Refreshed and Energised - thinking at last

After a most excellent easter break spent swimming, snorkling, surfing, the odd full-moonlit mystery kayaking trip, visiting friends, drinking coffee, bush regenning and propagating trees, seeing movies - new Gus V. Sant good - drinking more friends and visiting more coffee with a beautiful last day art gallerying, I found myself so sad to be saying goodbye to a Melbourne I had discovered I was still in love with and coming back to a town and a course I am both very unsure about.

However I walked into class to find myself being happily walloped with masses of pedagogy, or what i always thought was called educational methodology. Besides the piece of paper at the end, this is my raison d'être, the thought of getting my hands dirty with lots of philosophy and turning my brain into interesting origami shapes. Four weeks too late in my opinion - lecturers have been conveniently teasing us with scattered names of people we keep being assured we'll be hearing lots more of this week, but no-one until now has thought to explain any of this shit.

In the first week we were shelled with assignments and panic but little guidance. One of my most anticipated is the annotated bibliography we have to submit in just over a month. However beig told to pick and compare theorists from different schools of thought is somewhat daunting when none of the names being lobbed are familiar. I know of Dewey from cataloging, but felt frowned upon when I tried to explain Plato as being about Truth with a capital T and "tableness" (as Ben Gilbert, my most excellent yr 12 English teacher explained Truth - I got it!) but apparently there's an educational side to Plato related to but outside the cave.

Today however, we were showered with ISMs, as refreshing as the drought breaking torrents that covered Melbourne this week. Idealism, Realism, Liberalism, Progressivism, Behaviourism, Humanism, Radicalism, Eclecticism, Cognitivism. I've grabbed a bunch of books by a dude called Freire who sounds more interesting than some of the old school psychology hacks from the 50s and 60s.

Stay tuned.