Feminist pub no 12: The Bluestocking Returns, this time with goats!

[YonicScrewdriver]

Welcome!

Hello! I am sorry, I've been lurking and not posting (and not lurking that much either) because I still have no proper internet in my new house. It was meant to come today.

But I wanted to check in. vezzie I hope you're ok. I'm sorry it's so tough atm.

annie you will get your viva and it will be great!

V. Considered intellectual response to all issues on this Fred: oubliette, why not center parcs?

Thanks LordCopper - don't think it will work for us next week (DH's trip to Cork now confirmed as next Tuesday), but I'll certainly consider it for the future.

I think we're going to stay at home and do some day trips - I'm going to claw back a day of leave by working Monday (which means I can go to my old boss's retirement do).

vezzie - I've got nothing against Center Parcs. We were there less than 2 weeks ago with my family, so I just don't fancy an immediate repeat trip.

Hi Jeanne - how are you liking your new job and your new city?

Hi Jeanette good to see you!

I thought this was interesting - photos of men looking a bit vulnerable. The comments (why do I always read them!?) were pretty derisive and said they all looked depressed. I didn't think so. Anyway, it was certainly a different way to photograph me and I liked it. Maybe because it's a South African artist....

Sorry, Jeanne, I blame calling you Jeanette on it being past midnight. And name-change confusion. Apart from you I still have no idea who any of the name-changers used to be.

You fuck right off with your wafting, Yonic. I've been "in discussion" his cadno and not in a good mood.

I'm off to bed.

I should get a proper MN-style spreadsheet.....

Hello!

This is about my ninth try replying ... here goes.

oub, good so far, but I'm barely started yet - I've not done my first lecture. But everyone seems very nice, and the city is very pretty. Apparently, I'm living opposite what used to be the women's liberation front.

annie - I'm happy to be called whatever! I will look, but right now my feeble internet won't manage.

Yay! I made it!

Oh, I will be so glad to have proper internet again.

OK - I need to say something here or I will EXPLODE in class tomorrow night.

We're covering pedagogy atm. The readings we've been given are all about how teaching (at all levels) used to be about the teacher on a pedestal instilling knowledge to passive students. Then along came Women's Studies (and subsequent incarnations) and BAM! the pedagogy is all turned upside down.

Have I lived in an alternate universe? Fucking Plato and Aristotle didn't believe that shite. I was teaching in 1994 (when bell hooks was writing) and if I'd tried being all pedestal pedagogy-ish I'd have been laughed out and kicked out of teacher training. I know that reading things like Jane Eyre, Little Women, and shit loads of other stuff shows that this idea of teachers and students working together to bring about enlightenment is not something new.

I just think that the whole 'the old days used to be revered professors preaching, but now WGST has brought about a whole new pedagogy' is playing into two myths. a) It was worse in the bad old days, be grateful for what you get now, and b) WGST has arrived to save the day.

It just seems very emperor's new clothes to me.

Only I don't think I can stand up and say that bell hooks is talking a load of bollocks in class.

Kickass they must surely be referring to only a very specific kind of learning environment? It can't be teaching at all levels as you say

(I have to say my education in France wasn't far removed from that!)

That sounds very much like bollocks to me.

Passive students? Did whoever's teaching this ever study the history of education in Britain, or are they assuming history started in the Mythic 1950s?

look www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23588515 project to explore reality of having breasts in computer games

kickassangel, is it possible for you to ask some more questions about this? I mean is your lecturer equipped (in knowledge - and emotional maturity, ha) or is it not worth the bother?

It does sound like bollocks to me but on the other hand, when I read those Bronte texts and similar, it always struck me as interesting that the young teachers were such associates of their pupils - the humanity and affection between them struck me - so different from my own time at school, despite the sort of prevailing narrative that Victorian times were unemotional and humanitarian relative to ours. I wonder if there is a difference in historically male and historically female learning environments (or differences in other bases) and the style of learning that has been handed down to us is the "male" kind - so the other sort was always there but ignored?

Anyway I saw Ida last night

player.bfi.org.uk/player/watch-ida-154106344/9tZXlqcDqQ7jqgP6X22WHi_BNd5ZkvaI?gclid=CLCB7LGxrsECFfMZtAodJx0ARA

An absolutely magnificent film that laughs in the face of the Bechdel test

Just looked up that film vezzie, will find some time to watch it at some point, definitely the kind of film I enjoy.

I have my meeting with DS1's high school principal first thing this morning. I asked him if he wanted a lift to school, and he looked at me with horror in his eyes and said, "no way, I'll get the bus!" I will remember this, should he ever miss the bus, and need a lift in.

Oh Tess good luck with the meeting. I assume about the wanker teacher who thinks it's fine to refer to girls as hos. I was so angry when I read that.

About my class, bell hooks obviously had a crap education then discovered Friere and reinvented her own teaching and I don't have an issue with that, but the other reading this week was a chapter from a reader that just writes about the pedagogical struggle in WGST as it isn't just about the banking method like everything else. In my head I just kept yelling Bollocks. But then we all hate the main book anyway.

But seriously, I bet philosophy has also had issues with students bringing too much personal stuff and not just been passive learners. I don't think WGST can claim to have discovered pedagogical issues.

Anyway, about to take in 2 x 14 hour days so I will stagger back in at some point if the discussion was interesting.

I have nothing to add to the pedagogy debate. I consider myself intelligent, have a degree, work in the City blah blah blah, but in my final year of my post grad degree, we did a course on media pedagogy and I am embarrassed to admit I am still not sure, to this day, I ever fully got it.

To be fair, could have been the lecturer. I heard that they had to increase everyone's marks on a bell curve after the final exam because otherwise no one would have passed!

Tess - good luck. I can't wait to hear how it goes. This kind of thing is so insidious.

Good luck tess!

I don't know anything about pedagogy.

A photo from Facebook. :o