities inter-relating with and serving the learning networks. These networks will thrive on conversations, tweets, blogs, etc. I want learning to be like a great sloshing around of wise water that ebbs and flows through universities. I am glad that Pearson will be 'teaching' degrees in its offices. I teach (and learn) anywhere. I want Tesco to offer a 'value' range of bite-size education that can be 'consumed' between the beans and the frozen desserts. Long live horizontal, punk learning, I say.

Experience and learning

Is this a record? It's more than five years since my previous post. I started this blog as a technical exercise - and as a way of coming to terms with the trauma of moving suddenly from a big city to a small town. I recovered from that trauma by entering a far greater one - unanticipated life-changing illness.

I have learnt and experienced so much since then. I'm still in Crediton but I have probably reached a position of equanimity towards it. Nowadays it seems to be a mere launching pad in two directions: up the M5 to Bristol; along the A30/303 to London. But there are quiet times when I simply sit, work, write, think. Or just look out of my garden office window. On warm bright days I can glimpse the tree-lined hill between a new build and the corner of the other half of our semi. Occasionally buzzards swirl above the hill. A St George's flag endorsed by JJB droops in the neighbour's garden. Right now I am listening to DeYarmond Edison.

Since my last entry I have had a kidney transplant from my oldest son, seen two children married, become a grandfather twice, had countless books and articles published, and have returned twice to the classroom. Almost none of these things would I have expected five years ago. Surprise on this scale could make a mockery of planning.

I have returned to this blog because I wanted to share my renewed passion for education and learning. I was going to start a new blog. But then it occurred to me that my view of education has moved so from its starting point that I no longer know where the boundaries are between education and everything else. This year I returned to the classroom with my own Year 11 class. I was desperate to get them their C grades (they were less desperate it seemed). I wondered what was standing in their way. I decided it wasn't just something that could be defined in terms of the 'normal' mechanics of learning and progress. The barriers were largely psychological and were to do with emotions, ambitions, self-belief and the limitations of any sort of learning that could be rationally expected to take place at pre-ordained times and places. I started this blog originally to make sense of experience, to learn through articulation and reflection. In short, it was all about learning.

So, here is a blog that will twist and turn from its origins, and hopefully enlighten learning in its broadest sense. Let's see.