This week, BBC 2 televised a fact-based drama, The Best of Men, about Dr Ludwig Guttmann, the amazing neurologist who created what would later become the Paralympics. It was a moving, whilst often amusing, account of one visionary man’s struggle against bureaucracy to acquire the resources which would enable him to revolutionise the way war disabled patients were treated.
Arriving in a ward where all the wounded men were neutered with morphine, shut in behind heavy curtains, literally waiting for death, Guttmann defied convention and opposition (from some patients as well as staff). All chemical coshes were withdrawn, sunshine let in, patients encouraged to speak to the (2!) nurses about their lives, experiences and hopes and a regime of physiotherapy was introduced. From these difficult beginnings, Stoke Mandeville would become famous for its pioneering work. Guttmann (by now affectionately known as ‘papa’ to his patients) offered them opportunities to play hockey and basketball in a wheelchair, joining them in one himself. More sports were added and a humble group of 15 competed in the first disabled games, later to be joined by overseas competitors leading eventually to the formal establishment of the Paralympic games. Guttmann was a German Jew, most of whose relatives were victims of the Nazi regime. He could have succumbed to the trauma of this situation but instead chose to come and work in the enemy country, where he was seen as another ‘Kraut’. Perhaps I should not be surprised that the man who expected his patients to aspire to a new, if different, life displayed the same characteristics himself. And here we come to the relevance for Lifewide Learners: we tend to people who are adaptable, pick ourselves up after adversity, enjoy the challenge of swimming against the stream and, not least, have profound compassion for our fellow men (and women!). If you haven’t seen The Best of Men, I urge you to do so. Former service personnel will spot some technical inaccuracies, but these can be forgotten against the 90 minutes of inspiration you will experience. Whatever your views on the monarchy, we have to give them credit for their workplace learning! This was most striking when, at the close of the 60th anniversary celebrations, the queen was accompanied by the next two generations of her successors. Following her example, they are being inducted into their future roles, whilst simultaneously entering the affections of royalists. A clever model!
Sadly, I have to admit that I have personal experience of the sort of workplace bullying your refer to (Norman, Lifewide).
As deputy head of a comprehensive school, I witnessed how a number of my senior colleagues were harassed, some into breakdowns, one into suicide, others resigning because they could no longer muster the energy to fight, all in the interests of eliminating any hostile voices among the staff. Little did I expect to be in a similar position myself. Having been head-hunted, used and (I would contest) abused, my time came. I did stand up and tried to expose the continuing pattern of behaviour on the part of the individual concerned. No-one would come forward and endorse my claims, fearing that their own careers would be undermined. Unfortunately, in the system as it was then, and probably still is, the power of the head teacher was such that they were the judge and jury at disciplinary hearings. A malicious individual was able to contrive an alleged offense which, if it reached this stage, offered the defendant little chance of winning. I have, to this day, a letter from the president of the Secondary Heads’ Association, acknowledging my victimisation but saying that I could not win my case. I, too, became one of those who was forced out of the organisation. I left without being able to say goodbye to my pupils and colleagues. At times of stress, I still have nightmares deriving from these circumstances. This is the human side of unethical behaviour. In fact, my lifewide learning tendencies came to my rescue, and, when I had recovered my health, I embarked upon new careers. Based on my personal experience of harassment, I also held a voluntary role for several years as a Harassment Advisor in my university. There, time and again, the pattern of abuse and manipulation by managers was brushed under the carpet, money suddenly found to buy off the victim. I am sure other Lifewiders must have witnessed this, too. When are we going to say enough is enough? As an inveterate lifewide learner, I am always open to new opportunities and I always look for the best in people. So, when I met a businessman who shared my passion for destigmatising mental illness, I willingly undertook to provide whatever intellectual and practical support I could for his social enterprise. I had reached the age of retirement, had a pension which kept the wolf from the door, and felt it was time to give back to society, in the only way I knew how, with my mind and experience. Little did I realise that this would become an object lesson in ‘buyer beware.’
I do not wish to disclose the detail of a very complex situation which may yet have legal repercussions, but the events remind us of the less attractive side of lifewide learning. We naturally focus on its positive side: let us pause now and consider the obverse. Mental illness has been a presence in my life since early childhood, and over recent years, I have worked voluntarily to destigmatise it. Some months ago, one of my international workshops was attended by someone who had a vision to take this work to his native sub-Saharan Africa. By coincidence, he had a business in the UK, only 10 miles from my home, which provided training for social and mental health workers (amongst other professions). The next phase of this business was to use profits from the UK to establish mental health facilities in developing parts of Africa. My role was to coordinate these developments and take charge of media and marketing. Another ‘happy’ coincidence was that, through the lifewide community, I knew a young designer who would be ideal to help our project. Before long, he and his fiancée had both been contracted to work for the company, his first task being to rebrand the company and redesign its web site. Although my role was voluntary, I was given a title that gave me authority within the company. But I soon found that I was working a seven day week, available at all times of the day as the director was in Africa, in a different time zone. Nevertheless, I was inspired by our common vision and the commitment of so many professional colleagues. If a suspicion lurked when the director’s period abroad extended endlessly, it was dispelled by the integrity of these colleagues. I felt guilty for doubting the director, and chided myself that I was being influenced by adverse media stereotypes of African con men. Besides, the director and many of my colleagues were devout, practising Christians, most of them personal friends. Any suggestion of abuse was contrary to my view of Christian behaviour. Then I received information that these professional colleagues had not been paid for several months. Morale was at rock bottom and colleagues had all incurred serious debts, to the extent of being unable to pay their journeys in to work and under threat of eviction from their homes. Without wishing to expose my source, I spoke first with my counterpart, also a retired professional, also working without remuneration. He confirmed the parlous financial situation, knowledge of which he had been carrying alone, to the detriment of his own health. He was relieved to share matters and we agreed to confront the absent director immediately. Suddenly, we were inundated with correspondence from unpaid colleagues, cataloguing their individual circumstances. We appealed for money to be made available for instant support of these colleagues, but none has been forthcoming, only excuses and passing of responsibility for the crisis. So what have I learnt from these events? I have had to confront my sense of morality, and recognise that for some, the ends justify the means. According to my Eurocentric values, it is immoral to have recruited members of staff when there were no finances to pay them. They were exploited and misled. Admittedly, our lives in the UK are vastly more comfortable than those of the people we were seeking to help in Africa, but can this really justify taking on young people, at the start of their professional lives, who rejected alternative jobs in order to work for a company whose ideals they admired? My outsider’s view of Christian morality has been seriously challenged, along with the obligation of friendship. This all reinforces the cultural nature of moral values. I did not, though, hesitate to speak out once I knew about our circumstances. I am reminded, as I write of the immortal words of Pastor Niemὃller: First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. This has been, and still is a, very difficult and uncomfortable experience for me and I'm still coming to terms with it and working out what I should do. I have found it helpful to share this experience but I am still questioning whether I was right. What would you have done? Have you experienced any difficult ethical situations that have shaken you to the core? I, too, was sceptical about the value of Twitter, and perhaps had a slight fear of exposing my views in an open forum. This might seem paradoxical, given my academic and practical involvement in new technologies and my history of publications.
Whilst I cannot dispute the positive uses outlined by Jacqui, I still have some reservations (hopefully to be ironed out by the end of this process). I am delighted to see that we have engaged a wider audience and am impressed by the way in which a simple tweet can spark innovative ideas. I still have a concern, though, that conversations do not flow. You have to go back to find the tweet that a given comment responds to. I also wonder how others are using Twitter. I have been joining in for a period here and there, hence highs and lows in my activity. Do others keep logged in and just respond when something catches your eye? I have just learnt something new through reading Jacqui's account: although a linguist, I had never before come across the word 'tweeple'. Is this an accepted term in the Twitter community? I never thought I would become a dinosaur - help me out of this shell! My first response to the question was also to conduct a google search, but I choose to look at images associated with joy. It was noticeable that so many showed people in action or gesticulating, in other words, expressing their inner emotion. Some included the object which had triggered the joyful feelings e.g. a loved one.
I welcome Norman’s addition of the ‘lifedeep’ dimension to our evolving conceptualisation of lifewide learning and think this is something that emerges from several of the articles in Issue 2 of Lifewide. Importantly, it is not only the older writers who reveal it: younger ones, too, can be seriously reflective. I next looked to one of my favourite thinkers of the 20th century, the renowned Jiddu Krishnamurti. To my delight, joy is a theme on which he wrote from his earliest years. In 1952, he reflected: When you see a beautiful thing, there is immediate joy; you see a sunset and there is an immediate reaction of joy. That joy, a few moments later, becomes a memory. That memory of the joy, is it a living thing? Is the memory of the sunset a living thing? No, it is a dead thing. So, with that dead imprint of a sunset, through that, you want to find joy. Memory has no joy; it is only the remembrance of something which created the joy. Memory in itself has no joy. There is joy, the immediate reaction to the beauty of a tree; and then memory comes in and destroys that joy. So, if there is constant perception of beauty without the accumulation of memories, then there is the possibility of joy everlasting. But it is not so easy to be free from memory. The moment you see something very pleasurable, you make it immediately into something to which you hold on. You see a beautiful thing, a beautiful child, a beautiful tree; and when you see it, there is immediate pleasure; then you want more of it. The more of it is the reaction of memory. So, when you want more, you have already started the process of disintegration. In that there is no joy. Memory can never produce everlasting joy. There is everlasting joy only when there is the constant response to beauty, to ugliness, to everything - which means, great inward and outward sensitivity, which means, having real love. Talking to Boys and Girls, Rajghat,India 1952 This analysis and its focus on memory were particularly resonant for me, a serious scholar of Marcel Proust. Readers may recall Proust’s theory of unconscious memory and how any one of our senses can trigger a ‘forgotten’ experience and the feelings it aroused in us. Krishnamurti takes our investigation forward in suggestion that the source of joy needs to be re-experienced for the feeling to be sustained. By 2011, his ideas had been further refined, with an emphasis falling now on the ‘deep’ dimension posited by Norman: Very few of us enjoy anything. We have very little joy in seeing the sunset, or the full moon, or a beautiful person, or a lovely tree, or a bird in flight, or a dance. We do not really enjoy anything. We look at it, we are superficially amused or excited by it, we have a sensation which we call joy. But enjoyment is something far deeper, which must be understood and gone into. As we grow older, though we want to enjoy things, the best has gone out of us; we want to enjoy other kinds of sensations -passions, lust, power, position. These are all the normal things of life, though they are superficial; they are not to be condemned, not to be justified, but to be understood and given their right place. If you condemn them as being worthless, as being sensational, stupid or unspiritual, you destroy the whole process of living. To know joy one must go much deeper. Joy is not mere sensation. It requires extraordinary refinement of the mind, but not the refinement of the self that gathers more and more to itself. Such a self, such a man, can never understand this state of joy in which the enjoyer is not. One has to understand this extraordinary thing; otherwise, life becomes very small, petty, superficial -being born, learning a few things, suffering, bearing children having responsibilities, earning money, having a little intellectual amusement and then to die. J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life 2011 Clearly, we return, then, to the existential nature of joy, an emotion which transcends religious and other boundaries and which can make our time on earth truly meaningful. I came across this beautiful, moving piece purely by chance and wanted to share it with everyone. Some of you may already be familiar with it: it is a 1971 song by Bill Withers entitled 'Grandma's Hands'. Speaking of it many years later, he says this is the composition that he is most proud of having written. What do you think?
I have copied the full text here. For me, it is an evocative poem which epitomises the special relationship that children so often establish with their grandparents. The wisdom and generosity of this old lady are testament to what she has learnt in her long years of informal learning and the indelible impact she has had on those around her, and which will continue once she is no longer there. If you can, listen to the performance on YouTube before you read the lyrics. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5pagal-ls . Grandma's Hands Grandma's hands Clapped in church on Sunday morning Grandma's hands Played a tambourine so well Grandma's hands Used to issue out a warning She'd say, "Billy don't you run so fast Might fall on a piece of glass "Might be snakes there in that grass" Grandma's hands Grandma's hands Soothed a local unwed mother Grandma's hands Used to ache sometimes and swell Grandma's hands Used to lift her face and tell her, "Baby, Grandma understands That you really love that man Put yourself in Jesus hands" Grandma's hands Grandma's hands Used to hand me piece of candy Grandma's hands Picked me up each time I fell Grandma's hands Boy, they really came in handy She'd say, "Matty don' you whip that boy What you want to spank him for? He didn't drop no apple core" But I don't have Grandma anymore If I get to Heaven I'll look for Grandma's hands Holding back his tears, Alan Middleton expressed his frustration at the abuse he had experienced by those supposedly providing apprenticeships for England’s unemployed youth. He was speaking in a Panorama programme transmitted on 2 March 2012, tellingly entitled ‘The Great Apprentice Scandal’.
For those of us who have been championing learning in the workspace, the programme was a shocking insight into the abuses that some employers and colleges engage in in order to obtain the £9,000 per trainee award from the government. In some cases, this was to provide classroom learning but no work experience: as one desperate apprentice explained, employers demand experience, but how can you get experience if the apprenticeship does not include it? Parents, students and employers testified to this abuse. Arguable worse still, though, were the ‘colleges’ where student records are falsified to confirm satisfactory completion of programmes of study, followed by issue of award certificates. Alan Middleton had been appointed as Quality Controller, but resigned when he witnessed such fraud and refused to cooperate in the scam. It was this that led to the scene where he was moved to tears. His words struck me, not only as a sign that there are committed professionals struggling to realise the value of apprenticeships, but also for their inherent recognition of lifewide learning. “All the time you’re teaching them an apprenticeship, you’re nurturing them as adults, as well. So it’s what you don’t get paid for, sometimes, you’re doing more of. Umm, oops, [fans his face to clear his eyes] shame. I get quite passionate about this because these guys really deserve more than what they’re being given.” How do we ensure that it is these professionals, not the scandalous abusers, who remain in the public consciousness? |
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