Eduation without rebellion - what's the point of that?

As George Ritzer said in an interview in 2002, Universities today are designed not to give students the freedom to think for themselves: 'Students don't want to talk to me about ideas,' he said, 'only about grades'.

Otherworlds is long dead as a course, but it was founded on the principle that it is the thinking that matters, not the grades. At the end of the first lecture I gave on that course a student came to me and said 'What is the key thing we will learn if we take this course'. My answer was simple: 'To think'.

I didn't want to impart facts and 'knowledge' or even to 'educate', I wanted to get each individual student thinking about how they might go out into the world and find things out for themselves in unique and radical new ways that said more about their true human condition than their grade average would at the end of the term. I wanted to wake them up.

Naive perhaps, but I can't be alone in thinking learning should be about something more than getting grades to fit into the best paid jobs. What about learning to live a life which might question and challenge the structures which deny individual freedoms, the structures which give all to the few and nothing to the masses...? The very structures which now govern the educational establishments, which might once have given a few lucky individuals a critical edge to get them thinking there might just be a better way...

Words on Otherworlds

I miss our regular two hours of confusion on a Tuesday morning. And what is sadder still is that you were the only cohort to experience, learn from and endure Otherworlds. For soon I am to leave Manchester for pastures new and Otherworlds will be disappearing with me. By the time this year's intake of freshers reach the dizzy heights of the 3rd year, Otherworlds will be but a dim and distant memory.

But on the bright side, rumours are correct, Craig and I are currently drafting a paper on our experiences of Otherworlds and you can look forward to publication in a suitably learned scholarly journal at some stage in the not too distant future (publishing timescales allowing). You will all be acknowledged, for you all helped to make the experience what it was.

I read an interesting article recently in the Times Higher (28 September, 46-47 'Ready to furnish tools of thought'). A piece urging lecturers to be more critical, reflexive and creative in the way they teach - indeed encouraging us to involve the students in the knowledge-making process. Everything Ms Swain said read to me like the basics of what any lecturer should already be doing, and it sadenned me to think how rarely students really engage in the knowledge-making process today. So who knows, if nobody else is taking on the challenge, I may one day have to return to spread the Otherworlds word, or it may come to a bookshelf near you, for students of the future to challenge the sausage factory and stake their claim for the right to critical pedagogy! :) (If it is posible to confine the monster that is Otherworlds to the pages of a book that is, I am no Hagrid...).

The final curtain...

And so the end is near - you are all nervously biting the ends of biros and flicking through what seem like random, incoherent and meaningless notes (and I realise that is my fault and not yours). So take a few moments to read through the Final Team's posting below. It should hopefully spark off a Eureka moment for some of you who are still struggling to experience it.

Despite the heartaches and misunderstandings, I hope you have enjoyed Otherworlds and all that it tried to bring to you. I certainly enjoyed the challenge and have learnt more from you as a group of students than I have learnt from any of my students in the past. And if the world is to develop and change, rather than endlessly re-create itself in the same image, learning something from students should be a key part of what any academic does. And one day, you will realise that there was a benefit from being put in the teacher's shoes for a term.

Good luck to everyone in the exam. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for you all, and hope to see you outside the Ducie afterwards for the End of Year BBQ. In the meantime if you are getting stressed out take some tips from here to calm those nerves.

May the force be with you in whatever you choose to do with the rest of your lives. And remember - you create your world, so make it a good one!

Sara

...a few words of reflection

Hello All,

Firstly let us apologize for this late blogging. This was due in part to our plan to subvert the blog, but there is a time and a place for everything and we have an exam to pass! Sorry.

In fact that might be a good place to start: ‘there is a time and place for everything’. We would beg to differ and a central message of our learning experience was to demonstrate that there need not be specific times and particular places for anything. Rather, places are what we make, imagine and perceive them to be and time can be spent, filled and taken in any way we (and others) choose. Our learning experience may have seemed bizarre, or perhaps even messy and unorganised. So this might clear a few things up, but you should not be expecting answers from us; instead we encourage you to ask questions and specifically questions about the Otherworlds course and the student-led learning experiences.

We were concerned for we had heard criticism about the course from some of you (and we include ourselves). Some of us thought the course – because of its different nature (to understate) – was incoherent, difficult and unstable in subject matter. Our group was interested in why some of us felt like that and decided to pursue exactly this in our learning experience. Some things struck us about the learning experiences. The parameters of the learning experience were wide open and we had only two considerations: to do something of geographical relevance and to include some learning theories. By anyone’s standards this was a flexible course. Compare your other courses: Labour Geographies, 3000 words on the workers lot in a particular company; Critical Development, 3000 words on a development issue in a chosen region with a set scale; General Paper, 3000 words of a book review…Be critical. Think back to first year when we were compelled to learn Foreign Direct Investment statistics, read textbooks, remember dates and names. And to your A-levels and school; what did you learn?

For a lot of us I think it is fair to say that we ‘receive an education’, and this is very different to participating in education. A lot of our learning has, to the very present day, been centred around a very orthodox educational relationship (or ‘pedagogy’); that of the teacher-student. Like those dichotomies we see everyday – think nature-culture, man-woman – we take the fact that teachers (and lectures) teach and students learn, as a given. But what happens when that role is reversed? What, in other words, happens when students are seen not as recipients of knowledge, but as makers and creators of it? Well, Otherworlds is what happens! We all had the chance to ‘be the teachers’ and we all did so in a variety of different ways and with very different topics. How then, is it fair to voice criticism at Otherworlds? We were its creators; literally half of the course was ‘ours’ and we could do with it what we pleased. Now I think there is something very interesting in all of this; a paradox.

We could have united and decided to bring the course ‘together’, we could have made it coherent and even fixed its subject matter. Why didn’t we? That much is obvious; it would have been boring and we wanted to push the boundaries. Does this mean then that we embraced Otherworlds, did our learning experiences show us ‘otherways’ to learning? I would like to think so. However, while we wanted to explore otherworlds we somehow limited ourselves. The parameters were wide open yet our learning experiences remained largely within the classroom, most of us used PowerPoint’s and we placed a lot of emphasis on the spoken word and the visual. Why? This is one of the questions that I would like you to consider, and if you don’t agree with the proposition that our learning experiences were restricted then that’s fair enough but be prepared to argue your case. I think there are some illuminating points to this question to be found if we look at the way we learn. Most of us don’t think twice about what and how we learn, we just do it; read the book make notes; listen to the lecturer, take notes (even if we don’t understand or think it is boring). Writing essays? Do many of us write what we want to, or what we feel we should, or do we write to tick boxes that will get us the best marks?

Academia and university is about learning. It is about learning what we want to learn, and taking from it what we choose. Many of the courses that we have been taught over the last three years have not offered the opportunity to explore topics as and how we wish. When it comes to actually doing it, its scary, we are not accustomed to ‘being the teachers’ nor are we attuned to picking our own geographical topics and teaching methods. So we err on the side of caution, we give out handouts, use PowerPoints (that’s what ‘real’ lecturers do) involve the audience a bit (it seems rude not too) and have clear introductions and conclusions. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but when we are given the opportunity to do anything I find it interesting that we restrict ourselves and I think we do this because of the way we have been taught; our pedagogical conditioning tells us so and therefore it must be right.

So think back to our learning experience, and think about how we took on-board the above. Think about the bizarre postulations from Mike about spirituality and geography and Adams linkage of the big-bang to the love that we humans feel. The drums, the videos, Mike’s ‘David Attenborough’ voice-over and closing your eyes; these were all attempts to embody an unconventional pedagogy and push further the boundaries which others before us had began to push. If you really reflect on your own earning experience – and be critical – and relate your topics and methods to other learning experiences then you may find answers about pedagogy and how it helps shape us.

What is written here is deliberately ambiguous and it is intended to get you thinking about a few things in the final few days before the exam. Remember it is not always about finding answers, but is about learning to ask the right questions.

For some critical pedagogy theory check out Freire ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’

If there are any questions, write them below.

Prepare well friends for there are but a few days left.

Adam, Mike, Chris and Craig

Postscript thought: If there is a time and place for everything, try doing something that is not ‘normal’ at an unusual time or unexpected place. See what happens. Moments of jouissance can occur and these can alter the path of your (and others) day; the mundane becomes beautiful.

Pioneering the Geographies of Beauty: A Recap...

Thanks for everyone who participated in our presentation last Tuesday. We hope we provided some further food for thought on how Geography can be applied to unconventional subjects, such as Beauty. Here is a recap of the main arguments proposed in our presentation...

• Cultural variations of what defines 'beauty' do exist. We gave examples of pale skin in the Far East and tanned skin in Western Europe to represent wealth in both cases. Also, how over time our preferences are changing in relation to mass media influences, such as curvy female figures of the 1950s (Marilyn Monroe) and size 0 models of today.



• We also argued that despite these cultural influences on what defines 'beauty', there are underlying features that all persons perceive as attractive, eg. symmetrical facial features, wide eyes, full lips, overall youthful appearance



• Traditional English views of beauty as pale and 'white' justified slavery; 'Black' was seen as 'ugly' and inferior. This arguably continues today as we showed in our examples of Latin American and North American Beauty Pageants.



• Fairytales continue the 'Feminine Beauty Ideal' today and porpagate the idea that beauty, especially feminine beauty, equals success (feminist perspective).



• The Beauty Salon can be seen as a liberating space; making beauty available to all. It can also be viewed as a theraputic landscape. However, it can also be viewed as exploitative of people's insecurities about their appearance.



• The international success of Ugly Betty contests the notion of the 'Beauty Myth' (Wolf).



• Virtual Beauties, eg. airbrushing in popular media are creating an ideal of beauty that is unattainable to the vast majority of the population.

We hope that we've reminded you of the different worlds produced by beauty. We appreciated all the questions and comments put forward after our presentation, they were insightful and really helped us evaluate our presentation. We noticed, however, that one main point was drawn from our presentation, that of beauty as liberating, but we hope that this blog will remind you that that was not the main message; we wanted to show you all the different worlds of beauty, including those which exclude not only liberate.

Referring to the table at the top of the page, these are the results from the activity in which we asked you to rate the nine photos.

General findings showed that people tended to rate the pictures in similar categories to one another. Therefore, enforcing the idea that people share similar ideas on how they perceive beauty.

Hope you enjoyed it! Good Luck in the exam everyone!

Helen, Vicky and Angela.

References:

Baker-Sperry , L. and Grauerholz, L. (2003) The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairytales, Gender and Society, vol.15 (5), pp: 711-726

Biddle, J. & Hamermesh, D. S. (1993) ‘Beauty and the Labour Market’. NBER working paper No. w4518

Black, P. & Sharma, U. (2001) ‘Men are Real, Women are Made up: Beauty Therapy and the construction of Femininity’. Sociological Review. Issue 1 Vol. 49 pp100-116.

Black, P. (2004) ‘The Beauty Industry: Gender, Culture, Pleasure’. Routledge: London.

Featherstone, M. (2003) ‘Body Modification’. Sage: London.

Jordan, W. (1968) White Over Black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812, University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill.

Ossman, S. (2002) ‘Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Paris, Cairo’. Duke University Press: London.

Simpson, T. (2007) ‘The Hidden Beauty of Ugly Betty’. Daily Mail [on-line] accessed 11.01.07 available from; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=427992&in_page_id=1879

Sarwer, D. B., Grossbart, T. A., Didie, E. R. (2003) Beauty and Society, Seminars in Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 22(2) pp: 79-92

Wolf, N.. (1991). The beauty myth. Doubleday: New York

Spaces of Colour: Feeling blue or are you red faced?

We're all Geographers and stereotypically we're all very good at colouring in, but do you think about what colours you're using?

Our senses play an important role in our everyday experience, providing us with information about the world. Colour as sensed through sight, is just one way of looking at our experiences of everyday life.

“The idea of colour may initially seem a highly simple one, however it can be explored in various different ways due to the different meanings it conjures up” (Lamb and Bourriau, 1995)




Through the colour of red, we transformed the lecture theatre into an otherworld that hopefully conjured up different feelings... Intimacy? Passion? Rage? Anger? Or did you feel threatened? This experience was then contrasted with bathing our learning space in blue, complemented by Miles Davis, demonstrating the associations of colour with other senses.


Our relationship and associations with colour may be explained by semiotic theory, perception theory and classical conditioning. Explanations of these are all available on your handout (hope it's helpful!).


Feeling Blue..?
Colours have different effects on us emotionally, they are
consciously used to create different environments. Colour therapy uses the seven colours of the spectrum to balance the body’s energy centres (Chakras) and also helps to stimulate the body’s own healing process. In relation to geography the most immediate and felt geography is that of the body. It is the site of experience and expression:


“We live in worlds of pain or of pleasure” (Davidson and Milligan, 2004)


Artists and Colour
Perceptual Colour and Pictorial Colour. Perceptual is often sub-conscious associations whereas Pictorial is deliberately used to create a mood or feeling e.g. Van Goghs Night Cafe.


Colour Cross Culturally
Universal colour associations may be those associated with the elements e.g red= fire= heat. Or those associted with companies and branding e.g. Coca Cola= Red.


Regional or National differences in colour persist e.g. White in western countries being associated with marriage and purity whereas red is the Hindu counterpart.


"The connection of meaning and colour seems obvious, natural nearly; on the other hand it seems idiosyncratic, unpredictable and anarchic” (Kress and Leeuwen, 2002 p343)

Keep those Colouring Pencils sharpened!
Laura, Sascha, Sophie and Miranda.

The good, the bad and the memory: An overview

Despite the time lapse since our presentation we hope you may have spent some time contemplating the role of memories in the construction of places and we hope this comes as a reminder to trigger such thought!

The aims central to our discussion are as follows:

• To discuss whether memories make place or place makes memories
• To assess the difference between good and bad memories and their association with place
  

If you missed our lecture the other week we got all of the theoretical background out of the way and defined place and memory before exploring the above aims within a Jeremy Kyle style chat show. This highlighted how personal interpretation of such ideas results in a variety of perspectives and answers. From such analysis/discussion we discovered the following:

1. That stereotypical ideas of good and bad memories exist. Differences were found here in the application of such memories with good memories being commonly associated with places (e.g. the beach, the home, a night out) while bad memories tend to focus more on an action or experience (Being attacked, a crash, being ill).

'Another Place' by Antony Gormley. Artwork on a Merseyside beach - not only a common idea of a 'happy place' but also making connections between man and the landscape.

2. Significant gender patterns were also discovered within the literature and our own research. Here females commonly thought that the memories created the place with literature suggesting this to be due to their more emotional state. Conversely, males believed that the place was more significant in creating a memory, with a day watching football at a stadium being one of the common examples used.

3. The concluding point here however was that the emphasis of memory in constructing a place differs greatly depending on the individual, their background and the experiences they have had.

We hope our contribution was thought provoking and we have included a few references for those who wish to explore these ideas further.

Kim, Sam, Sarah R, Sarah H and Matt.

•Adams, S., Kueblie, J., Bayle, P. A. and Fivush, R. (1995) ‘Gender differences in Parent-child conversations about past emotions: A longitudinal Investigation’, Sex roles, 33, 309-323.

•Bluck, S. (2003) ‘Autobiographical memory: Exploring its functions in everyday life’, Memory, 11, 113-123.

•Knez, I. (2006) ‘Autobiographical memories for places’, Memory, 14, 359-377.

•Said, E.W. (2000) Intention, Memory and Place. Critical Inquiry 26(2) pp. 175-192.

•Twigger-Ross, C. L. and Uzzel, D. L. (1996) ‘Place and identity processes’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 205-220.

'Geographers are mystics': the beauty of emancipated sausages

Spaces of beauty and spirituality all woven together to the beat of a bongo drum. What a way to kick off a Tuesday morning, and what a perfect end to Series 1 of the Otherworlds student activities. Thank you to everyone who has taken this opportunity to think outside the box: and well done to those of you who decided not just to take a tentative look outside that box, but wholeheartedly made a leap for it, feet first into the great unknown. Let's hope we see Series 2 running so successfully next year.

The first group today suggested beauty can be a cause for liberation. The second group argued critical engagement with education can be empowering and emancipatory. We may not all be able to obtain some elusive universal image of beauty to liberate us in the consumer driven society of the spectacle, but we can all grab any opportunity for learning with both hands and break out of the sausage factory... or at least add our own unique spice and flavour to the recipe.

As the group said, the course is indeed sculpted by each and every one of you, which gives you a unique opportunity to take geography wherever you want it to go. I hope you enjoyed your roles as sculptors, and that you have found the journey as much fun as I have. Mike's definition of geography as a spiritual process bothered some - but his reason for defining it in this way is spot on - geography is about "trying to figure out things that are bigger than yourself". Otherworlds has given you an opportunity to be in the driving seat of that figuring-out process.

If there is a 'universal beauty' to be had - then I think we saw it in action on the grass outside Mansfield Cooper in the sunshine this morning. Go forth and search for unity, emancipated sausages, and as Craig said - where critical pedagogy isn't up for grabs, you should fight for it!!