In Performance

For some reason best known to themselves, over the last couple of decades and more my various employers have thought fit to send me to all sorts of seminars and the like that I've not been terribly keen to attend. Sadly my instincts have never been proved wrong and sadly I've been repeating the experience today. Happily I was able for a few moments to enjoy one old chap torturing the language to claim that pedagogy was not the same thing as teaching as it meant the 'science' of teaching. He went on to insist that those who tended to frown at this notion (all Brits as far as I could tell) were quite wrong in claiming teaching was merely a craft. He spoke with the assertiveness of those who know deep down they're not exactly on solid ground.

I wondered how he might react to me if I were to share my conviction that teaching is at best a sort of sullen art. And then I had the happy thought that it might best be seen as a particularly dubious form of performance art. So not such a wasted day after all.