Reductio

I was reviewing my research documents today, in the company of the kind and systematic people at my research institution. That's when one of them, old in years and wise in experience, pointed out that given the documentation I had accumulated, it was quite obvious that some people were 'playing a game of soldiers'.

That's a kind way of putting it. The people I've been working with have been involved with the Ministry of Education at various levels of appraisal, evaluation, policy, and suchlike. They know what constitutes evidence and what doesn't. And they are alternately repulsed and amused by the kind of stuff that passes for legitimation and legitimacy at some educational institutions.

They were particularly entertained by my policy/personnel/programme graph, which charts on the same layout the movement of personnel, the implementation of policy, and the programmes carried out in ostensible support of such policies. One, an educator who is sometimes mistaken for a member of the intelligence services, went so far as to say that the alignment was significantly out of phase in some cases to make the anonymous institution look something like China during the Cultural Revolution, or Stalin's Russia.

Not being an historian myself, I pointed out that while such comparisons were useful as frameworks for comparison, I could hardly be expected to deploy the equivalent of the reductio ad Stalinum while trying to maintain an objective stance on the subject. The quasi-historian who had pointed the resemblances out then laughed and said, "Of course you shouldn't. That can wait till our book next year."

No, I am not one for the drama. I think that anyone who knows me well would be able to sift through every word I have written, whether credited to me or not, and realise that I am a writer of integrity. If the evidence is there, I'll say it. If the evidence is not, I will refrain. And I don't go out of my way to do hatchet jobs, despite the actions of others.