IN SEARCH OF ACADEMIC IDENTITY

To entertain a course of study is not so easy an undertaking as it first appears. One is, by law in most countries, required to attend some sort of educational establishment, or, in the absence of a school or similar institution, one is require to receive some sort of tuition which is commensurate with what is considered to be a basic education.

This Basic Education refers to the whole range of educational activities taking place in various settings (formal, non formal and informal), that aim to meet basic learning needs. According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), basic education comprises primary education (first stage of basic education) and lower secondary education (second stage). In countries (developing countries in particular), Basic Education often includes also pre-primary education and/or adult literacy programs. The ISCED for 2011 follows, with Levels 1, 2 and 3, highlighted, as they are the usual legal requirements in most countries.

Level	ISCED 2011	Description
0	Early childhood Education          (01 Early childhood educational development)	Education designed to support early development in preparation for participation in school and society. Programmes designed for children below the age of 3.
0	Early childhood Education         (02 Pre-primary education)	Education designed to support early development in preparation for participation in school and society. Programmes designed for children from age 3 to the start of primary education
1	Primary education	Programmes typically designed to provide students with fundamental skills in reading, writing and mathematics and to establish a solid foundation for learning.
2	Lower secondary education	First stage of secondary education building on primary education, typically with a more subject-oriented curriculum.
3	Upper secondary education	Second/final stage of secondary education preparing for tertiary education and/or providing skills relevant to employment. Usually with an increased range of subject options and streams.
4	Post-secondary non-tertiary education	Programmes providing learning experiences that build on secondary education and prepare for labour market entry and/or tertiary education. The content is broader than secondary but not as complex as tertiary education
5	Short-cycle tertiary education	Short first tertiary programmes that are typically practically-based, occupationally-specific and prepare for labour market entry. These programmes may also provide a pathway to other tertiary programmes.
6	Bachelor or equivalent	Programmes designed to provide intermediate academic and/or professional knowledge, skills and competencies leading to a first tertiary degree or equivalent qualification.
7	Master or equivalent	Programmes designed to provide advanced academic and/or professional knowledge, skills and competencies leading to a second tertiary degree or equivalent qualification.
8	Doctoral or equivalent	Programmes designed primarily to lead to an advanced research qualification, usually concluding with the submission and defence of a substantive dissertation of publishable quality based on original research.

Levels 4 to 6 are now considered to be essential in order to obtain some form of employment. Most people who attain level 3 are between 15 and 18 years of age. The majority of people in this world barely reach level 3.

Levels 4 and 5, are pretty much required to “make a living’ and are very often undertaken, at a later age, by people who missed out on education up to level 3.

Usually one has to have progressed through levels 1-5 in order to move on to levels 6-8. Of those entering level 6 a small, but now growing, percentage move on to level 7. Indeed level 7 is now seen by many, who have undertaken level 6, as an essential. Those who have moved through the levels as some sort of progression have often reached level 8 by the time they are 30 years of age and have established what can only be described as an Academic Identity; although, in many instances there is usually a hiatus between levels 7 and 8, but the ‘student’ has usually remained in academic circles and academic identity is thus acquired. So long as the ‘student’ remains in academic institutions that identity will enfold around him/her.

There is now a new breed of student seeking to acquire an academic identity. The late starter, more often referred to as the mature student, and the retired professional. These are people who have perhaps tired of reading fiction and, for some unfathomable reason begin to seek answers to questions of a more metaphysical nature. They are a growing genus of students who now prowl the libraries and universities round the country. Often they are more elderly than their supervisors.

Still, they have a considerable adjustment to make. Often they come across material which strikes them as something they have thought for some time, but never expressed. Indeed they often come across material they wish they had produced themselves. That is, they get an idea, only to find that the idea has already been well documented and well presented. The parameters of their thinking during their working lives have not truly prepared them for the global contemplations of the academic world. To come up with something new in a world of ever developing and polished ideas is somewhat daunting with a brain that has seen better days. But still they plough and prowl on. Perhaps something will come out of it. An academic identity perhaps?

HOW MANY CAN IDENTIFY WITH THIS?

A foundation to save the word SCHMUCK

NEW YORK--Saying he could no longer stand idly by while a vital part of American culture is lost forever, activist and Broadway producer Mel Brooks has founded a private non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the word "schmuck."

An emotional Brooks stopped short of kvetching at a schmuck fundraiser Monday.

"Schmuck is dying," a sober Brooks said during a 2,000-person rally held in his hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Monday. "For many of us, saying 'schmuck' is a way of life. Yet when I walk down the street and see people behaving in foolish, pathetic, or otherwise schmucky ways, I hear only the words 'prick' and 'douche bag.' I just shake my head and think, 'I don't want to live in a world like this.'"

REFLECTING THE MIRROR STAGE

I had occasion to be reading about Mirror Stage Theory. A reflection proposed by psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacque Lacan.

Lacan

The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside of himself) from the age of about six months. Later research showed that, although children are fascinated with images of themselves and others in mirrors from about that age, they do not begin to recognize that the images in the mirror are reflections of their own bodies until the age of about 15 to 18 months. Of course, the experience is particular to each person.

Initially, Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months, as outlined in his first and only official contribution to larger psychoanalytic theory at the Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Marienbad in 1936. By the early 1950s, Lacan's concept of the mirror stage had evolved: he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "Imaginary order". This evolution in Lacan's thinking becomes clear in his later essay titled "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire."

The mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body image. (Lacan, Some reflections on the Ego, 1953)

On reflection, the longer one ponders the matter of the mirror, the less one sees it as a turning point in mental development. An interesting observation, and one can recall being fascinated by reflections; but a turning point?  Does a child blind from birth, suffer from a lack of mental development by not ‘seeing’ itself in a mirror. Is its identity impaired in some way? 

And while we're at it: