Get REAL. Seriously

I usually  spam my classes over break before
we’ve even met under fluorescence to see if I
can help re-set the Environment of Classroom
culture, which we’ve all groan -up in so that it
is transparent and FEELS like  Reality rather
than arbitrary convention  (which is what any
convention is: arbitrary),
 
And I’ve had the presumption  and nerves some
times to frame my prelude as GET REAL—
let’s get real 
 
(Which is NOT the same as KEEPING IT REAL”
true? 2 radically different tasks, agenda, challenge:
to Get Real on the one hand and to Keep IT Real
on the other hand.
 
Get Real, we say. Imagine the implications of that
admonition? We’d have to have a good notion of
what’s un-real in order to be encouraging . reality,
true? Or think we have.
 
When I urge it (let’s get real) to incoming members
of my courses, I am presuming to assume that we
are not real—and could be, and that it would be
desirable to be so. Real.
 
(Forget about Keeping IT Real: that would be a
course of another color, true?)
 
If we Got REAL—it would necessarily be  demoralizing,
true? Disillusioning. Something like exposing the emperor’s
bare butt, or the elephant in the room, or the culture in the cave,
custom,  convention, closet—which if exposed blows the whistle
on the conspiracy, yes? Apocalypse now! A revelation which
reveals, unveils  what was  covered-up  
 
What’s covered up and over in
institutionalized credit-driven
grade-gun regulating industrial
education?    That it’s credit-
driven and grade-gun regulated
and not not not  for the love-of-
learning, & play of mind, cerebral
and affective Gold’s gym

[in  Europe,  school (L. schola: “leisure”)
is  called “gymnasium::  which  means
“naked training.”
 
Get Real  But got to factor-in demoralization,
true? That right there is what makes getting
real almost impossible. Let alone keeping
IT real.

Need we argue?  I wish we could.  Put IT
in play. Seriously.