"You should have kept the book longer to meditate over..." (Giorgio - Passion, by Stephen Sondheim)

On the tenth birthday of Wikipedia, commentators are remarking upon the way that, despite its flaws, it has democratized knowledge. I've sensed, in the media, a tangible air of celebration and an overriding acknowledgement that Wikipedia has been, and is, a jolly good thing.

Academics too are becoming increasingly interested in the wikipedia phenomenon. Kittur et al. comment that "although Wikipedia was driven by the influence of "elite" users early on, more recently there has been a dramatic shift in workload to the "common" user." If Francis Bacon's famous aphorism "knowledge is power" truly stands, then Wikipedia is surely a concrete site of the way that power is increasingly spreading and shifting away from an elite centre.

Perhaps of more interest is the way that wikipedia symbolises our obsession with being permanently 'plugged-in' to information. As Alain de Botton recently remarked on Radio 4's 'A Point of View', we have a tendency to favour 'consumption' over 'absorption' and 'reflection'. In a restaurant with my family on Saturday evening, I had a television - showing the news - over my left shoulder, and a table of two girls - both with permanently buzzing blackberries - over my right. Information is all around us and we seem to thirst for it. 

It seems I too am guilty of this info-lust. I hate the idea of discarding books, or passing them on to others. I like to keep them, and display them. Ostensibly, so that I can return to them and meditate on their many truths... Perhaps more truthfully, so that I have a sort of visual archive of my remarkable consumption on text-after-text.

In Sondheim's Passion it is the ugly, sickly, outcast 'Fosca' who sings:

 

I do not read to think. I do not read to learn.
I do not read to search for truth.

I read to fly, to skim -
I do not read to swim.

I do not dwell on dreams.

And yet, in this connected world of Wikipedia and smart phones, Fosca's admission does not contribute to the minority status that crystallizes from her physical appearance, to the contrary she describes an increasingly 'normal' condition, and in so-doing, shifts herself closer to the mainstream, not further from it. 

The Monday Before

Tomorrow I go back to school after my christmas break. It'd be untruthful to say I'd made the most of the holiday, and it'd be untruthful to say I was either looking forward to going back, or was ready to go back. Perhaps all three of these things are interconnected to form a sort of matrix of dread. The lack of a truly refreshing holiday stops you wanting to prepare, the lack of preparation makes you feel less ready, the unreadiness prevents you wanting to return. Or perhaps, as one of my colleagues posted on her facebook page, it's the "ridiculous hours, low pay and verbal abuse" that form the real triangle of fear for teachers.

In six or seven weekly cycles my step-father recounts a story. At the end of the frequent breaks that are the bugbear of so many non-teachers, as I moan about my unwillingness to return to the classroom, he will reliably tell me of a 'guy at work' who hates having a week off. "You just get out of your routines", he moans, "and then have to go through the bloody hassle of getting back in to them. Far better just to stay at work." 

I can't say I agree. By the end of a half-term my brain is truly tired, and I genuinely need a break from the sheer break-neck pace of the day-to-day. The energy-sapping-decision making-influencing-disciplining-cajoling-encouraging-laughing-planning-recording-assessing-coffee-drinking-melee that is modern day classroom life. And I didn't even mention teaching itself in that hoi-polloi. 

Don't misunderstand me. I will get to work at 7.30am, I'll have a sense of purpose, I will have exciting, thoughtful lessons ready, the students will get feedback on the work they did last half-term and how to make it better, I'll enjoy seeing my classes, I'll certainly not be bored... but despite all that there is still something missing right now, prior to the event itself. Perhaps I need to be back in it, before I will enjoy it again.

The Monday Before

From here,

seeing Tuesday

is like looking at

the grass outside

through the frosted glass 

in my porch door.

Behind the misty panes

things are smudged past focus.

Glancing,

I see Owen's

green sea

instead of reality.