Yes, I also write a lot about those subjects, and not merely because I spend my working hours in those fields. They are now the focus of much attention. Unfortunately much of the attention is distorted by improper framing or worse.
Monday may make things different. Then again it may not. But it is an attempt.
Monday November 22 is the national Day of Blogging for Real Education Reform, about which you can read here. Perhaps you will decide to join the many who will devote themselves to that topic.
Today I want to share some thoughts on education with you. I want to start with some words I recently encountered. They are not mine. They are those of Hannah Arendt.
Let me explain.
Regular readers know that I often write about books on education. I am currently reading a superb book on education by Bill Ayers, who is one of the most thoughtful teachers about education, now retired from U of Illinois Chicago Center. I have never met Bill, although we both were contributors to a volume called the Handbook of Public Pedagogy, for which one of the editors, Brian Schultz, was someone who knew my blogging and for whom Bill had served as a mentor for his dissertation. We have exchanged a very few emails. People I know and respect in education think highly of his work.
Thus when I saw a list of books available for review for Education Review - a journal of book reviews, for whom I had written in the past, I requested the task of reviewing Bill's book. I began reading it yesterday.
Ayers was taught in part by Maxine Greene, who herself was taught by Hannah Arendt. He refers to thought of both, and offers a quote from Arendt which very much grabbed my attention. Here is that quote:
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.
something unforeseen by us - if we can grasp that idea, then our notion of education would be very different than what have been imposing and are imposing upon the young people entrusted to the care of teachers and schools. Learning cannot be merely cramming more and more information in, its success measured by ever increasing numbers of tests with higher stakes for teachers and schools as well as students. There must be time and opportunity for play, for exploration, for failure and the learning therefrom.
whether we love the world enough - I often think that much of what we impose is not from love but from fear.
except for renewal we must find new ways of thinking, of observing, of considering. Yes, that can be scary, because we might not always succeed in our attempts at finding ways of renewal. But we learn from our attempts, unless we are so willfully blind that we only interpret them as reasons not to try anything new, no matter how destructive continuation of our current patterns might be.
Our current patterns - which in this country include unsustainable use of energy and water, abandonment of equity economically and in so many other ways. Or to use a more current example, that the only possible response to threats against our security is to further erode our liberties in the name of security, even as a child can point out that this emperor is naked, that to put all our resources into high-tech methods of prevention will merely cause the threat to migrate to other unprotected avenues.
I am thinking quite a bit about my own teaching. Part of that is a continuation of my encounter with Parker Palmer, with rereading works I knew and encountering others (such as The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Paradox in the Christian Life) that I had not known. It is also a reoccurring part of my understanding of how I must approach teaching - to constantly reflect upon what I am doing and why, to consider its impact upon the students entrusted to my care, not only within my classes but as they carry whatever they may value from what they encounter into the rest of their lives.
Many of the paradigms upon which we as a society have been relying, in politics and government as well as education, are preventing us from the kind of renewal that we need. Certainly those of us towards the political left understand the repetitive mantra of less taxes as the solution to all problems is a failed paradigm, one not based on reality: Americans pay a relatively low percentage of GDP in taxes compared to places like Sweden, for example, and the Swedes get far more for the taxes they pay in things like pensions and health care and other important aspects of living. What we get from our taxes is further diminished by the incredible waste of our military expenditures. And those, about which Eisenhower warned us more than half a century ago, are the product of failed ways of thinking, not merely about strategy and the use of force, but of politics and economics as well. They are bankrupting our present and destroying the future for the child we purport to educate for something better.
We often encounter arguments that people become more conservative as they get older. Certainly we have seen voting from fear among a significant portion of our older electorate. Perhaps that is normal. But does it have to be?
I will be 65 in 6 months and 3 days. I find I am becoming increasing radicalized as I age. I think that is very much because I spend so much of my time with young people. I wonder what we are doing to the world we are leaving them.
Should not we be including them as soon as possible in thinking about how we save and renew the world? Should not our approach to education encourage them to think outside the patterns upon which we have relied which are proving so destructive?
Let me return to Arendt again: nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world
something unforeseen by us - we need new eyes and new ideas. Yes, we want them aware of the heritage we can pass on, if for no other reason than perhaps they can learn from our mistakes. One does not renew the world by remaking it from scratch, one must first see what is to imagine what might be truly possible.
It is Saturday. I have no papers to grade or correct. I have one brief quiz I must commit to paper but which I have already constructed in my mind. I see students for only 2 days before we break for Thanksgiving. My regular students have a review Monday and the quiz Tuesday. My AP students have a guest speaker Tuesday. I have little to do to prepare for school.
Which means I have time to reflect. Which is good. Because teaching should never be automatic or rote. Even the lessons that worked well last year need to be reexamined. Why am I planning to do this lesson with these students now? My answer needs to be something far more than the state or the College Board will test them upon the material. It must be for some larger reason, one that includes them, their hopes and dreams, as well as the hope that I have as a teacher to leave something of value behind when I pass from this world.
The words of Hannah Arendt spoke to me. I decided to share them with you.
Have a nice day.