Mike Caulfield alerted me to Edupunk. I notice Google alerts of my name before I can make time to catch up on my news reader – how sad is that! How my brain has come to a grinding hault working on the ‘inside’ 😦 so.. am I an edupunk?
If I was born 10 years earlier I would have most certainly been a punk.
If I was born 20 years earlier I would have been in the Weather Underground
But I was born in 1975 (great year it was too!) and I’m still looking for an identity… I think, I feel, .. maybe… perhaps I’m a neo anarchist with Derek Jenson. Oh dear, I think I just lost my job and popped myself on the CIA, FBI and ASIO lists.
And so, I am in my mid 30’s and increasingly career concious 😦 living in an era that many believe to be a very significant time, but I have this feeling all of a sudden, that it is all passing me by. Is this what they call aging? Is it a bit sad to wanna be an edupunk?
Mike’s older than me and he’s up with the play, and Stephen Downes is older than me and he doesn’t miss a beat! Edupunk!? WTF is that! Is Mike right, am I included without having to do anything like sign up or register?
Stephen summarises it nicely, and I can’t think of anyone more Edupunk than Blamb! Do I wanna hang out with people like this? Hell yes! Even if does mean ignoring oximoronic elephant in the corner, Education and Punk – as one of the commenters to Downes points out:
Oh, please. What’s next, governpunk? Religipunk? I can’t think of anything less punk than education. No matter how you slice it, most of these people are trying to find more creative and cutting-edge ways to help students conform to the needs of the institutions that employ them.
And that’s just it, the institutions that employ us. Sure! We can get away with being anarchic and brute punk – online (only just), but the brakes apply almost immediatly when you swivel around on your corporate office chair, to face the corporate open plan, in search of no one to share your regular ah ha moments with… so you swivel back around and blog it instead, in the vein hope that someone you work with is actually interested in what you think, let alone a boss! and in the weak sense of security in virtual numbers.
Am I sounding pesimistic? Of course I am, and I’m probably being very unfare to those around me again. Of course they care! Of course they’re interested! But boy are we institutionalised!
Edupunk is one of those terms that helps and hinders. Its like Web2.0 – technically incorrect, a term that widens the gap between our IT ‘supports’ and educationalists, but a sound bite that is easier to spread than something more accurate like “social constructivist media and communications”. Like Web2, Edupunk could help to reinvigorate those of us that can relate to what underpins it, and give us a new banner to rewrite papers on socialist principles, models and case studies, it could become a new battle cry in an age old campaign between industrialists and socialists.
But it could hinder us as well. In our neoliberal educational settings, where Reaganomics and Thatcherismis alive and well and deeply embedded, a punk has no place inside such institution. A label like Edupunk could become a sword we fall on when it comes to performance reviews and service feedback… “Leigh’s an Edupunk, very passionate about Web2..” = “Leigh’s a socialist and needs to wake up to reality..”
But I like it! If it gives us something to dance around for a bit, then great. I need a bit of a thrash and lash out. I see David Warlick has cranked the Wikipedia entry already? Someone add the image above! I gotta drop into reality for the day…
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June 5, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Sarah Stewart
Its been very interesting watching this theme develop through blogs and I must admit I thought of you, Leigh, when I read what an edupunk is supposed to be. In the end, its all semantics – the ‘in’ phrase for the day..week..year. Its doesn’t matter what we call it or how we define it. What matters is…we do ‘it’.
June 6, 2008 at 8:17 am
Henry Vyhnal
From the perspective of a person who was a part of the aussie punk movement in the mid to late seventies and now teaches metal (and other) non conservative musics in a progressive state college, I wonder why nobody has mentioned edupunk in the context of classroom management. When I push my kids’ socio-musico-value systems to the point where we are screaming at each other about music, it takes me back to the punk parties I used to attend where punks and wannabees came to blows over whether the Pistols or the Clash had the most cred. And it makes me feel good! Gabba Gabba hey!
June 7, 2008 at 6:52 am
Jeremy
That was my (somewhat snarky) comment on the Downes post. I still want to write a proper post about why this label is so very stupid, but also about how it has the potential to open up the kinds of conversations that need to happen, questioning the fundamentals of education. You’ve covered a bit of it here already…so thanks for that.
If you’re going to consider punk as a sort of watered-down label for “alternative”, minor boundary-pushing, or low-grade anti-authority views (kept-to-yourself, mostly), then it can be married to the edu- prefix without being automatically oxymoronic. In practice, it seems to mean that these are people in the system who sort of wish they weren’t, but don’t really want it to change much either.
Unfortunately, it also has the feel of a bunch of ed-tech’ers displaying a type of mid-life crisis about their field, perhaps wistfully remembering their younger idealism and techno-dreams…then looking around at what’s been accomplished with their ed.tech friends and asking hopefully (and collectively), “We’re still cool, right?”
Real punk, with a strong affinity for anarchy and disdain for authority of any kind…well, that is the opposite of education (loosely defined as a system of government control of young people). If you bring punk into a conversation about the education system, you basically have to pull an Illich and suggest that the whole thing be dismantled. Or better yet, dismantle it yourself. Of course I’m all in favour of edupunks willing to be real punks in that respect.
So, what words could we use to better describe what the best people in ed.tech are doing? They’re change agents, mercenaries, skunkworks, inventors, synthesizers, mentors and facilitators, moonlighters working underground or on the side from their (boring) day jobs. Some of them (thankfully) are even borderline shit disturbers. But they’re not punks.
I’ve been envisioning a simple graphic, and I hope I get some time to create it, although anyone else is free to: a simple horizontal spectrum. At one end, punk (above the line) and edupunk (below the line). Up top is maybe the Sex Pistols, down below is probably Illich. At the other end of the spectrum is American Idol (above the line) and perhaps NCLB (below the line), symbolizing the heavy-handedness of government control and the status quo.
Where do most of today’s ed.tech’ers fall on the spectrum? I have no idea really, but I suspect they’d be scattered around the middle. A few like Downes (who has the benefit of not being employed by an educational institution) might be halfway between the middle and Illich. Many would join their stodgiest old-school administrators way over on the other end, determined to preserve and support a system that helps them pay their mortgages. And that’s ok, but let’s acknowledge that a strong dislike of Blackboard does not make you a punk.
June 7, 2008 at 11:49 am
leighblackall
I think I rate in that spectrum, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. My talk Teaching is Dead, Long Live Learning (Was the first Web2/edutech reference to Illich that I know of) clearly a talk like this positions me as edupunk in your books – but I also sense that you are right in calling BS with the term. I do sometimes stop and look around and ask.. are we still cool.. I bet even the Sex Pistols have asked themselves that from time to time. And they were of course all wrapped up inside the music establishment – subservient to cultural industry and perhaps even a dark politik, and obviously lacked the sophistication to actually bring on anarchy beyond teenage parties of the time.
June 7, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Henry Vyhnal
Not so…
The punk movement of the mid to late seventies nutured a strong ‘low-tech’ DIY flavour in the way music (and moving image) was created and distributed. This came about because one of the drivers of the punk movement was the frustration experienced by young musicians and film makers when they were shut out of the music establishment because the monolith record and film companies refused to sign them up and thereby provide access to popular media.
Punks were forced to use their own meagre resources as well as create their own publicity and distribution systems to participate in the art of the time and they did it so successfully that by the early 80’s, many previously successful traditional musicians could no longer sell their music because they sounded too ‘slick’ or over produced. The ingenuity of some of the punks was astounding. One group proved to the old school record companies that their role in developing and distributing artists work was hugely overated when a group of punks and other interested geeks and independent producers recorded an album of music, pressed it and distributed it through the UK independent record shops in a week.
The classic punk victory was when EMI were forced to buy their way out of the Sex Pistols contract to preserve the support of their stakeholders. The Sex Pistols went on to finance their debut album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ with the proceeds and then to go straight to number one despite the record being banned and unavailable through most record stores.
Music and the means of production has changed enormously since then and it could be argued that the punks lit the fuse. The average laptop in 2008 has infinately more media/music production capability than most commercial studios of the late 70’s and the Internet is now a far more ubiquitous and democratic distribution platform than anything available last century. My view is that many of today’s edutech benefits came about because the punks championed the idea that everyone has the right to say (and sing) what’s on their mind and that the broadcast and distribution of those expressions should not be limited by access to the means of production and distribution.
In the classroom, the punk idea that you can do anything and that if the means is not available – you can just make it or ask your friends to help is a really positive thing. If something has not been done before or a sacred cow is due for a good kicking then – Hey Ho – Let’s Go!
June 14, 2008 at 1:50 am
alexanderhayes
Oi oi oi !
Skinheads can grow their hair back and do degrees and punch putrid prose through petty politics.
D’arcy Norman got all gooey and anarchistically considered trashing his hotel room and nuking it all – so I told him to go and fcuking get on with it – http://www.darcynorman.net/2008/05/31/on-nuking-my-blog/#comment-183386
Nothin’ like a good ol’ bit a Johnny thrashing away as you slam dance ya way into another educationalist piss-take on web marketing and ‘free’ as in 500 mls of bourbon and coke swilling around in your too fat gut of neo constructivisms.
Oi !
June 14, 2008 at 1:51 am
alexanderhayes
Oi !!!
Whats that swastika poppin up in the right hand corner o’ my spit ? 🙂
June 14, 2008 at 2:04 am
alexanderhayes
‘Edupunk’ raises one of the worst forms of destructivist thinkings into being amongst the smarm of web 2.0 and the sooner we suppress it’s re-immortalisation the sooner we will rid ourselves of the glorified violence that anything punk stood for.
Or…..
June 14, 2008 at 3:16 am
Edupunk : Oi Oi Oi ! : alexanderhayes
[…] Norman threatens self immolation in a land of machines and Leigh Blackall quotes 1975 as being one of the best years in his short life in their reference to geek-boys desiring dirt […]
June 14, 2008 at 11:38 am
Jeremy
Leigh, that talk is inspiring. An artifact of an iconoclast. Thanks for sharing.
My spectrum idea might be dumb, but as a thought experiment I think it might have some value in showing what budding edupunks might aspire to. The message shouldn’t be “edupunk is stupid” — it should be “we need more edupunks, but don’t pretend you’re one if you’re not willing to at least question the establishment.” And not because it should be an exclusive club…but because pretending won’t actually change (improve, ideally) the system.
I think it’s ok to look around and wonder if we’re cool, but the deeper (and more important) question is whether we’re having an impact. You’re right that punk may not have had much impact in the end either.
June 14, 2008 at 10:09 pm
alexanderhayes
Jeremy,
I disagree. The concept of ‘punk’ did much to de-bunk the egalitarian principles of marching in lines and burying loved ones as unknowns.
The value of punk was a much different conversation. It’s interesting to note we are returning to it to dig our way out of what would otherwise posit as automated consumerist capitalism.
June 17, 2008 at 9:31 pm
bronwyn hegarty
Long live punk! The young are still doin it, making music underground and producing their own music labels….it is no longer just a 70s phenomenon… I know cos I bred one and a fine punk he is…he and his band (Ritalin) wrote this which makes the point for me…”you live in a suburban home and you die when you kneel at their throne, shop you drop, you buy, you sell, you close your stagnant mind….” taken from – Not my idea, Ritalin Roguetown, 2007.
Edupunk is surely about opening minds, helping people to see the other picture as we creep in the shadows.
June 22, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Helen
You ROCK Bronwyn! we need more people like you breeding and nurturing the thinkers of the future.