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BLOG 25/11/16 Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool; THE SYNTAX OF POWER AND THE OU

 

It has been brought to my attention that a number of ~~~~~ students have been using Facebook to discuss TMA 01. Not only have students been asking questions on Facebook that would more appropriately have been raised in their ~~~~~ cluster forum, but also other students have been answering those questions in, effectively, the role of a tutor".

 

 

This missive has very recently been sent (via a course newsletter) to the learners on an OU module. I have tried to let it rest on my mind,but  as a tutor in the OU and more importantly, one of its learners, have FAILED TO DO SO. Why I thought?

 

I think it is because of the combination of notions of authority and power in the portrayed notion of tutor identity. this phenomenon was once examined by the wonderful Sian Bayne in Bayne (2005) in which she demonstrated the gap between learners and tutors on OU online interactions. The former learned through the play of identity afforded by forums, the other not. Why? Because 'tutor identity' was fixed (discourse analysis seemed to show) in models of authority.

 

In my view those models are uncomfortably mixed, as it authority unexamined, were easily to fall into an exercise of pure power.

 

But there is something in the syntax too of our note to learners that worried me. What is it? The rhythms of prose and verse have sung in my head since grammar school – it took some doing and it seemed a transformation of identity too far, but then in the 1960s transformation of class and status (the working class boy made good) were both painful and in some sense delicious – accessing new potential powers . It was work but now it’s some kind of secret joy, but also worry (now I no longer work formally).

 

What rankled here was the ‘Not only … but also’ clause. It seemed a means of suggesting the enormity of some error or sin that it was difficult to specify. But what is that sin? Transgression of role – a learner has dared to act ‘as if’ a tutor.

 

This is I suddenly remembered the position of Lear – losing authority but seeking to retain some shadow of it from studied refection on his life. What does he get from his daughter – a ‘not only but also’ clause, that appears in its order and organization to attempt to control the very riot of excess to which it points.

GONERIL

(to LEAR) Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool,

But other of your insolent retinue

Do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth

In rank and not-to-be-endurèd riots. Sir,

I had thought by making this well known unto you

To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful

By what yourself too late have spoke and done

That you protect this course and put it on

By your allowance—which if you should, the fault

Would not ’scape censure, nor the redresses sleep

Which in the tender of a wholesome weal

Might in their working do you that offense,

Which else were shame, that then necessity

Will call discreet proceeding.

 

That is what I was hearing in the shadow of the module leader. Do not presume to do as I do – do not take on the role of teacher. Why, we might ask. It is not appropriate?  Because it constitutes an anomaly in the hierarchy of authority power dreams to be sacred and unchangeable. It is ‘not to be endured riot’ for someone to take on the role of protector where power is, in fact none. The fact of powerlessness lies in the effect of Goneril’s imaginings of an order that will harm those who disturb it :

 

Might in their working do you that offense

 

You will be put down – put in your place, act within the license I give you – or all ‘necessity’ will seem harsh to you. The same powers our module leader takes on in their syntax and lexis – attention, and proper distribution of the relative rights to raise and answer questions. Challenged by learners, that same module leader said they were doing it for learners' own good. Having taken it in the subject Academic Board, all agreed that ‘prevention was better than cure’. However, the ‘cure’ is the same hidden threat as that now possessed by Goneril – to exclude and unhouse – to threaten any chance of identity at all if you do not take the one I give you. Lear on the heath in the storm. The threat of deinstitutionalisation – the threat of loss of ‘degree’.

 

Once noble, Open University! How can you support this discourse? I can just about stomach the hatred of Facebook. I don’t like Facebook that much myself but of the right to cross boundaries – that is another matter. In a sense, great educationalists (Vygotsky, Bruner, and Engestrom) teach us that learning is transgression and boundary-crossing. That which needs ‘scaffolding’ will be that that requests it be taken down or that THAT FINDS a better way of providing it amongst peers – without the costs of patronage it once had (another rich word).

 

All the best

 

Steve

Bayne, S (2005) Deceit, desire and control: the identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace in Land, R and Bayne, S (eds) Education in Cyberspace. London: RoutledgeFalmer