I’ll probably write my EdublogsClub post tomorrow. I’m really too tired to think too much about it now. I had a job interview this morning and I spent all my enthusiasm in one hour.

An interesting thing happened yesterday. I was tweeting about how excited I am to write about learning styles. And someone replied with they don’t exist and linked to the Guardian article that The Edublogger refers to! Now, maybe my reaction was coloured by the fact the person who replied spends their days trawling through Twitter to find and repost opinions that are identical to their own, as well as dismissing anyone who doesn’t share their world view.

But the post they don’t exist is very revealing. Firstly, it’s a definitive statement. Would you respond to questions or comments (in a learning environment) like that? Do you think it encourages debate? Secondly, would you comment before someone has even expressed their position on an issue? If you do, why are you doing that? Thirdly, do you think the sources/evidence you are showing balances conflicting opinions on the issue?

Of course, this approach to learning can be useful in some situations. Statements like this can encourage people to form a very strong counter-argument. It can stimulate and challenge.

But it also brings up another idea, one that is relevant to my learning journey, and that’s the idea of who owns and accesses the knowledge? This was addressed by one of my favourite writers Maranda Elizabeth:

One of the things that helped me get through the disability review process was reading stacks of disability studies and mad studies books from the library. As a broke-as-fuck high school dropout, these are texts that, in various ways, are not accessible to me – whether or not they are meant to be (and even when they’re about me). I spent a lot of time googling seemingly innocuous words like pedagogy and temporality that a lot of people use everyday and take for granted. I found ideas that made me want to stay alive. But the books prompted so many more questions: Who gets access to information that makes their life more liveable? Who gets to participate in conversations about disability and madness? Who is invited to participate and who is left out? Whose knowledges are valued, prioritized, listened to, paid for? Whose knowledges are left behind? What happens when maps and theories about your own brain body psyche daily-life and survival are not accessible to you?

From What is art about social assistance?

In my short period as an art history student, these are thoughts I had throughout my first (and only!) term. I frequently found myself face-to-face with the Western canon. Obviously I had been subjected to the Western canon from an early age via the national curriculum and, later, through attitudes of people I meet. I had decided in my teenage years that I wasn’t interested in the Western canon (though, back then I blamed my lack of appreciation on my being uncouth). In my twenties I started becoming aware, maybe even class conscious. In my thirties, I realised that the reason I don’t care about the Western canon is because I want to hear from those left out of the history books.

A couple of years ago my friend asked me You must be interested in history though? And was surprised to hear me say that I wasn’t. History is written by those with the knowledge, and the power. He then asked me what I cared about. I played this:

From wfmu.org/365/2003/160.shtml

I want to know what happened in the lives of these two young people next. Are they happy now? Maybe they haven’t achieved anything noteworthy since, so they have no reason to be put in our history books. But I doubt history books will have anything to say about me either. This mp3 may be their legacy, and I could have easily missed it – I wonder what else I’ve missed.