When I was studying English, or history, I could curl up in bed with a textbook and feel relaxed and cheerful. It’s never been like that in IET. Apart from the odd easy read – like Howard Rheingold on virtual communities – it all feels like work. Interesting, but work.

I’ve just read Walter Ong’s 1982 book ‘Orality and literacy’ and reclaimed that lost sense of comfort. Yes, there are pages of references and the text swings across 4000 years and several continents. But they’re references I’m happy with. Been there, done that, struggled with that, understood that. I know why Jaynes felt that there was a significant gap between the writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey, how Robinson Crusoe relates to Tom Jones, why Anansi is important, why Ong is wrong in his references to Hebrew and why Sterne’s use of typography was significant.
I think this is why I struggle so much more with the psychological literature. I feel adrift with so few points of reference. Even my points of reference I only know sketchily. No matter how diligently I read the literature of pedagogy and education, my grasp of it never feels more than superficial when compared with my grasp of English literature.