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.