During the #cck08 course there's quite a lot been discussed how connective learning can be utilized in K-12 learning. This area is not very familiar to me. My interests in near future as well relate to business organization training. Today I got a surprising reminder how far one event created by one particular high school teacher can affect.
The Saint Lucy's day approaches. At one school in Sweden the pupils had elected a boy to act as the Saint Lucy (who wears a white dress and a candle crown and spreads peace and joy). The school principal heard of this and absolutely forbid the plan to choose a boy to become the Saint Lucy of the school of the year. This made headlines in Sweden and Finland. The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (Finnish) and Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish) arranged a gallup: Can a male act as the Saint Lucy? Over 14000 people voted and 62,6% said NO.
When reading that today I initially thought NO!! No way can this tradition be violated like that. Immediately though did I recall: When I was going the first year to the senior high scool in Finland - we had a minor Saint Lucy celebration within our class (in Finnish schools there's not that strong tradition as in Sweden and Swedish schools in Finland - to elect the Saint Lucy to represent the whole school in a common celebration). This happened during a Swedish class and was a part of learning the Swedish culture. Our teacher - an older Finnish-Swedish lady - said, without leaving any room for any objections, that this year we'll elect a male Saint Lucy. So we did and a guy called Veikko acted as the Saint Lucy.
This memory very strongly hit against my today's objection to the idea of a male Saint Lucy: I've seen it happen once. It was OK, fun and memorable. So why not?! After some reflection - I've got the opinion that I'm absolutely for protecting the tradition - but if the pupils wanted to experiment something different this year, then WHY NOT! Just go ahead!
It was striking for me to understand that this little event had such a strong effect on my opinions over 20 years later. I got a healthy reminder of how huge effect it has what kind of examples we as adults show to the kids and youth around us. Ability to think, rspond and act in a totally different and unexpected way - which is required by connectivism - can be due only one occasion only once created by one teacher.
(The following picture visualizing my thinkin today belongs to my set: One photo a day. Every day.)
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