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I’m going to avoid the very tantalizing threads here and respond to the blog post. My writing has been mostly stopped lately due to an attempt to capture too many threads. Maybe tonight i can get to a blogpost to try and capture some of the lines of flight coming out of this excellent thread of comments 🙂

I use the word community to signal caring. It’s as simple as that. I wont say that the word ‘means’ that, that would be a fairly serious epistemic departure for me. I get my feelings about community through Nancy White, who, probably, has had that conversation with Howard at some point. I’m not sure what it’s antecedents are… but it rings perfectly clear to me.

Meh. I can’t resist. The covenant idea brings me back to a failed metaphor i tried to use a few years ago… the idea of guild. I meant it as a bridging concept to describe the space of responsibility brought on by more formal structures. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/01/27/community-as-curriculum-vol-2-the-guild-distribute-continuum/

I like covenant and the overt social contract that i feel the word implies.

To Simon’s point… ‘academic’ approaches are, to some degree, methods of validation. They are formulas (incantations you might say) that allow people to speak with confidence on a particular topic. It’s not surprising that those armed with such weaponry, would appear more certain.