I am currently reading a book by Parker Palmer, which while not specifically on education contains some interesting observations thereupon. First published in 1980, The Promise of Paradox: A celebration of the Contradictions in the Christian Life has an introduction by Henri Nouwen, who was a close personal friend of Palmer. In the portions I will share below the fold, among other things you will see reflections on the idea of multiple intelligences 5 years before the publication of Howard Gardner's seminal Frames of Mind, and remarks mindful of Theodore Sizer's Horace's Compromise 4 years before that book's publication.
The book also contains some very interesting observations about community which at some point I also may well share here, as given our penchant for both meta and heated and sometimes divisive rhetoric might be useful for at least some.
But for now, only his remarks about education, to which I now proceed below the fold.
Palmer writes about education from within a lens of a paradox, that of the contrast between scarcity and abundance. I will offer a few selections selections, several relatively short, and the other more extensive.
First the shorter one, from p. 99:
Clearly, education is a boundless adventure of the human spirit, possible in any place under any circumstance, with any material one can imagine. What are the limits of learning or teaching? There are none. Why, then, have we put boundaries around education, called the result "Schools," and made schooling an object of bitter competition? Why have taken what is limitless in human experience and made it scarce, creating a situation in which people's self-esteem, and too often the course of their lives, is determined by the fact that some get more and some get less?
Palmer finds something inherently wrong in how much emphasis we put upon competition in our discussions of schooling. Certainly nowadays most of what drives our public discourse on education is the sense of fear that somehow either our nation is losing competition or that too many of our students and schools are losing competition. As Palmer writes on p. 106, in part of a section called "The Way of Education" from which I will also take the more extended passage,
Nowhere is there a better illustration of how we take abundance and create scarcity, driven by our belief that the best way to determine who gets what, never mind the fact that competition creates abundance for the winners and scarcity for the losers.
He also warns us that the outcome of such an educational system
is medical schools in which cheating is a survival tactic for too many and a medical industry that not only exploits the consumer but falls far short of the quality one might expect in a country as affluent as ours.
I remind you again that the original version of this book was published in 1980.
As to the purpose of education, Palmer resrots on p. 107 to some etymology:
The true calling of the educator is to be a midwife of abundance. The classical definition of education - the Latin educare means to "draw out - gives us the image we need, for the resource education works with is within each person, waiting to be brought forth.
And now, skipping several paragraphs, I will continue beginning on p.107 through the end of the section from which I have been quoting. I hope you find the words I offer from Palmer of use. The only change from the original is that rather than indenting at the start of each paragraph I will skip a line.
The transition from scarcity to abundance nin education is made especially difficult by our obsession with a single form of intelligence: cognitive rationality. Our schools ranks people along this one dimension, thus creating a competitive zero-sum game and the reinforcement of scarcity thinking so injurious to real learning. But some people know best with their logical minds, others with their intuition, and still others with their hands. Some people experience life in signs and symbols; others are more gifted at perceiving color and texture and form. Some learn through contemplation, while others learn largely through action and engagement. why not recognize and cultivate the diverse ways in which people learn and know? Why not turn our schools into places where this great abundance of human intelligences is nurtured and celebrated and used?
That possibility can begin with a single teacher, a teacher willing to turn from the well-mapped highway of competition over scare resources and walk the less charted path of educational abundance. But doing so involves trust that abundance can be found, and trust always entails risk.
The risk in this case begins with the fact the conventional education puts the teacher in command, doling out scarce information that only he or she controls. In teaching for abundance, premised on the assumption that student bring knowledge to class, the teacher loses some come control by sharing power with the students; at times, the class may be teaching the teacher. Under these circumstances, some teachers have difficulty maintaining a sense of identity, having become accustomed to gaining personal identity by depriving students of theirs.
Teaching for abundance also risks meeting with resistance from students. Teachers find this problem especially painful, since they changed their way of teaching "for the students' sake." But conventional education, though it subjugates students, also puts them in a comfortable an protected position where they never need expose what they know or feel but can passively absorb what the teacher hands out. In teaching for abundance, students must come forth, be vulnerable, and respond to others. And that poses a threat that students can resent and resist.
There is risk, too, in the reactions of colleagues toward those who try to teach for abundance. Conditioned to think of education as a competitive scramble for scarce resources, the turn toward abundance can arouse suspicion and distrust. Teachers who abandon the "discipline" of pouring "content" into "empty minds" are suspected of everything from sloth to incompetence. Methods of teaching that make students into teachers and teachers into students are often ridiculed as little more than "rap sessions." It is true that these experimental pedagogies can be less than precise: we have little experience with them, and they students and teachers alike against powerful currents of habit and tradition. But only by risking pedagogical mistakes can we start to grow modes of teaching and learning the allow the abundance of human intelligence to come forth.
All this reminds us that education at its best is an essentially spiritual exercise. It deals with the deepest question of life; it demands risks that require trust; it can evoke the most inward resources of individual and group. The spiritual journey takes us toward an abundance that responds to our deepest needs. Education becomes part of that journey when it rejects the notion that intelligence and its rewards are scarce and embraces the fact that these goods are abundant and available to all.
When I read them, these words spoke to me, powerfully.
Education is a crucial issue in our public and political discourse.
My diaries here on education often draw a significant audience.
I thought these words worth sharing for the consideration of others.
I hope you don't mind.
And even if you do? Perhaps I - or rather Parker Palmer - have at least challenged you to consider a different lens through which to consider the issues of education.
Peace.