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This is heavy pull here. The filter/value of keeping deadlines is self-referential. You make the filter because that cog is needed to fit into the larger machinery of the institution. You must have deadlines in order to have order within the term or semester. We wouldn't want to treat others unfairly, unequally (even more filters). Thus the system creates the circular logic that justifies the values of the system. The heavy pull is to dump the trash can that holds the whole mess together and say, "Well...it's a mess. Let's try something else." What you are asking for is the right to be messy. The system struggles against such illegibility. Mightily. So mightily that subversion (one of the tools of messification) is inevitable and iconoclasm becomes a way of life in that system. Or we become 'silent runners'. Does this analysis seem true to what you are saying? I ask in the spirit of interdependence.

"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Fro ego to eco--how else can it be with 7 billion people on the planet. This is not just a stance, it is an imperative.

As a practicing teacher working under the constraints and affordances that make modern pedagogy such an act of hypocrisy, I find that these generic observations are 'unhandy'. In fact, I get visceral with them. I get pissed off and feel a certain amount of 'how dare you'.

This is what I asked about last week, too. What makes learning different from rhizomatic or deep or knowmadic learning. I think the modifiers (deep, rhizomatic, knowmadic) have a purpose. They allow us to filter learning differently very like having a variety of critical stances. It is, however, like the story of the blind men and the elephant. Which description is correct? All of them--in part.

I tried to address this in my blog post this week: http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2014/02/01/hodie-quid-egisti-what-have-ye-done-a-rhizomagic-week-of-blooming-buzzing-confusion/ I don't think I used the word 'uncertainty' once in that post, but the tone is, I think, one of taking that leap.

It is unnatural to leap into the total darkness of the unknown. In fact I think that by definition it is impossible. Instead I think we leap into the partly known. My analogy is the Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone. Some might say that he worked his way into virgin, unknown territory. I would say yes and no. He did blaze trails into places no Euro-American had ever been, but the territory itelf shared lots of known traits with where he had already been. For example, water flows downhill to larger streams. The sun rises in the east. And the thousand other 'knowns' that come from a lifetime of living close to ground. And, of course, he really did blaze the trails he made by walking. He emblazened trees with marks for others to follow. Now that must've been an ego trip and a half! The other half of the analogy is that we too have general knowledge that we take with us into the knowmadic life and the rhizomatic wilderness of learning. We have theoretical knowledge. I would include the whole baggage of ed school in that. But we have to dump most of that when we move into the partly known territory of deep, rhizomatic knowmadicism. You need to travel light when you are blazing the trail. You need the practical stuff in your backpack. All week and every week I will be bringing back news as I light out into the territories. I expect to get well and truly turned around on occasion, but I don't plan on backtracking much except to send back reports. Boone wasn't much good at this part, but Lewis and Clark were, but I daresay I call more on the Kentuckian than I do the Virginian. All I know is that every one who reads this could be my Sacajewia, a real guide to the undiscovered country. Amen.