Edupunk, Eduschmunk….

Posted on | June 6, 2008 | 12 Comments

There is good music and there is bad music. For real music lovers (you know, such as me) the split between good and bad music does not coincide with the division between any particular musical genre and any other musical genre. In other words, there is good classical music and bad classical music, just as there is good punk music and bad punk music, and good pop music and bad pop music. The one exception, of course, is that there is no such thing as good prog rock!

At a more refined level (of granularity, not taste) a similar view should always be taken of the music of any one artist, group, songwriter or composer. While my son, for instance, seems to enjoy pretty much everything ever produced by the Foo Fighters, he finds it diffcult to comprehend that I can differentiate between the good music produced by Clapton, the Faces, Mozart, Dougie Maclean, Howlin’ Wolf, Bob Dylan, Kate Rusby and the Clash (and thousands of others) and the bad music produced by each member of that same cast of thousands. Compare the powerful live version of Badge from Clapton’s Rainbow Concert with, for instance, almost anything off his Money and Cigarettes album: Badge good, Money and Cigarettes bad.

And, please note, I am using the binary ‘good .v. bad’ for simplicity of argument – assessment of music quality needs a continuum, not an either:or.

And, please note further, what is good today might not be so good tomorrow, and what is bad now might get better tomorrow when I listen to it again. Such is taste.

Of course, what I happen to think of as good music, whatever the genre, is unlikely to reflect what anyone else thinks of as good music across all genres. This is the perennial bugbear of those who believe they understand the difference between high culture and low culture. These people can argue that, of course, without question, Mozart is better than Dylan. They cannot know this, because, again, it is a matter of individual taste. Technical summations of musical quality are one thing; accounting accurately for what gives us pleasure and what does not is quite another.

This long, and quite irrelevant, lead-in is my way of coming around to talking about the slightly odd Edupunk meme that is doing the rounds at the moment, spreading good will and antagonism in unequal measure as it runs (the weight of argument is on the goodwill side, I think).

I was 18 in 1975 and so could easily have been a punk (I’m just 8 days older than Simon John Ritchie). I wasn’t one, not because I did not like the music – some of it was damned good, and is still good, and some of it was excruciatingly bad. No, I did not like punk because I simply did not like any movement – cultural, political, social – that brushed shoulders with nihilism of any kind, nor did I take to an idea that so often reeked of bad faith. I regarded such notions then – and still do – as essentially a little self-indulgent, a bit pointless and usually politically naive. As a working class kid, I saw too many punks, rightly or wrongly, as ‘poor middle class kids’ searching for something that would simultaneously horrify their parents and allow them to shed their bourgeois chains, however briefly. No harm in that, maybe, but too many punks, for me, were really just ‘weekend-punks’ who fitted in, however uncomfortably, with the establishment during the week, and only donned their anti-establishment personas when Friday hove into view. By Monday morning, they could slip easily back into their ‘acceptable’ shells. Prejudice on my part, I’m sure, but even the prejudiced are allowed the occasional clarity of vision. Some punks, of course, were real punks, whatever that meant – but they were few in number in my view.

As in culture and politics, so in education and in ed-tech. I’m afraid I find it hard to take the whole Edupunk thing at all seriously. Maybe I’m not meant to, and maybe that’s the whole point – to piss off those who try to look too closely at it, who take it too seriously (such as Ken Carroll – come on Ken, lighten up). Whatever the original impetus, and however diverting some of the discussion has been around the concept, it just doesn’t work for me.

Some of the interpretations of Edupunk lean towards the communal, the anti-consumerist, the anti-authority, and the DIY spirit in ed-tech. I can live with all of that, and have argued for all of them on one occasion or another. But, like punk itself, Edupunk will probably prove to be self-defeating because the original spirit of punk defied even a modicum of collective action. DIY is great in education, but there are just too many faults in the system that, I believe, can only be overcome by one form of collective action or another – can Edupunk carry off the trick of finding the balance between the individualistic and the organized, even the self-organized? Web 2.0/Learning 2.0 as a concept carries that balance within its compass – the power of the crowd alongside the personal knowledge environment, the architecture of participation alongside individual production, and so on. I’m not sure that Edupunk is able to follow suit, at least not without shifting more than a bit from the central notions of punk in the process.

The slightly anarchistic tendencies of much discussion in Learning 2.0 is attractive. For the ‘converted’ it is a liberating notion and so much great practice that we can see and read about daily is down to those tendencies. As a means of moving the formal institutions of education into the Web 2.0 age, however, it falls short because, as I have argued before, the institutions of formal education, at all levels from the school to the nation, require to have their arses kicked again and again until they begin to see sense and start to make the shift towards humane education through inversion of those staid and top-down entities. A few mavericks – and even many more than just a few mavericks – will only ever change practice at local levels. That is wonderful when it happens, but it won’t be enough. Once those mavericks begin to coalesce around a general vision of humane compassionate learner-focused learning they can begin to raise their collective toes to meet the unbending backsides presented by the ‘authorities’ in education, and they might then kick-start a real process of change. Whatever metaphor one might want to use to describe that process, punk is not it. Punks did kick arses, but usually fairly indiscriminately and to no particular purpose.

In any case, in musical terms punk might have saved us from the excesses of disco, prog rock and the 20-minute guitar solo – in ed-tech terms, however, we have hardly reached the shores of skiffle in most schools in most places, so we are still waiting for EduRock’n'Roll to rescue us.

Nonetheless, the Edupunk meme is definitely proving useful in itself. I agreed, for instance, with David Gran when he wrote recently:

“Whether the term “edupunk” gains a footing as a frame for progressive integration of the 2.0 pedagogy, or if it disappears into the into the meme void with the hamster dance, it doesn”t really matter. It has already begun a debate that furthers our understanding about the relationship of our ourselves to the global community through technology. Ignoring the irony of the edu-punk-ness of the debate itself, it should remind us of the necessity of these kinds of discussions -not to define us, but to allow us to continually reflect on the nature of this constantly changing relationship.”

May the punk be with you.

Technorati Tags: edupunk, music, culture, politics, education

Category: education, music, philosophy, politics

Comments

12 Responses to “Edupunk, Eduschmunk….”

John
June 6th, 2008 @ 8:19 pm

I was very heartened by the mention of HyperCard on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edupunk (the mention of HC is now gone).
If I could code a bit better I’d prefer eduhacker to edupunk for the same sort of dislike of negativity you express.
As a teacher it is nice to see focus on bottom up/DIY rather than top down. Of course I need the constraints and advice from higher up the chain of command but there is a lot of satisfaction and enthusiasm generated by ‘teachers doing for themselves’. This will not change the world but it might let me and my class have some fun.
John Connell
June 6th, 2008 @ 8:29 pm

And more power to your elbow while you’re having fun, John!

Gawd!….HyperCard….now that takes me back…….talk about DIY?…..
Ken Carroll
June 7th, 2008 @ 1:34 am

John,

Educators behaving like adolescents seems to me like an irresponsible way to deal with students, but even that is not really my point. Of more significance is the move to reduce debate about the free market to Marxist cliche and a negative, one-dimensional ideology. The silliness of the first is mirrored by the naievete of the second. I find that worthy of some criticism.
Robert Jones
June 7th, 2008 @ 9:16 am

Remember the band “Pop Will Eat Itself”?

Looks to me like the edublogosphere is doing the same.

You also reminded me of the classic Television Personalities song “Part Time Punks”.

No good prog rock? Surely you jest
Andrea Reid
June 7th, 2008 @ 12:24 pm

Nicely put Robert.
So John as we launch into eduskiffle where you’re the kind of skilled jazz daddy. I think we could refer to you here on in as John “Lonnie Donegan” Connell.
Jaye Richards
June 7th, 2008 @ 1:59 pm

John’s obviously spent too much time listening to ‘Tales of Topographic Oceans’ and the like to come out with such an outrageous comment about prog rock…

Get your head around some classic Barclay James Harvest, Fat Mattress or Karnataka… maybe that will eduprog you…
John Connell
June 7th, 2008 @ 3:16 pm

Oh Gawd, Jaye……the number of times I was subjected to BJH and the like by well-meaning friends at the time! I’m afraid I’ve always been a kind of back-to-basics kind of person when it comes to music – the Blues, straight down the line rock, singer-songwriters, good folk music, etc etc. I like lots of other kinds of music too, mind you, but that’s where my heart lies. All those prog-rockers were just trying way too hard for my liking.

And…..Tales of Topographic Oceans? You jest, surely? Yes were just the biggest bunch of w**nkers I ever had the misfortune to listen to. Sorry

And, by the way, I’m still looking for my Cumberland gap…..
Jaye Richards
June 7th, 2008 @ 3:58 pm

Well some prog rockers came good….after all look what Rush became, and then there were Asia from the ashes of Yes.
And I’m not one to cause trouble, but I must also take issue with you on the Rainbow concert vs ‘Money and Cigs’ albums… ‘The shape you’re in’ and ‘crosscut saw’ are Clapton classics surely. And up against the ‘live at the Filmore’ Derek/Dominoes album, the rainbow comeback gig pales into insignificance in my view. Townshend had to prop him up at that one !!
Still, I’ve got David Coverdale to look forward to in a couple of weeks….
John Connell
June 7th, 2008 @ 8:45 pm

But it was the symbolism and the significance of the Rainbow concert that made such a great concert. The music was rough at times – but brilliant nonetheless.

Have you seen the recent CD release of the Rainbow Concert – many more tracks than were released on the original album – some great stuff?
Jaye Richards
June 7th, 2008 @ 9:47 pm

Yeah, I think the copy I have must be that, but its about 10 yrs old. My ex used to have the original on LP. My cd has the Bonnie Bramlett/Clapton songs on it as well as ‘presence of the lord’ and ‘blues power’ – great songs.
I still think the Dominoes Live at the filmore with that amazing version of ‘have you ever loved a woman’ is Clapton at his best – you can almost feel the pain he was going through over Patti Harrison I think..
alexanderhayes
June 20th, 2008 @ 2:15 pm

More debunking here – http://www.edupunk.com.au
acer
July 2nd, 2008 @ 2:43 pm

Yeah, I think the copy I have must be that, but its about 10 yrs old. My ex used to have the original on LP. My cd has the Bonnie Bramlett/Clapton songs on it as well as “presence of the lord” and “blues power” – great songs.