The difficulties of blogging on education

There is a big drive right now towards improving the RSA's presence in the blogosphere - RSA Projects teams are being encouraged - and supported - to blog on their various areas of expertise. Arts and Ecology have an excellent and busy blog, Design and Society, Design and Behaviour, Prisons and the Social Brain are new and a fascinating insight into the diversity of the projects (and people!) here at the RSA.

There is a big drive right now towards improving the RSA's presence in the blogosphere - RSA Projects teams are being encouraged - and supported - to blog on their various areas of expertise. Arts and Ecology have an excellent and busy blog, Design and Society, Design and Behaviour, Prisons and the Social Brain are new and a fascinating insight into the diversity of the projects (and people!) here at the RSA.

We the Education Team have been blogging for some time now, with varying degrees of success and frequency. However, I've been finding it difficult and our blog account is full of my abandoned, half written blogs. Why?

It's partly because I find it difficult to stick to writing short posts on a single idea and always tend to get distracted and go off on tangents. Like this one.

But it's also because education feels like a particularly contested field - both ideologically and personally - where the stakes are high. All that makes it difficult to write about without being controversial.

We're told that this is OK - that we are blogging as individuals and that the blog is the place for our opinions, thoughts and provocations, rather than meticulously thought out pieces of writing. We have organisational go ahead to say what we think without worrying too much.

However, we also have a responsibility to the reputation of the projects that we run, the partners we work with, and - most importantly - to the schools we work with, their learners and their teachers, whose lives and careers are subject to plenty of scrutiny and critique as it is.

So, can we embrace the open, collaborative, opinion driven climate of the blogosphere without courting damaging controversy? If not then our account is going to remain full of half written pieces that I found the inspiration to draft, but not the courage to post.

But we will try, and all we ask is that those who read these posts take them in a generous, thoughtful spirit and then comment to tell us why we're wrong ;)

- Louise Thomas