Sarah’s Blog is about …

This year, Prof Michael Sandal is providing us with a series of lectures he has entitled, “A New Citizenship”. I have listed to the first two with some interest.

His first one is around Markets and Morals and in his second lecture, he discusses Morality in Politics and raises a number of key issues, some of which had synergies for me, yet at the same time held a contradiction. Most of what Sandal had to argue, came down to the basic premise of ‘purpose’. At times where conflict of opinions arise, if the issue can be stripped down to the basic principles of purpose, then a logical way forward can be found. The basis of this argument can be found in Aristotle’s work.

The idea of purpose as being a central component of what we do is no truer than in online learning communities. The very first part of forming such a community, is to define the purpose – what is it the participants wish to do. It is from here that all else follows – and sometimes that means not adopting an online community of learning at all.

However the contradiction came from a question he was asked regarding the use of the internet in helping to move political debate. He suggested that although it provided a route for communication, it could not replace direct personal engagement. This is where he and I would part company – and it seems as I am not alone as Timonthy Garton Ash describes how the, ‘Digital David fights theocratic Goliath” in response to the current non violent reactions which are taking place in Iran, in today’s Guardian.

My experience of working in cutting edge projects over the last 10 years has demonstrated to me that it’s not only possibly to directly engage on a personal level, but that sometimes this engagement can go very deep. Comments such as, “The xxxx needs to fashion a real dialogue with heads and leadership teams. The questions are excellent – probing and full of energy and ideas” and “I really felt that my views were important and that the subsequent changes in policy had arisen after much consultation with a wide range of people…” have not come from people who work alongside each other, but from people who have never met and are engaging in a virtual world to move, in their context, the education debate forward.

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