Panic and Pedagogy

Panic. There seems to be an awful lot of it in the staff rooms of schools these days. Either you’re a teacher panicking about the digital world, or you’re not. Not that panics are new. In the 1950’s people panicked about comic books - comics were destroying the youth. They were banned for a while, censored essentially. Before that radio was destroying youth; then TV, video games, the Internet, social media. Catholics thought the printing press was going to destroy their version of God. Do we really have such little faith in youth? Is media really the great destroyer? Age destroys youth. Most of us are still here. Un-destroyed? by media. Perhaps it’s just change that adults are afraid of. Youth isn’t afraid of change, they don’t have enough context to even sense it. It just is. Like Heraclitus said,“The only thing that is constant is change.” They live in the stream. Adulthood tries to set itself up against the flow. You “settle down”. You become a sort of rock, rather than a leaf. Eventually though it will wear you down. I’m trying to be a cork.