Many of my students come to classes wondering why in the world they should spend their time studying ideas--especially OLD ideas. So I have to get them thinking about why ideas just might be important. And what ideas are.
Here's how I start:
* When I talk about important ideas, I mean general statements about reality that are influential—they move people and convince them and activate them—but that are not based on historical or empirical fact. In many cases, important ideas are about the way things SHOULD be rather than the way they HAVE BEEN or ARE. For example, “All men are created equal” is an important idea. Why? Because it has shaped national policy, workplace regulations, and the conditions of life for Americans for the past 200 years. That is pretty important. But there was no basis in fact for the idea offered in our Declaration of Independence. Historically speaking, there was no reason to make such a claim. So an idea became a reality (or edged closer to becoming a reality) in America--and elsewhere.
* Many important ideas were “born” in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many others simply developed into their mature forms.
* The women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, the battle between supporters of evolution and creationism, the development of modern media and industry, and the structure of our economy are all founded on what happened since 1750 or so. These things are all built on ideas about human nature, and where we came from, and how market relations should be managed.
I then ask students to come up with an important idea—for good or ill—that is still relevant to us today. Here are some that we talk about:
More is better.
Bigger is better.
Money is the highest value in the “real world.”
College will get you a job.
Poetry is boring and old-fashioned.
Jews are ruining the German economy. . .
Hopefully, by the time we finish this discussion, students are beginning to see that ideas are important, and that literature is a force that creates and re-shapes ideas.
When we read, we experience something. Experiences and ideas are always related. We experience things, and then we generalize ideas from that experience. In middle school, for instance, many of us have enough data to determine that school is essentially boring and pointless. That is an idea that comes from the facts of daily school life. But we can also have an idea that schools should be better than they are. And we can change things based on that idea. Literature is one place where we play with ideas—possiblities—ways of seeing the world. I try to get students to look at it that way.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Changing our minds . . .
In order to start changing our habits of mind, and our minds, we must remove ourselves from some of the “gross and violent stimulants” (Wordsworth, "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads) that surround us. Begin with a retreat. Set aside a long weekend for the work. And then turn off the Internet, the TV, and the iPods. Start the day by watching the sun rise. Plan activities that are family-oriented if your family is willing. Clear the slate so your mind is not full of everything that “must be done.” Play cards. Read. And write down the things that you enjoy most in your life. Reflect on those things. What is it that makes them enjoyable? How can you make other activities in your life similarly enjoyable?
The principle of substitution. Like people who are quitting smoking, an old habit cannot simply be dropped. New habits must take the place of old ones. So think about ways of changing your practices. What will be the gum you chew? Or the toothpicks you chew? Or the favorite foods you eat? Find something that will give you a different pleasure, and use it as a starting point for new habits. Best to choose several alternatives so that you don’t get too fixated on one. Otherwise you will find yourself with yet another hard habit to break.
First, consider the issue of habit. Habit is important. It enables us to think less and to get more done. Without it, we would have to start over from scratch every time we did anything. Imagine a world in which you had to re-learn the alphabet every day. Or learn how to walk again every day. Impossible. Learning is partly about moving new skills and ideas from the novel to the habitual. Once we have accepted a practice as good, or satisfying, it has a tendency to become habitual very quickly. The more pleasurable the practice, the deeper the “groove” of the habit produced. Thus we are rightly concerned as a culture about sexuality, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol. These things produce intense pleasure at levels that are very persuasive. Sometimes they are very hard to manage for that reason.
We love these things, and we fear them, because of their power to alter our perception of time and engagement with the world. When we are sexually aroused, we become totally focused on the moment of pleasure at hand. When we are drinking, we feel relaxed, untroubled by the busy and frantic worlds of work and family responsibility within which we usually find ourselves. When we smoke, we feel alert, empowered, more intensely in the moment. All of these pleasures involve a sense of immersion and connection that we often lose in the repetitive and form-filled world of work. Boredom is our greatest enemy; but boredom is a choice, not a necessity.
We need to substitute other forms of immersion for the immersion of drugs, alcohol, and sex—or to increase our immersion time. Being completely involved in ANYTHING is satisfying. We have all felt the power of reading a great book, or watching a great movie, or watching a game, or playing a sport, or . . . We are most happy, according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, when we are completely involved in an activity that challenges us but also rewards our skills. So it makes sense that we should work at creating immersion opportunities. E.F. Schumacher said that we should focus on creating Good Work, rather than focusing on “productivity” or “growth.” And he was so right.
As a culture, however, we have trained ourselves into believing that immersion activities are separate from work, separate from family life, and separate from “productivity” on the whole. Hmmm. We have generated a model in which we work only 30-35 hours a week and dedicate the rest of our time to a highly troubled “leisure” that remains completely unsatisfying to most of us. “Leisure” is not really “leisure” when it is full of second jobs, running errands, raising children, and so on. It is, in fact, more work. But the fact is, work can be satisfying when we participate fully and do it well. QUALITY is the key. Most people find mediocrity completely unsatisfying, yet they live with it and even become it in order to “save time” and to have more leisure. Mediocrity is the result of non-immersion practice. When you are thinking about one thing and doing another, you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing something in a hurry in order to “get finished,” you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing a job you hate in the name of making money only, you are committing mediocrity. So most of us find ourselves committing mediocrity on a daily basis. And it doesn’t feel good, does it?
Eventually we start to believe that mediocrity, and non-immersive experience, is the primary mode of life. We are hungry for immersion and at-one-ness with our work, with our friends, and with our spouses. But we feel that it cannot be found in everyday activities which reek of mediocrity. So we begin to try other routes—New Age junk, drugs, alcohol, vacations, various “escapes” from mediocrity. But since they are not authentic immersion experiences that cultivate our learning, our skills, and our sense of who we are, they are simply distractions from the ongoing problem of being detached from the world that we live in. This is what we call “escapism,” and it is rampant in today’s world. If the world of work and the world of social values are so unsatisfying, why do we tolerate them? Because we must? Or because we don’t know any better? These are questions worth asking.
Csikszentmihalyi offers several stories of factory workers, office workers, and “line workers” who found what he calls “flow” in their work. I would say that “flow” begins with openness and a willingness to try things—to learn. It is sustained by patience and a patient commitment to getting better at anything we do. It ends with mastery and control. Once a job is routine, and there is nothing new to be learned in that job for a person, that person will rapidly lose the sense of “flow” or complete immersion in the task at hand. And that is the beginning of alienation. But any job can produce flow for a time, and many jobs can produce flow indefinitely (people-oriented jobs are often this way—new people, new situations every day). So the conditions under which we labor, while they are often not ideal for flow and immersion, do not make flow and immersion impossible. What makes it impossible is the state of our own minds as we face the conditions of our lives.
The principle of substitution. Like people who are quitting smoking, an old habit cannot simply be dropped. New habits must take the place of old ones. So think about ways of changing your practices. What will be the gum you chew? Or the toothpicks you chew? Or the favorite foods you eat? Find something that will give you a different pleasure, and use it as a starting point for new habits. Best to choose several alternatives so that you don’t get too fixated on one. Otherwise you will find yourself with yet another hard habit to break.
First, consider the issue of habit. Habit is important. It enables us to think less and to get more done. Without it, we would have to start over from scratch every time we did anything. Imagine a world in which you had to re-learn the alphabet every day. Or learn how to walk again every day. Impossible. Learning is partly about moving new skills and ideas from the novel to the habitual. Once we have accepted a practice as good, or satisfying, it has a tendency to become habitual very quickly. The more pleasurable the practice, the deeper the “groove” of the habit produced. Thus we are rightly concerned as a culture about sexuality, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol. These things produce intense pleasure at levels that are very persuasive. Sometimes they are very hard to manage for that reason.
We love these things, and we fear them, because of their power to alter our perception of time and engagement with the world. When we are sexually aroused, we become totally focused on the moment of pleasure at hand. When we are drinking, we feel relaxed, untroubled by the busy and frantic worlds of work and family responsibility within which we usually find ourselves. When we smoke, we feel alert, empowered, more intensely in the moment. All of these pleasures involve a sense of immersion and connection that we often lose in the repetitive and form-filled world of work. Boredom is our greatest enemy; but boredom is a choice, not a necessity.
We need to substitute other forms of immersion for the immersion of drugs, alcohol, and sex—or to increase our immersion time. Being completely involved in ANYTHING is satisfying. We have all felt the power of reading a great book, or watching a great movie, or watching a game, or playing a sport, or . . . We are most happy, according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, when we are completely involved in an activity that challenges us but also rewards our skills. So it makes sense that we should work at creating immersion opportunities. E.F. Schumacher said that we should focus on creating Good Work, rather than focusing on “productivity” or “growth.” And he was so right.
As a culture, however, we have trained ourselves into believing that immersion activities are separate from work, separate from family life, and separate from “productivity” on the whole. Hmmm. We have generated a model in which we work only 30-35 hours a week and dedicate the rest of our time to a highly troubled “leisure” that remains completely unsatisfying to most of us. “Leisure” is not really “leisure” when it is full of second jobs, running errands, raising children, and so on. It is, in fact, more work. But the fact is, work can be satisfying when we participate fully and do it well. QUALITY is the key. Most people find mediocrity completely unsatisfying, yet they live with it and even become it in order to “save time” and to have more leisure. Mediocrity is the result of non-immersion practice. When you are thinking about one thing and doing another, you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing something in a hurry in order to “get finished,” you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing a job you hate in the name of making money only, you are committing mediocrity. So most of us find ourselves committing mediocrity on a daily basis. And it doesn’t feel good, does it?
Eventually we start to believe that mediocrity, and non-immersive experience, is the primary mode of life. We are hungry for immersion and at-one-ness with our work, with our friends, and with our spouses. But we feel that it cannot be found in everyday activities which reek of mediocrity. So we begin to try other routes—New Age junk, drugs, alcohol, vacations, various “escapes” from mediocrity. But since they are not authentic immersion experiences that cultivate our learning, our skills, and our sense of who we are, they are simply distractions from the ongoing problem of being detached from the world that we live in. This is what we call “escapism,” and it is rampant in today’s world. If the world of work and the world of social values are so unsatisfying, why do we tolerate them? Because we must? Or because we don’t know any better? These are questions worth asking.
Csikszentmihalyi offers several stories of factory workers, office workers, and “line workers” who found what he calls “flow” in their work. I would say that “flow” begins with openness and a willingness to try things—to learn. It is sustained by patience and a patient commitment to getting better at anything we do. It ends with mastery and control. Once a job is routine, and there is nothing new to be learned in that job for a person, that person will rapidly lose the sense of “flow” or complete immersion in the task at hand. And that is the beginning of alienation. But any job can produce flow for a time, and many jobs can produce flow indefinitely (people-oriented jobs are often this way—new people, new situations every day). So the conditions under which we labor, while they are often not ideal for flow and immersion, do not make flow and immersion impossible. What makes it impossible is the state of our own minds as we face the conditions of our lives.
Expanding Mind
We need a new mode of analyzing natural systems: matter and energy are only part of the picture. Information "flows" are critical as well. How can you analyze a natural system in time without attending to the flow of representation and interpretation that makes change possible? DNA communicates pattern; animal behaviors communicate threat, sexual readiness, friendliness, awareness of predators, and so on. How can we imagine that we understand a natural system without attending to the complex of codes and responses that are part and parcel of it?
At a higher level of abstraction, we have in the human world the use of imagined behaviors and gestures. It is “as if” something were said or done when we read it in a book or an article. Extended stories and arguments become part of the world of possibilities for interpretation and reaction.
Mindlike activity, according to Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature), starts with something as simple as a thermostat-driven heating system. The thermostat triggers the furnace, which heats the house until the thermostat triggers the stop mechanism when the temperature reaches a certain level. But this system really does not involve information only. A physical “key” is usually used as the trigger, which means that the system can be described in terms of exchanges of matter and energy only. Or does it? How about chemical “signals” in the brain? They act physically or energetically, but do they not also act symbolically (standing for something—a state, a condition external to themselves)?
Genome and epigenome—code and activation of code. Represented worlds and actualized worlds. Habit and disruption of habit. At all levels, entropy and order work together to create possibility. Randomness doesn’t really exist. Or does it?
At a higher level of abstraction, we have in the human world the use of imagined behaviors and gestures. It is “as if” something were said or done when we read it in a book or an article. Extended stories and arguments become part of the world of possibilities for interpretation and reaction.
Mindlike activity, according to Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature), starts with something as simple as a thermostat-driven heating system. The thermostat triggers the furnace, which heats the house until the thermostat triggers the stop mechanism when the temperature reaches a certain level. But this system really does not involve information only. A physical “key” is usually used as the trigger, which means that the system can be described in terms of exchanges of matter and energy only. Or does it? How about chemical “signals” in the brain? They act physically or energetically, but do they not also act symbolically (standing for something—a state, a condition external to themselves)?
Genome and epigenome—code and activation of code. Represented worlds and actualized worlds. Habit and disruption of habit. At all levels, entropy and order work together to create possibility. Randomness doesn’t really exist. Or does it?
Saturday, May 9, 2009
On (not) giving up . . .
How many of us have watched a great athlete, or team, find a way to "hold on" despite being way behind, or tired beyond endurance, or divided? It's easy to see the power of "finishing," but not so easy to attain it. How does a 60 year old man dig deep enough to face the hill in the final miles of the Boston Marathon? What do we mean when we say "dig deep"? Why does it move us so profoundly to witness it when it happens?
The answers to these questions are significant in our efforts to understand human character and identity. The essential human act is creativity--the act of making a self out of the chaos of our perceptions. We generate integrity through coherent actions and habits. We create wholeness and purpose and meaning with disciplined practice. Thus in music and sports, my favorite analogs for these life processes, we become greater, more complex, and more capable than we were. Attention, and will, and patience are essential to this work.
Great moments in sports are not trivial. Our hunger for such moments is an indication that they reveal something important about ourselves. And so do great moments of drama in movies, and great moments of accomplishment in the arts, and great moments of success in business or in everyday life. Some of the most moving moments in all these arenas involve the engagement of minds and bodies in what seem to be "losing battles." We love the "underdog," and are delighted when he or she finds a way to come back, to win--or even simply to make the other team struggle a bit more. We love to hear the old refrain "they're not giving up!"
What does it mean to "give up"? Why do we expect it even as we wish it away? Why are we amazed and satisfied when it does not happen? More on this topic soon. . .
The answers to these questions are significant in our efforts to understand human character and identity. The essential human act is creativity--the act of making a self out of the chaos of our perceptions. We generate integrity through coherent actions and habits. We create wholeness and purpose and meaning with disciplined practice. Thus in music and sports, my favorite analogs for these life processes, we become greater, more complex, and more capable than we were. Attention, and will, and patience are essential to this work.
Great moments in sports are not trivial. Our hunger for such moments is an indication that they reveal something important about ourselves. And so do great moments of drama in movies, and great moments of accomplishment in the arts, and great moments of success in business or in everyday life. Some of the most moving moments in all these arenas involve the engagement of minds and bodies in what seem to be "losing battles." We love the "underdog," and are delighted when he or she finds a way to come back, to win--or even simply to make the other team struggle a bit more. We love to hear the old refrain "they're not giving up!"
What does it mean to "give up"? Why do we expect it even as we wish it away? Why are we amazed and satisfied when it does not happen? More on this topic soon. . .
Friday, May 8, 2009
Extending our pleasures
Interpretation involves experiencing well. In fact, one could say that good interpretation requires perceptual acuity and quality of experience. If one reads a poem like a newspaper, one’s experience of that poem is impoverished. If one’s experience of a poem is impoverished or minimal, one’s interpretation of that poem will likewise be impoverished or minimal. The “capability of mind” that Wordsworth seeks to stimulate and increase in his work is precisely the ability of the mind to engage in experience fully and to be pleased more broadly and readily with what it finds there.
So to focus on the experience of the text is central to doing good interpretation of texts. Without attending to the one, how can we presume to do the other?
With that said, how do we get at the experience of the text? This is the difficulty of the transactional view of Louise Rosenblatt: we have the text, and we have ourselves. But can we access the poem itself? It is the same problem central to reality and representations of it. We have language, we have our own experiences, but we don’t have access to broader truths or meanings until we construct them. Rhetoric is at the core of it all.
Wordsworth calls the core issue “the language of the sense.” But what is it? How do we access it? How does it become sensible to us? Clearly it is important, and prior to conceptual language. But how does it happen?
Perception is neuronal mapping of sensory inputs. Data is selected, screened, assembled, and represented to us for decision-making. Pleasurable inputs are strengthened by feedback and sought again and again. Painful inputs are only strengthened by feedback when reflection indicates long-term pleasures beyond and causally related to the painful inputs. The excitement of the brain can be pleasurable, but over-stimulation crosses a threshold into pain at some point. I’m not sure that pleasure and pain can be mapped entirely as matters of degree (as David Hartley tried to do in his Observations on Man (1749)). They may be related to different centers of activity too—like taste sensors on the tongue.
Wordsworth wrote that “the mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants.” And he asserted that the job of poetry was to “increase this capability” in the reader. This is where neuronal changes come in. How does one learn to feel a rush of pleasure when reading a poem or playing a word game? Is such a pleasure “automatic” or learned? How does one learn to experience pleasure in a good equation? A well-drawn diagram? A diving catch on a baseball field? What brings us back to the aesthetically-pleasing? To what Robert Pirsig (in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) called QUALITY?
Education should partly be about the process of refining and extending the range of pleasures that we can experience. We should be capable of being pleased by word-play, by stories of the past, by dreams of the future, by the worlds of “as if” and “ought to be.” If we are not, our experience will surely be impoverished. And our interpretations of “reality” (and the worldview we assemble from them) will surely follow suit.
Any educational situation that ignores pleasure and quality, and sacrifices them (in the literal meaning of the word) in the name of “discipline” or quantities, is a failure. The Puritan strain in our educational system asserts that play and work never join forces, that pleasure is not part of learning, and that “discipline” means categories and dogged repetition of a limited repertoire of activities. Ouch. How wrong can this be?
Why do we have an educational curriculum that denies pleasure, play, and open making of meaning? Well, it comes from the “Western Tradition” that academics have been so proud of for so darned long: concepts privileged over experiences, objectivity favored over subjectivity, mastery favored over inquiry, control favored over spontaneity. All of this is dangerous and damaging to the human mind. In fact, TV and the Internet and drugs and alcohol and a host of other social innovations have been efforts to bring play and un-directed experience and spontaneity and subjectivity back into our culture. But they bring them in the back door and do not integrate them into our way of understanding ourselves.
In the name of authority and control, we have created educational and business structures based on yes/no and either/or thinking. We have followed the lead of our computers. But rhetoric is central to learning, thinking, and relating to other complex creatures, and we cannot neglect it. Representation, metarepresentation, interpretation, attention, and other factors come into play. The answer to many questions remains “mu”—neither yes nor no—for a long time. And that is good! To jump to conclusions is one of the fatal flaws of human cognition. Better to hold information with a metarepresentational tag (as Lisa Zunshine and others describe it). So and so said this, or I read this in such and such a newspaper, or . . . in the world of rhetoric, judgments are always contingent. But that does not stop us from making choices and acting. Our best judgment guides us, and that must be (adaptively speaking) good enough. Can I jump far enough to avoid falling on that ice spot? Did my friend give me the best instructions for getting to his house? Should I take the job offer I just received, or stick with a sure thing that I’ve already got? Both/And thinking always comes into play.
The university, and public education in the U.S., were built on principles that no longer hold. Education in medieval times centered on cultural memory. Monks copied manuscripts, storing and transmitting the written word and thought from generation to generation. The scale of human thinking was limited by the small scope of both thinkers and their influence on readers. The corpus of knowledge was small, relatively speaking, and a life’s work could result in complete mastery of major subject areas. One could, truly, know the best that had been said and written. Knowledge was accumulative, centered on memorization and identification. Expertise was mastery of a body of texts and ideas. Ph.D. programs and teacher prep programs remain enmeshed in the assumptions of this medieval understanding of knowledge
It is time for a change of direction. I'd love to hear comments on this.
So to focus on the experience of the text is central to doing good interpretation of texts. Without attending to the one, how can we presume to do the other?
With that said, how do we get at the experience of the text? This is the difficulty of the transactional view of Louise Rosenblatt: we have the text, and we have ourselves. But can we access the poem itself? It is the same problem central to reality and representations of it. We have language, we have our own experiences, but we don’t have access to broader truths or meanings until we construct them. Rhetoric is at the core of it all.
Wordsworth calls the core issue “the language of the sense.” But what is it? How do we access it? How does it become sensible to us? Clearly it is important, and prior to conceptual language. But how does it happen?
Perception is neuronal mapping of sensory inputs. Data is selected, screened, assembled, and represented to us for decision-making. Pleasurable inputs are strengthened by feedback and sought again and again. Painful inputs are only strengthened by feedback when reflection indicates long-term pleasures beyond and causally related to the painful inputs. The excitement of the brain can be pleasurable, but over-stimulation crosses a threshold into pain at some point. I’m not sure that pleasure and pain can be mapped entirely as matters of degree (as David Hartley tried to do in his Observations on Man (1749)). They may be related to different centers of activity too—like taste sensors on the tongue.
Wordsworth wrote that “the mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants.” And he asserted that the job of poetry was to “increase this capability” in the reader. This is where neuronal changes come in. How does one learn to feel a rush of pleasure when reading a poem or playing a word game? Is such a pleasure “automatic” or learned? How does one learn to experience pleasure in a good equation? A well-drawn diagram? A diving catch on a baseball field? What brings us back to the aesthetically-pleasing? To what Robert Pirsig (in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) called QUALITY?
Education should partly be about the process of refining and extending the range of pleasures that we can experience. We should be capable of being pleased by word-play, by stories of the past, by dreams of the future, by the worlds of “as if” and “ought to be.” If we are not, our experience will surely be impoverished. And our interpretations of “reality” (and the worldview we assemble from them) will surely follow suit.
Any educational situation that ignores pleasure and quality, and sacrifices them (in the literal meaning of the word) in the name of “discipline” or quantities, is a failure. The Puritan strain in our educational system asserts that play and work never join forces, that pleasure is not part of learning, and that “discipline” means categories and dogged repetition of a limited repertoire of activities. Ouch. How wrong can this be?
Why do we have an educational curriculum that denies pleasure, play, and open making of meaning? Well, it comes from the “Western Tradition” that academics have been so proud of for so darned long: concepts privileged over experiences, objectivity favored over subjectivity, mastery favored over inquiry, control favored over spontaneity. All of this is dangerous and damaging to the human mind. In fact, TV and the Internet and drugs and alcohol and a host of other social innovations have been efforts to bring play and un-directed experience and spontaneity and subjectivity back into our culture. But they bring them in the back door and do not integrate them into our way of understanding ourselves.
In the name of authority and control, we have created educational and business structures based on yes/no and either/or thinking. We have followed the lead of our computers. But rhetoric is central to learning, thinking, and relating to other complex creatures, and we cannot neglect it. Representation, metarepresentation, interpretation, attention, and other factors come into play. The answer to many questions remains “mu”—neither yes nor no—for a long time. And that is good! To jump to conclusions is one of the fatal flaws of human cognition. Better to hold information with a metarepresentational tag (as Lisa Zunshine and others describe it). So and so said this, or I read this in such and such a newspaper, or . . . in the world of rhetoric, judgments are always contingent. But that does not stop us from making choices and acting. Our best judgment guides us, and that must be (adaptively speaking) good enough. Can I jump far enough to avoid falling on that ice spot? Did my friend give me the best instructions for getting to his house? Should I take the job offer I just received, or stick with a sure thing that I’ve already got? Both/And thinking always comes into play.
The university, and public education in the U.S., were built on principles that no longer hold. Education in medieval times centered on cultural memory. Monks copied manuscripts, storing and transmitting the written word and thought from generation to generation. The scale of human thinking was limited by the small scope of both thinkers and their influence on readers. The corpus of knowledge was small, relatively speaking, and a life’s work could result in complete mastery of major subject areas. One could, truly, know the best that had been said and written. Knowledge was accumulative, centered on memorization and identification. Expertise was mastery of a body of texts and ideas. Ph.D. programs and teacher prep programs remain enmeshed in the assumptions of this medieval understanding of knowledge
It is time for a change of direction. I'd love to hear comments on this.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The Importance of "Making Special"
Ellen Dissanayake, an independent scholar, has written several wonderful books on the central evolutionary role that art plays in human life. Her assertion has been that art, and music, and all the forms of aesthetic expression, are not “added on” to human culture, but are the foundation of human culture. Social relationships, rituals, artistic expression—all are vital to building and maintaining community. She explains art as “making special” in Homo Aestheticus, writing that ceremony, ritual, play, and other social conventions are all focused on engaging, stirring, and maintaining attention by way of special practices—something “extra” that provides pleasure and appeal. That “something extra” can involve style, or rhythm, or repetition, or other kinds of aesthetic patterning.
In a world guided by instrumental reason, ritual and ceremony and art have no place. They are, precisely, something extra(neous). But we don’t live in such a world, nor should we desire to. Reason does not account for feelings, intuitions, values, beliefs, dreams, hopes, love, or death. In short, it is an instrument that operates only within a very limited range. Why do we elevate it to godlike status? Because it offers apparent clarity, simplicity, and lasting order. It eliminates the troubling transiency of life and meaning. It promises knowledge that will never fail us. And it lies to us, and cheats us, and castrates us. Reason makes nothing special—in fact, it insists that everything is “information” of the same type. Reason “processes” reality rather than exploring and engaging it. As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “It was reason itself that was ugly and there seemed to be no way to get free.”
Yet reason also provides a counterbalance for strong emotions and misdirected energies. It can guide us back when we are wandering the wrong paths. But how do we know which paths are “right”? Can we know? Creativity often leads us into strange places. To create something new we must often threaten or destroy something old. While we can’t trust reason, we can’t dismiss it entirely. Can we?
Well, I suggest that the way to align and balance our energies is through the discipline of “making special.” In other words, I am arguing that art is the fundamental subject in our curriculum, and everything else should follow it. Art as a process cultivates attention, provides a situation which demands focused and ongoing practice, and culminates in “added value” in a variety of ways. By “making special” we train our minds for focused engagement with any work that we may take on, we learn to value every new situation as an opportunity for “magical involvement,” we learn to value our own ability to make a situation or a thing extra-ordinary, and we add beauty and grace to our lives and the lives of others. Pretty important stuff!
So how did we begin to treat art as something extraneous that can be removed from the curriculum without cost to our children? And how do we turn school into a situation in which nothing is “made special” in terms that children can understand and relate to? The answer to these questions is long, but I will provide an abbreviated view here for reference.
Western culture has been founded on a fallacy. That fallacy has several faces, all of them created by Plato. The first face is embodied in the myth of the cave. For Plato, sensory involvement was confusing and inaccurate. Reality existed outside the world of the senses, and we could only understand reality by ignoring the evidence of our sensual involvement with the world. The ideal forms were real, horses and cows and people were not. This idea, interestingly enough, has an element of truth in it. We are indeed patterns of energy in motion. The pattern is more real than the “flesh” itself. The molecules that make us up die and are sloughed off or replaced. The “matter” of which we are made is entirely different after seven years of this process. We are not “matter” but pattern. Even the “matter” that builds us up out of nothing is mostly nothing itself. Most of it is empty space. Atoms are tiny packets of energy vibrating. We are patterns of vibratory energy.
Plato’s mistake was to assert a perfect pattern that existed outside the warp and weave of the sensory world. There is no such pattern. The universe is infinitely creative. Each person, each creature, each society is unique. Everything is evolving, changing, and becoming. The universe is moving with the purpose of an artist towards a coherent, but unforeseen, conclusion. But the sensory is our gateway. We should attend with great vigor to the world of sensation and perception, and cultivate our relationship with it. If we are true to this practice, it will lead us to knowledge. This was Wordsworth’s insight. For him, “the mighty world of eye and ear” was the source of understanding. Shunning it, and removing ourselves from it, we cut ourselves off from nourishment and wither away.
The second face of the Platonic fallacy was this: emotion is flawed and should be held in check. This was the story of the two horses that pull the chariot of the soul. One was white and strong and good, one was black and strong and unwieldy. The black horse leads us astray down corridors of lust and desire and emotional response. The white horse holds back and controls and leads us to angelic righteousness. Blaaauugghhh. What a bunch of simplistic bullshit. Emotions provide our basis for relating to other people. Only by empathy and imagination can we identify our own purposes and plights with those of others. We must literally “feel our way” toward an understanding of those who are different than us. Feelings and beliefs and hopes and dreams provide the desire, the impulse, to do great things. Reason tells us that we are small, and unimportant in the vast scheme of things, and unable to give great gifts to the world. Our feelings, unshaped but powerful, lead us to act in gracious and giving ways. The “little unremembered acts of kindness and of love” are attributable to our feelings and emotions and connection to others. They do not exist in a world in which everyone “holds back” with rational poise and deliberation. Reason dictates that we save ourselves. The unknown forces within us compel us to try to save others, and to save the world. Which is the larger and more meaningful?
The third face of the Platonic fallacy is related to this second face. Here, Plato asserts that rhetoric, or the interested use of language, is like emotion itself. It is to be avoided, shunned, and, if possible, outlawed. This is the impulse that made Plato both fear and trivialize poets so much that he expelled them from the Republic. They speak in persuasive language without absolute knowledge, and so they are likely to mislead us, like the black horse of the soul. Funny. I think we all speak in persuasive language without absolute knowledge. Don’t we?
So the fallacy of Western Culture, and Western educational practice, centers on ideas of “pure knowledge” that transcends the sensory world, “holding back” from sensory and emotional enjoyment, valuing only “fact” and “truth” and refusing to participate in persuasion. In short, we are in the business of cultivating indifference and alienation. Hmmm. Why would we want to do that? Interestingly enough, it was the persuasion of Plato—his stories—that helped get us into this mess. So perhaps he was right about rhetoric. But the goal is not to let bad persuasion to sneak into the world as “truth” like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And only by studying rhetoric, by understanding its workings, and by making good use of it, can we reach that goal.
In the Platonic world, “making special” would be a travesty. It would be ornamental, and probably misleading. The work of the black horse. Rather than using art to elevate and engage, he would insist on flat, simple language employed in dialectic in the name of “Truth.” By telling persuasive stories, he taught us that we should never tell persuasive stories. Weird.
In our world today, however, we have a strange paradox at work. In the domain of education, we teach silence and orderly behavior and facts and information and “objectivity.” In the world of pop culture, in the meantime, suasion rules absolute. Celebrities live fictional lives; advertising encourages us to live fictional lives too. Facts rarely take up residence in the “Now . . . This” world that Neil Postman described in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Everything is appearance. Everything is style (mawkish and superficial, but “style” in the most simplistic sense). Where is the “rigor” of long school days and boring exercises? Where is the “purity” of knowledge being transmitted by teachers? Nowhere. And kids recognize the disconnect and disdain schools for it. Our schools are so far out of touch with reality that it is flabbergasting!
More importantly, however, where is the subversive edge of education that might provide us with the tools to counteract a culture that has gotten out of control? Where is the critical thinking that can only come with perspective and with an awareness that everything’s rhetorical? We live in a world of “symbolic action” (Kenneth Burke’s term for rhetoric), and we must know how to operate in such a world. If we don’t understand the tools of rhetoric, we are going to be manipulated and managed in ways that are completely inappropriate.
Schools need to be “making special” too—and “made special” for our kids. My son has had a lousy experience in school. Teachers that are boring, and disconnected from their students. A curriculum that is moribund, and rarely if ever connected to the life that he expects to lead. A daily structure that is stifling to creativity. Only the disruptive and the subversive teachers and students survive and encourage survival in this educational wasteland. One teacher of World Civilization made a difference for Luke. He was engaged with students from day one, and would not let them avoid interaction or active participation in class. He gave them hands-on learning activities to do and to share with the others in class. He had them perform skits in costume about historical periods. He brought enthusiasm and excitement about learning to the classroom each and every day. And my son, who has struggled mightily in school, missed making an A by a couple of points.
Energize. Engage. Challenge. Connect. Education needs to focus on these things instead of testing results. The results will come when students care enough to learn. BUT IF STUDENTS DON’T CARE, NO LEARNING WILL TAKE PLACE. Education, in a democratic culture, is partly about helping students LEARN TO CARE—to learn to be interested, how to have interests. And we don’t teach this now, except accidentally.
Everything is Artful. And that is good, as long as we help people learn how to cultivate it and live it well. Life is about attention, and practice, and caring, and craft, and sharing what we make and what we are with others. Life is Art. But if we don’t help our kids to live with this awareness, then life becomes artificial, inauthentic, and stifling. Beauty is all around us; it is not limited to the superficial beauty of supermodels or sports cars or Las Vegas casinos. The painted beauty of the whore is all around us too. But we must discern between deeper, richer, more engaging beauties and that painted, cracked “beauty.” And only an education of the mind, an extension and refinement of the sensibilities, can help our kids recognize and value the difference.
No. They recognize and value the difference when they enter the world naked. The problem is different. Life has been cheapened even as it has become suffocatingly expensive. Education has become pointless. Work has become “making money.” Fame has become prostitution. And our kids know shit when they see it. They are contemptuous of our schools, of our values, and of us. And it’s because we have lost our center. We don’t make things anymore, we simply consume them. We are giant mouths gobbling and smacking our giant lips. We are Pac Men swallowing mass-produced dots in the market mazes of our consumer world. Where is the sense of responsibility that comes with making things with our own hands and guaranteeing them as good for our neighbors? Where is the pride of making something that is functional and beautiful and enduring? Where is the patience of the craftsman at work? Where is the joy of completing good work and sharing it with others?
All of these things are still here, still alive among us. But our cultural and educational practices militate against their survival. And that is wrong. Our children should be nurtured and sustained as makers, not as consumers. They should learn early how to “make special,” and they should have ample opportunities to use their precious knowledge. “Making Special” is the same thing as making meaningful. Life requires it. And we must respect it and teach it.
With that in mind, I will offer a different view of the curriculum that I hope will be helpful as a starting point for change. In essence, I think that we should create focus areas as follows: languages and symbolic structures (including mathematics), artistic practices, historical contexts, inquiry, and rhetoric. These areas should all be explored at every stage of education, but obviously they will generally be taught in this order:
I. Languages, symbolic structures, historical contexts, and artistic practices
1. Languages and symbolic structures. First, students should learn at least two languages in elementary school. They should immediately develop the comparative view (of language, of cultural understandings, of “realities”) that comes with understanding two languages. This will sustain and fuel their interest and inquiry in other areas of learning. Second, they should learn math as a language of relationship and not simply as a “skill.” Mathematics is a language for describing numeric relationships, and it is vital to broader understanding. It should be taught that way, and not as a dull, repetitive practice. Children should also be taught the power of symbols early on: flags, advertising jingles, images of beauty and so on. How do these symbols influence us? How do they make us feel? How can we manage and make use of symbols?
2. Historical contexts. Students need to understand early on that everything has a history. Where did this (whatever it is) come from? Why did it turn out the way that it did? Process orientation is built into the understanding of history. We must think of everything as an unfolding process of making meaning (which is artful). Help students to see science, math, philosophy, the human story, as embedded in and emerging from historical circumstances. In elementary school, don’t teach compartmentalized “units” of factual history. Teach history as the drama of human experience, starting with TODAY and working backward. Engage students with the issues we face NOW and then work our way backward into the origins of these issues. This makes history interesting, relevant, and generative as a field of inquiry. They should certainly learn about Western Culture, but they should also learn about Eastern culture. Comparison is the key to broader understanding.
3. Artistic Practices. From the very earliest possible age, students should be engaged in making beautiful things. Every student should have the opportunity to draw, to paint, to sculpt, to work with wood and other materials, and to make music. Acting out and skits should be regular parts of the school regimen. Imagination is fed by the work of making stories come to life. Students should be able to share their work and to present it formally. By doing so, they learn to be responsible and to seek excellence (as well as approval). They should be able to learn patience as they work without distraction EARLY IN THEIR LIVES. Once they have learned the pleasures of slow and deliberate making, they will be able to withstand the temptations of instant gratification more easily and enduringly. Every subject should be taught as an unfolding process of making meaning; the students should learn to see themselves as participants in that amazing process—not simply consumers of it.
Obviously, at the elementary and every level, active participation and DOING are vital to this curricular approach. Teachers are leaders and facilitators—not “subject authorities.” The teacher’s job is to create an environment that is interesting, challenging, and creativity-generating. The student’s job is to try, to participate, and to develop his or her own interests and enthusiasms.
Self-esteem comes from being challenged and rising to the challenge—not from being told “that’s good, honey” when no effort has been put forward. Bullshit remains bullshit, no matter what we try to call it. Real respect for others means demanding that they be and do their best. Coddling is nonsense.
So the “making special” curriculum centers on:
PROCESS
MAKING
HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING
DOING AND EXPLORING
Service to others is also important. Each student will be required to take on a service project each year. In addition, each student will do one full YEAR of service between high school and college. This will provide a labor force for good works that is unbelievable!
Instead of adding these elements on at the college level, they will be “built in” to the ways in which our young people see the world.
We need to refute the Platonic tradition. Truth is not pre-existent. Life is evolving and changing. Learning is central to life, and dynamic. Making and making meaning are the core activities of human beings. Rather than teaching “truths” we need to teach modes of making, modes of inquiring, modes of exploring, modes of interpreting. Everything is process, and performance, and revision. Sharing and connecting is vital to our well-being. So education and our philosophy of teaching and learning must reflect these things.
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