From the Hinterlands of Loss: “Before you know what kindness really is…..”

Kindness, Care and Love in Education.Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow

“Before you know what kindness really isYou must lose things.” Naomi Shihab Nye.

Lost things….

Typical views from the Western Front?

• Critical voices abound• Performative

demands measure with increasingly invasive indicators.

• Cynicism, nostalgia, fear.

• Unkind, uncaring, unloving

Killing Thinking

“Not only have universities committed themselves to the rule of the bureaucratic agenda, they have allowed themselves to be bought by commerce, industry and the market.” (p.42)

The University in Chains

The rigid ideological, economic and religious chains that are now engulfing higher education so as to eliminate critical thought, [...] represent more than an attack on democracy. (Giroux 1-2)

Crac de chevalier, Syria

“I am beset on everyside.Committed academics to my

RightAnd to my Left.Behind, the grey years of the

profession.Ahead, I hear the helpless cries

of studentsFor more entertainment and

better results.”

(Keith Warnock)

Loss of care; love of the ‘wrong thing’

• Kindness, care and love give way to the project of fitting out universities as places of ‘therapeutic, technocratic, consumer militarism’ (Brueggemann)

What are the effects?

“Under these circumstances, the organization becomes unsafe for everyone in it. Emotional intelligence decreases and organizational emotions, including anger, fear, and loss, are poorly managed or denied.” (Sandra Bloom)

Post traumatic Institutions

“The crisis-driven nature of the hyper-aroused system interferes with organizational learning. When the organization stops learning it becomes increasingly helpless in the face of what appear to be overwhelming and hopelessly incurable problems. “

(Sandra Bloom: The Sanctuary Model)

Damage Control

“Globalisation takes place only in capital and data. All else is damage control.”

(Spivak 2013)

Kindness crawls into the hinterlands

…’

How can we find places from which from which to be restored?

“When where we are is where we are not.”

Al Aqsa, Khan Younis

Off-Grid: learning together

Ideal University?

Healing, music, quiet, sanctuary, art and reading were the heart of the organic ideal campus.

Singing Goodbye.

• Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network: Thinking with the city.

Perpetuating Beauty

“ By perpetuating beauty institutions of education help incite the will toward continual creation”

(On Beauty and Being Just, Scarry: 2003)

Resilient Kindness

• Pedagogies of Indignation• Pedagogies of Creativity:

– Earth, air, fire, water• Pedagogies for Conflict

transformation• Pedagogies for Compassion• Alternative Economics for the

Anthropocene. (Gibson-Graham)

• Aural and Embodied – Poetry, touch and Sound