I have met the enemy.
And he is this man.
I attended 2/3 of a talk he gave yesterday. While garnished with the usual eduspeak, the abstract of his talk had sounded pretty good:
As the parent of gifted children out in the boondocks, feeling these effects of personal and emotional isolation, I was hoping to gain some useful insights from the Professor’s talk. And I agree completely that there are limitations to what technology can do in education, that a lot of the ‘gee-whiz’ education material on the internet is a waste of time, and that technological resources need to be balanced with more ‘personal and interrelational’ ways to – er – ‘support the development of children’s socioaffective natural potential into performance.’ I also think that over-reliance on Powerpoint is doing bad things for teaching and communication in my discipline, so he immediately had me onside by not using it, striding back and forth talking to us conversationally instead. He spoke very well. And he had a beautiful voice. A deep, authoritative, voice, with a mellifluous Bostonian accent.
By 2/3 of the scheduled time through his lecture, he hadn’t yet said anything that was cogent to the abstract.
He had started with some funny anecdotes about when he first arrived in Oxford to do his doctorate.
He had talked about a Mercedes-Benz advertisement announcing that they were putting air-bags in the rear, as well as the front, after an accident involving someone trying to negotiate a motorway exit at 240 km/h in one of their cars, in which the occupants of the air-bag equipped front of the vehicle had lived and the passengers in the back had died. ‘We think we can solve all of our problems with technology,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t any suggestion in the ad that maybe people ought to slow down a bit. Or that we should make cars that don’t go so fast. We immediately resort to technology to shield ourselves from the natural consequences of our actions.’ Well, okay. That was an okay sort of analogy. Maybe making cars a bit slower would be good. If you could sell them.
He talked about the Garden of Eden, and how the first act of Adam and Eve after eating the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil had been to invent technology: sewing themselves clothes out of fig leaves.
He told us a pointless story about the nine-times table.
He talked about how in our Western societies knowledge was seen as power which was the same as dominance which was the same as something else which I couldn’t see because that bit of the whiteboard was hidden behind some useless bit of audio-visual equipment.
He said that the technology that came out of this knowledge shared the same original sin, if you will, as the knowledge itself.
On he went- sonorous, sweeping, sincere, non-sequitur after non-sequitur, abusing western science and technology as authoritarian and dehumanising. He didn’t call for dialogue with us, the audience. He wore a suit. Nobody else wore suits. He had degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford. We didn't. The authority in his voice repelled dialogue, compelling me to sit meekly in my seat trying to project ‘I know more than you’ through body language.
‘He is sweeping everyone along,’ I told the person next to me. ‘But what he is saying is wrong. And dangerous.’
He said something about how we should not be educating aboriginal children with the same kind of knowledge that we educated our own children with: it was tainted, unnatural knowledge, and it was more appropriate to teach their culturally-appropriate, natural knowledge. There was , unbelievably, what I took to be a gentle murmur of assent from the audience. Earlier that day another speaker had quoted figures saying that 20% of Year 7 aboriginal students in remote parts of New South Wales met the numeracy benchmarks. (These are pitifully easy benchmarks, met by more than 90% of students in metropolitan areas).
I left.
So I don’t know if he got to talking about nurturing the socio-emotional needs of gifted children or not. He might have, and he might even have said something that would be useful to me as a parent. But I didn’t stick around. I couldn’t take it anymore.
And- would you believe, would you believe- googling him this morning, I find that he has written a book with John Ashton!!
This man was Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Newcastle. Heaven help us!
And he is this man.
I attended 2/3 of a talk he gave yesterday. While garnished with the usual eduspeak, the abstract of his talk had sounded pretty good:
As the parent of gifted children out in the boondocks, feeling these effects of personal and emotional isolation, I was hoping to gain some useful insights from the Professor’s talk. And I agree completely that there are limitations to what technology can do in education, that a lot of the ‘gee-whiz’ education material on the internet is a waste of time, and that technological resources need to be balanced with more ‘personal and interrelational’ ways to – er – ‘support the development of children’s socioaffective natural potential into performance.’ I also think that over-reliance on Powerpoint is doing bad things for teaching and communication in my discipline, so he immediately had me onside by not using it, striding back and forth talking to us conversationally instead. He spoke very well. And he had a beautiful voice. A deep, authoritative, voice, with a mellifluous Bostonian accent.
By 2/3 of the scheduled time through his lecture, he hadn’t yet said anything that was cogent to the abstract.
He had started with some funny anecdotes about when he first arrived in Oxford to do his doctorate.
He had talked about a Mercedes-Benz advertisement announcing that they were putting air-bags in the rear, as well as the front, after an accident involving someone trying to negotiate a motorway exit at 240 km/h in one of their cars, in which the occupants of the air-bag equipped front of the vehicle had lived and the passengers in the back had died. ‘We think we can solve all of our problems with technology,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t any suggestion in the ad that maybe people ought to slow down a bit. Or that we should make cars that don’t go so fast. We immediately resort to technology to shield ourselves from the natural consequences of our actions.’ Well, okay. That was an okay sort of analogy. Maybe making cars a bit slower would be good. If you could sell them.
He talked about the Garden of Eden, and how the first act of Adam and Eve after eating the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil had been to invent technology: sewing themselves clothes out of fig leaves.
He told us a pointless story about the nine-times table.
He talked about how in our Western societies knowledge was seen as power which was the same as dominance which was the same as something else which I couldn’t see because that bit of the whiteboard was hidden behind some useless bit of audio-visual equipment.
He said that the technology that came out of this knowledge shared the same original sin, if you will, as the knowledge itself.
On he went- sonorous, sweeping, sincere, non-sequitur after non-sequitur, abusing western science and technology as authoritarian and dehumanising. He didn’t call for dialogue with us, the audience. He wore a suit. Nobody else wore suits. He had degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford. We didn't. The authority in his voice repelled dialogue, compelling me to sit meekly in my seat trying to project ‘I know more than you’ through body language.
‘He is sweeping everyone along,’ I told the person next to me. ‘But what he is saying is wrong. And dangerous.’
He said something about how we should not be educating aboriginal children with the same kind of knowledge that we educated our own children with: it was tainted, unnatural knowledge, and it was more appropriate to teach their culturally-appropriate, natural knowledge. There was , unbelievably, what I took to be a gentle murmur of assent from the audience. Earlier that day another speaker had quoted figures saying that 20% of Year 7 aboriginal students in remote parts of New South Wales met the numeracy benchmarks. (These are pitifully easy benchmarks, met by more than 90% of students in metropolitan areas).
I left.
So I don’t know if he got to talking about nurturing the socio-emotional needs of gifted children or not. He might have, and he might even have said something that would be useful to me as a parent. But I didn’t stick around. I couldn’t take it anymore.
And- would you believe, would you believe- googling him this morning, I find that he has written a book with John Ashton!!
This man was Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Newcastle. Heaven help us!
8 comments:
Just a test, to see if this is working!
Socio-affective support, I'm fine with.
Gagne's model of G&T... it's mostly jargon, but people are doing some good things with it, so I can deal with it.
But, this guy? He sounds like a tool on a power trip (a power-tool?). More so than many of the other G&T 'experts'. Thanks for the heads up!
No worries, emmajeans! Hmm... do you have any impressive G&T knowledge and connections that I ought to know about?
Hi Chris,
I have seen Ron Laura speak too (in January this year) and I completely understand your perspective given your experience.
However, I stayed through until the end and was left with a different response. I thought it was the most inspiring piece of speech making I have ever heard.
I was not alone.
Another woman like me sat silently afterwards in awe of his level of insight. Her comment; 'it is rare to have the good fortune of being in the presence of someone with such a deep level of understanding'.
I can understood your feelings about the lack of dialogue (and no doubt he would too). However, I felt he connected with us in a different and much deeper way with his speech.
And when I spoke to him afterwards I found him very open to dialogue and totally lacking in arrogance. I don't think he could have transferred his insights with the same degree of effectiveness with dialogue.
What I found most impressive about Ron was that he supported spritual insight with intellectual rigour. It is all too common for spiritual insights to be destroyed by intellectual rigour ...or for them to be conveyed without intellectual rigour.
As for the suit...I understand that you may have related that to the rich and expoitative. I interpreted it as a sign of respect for us as his audience (and for himself).I felt honoured by it and prefer it to the "i don't think you are worth getting out of my jeans' attitude'.Not dressing formally can be a sign of arrogance too. I'll meet you half way on that point...perhaps smart neat casual would have sufficed.I would prefer to see him look more comfortable himself.
All in all Chris I understand your viewpoint given your limited experience of Ron and your frustrated desire to receive support for your child. I really do.
However, I think your blog could do a good man alot of harm. And by the sound of it you don't seem to be the kind of person who would be consciously malicious. Those of us who are creative or gifted ...or who have gifted or creative children or children who need their creative expression supported ...truly need people like Ron in positions of power and influence. With further listening I think you might find that he is actually batting for the same team as you.
I would recommend giving Ron and his work a second chance (or at least let him be).
Good luck with getting the support that you need for your child.
Mary
Thanks for your message, Mary! I’m glad you put in the effort to write to me. I don’t know if you will ever come back here to read this, but here goes.
Did you read my other post where I unpack a bit more just what I thought was wrong with what Ron Laura said and how he said it?
Given that the content of the talks we attended may well have been different, I also felt how inspiring he was. This is what scared me. A lacklustre speaker with dangerous ideas is nothing to be afraid of. Someone who can get people nodding happily in response to ideas that have been proven to be extremely harmful (e.g., the ‘culturally appropriate’ Aboriginal education I referred to) is a real danger.
I’m not saying that he should stop saying what he believes, still less that anyone should try and stop him from saying it. I did a search and couldn’t find any mention of his name in the context of ‘the Emperor has no clothes’. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have written anything. But I didn’t find anything, so I felt it was up to me to provide a smidge of balance.
I don’t think my little blog can do him any harm whatsoever. When our ideas are challenged, we are either driven to improve how we explain them, or we abandon them in favour of better ones.
Again, the talks may have been very different, but I did not detect a great deal of intellectual rigour in the talk I attended. He only tore down what other people had built, he did not give any coherent picture of what he would replace it with. I couldn’t find a logical exposition of his worldview on his website, either, nor in his book ‘The Perils of Progress’. This is another thing that worried me.
If someone want to throw away the one means of knowledge at our disposal, I want to know what they intend to use instead. If they say: ‘I believe in the infallible Qur’an’, fine. If they say: ‘Here, I am following Marx,’ fine. If they say: ‘My philosophy is based on these seven core axioms revealed to me by the Squid God,’ sure, why not. But leaving your own position cloaked in fog puts the other person at an unfair disadvantage.
Do the words "baffle with bulls#*t" ring much truer when talking about Ron Laura.
I have a Masters degree in Exercise Science and have worked all over the globe in professional sport and also competed at a very high level in a strength and power sport and feel that regarding Professor Laura's words on Health and Fitness are just that, words. Professor Laura is somewhat of a running joke in academic circles regarding his philosophies on health and fitness.
Many peer reviewed experts in this field shake their heads in disbelief when hearing of the advice professor Laura gives. I will give him one bit of credit, that is, he is a marketing genius.
No one i have come into contact with in the powerlifting, bodybuilding or the strength community has even heard of Professor Laura, areas in which he claims to have excelled in. Also if Professor Laura is such an expert in this field then why hasn't he published proven research to his claims in peer reviewed journals or spoken at conference's whereby experts in their respective fields gather to exchange ideas and debate current issues? No not Professor Laura he only preaches to the general population whereby he can get away with extravagant words and stories.
Last of all I graduated from the education faculty at the University of Newcastle and can assure you that in the four years I attended Professor Laura did not lecture in the PDHPE or secondary education department the only area I know of that he was involved in was the final year teacher research project whereby he was quite popular amongst the students as he was known to never fail anyone and always give high grades.
People like Professor Laura really upset me because I worked very hard in sport and study to get where I am today and it saddens me that there are some people out there that use technical jargon and marketing brilliance to fool the general population into forfeiting lots of money on schemes and gimmicks.
So Chris don't worry there are many, many people some in very prestigious positions in education and health that feel exactly the same as you.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your response. I was surprised to find your blog still listed.
I think I understand your point of view but at the same time, it seems to me that there is a difference between providing an alternative theoretical perspective (either aggressively or diplomatically) in response to another’s idea and denigrating a man’s character and worth. One is within the bounds of democracy and decency, the other is within the bounds of democracy (and perhaps indecency) and the other is indecent defamation.
I admit I don’t know much, but as far as I know, Ron Laura has not engaged in acts of defamation or aggression. Nevertheless, I take your point that at this stage his theoretical perspective might be destructive rather than constructive (from my very limited experience of one talk). I agree that a constructive approach is the preferable ideal. At the same time, I also wonder if demolition of an existing structure of thought might sometimes be necessary to clear the way before construction of a new approach - possibly not. I think the destructive approach might be a trap of academic culture and, like you, I would advocate a constructive approach ... with acceptance, flexibility of mind and open dialogue with diversity.
Mary
Hi Chris,
I too was at the conference for gifted children.
There were some very interesting speakers there.
I felt they should have allowed more input of parents who actually do have gifted children.
There was one lady there, who to me, was the best speaker and knew exactly how gifted children's minds work.
She obviously was closely involved with them or is.
I do hope we are able to help our gifted children in the future.
This is highly necessary.
As for professor Ronald Laura.
I too was disappointed at his speech.
I stayed to the end of the conference as I thought he would advise us on our gifted children as that is a great worry to a lot of parents.
Our children love science and everything there is to learn about any subject.
I felt highly disappointed by what he had to tell us and even shocked.
And if he attends a conference on gifted children again maybe he should put more effort into backing them up as we are looking for improvement for them,and not for them to be held back just in case they might become scientists or such.
And by the way I did not notice if he was wearing a suit or not I was waiting for him to say something more about gifted children.
That is why we were there.
And we did not get to meet him.
Having profoundly gifted children myself. I thought some of the speakers would have liked to have been interested in how we cope with gifted students. So therefore would gain more knowledge on how to help them.
By the way I am glad there is still freedom of speech in this country and no one is classed above such.
And by the way this is not about personality .
It is about creating an acceptance of our gifted children into our lives and making life easier for them in the community as a whole and creating a place suitable for them to go so they can meet their own. And feel they are not so isolated.
I am a grandmother of gifted grand children and a gifted child.
Hope for the gifted and profoundly gifted.???
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