For the Monday group and an invitation to colleagues,
5..00-7.00 1WN 3.8, Monday 2nd October.
As researchers are producing the first complete drafts and getting close to the submission of their doctoral theses we have tended to focus our conversations on their ideas and writings. Eden is now close to submission and I'm hoping to continue our conversation from last week when we focused on the Abstract for his thesis and the communication of his meanings of an African Cosmology with Ubuntu. At the Labour Party Conference last Thursday Bill Clinton explained his commitment to Ubuntu and I'm hoping you will access the ideas on Ubuntu from his speech at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5388182.stm
Moira has sent in her draft action plan for her work in China for 2006-7 and you can access this at:
http://www.jackwhitehead.com/china/mlarplan0607.htm
.
Mark Potts has formed a partnership
between Salisbury High School and Nqabakazulu School and writes:
Jack
I read your Draft paper of September 2004
on your educational
relationships and Ubuntu with interest. I
am pursuing the leads that
you give on Ubuntu to give myself a better
understanding of the idea
and to see how I can use it as I develop
the partnership between
Salisbury High School and Nqabakazulu
School. I have had a response
from the Headteacher at Nqabakazulu School
on his understanding of it
as it relates to our work together, which
is interesting. I am
intending to use it as a guiding principle
for the professional
development work that I do with my
colleagues at Salisbury High School.
I am starting that this Wednesday and I
attach a copy of the Powerpoint
presentation that I intend to use.
Unfortunately, my technological
prowess does not extend to including the
Dvd footage of the wonderful
singing by the South African girl at the
start.
(The paper on
Ubuntu Mark refers to is at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwbera04d.pdf
)
Mark has sent on
the powerpoint presentation and I'll check it is OK with him to share this on
Monday)
I've asked Marie
to share some thoughts on her action plan for 2006-7. I'm hoping to have
something ready to show on researching educational practices in inclusionality
for the conversation of the 9th October that includes Vasilyuk's
ideas on value experiencing and creative experiencing. Vasilyuk writes:
The third
sub-type of creative experiencing is connected with the highest stages of
personality development in terms of value. A life crisis is precipitated by the
destruction, or threatened destruction, of the value entity to which the
individual seems himself as belonging. The person sees this whole under attack
and being destroyed by the forces of a hostile reality. Since we are here
speaking of a person who is a fully competent inhabitant of the
complex-and-difficult lived world, it is clear that he does not simply see this
destruction but cannot fail to see it, being incapable of hedonistically
ignoring reality. But on the other hand, it is equally impossible for such a
person to relinquish the value entity in question, to betray it, to abandon
one's convictions. A rational assessment of the situation would admit it to be
fundamentally insoluble.
Vasilyuk, F. (1991) The Psychology of Experiencing: the
Resolution of Life's Critical Situations.
Hemel Hempstead; Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Any more news do
please e-mail it in to share on Monday evening.
Love Jack.