Serendipity Again

Viewed from Bruntsfield Links there is something Central Park about the Meadows, looking towards the Quartermile re-development of the old Royal Infirmary site, especially when the evening sun picks out the glass tops of the new buildings. Seeig it was another lovely evening I took the camera out with me to look for a blip, and my wanderings took me up to Bruntsfield. I had just crossed Whitehouse Loan and was considering what shot to take when I saw a familiar figure walking towards me - M, one of my tutors from college (seems it is the weekend for meeting old tutors!) He had news - he is leaving the college very shortly which seems a real shame as he always provided a different slant to things. Turns out that the big merger that formed Edinburgh College out of Stevenson, Telford and Jewel & Esk has led to the demise of senior lecturer positions. He could have applied for a management role but that would mean no teaching and so he is leaving. Once again, the progression for skilled practitioners ultimately leads them away from the thing they do best, if they want to 'get on' and achieve the financial rewards that their length of service merits.
Much like my experience of IT in the bank, where the technical people were always relatively poorly rewarded, at least the in-house ones. (External contract expertise always seemed able to name its price.) Within the organisation however it seemed impossible to countenance the idea that a manager could manage (and I say that very specifically - manage, not lead) people that were more highly paid than them. As a result there was no real career path for technical experts while a conveyor belt of middle managers moved onwards and upwards. And I hear the same from school teachers. Great classroom teachers have to leave the classroom to further their careers and improve their pay. Why do we do this in so many organisations?
There were some students that couldn't see the value to M's classes - it seemed too 'left field' to them, and not strictly necessary to tick the educational boxes that the coursework required of us. However for me, and several of my good friends on the course, his was the sort of teaching that encourages you to find out stuff just because you want to know about it, not because there will be a question on it in an exam. To the number-crunchers that run so much of edu-biz these days something of a luxury, but the way to create the sort of enquiring minds that can make real discoveries and create the unexpected. I told M about one of my Uni lecturers at Durham whose lectures always rattled along with ideas and anecdotes. He told people not to take notes but to listen and think, but you could see some people desperately scribbling as they tried to keep up. It was much better to listen, to follow the train of thought running through the hour and then think about it and discuss it afterwards over a coffee. Much like many of M's classes, that led to long discussions in the Stevenson canteen.
M was actually walking home from Leith as part of his training for walking the West Highland Way. Something linked to the Ragged University I think he said - I'll need to look that up. But we discussed the value of walking as a useful activity to give space for thought and coming up with ideas. Something I was very familiar when I used to walk to work every day - it was always a good way to come up with ideas and work things out.
Hopefully we can meet up properly soon to continue the discussion. For me, M is inextricably linked to 'the day I was inspired to blip' as it started with a great post-breakfast chat in the hotel with him and several of my fellow students. And at the end of the day, as P and I finished our evening meal in the excellent cafe-restaurant on the corner of the Place des Vosges, we saw him, and A and K walking past. As I said then, it gave me a strong feeling of belonging.
And after we parted and I started to think about this picture, I also thought once again about the Paris book, still mostly ideas and rough notes. I need to get it done!