One thing I used to find extremely irritating about working in schools here was that any kind of discussion between teachers regarding the fundamentals of teaching and learning always takes place in an extraordinary, impossible rush such that there's no way in which to develop any kind of coherent ideas of genuine substance. On two separate occasions today questions of profound depth were put to groups of which I was a member, the groups being asked to answer them in five minutes.
I think I now understand why this happens, indeed is bound to happen, given the context in which we work. One key factor is, of course, the sheer manic busy-ness of schools.
Funnily enough I have come to appreciate the strange, at times exhilarating comedy of all this. Once you abandon all hope of any kind of genuine intellectual progress a sombre satisfaction can be salvaged from the brittle shards of thought on offer. Moments of genuine insight rub up against what we might charitably term moments lacking such insight in ways that lead nowhere except to an understanding of why it's sometimes better, like Lear's Fool, just to hold one's peace.
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