Wednesday, February 06, 2008 at 9:05 AM -0500 wrote:
>But it never really was *private*. As far as I knew, there was no one
>standing at the gate saying thumbs up or thumbs down to people who wanted
>to
>join. To be sure, it was a *select* group, based on the fact that we all
>self-selected to belong here because of our common interests, but since
>*anyone* could join, it was by no means private.
>
>Is there something I'm missing here?
Hi!
I think for some of us, it felt private, precisely because we knew it was
people who had enough of an interest in independent education who
self-selected into the group and who were willing to take the time to
participate. While we knew in theory that anything we wrote could be
passed on, it felt like a safe space to say what was really on our minds.
You could draw an analogy to opening up our inner selves in conversation,
knowing in theory that anything we say could be remembered and passed on
to others, yet still we talk.
So for me, and I suspect for others, knowing that these postings are now
being blogged is coming as a sort of wake-up call that what has felt like
a safe and private space may not actually be so. Similarly, I know my own
postings became more infrequent, and more carefully filtered, back when I
realized they were all being archived. Yes, it never really has been
completely private, I get that. But perceptions create their own reality,
and for some of us, it is our perceptions that are shifting now, not the
underlying reality. That's nobody's fault, just - well, just another
reality! Am I making sense?
Take care,
Bill Ivey
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
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