A lifetime of homework...

The title of this post sounds a little Sisyphean, doesn't it?  After all everyone dreads homework...don't they?  Perhaps if you are Lisa Simpson maybe you do not, but for most people the idea of homework does conjure up the mental image of a chore.  Something that isn't particularly pleasing, yet we have to do it.  It also seems to be other-regulated.  Homework isn't something you make for yourself (usually), but rather it's something given to you!  I think that the best word that describes homework for me is the Greek word αγγαρεία (agga-rhéa).  In English it translates to chore, but as with many translations there is something lost in the translation.  Αγγαρεία also has the connotation that the task you are given is pointless and lacks pleasure.  So, with this in mind, I was reading Maha's post the other day Academia = Lifetime of homework.

After reading the post I was hit by two thoughts.  The first thought is that we might want to reclaim the word homework to mean something that we enjoy doing.  After all, many of the things that Maha described in her post (things that I do as well at home and during my commutes) are things that I enjoy.  And, when I have downtime in the office I use my office time to undertake those activities as well. For example, Virtually Connecting sessions tend to usually happen when I am in the office.  I do get tired as well, and when I can't read any more, I have my iPad and Nexus read posts to me (thank you Pocket!) so I can keep "reading" and thinking.  Every so often we do need downtime as well (for me it's video games), but unlike regular "αγγαρεία" homework which weighs on you if you don't do it, the reclaimed homework is happy to wait for you to come back to it. After all, it's regulated by you and not some other party

The other thought that came to mind is that while academia is a lifetime of homework, it does not mean that we are the only ones doing homework!  In many cases the things you do outside of the context of work, things that you do for pleasure, are called hobbies.  Hobbies have their own homework as well, but we never really think about it as homework because they are fun.  Everyone is a geek about something, and in order to keep up your knowledge or skill in that something you need to practice (also known in some circles as homework).  I do wonder if because we are working in academia that we are predisposed to think about work outside of work as homework?

Your thoughts?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil...
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the ...
Read more