{"id":45,"date":"2010-01-28T20:26:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T20:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2010-01-28T20:26:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T20:26:11","slug":"advantages-of-maintaining-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/advantages-of-maintaining-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Advantages of maintaining ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\t\t\tThere’s a saying that “knowledge is power”. But sometimes ignorance has advantages too.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

I’m a fan of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick<\/a>. It’s a while since I read any of her books, but my quotes collection includes a good crop of thought-provoking ideas from her.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFound myself thinking about this one, from the book Tendencies<\/em><\/a>:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

Knowledge is not itself power, although it is the magnetic field of power. Ignorance and opacity collude or compete with it in mobilizing the flows of energy, desire, goods, persons. If M. Mitterand knows English but Mr. Reagan lacks French, it is the urbane M. Mitterand who must negotiate in an acquired tongue, the ignorant Mr. Reagan who may dilate in his native one.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>Autonomous education in the Badman Review<\/h2>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is reminding me of Mr Badman’s persistent lack of understanding of autonomous education (AE). As we said in AEUK’s submission to the Select Enquiry<\/a>,\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\tThe author’s call for further research into AE sits oddly with his disregard of the available material.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen Mr Badman was meeting people in the process of “researching” his Review, various people told him about AE. And there are plenty of books and research relevant to it<\/a>. But this information received almost no acknowledgement in the Review, and as far as I can tell, had little or no influence on Mr Badman’s own understanding either.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs a result, the Badman Review completely fails to recognise the incompatibility of autonomous education with Mr Badman’s proposed monitoring scheme<\/a>.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf Mr Badman and his team had allowed themselves to learn about AE, it would have been most inconvenient<\/em> for their beliefs about monitoring.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/a>Maths<\/h2>\n

\n\t\t\tI’m thinking too of Mr Badman’s statistics on Child Protection Plans (CPPs). The other week at the Bill Committee, he was still talking about these stats as though they prove something, despite Graham Stuart MP carefully explaining to him back in October that they don’t. \t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe following exchange is taken from Question 85 at the Bill Committee on Tuesday 19 January 2010<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tGraham Stuart MP: I must say that I am rather disappointed that, following our exchange at the Select Committee sitting, you have not reflected in any way on the child protection plan figures …\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGraham Badman: I reflected a great deal on our exchange of views, I promise you. I did go back and look at the figures and I came up with exactly the same conclusion.\n\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\t\t\tThat session also produced this little gem:\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tGraham Badman: I fear we are in danger of going round in the same circle. I am afraid I fundamentally disagree with you. You think I am wrong; I think you are wrong.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tGraham Stuart: It is maths.\n\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\t\t\t(Hilarious or tragic? You decide.)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI’ve spent a quite preposterously enormous amount of time looking at those CPP statistics, and I assure the reader that they don’t warrant Mr Badman’s faith in them. (Details to follow when I’ve finished writing about it.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tBut if Mr Badman and his team had allowed themselves to learn how statistics actually work, it would have been most inconvenient<\/em> for their ability to convince other people that EHE children were at higher risk. It sounds so much more convincing when you throw in a few numbers!\n\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/a>It’s a human thing<\/h2>\n

\n\t\t\tIt’s a very human thing to find it uncomfortable and unsettling to have your ideas overturned. Even though in principle I’m a great believer in finding out the truth, I’m sure I’ve felt that feeling a few times, and perhaps been somewhat reluctant to consider a new idea because of it. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t(I wouldn’t claim to have done it quite so persistently, and certainly not in the context of being paid thousands of pounds in a professional capacity to report what’s true and known. But, “nothing human being alien to me”, I can empathise with the temptation.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn my family of origin, this kind of behaviour would be satirised with the phrase “I have made up my mind; do not confuse me with the facts<\/strong>” :-)\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tIt can be especially painful for humans to have to “climb down” when they’ve taken a position in public and gone on and on about it. In this respect I have some compassion for Mr Badman, even while feeling cross and impatient with him. I wonder if he does actually know at some level that he’s got some things wrong, and just can’t contemplate the loss of face that would be involved in admitting it. It might not be very popular with the people who hired him, either.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut you see, one of the advantages of maintaining ignorance is that you never have to climb down like that.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a saying that “knowledge is power”. But sometimes ignorance has advantages too.
Featuring a quote from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and a couple of extracts from the Children, Schools and Families Bill Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,28,20,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autonomous-learning","category-ethics","category-non-school-education","category-ontology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}