Front Phrases

6 August 2012 Leave a comment

It isn’t what we say; it’s how we say it. Because language is symbolic, it lends itself to labels and sound bites, bits that represent so much more. Because language is metaphoric, it lends itself to misleading eloquence, phrasing that conjures appealing imagery. Appearance trumps significance almost every time. Most important about what we say is that it sounds good. We must therefore question everything we see and hear. We have iconized words to represent complex and widely varied philosophies or policies. We ride these banner words for reasons only loosely related to those words. We parade verbal icons before movements whose function and purpose are cynically disconnected from the originating reality, and sometimes fairly antithetical to the operation and even existence of institutions to which the words were initially connected, words subsequently employed to leverage change for obscure and sometimes Machiavellian ends.

What do these iconic phrases mean? Here begins the examination of one such verbal icon, Education Reform. A search of book titles related to “education reform” at Barnes and Noble online reveals 32,640 titles. We can only guess what range of thought this encompasses. Even if the ideas enfolded in the pages of these books are repeated on average a thousand times, it chokes thought to accept that the phrase, which drives billions of dollars and millions of votes, can probably be safely construed only to mean ‘changing something that will affect school age children.’ Of course, it can be pretty certain that it will fuel a great deal of media-fanned political heat. In the end, what is likely to get changed is the flow of money, which generally moves away from schools and often into profit margins and dividends.

Look at the words according to Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary (electronic).

Education:

noun :

1 a : the action or process of educating or of being educated; also : a stage of such a process b : the knowledge and development resulting from an educational process <a person of little education>
2 : the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools

Reform:

noun :

1 : amendment of what is defective, vicious, corrupt, or depraved
2 : a removal or correction of an abuse, a wrong, or errors

Let us assume that “the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools,” and “a removal or correction of an abuse, a wrong, or errors,” are pretty good indicators of what is suggested by the Education Reform advocates. At least something about what happens to school aged children is impacted by “methods of teaching.” It is certainly impacted by methods of learning too, but the field of educational psychology seldom enters the Education Reform discourse. The simplified findings of brain research are sometimes forced into that discourse. Unfortunately, modern brain research is more about what happens in the brain when one learns, but not so much about how one learns.

Memorizing Cassius’ appeal to Brutus probably looks the same as memorizing the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence in terms of brain activity. So how do we memorize better? Should we even be memorizing? Is that “learning,” and if not, what is? And what do we memorize? Our definition of education doesn’t touch on the processes or content we teach and learn. We can fault Merriam-Webster for the shortcoming in its definition of education, but how can we change the rules mid-game? That’s the definition we had going on. And that’s the danger of defining; defining attempts to fix the temporal into the perpetual. The practical reality of teaching and learning is something more and different from “the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools.”

If teaching and learning has to do with building society, and it probably does, then social policy probably should specify some of what we are taught. If part of our society, however, wishes to have its members learn, say, music, should society at large have the right, because it has the power, to deprive it of that area of learning? Well, we can’t manage the issue of rights and power here. In practice, our working definition of education deals with methods of learning, how we learn, and public policy doesn’t actually try to legislate that. At the same time, our definition doesn’t deal with what we learn or why, while public policy does put considerable energy into what we learn and in an off-handed way, why we learn it. The latter is not often stated, as it happens, but since the testing that matters is a measure of economic potential, we may extrapolate an economic motive in the prescribed content of education. Not a necessarily bad thing, though a bit flat given the depths of which societies and cultures are capable.

How we learn, returning to our line of argument, likely is affected by “methods of teaching.” At first glance, this seems like the place to effect change to reform this broken world; it looks “manageable,” and in need of repair. If the advocates of Education Reform are to be believed, they may provide the best evidence that past practices in teaching were indeed flawed.  These advocates were either well educated and are deceiving us, or they were poorly educated and shouldn’t be making education policy decisions. One questions whether the policy makers themselves know the answer to that one.

In reality, teaching and learning are complex interpersonal activities, much as parenting and (he improvises) childing. They are reciprocal processes, highly individualized and adaptive, deeply steeped in personal, sometimes sectarian morality, and served with a degree of social propriety and responsibility. Where do we draw the lines around these domains? The beliefs of which institution, family, religion, heritage, state, define those lines? How do we make the right things happen and keep the wrong things from happening when we can’t always agree on what those things are? Still, without having any clear idea what we are referring to, we will leave “methods of teaching” in our Education Reform policy, and move on to the “removal or correction of an abuse, a wrong, or errors,” because the reform part of our policy may resolve this methods conundrum.

Assuredly, if there is something abusive, wrong or in error about the methods of teaching they should be corrected or simply removed. To say there may be something abusive, wrong or in error about the methods of learning challenges reason, and further justifies leaving the learning aspect out of this discussion. We can agree that we want to avoid anything that is “abusive, wrong or in error.” Fair enough, as long as we can agree on that which is constructive, right and correct. Ah. That points to the soft-spoken or unspoken but hard sought goals of the Education Reform movement. Does constructive mean building a sound, secure society or a productive, profitable work force? Does right mean, among other things of course, all for one or everyone for himself.[*] And does correct mean there is only one right answer? We would have good cause to distrust anyone who even attempted to answer these questions. If they are still being asked after millennia of contemplation, one ought to consider the possibility that their irresolvability is their answer. The conundrum not only persists, it seems to loom over this Education Reform policy.

A year ago, I visited the Cathedral in Ely, East Cambridgeshire, England. I was of course impressed by the age, the history, the grandeur, but I was most impressed by what the Reformation had accomplished at Ely, and across England. Under the reign of the deeply religious, nine year old King Edward VI and his Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset,

The 1547 Injunctions against images were a more tightly drawn version of those of 1538 but they were more fiercely enforced, at first informally, and then by instruction. All images in churches were to be dismantled; stained glass, shrines, and statues were defaced or destroyed; roods and often their lofts and screens were cut down; bells were taken down; vestments were prohibited and either burned or sold; church plate was to be melted down or sold.

(taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Reformation, 06 Aug 12)

Standing, as I did, among the destruction of nearly an acre of Norman stained glass, scores of friezes of angels’ faces, dozens of religious statues and more, some over 500 years old at the time, and the destruction of the original Saxon remains including the seventh century tomb of the founding nun, Etheldreda, was a profoundly numbing experience. This was a compounded crime against heritage. Local lords and their knights paid the Crown for the privilege of wreaking this destruction.

I became acutely sensitive to the potential for loss of roots, the loss of heritage and the consequential loss of identity inherent in reform. Were the Tudor Protestants about reforming what was an abuse, a wrong, or errors in the Roman Catholic Church in England? No. We know it was about diverting the wealth and power of the Church to the Crown. I make no defense of the Church, but ask who paid the price over time. It turns out that all across England, Victorian wealth replaced much of the lost glass and statuary and even rebuilt many churches, and I’m glad they did. But where did that wealth come from? That which made Great Britain great, the factory workers of the great industrial revolution and the exploited lands and people of the British Empire paid for the sins of fathers not their own. Reform appears to be the great change that never changes.

So, where does that leave us, and how is it that we hear this term and others similarly devised so often? They are front phrases of modern policy. Front phrases are façades raised to make actions and even words appear “pretty.” They are spins on the truth, euphemisms of reality, dust thrown into credulous eyes. Not only do front phrases mean whatever the speakers or writers want them to mean, they give vice the visage of virtue, and pledge solidarity with disparate purveyors of fraud. You see, it isn’t what we say; it’s how we say it.

Assume nothing. Question everything. Look for evidence. All arguments are logical, but not all logics are reasonable. Humans are capable of reasoning. They are also capable of obfuscating, and lying with the appearance of reasonableness. Education Reform sounds like a good thing, but what does it mean? And above what army does it rise as a standard?

Now should we try “Restore American Values?”


[*] I am aware of the gender exclusion here. It is intentional.

Filed under Education Policy, Philosophy, Reflections, Social Commentary Tagged with , ,

Putting Aside Woolf: Libertarian Suffering

5 July 2012 1 Comment

In talking with my brother yesterday, I was trying to explain to him, a translator of German literature—some obscure 19th century romantic, in particular—why it is that I feel I can put a book aside without finishing it. I was perhaps preparing him for the possibility of not finishing his recent translation of Wilhem Rabbe’s “At the Sign of the Wild Man,” just in case. Putting aside a book seems one of those things that people either do, more or less frequently, or don’t do, shuddering with irreligiosity at the thought. And it is with some irony that I feel I may put a book aside or a short story or any other piece of writing, as I have put aside the very writer who gave me this permission on two occasions.

I put aside Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, both by V. Woolf. I’m not saying I would never try Woolf again, but there are so many other things I would read in the stream of consciousness school of about the period. I have of enjoyed rather very more such alternatives—J. Joyce in fact. I have enjoyed The Dubliners, piecemeal and as a collection, and I am enjoying again Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man—my first reading 33 years ago I recall as enjoyable but I couldn’t say why or have recalled much about the book except that it took that very strong personal voice of narration. I bought my first copy of The Dubliners in Dublin in 1990, though I had read a couple of the stories long before, as have most English majors. And I enjoyed the study of the stories of the collection as a set in the lectures of Mark Sutton at Cambridge in 2011. Oddly and also perhaps ironically, while attending downstream at the colleges, I have twice had tea at the Orchard, the tea shop with tables, chairs and even stinging insects among the trees of an old apple orchard near Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, once a haunt of Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf, and others—and have come away from there enjoying much of Brooke’s works, though that liking became muted by a certain redundancy, but I have not felt the least inclined pick up Woolf again.

So why is it that I can so much enjoy one and dislike to the point of turning away the other of two of the greatest stream of consciousness writers of the English language? I wonder if it is the gender of the narrator. Yet if it were only the narrator’s gender and presumable my ability or inability to identify with it, then why would it be that I loathe, and do not finish, reading Henry James—I nearly gagged on the first half of The Portrait of a Lady before quitting it—and quite enjoy Edith Wharton? No, it is more than just gender. I wondered if it has to do with class. Yet my two all-time favorite writers are Thomas Hardy—well the classes are certainly in his novels, but in all their colors—and Jane Austin for whom class is not a factor, as anything in a lower class would, like a toilet, be well used but never mentioned, and anything in a higher class would have been—well—quite Olympian. No, the issue for my choosing not to finish a Woolf book is not one of social justice of gender or class.

I would, I believe, have to read a great deal of something that I don’t like to determine why I don’t like it. I might also have to read other writers I consistently disliked to see a common thorn. Suffering for the sake of analyzing that which makes me suffer? I think not. So I have taken Woolf’s advice, gotten I know not where, of putting aside a book I am truly not liking and moving on to something else. Yet here I am writing about this choice as if to justify it. Yes, there is a monitor in my reader’s heart that tells me to read on, finish what I’ve started. And I have. Reading The Last Temptation of Christ, for a class I imagine, was a nightmare. It was, all the same, the first book about which I could say, “I hated reading it, but I love having read it.” So, I will read on. Who knows but that I may discover a greatness in the last page, the last word. The very best things in life are those unlooked for, but not overlooked, after all. I’m just not looking for them in Woolf.

Filed under Foolery, Literary Criticism, Reflections Tagged with ,

Summer

30 May 2012 Leave a comment

Summer slows mentality,
Slides a hand over the heart,
And saddens old sentimentality.

Marshy days ooze toward sodden ends.
Luminous dusks linger,
Resolving into shimmering specks,
While night weeps in the long grass,
And sleeplessness seeps toward dawn.

Vivum est iudicium sine iudicio.

Filed under Poetry, Reflections Tagged with ,

Mike

20 April 2012 Leave a comment

My neighbor, Mike, inspires my gardening
By his example of helping things live and thrive.
He runs a sprout orphanage next to his garage.
He houses a seedling nursery on his patio table.
His elderly junipers overrun the front walk way.
Cutting it back hurts too much. He is its friend.

Legs moving like tree limbs in the wind,
He ambles from alley way to back door.
The wind has knocked things over.
He rescues a fallen, potted rhododendron.
It is waiting to be planted. It needs a friend.

The wind knocks things over that are not wary.
When Mike was a child, he lost one of his sisters.
I never had a sister. I can’t imagine losing one.
I didn’t know Mike back then. We didn’t live here.

Thirteen years ago, we moved in
Next door to Mike and his mother and father.
Theirs gave me hope for our dog-edged yard.
Mike’s mother died shortly after we moved in.
I wanted to say something about it to him.
I wanted to say the right thing, to say I was sorry.
I wanted to rescue him, to be his friend.

I guess Mike just wanted to cope with his pain.
I think he wanted to get back to gardening.
I don’t think he wanted to deal with his grief.
I don’t think he wanted to deal with his father’s grief.
I know Mike didn’t want to deal with his father.
I don’t think his father wanted to deal with his own grief.
Maybe they didn’t know how to grieve.
I know I didn’t know how to be his friend.

Three or four years ago, Mike’s father died.
Mike buried his pain. Mike’s family came to bury his father.
His father had been old, and too much and not enough in charge.
Mike said he struggled to live with his father.
He spent his time gardening, moving plants around.
He rescued alley furniture and rebuilt broken tables.
He had held yard sales of refurbished dressers. I had joined in.
I think maybe we had become friends.

Now one of Mike’s brothers is quite ill.
Mike takes his brother to the doctor sometimes.
His brother has been loud and quirky and kind.
Mike has made out that his brother is a pain.
Now Mike’s brother is in pain. He is dying.
Mike rescues upstart garden plants, ferns and flowers.
He puts them into plastic pots to sell at a yard sale.
I ask about his brother. I don’t join in on his plant sale.
I am glad Mike’s my friend.

April 2012

Filed under Poetry, Reflections Tagged with , ,

In the Spring

21 February 2012 Leave a comment

In my well planned garden in the spring,
A blowing rain ungrimes the moiling earth.
As hawk-winged sunshine stoops upon the soil,
Up poke the giggling prepubescent sprigs
That lagomorphic whiskers glibly nip.

In my well planned garden in the spring,
A warm wind sweeps across the land,
Awakening buds that burst from orchard twigs.
‘Til dark and still, in creeps the late night frost,
Whose pruinose talons coldly grip and kill.

The hungry rabbit and budding bloom
Do not know the hazards of the spring.
Such precious newness lacks immunity,
In my well planned garden in the spring.

February 2012

Filed under Poetry, Reflections Tagged with ,

Jay Being Joyce Being Joyce

15 January 2012 1 Comment

I have been reading the biography of James Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, by his brother Stanislaus, whom I mistakenly named “Stanislav” in another place. In it was an excerpt from an early J. Joyce journal entry, in his early stream of consciousness, Dubliners‘ style. I thought I might try to emulate it here. Joyce was reflecting on his reading of Erckmann-Chatrian; I on Joyce’s brother Stanislaus.
———————————-
Retirement and recuperation mix sourly as I recover from a biking accident, still too much in pain to move around a great deal, but impatient to be doing so. The other is upstairs also recuperating from a cold, also impatient, also uncomfortable. The Sunday sounds of her decades old television programs mix with the pomposity of my Royal Concertgebouw radio program enshrouding me in a rough and remorseful reverie. The bright sun on yet another unseasonable day cheers the house plants more than me. I am reading to pass time. Reading Joyce’s early life through his brother’s eyes creates no deeper understanding of James or their father John or their mother Mary. To be born to Mary.
No, the book makes me think more about how children see their own history in retrospection from adulthood. Even with a purpose, we cannot bring up more from the depths of memory than the unbidden images that arise. And even those come with no sense that there was anything really significant behind them, only that we know there probably was something. The images are often the most disjointed where they should be the most influential to developing us as who we are. Yet taken all together, a different kind of mise-en-scène emerges, an history as a child saw it, but not the immediacy as a child experiences it. The child’s emotions stick the memories; the adult’s emotions interpret them. Like twice baked bread, it is the bread but yet quite different from the bread, and sweeter, usually.
How this can sweetens our aging! A reader and writer would know this, and immerse himself in the knowledge. A researcher, a scientist will push away all the color, the music of the memory, strip it of useless feelings, extrapolate and connect the dots of it, recreate what he asserts happened in black and white, a dry point. But it is no longer what happened. It happened and is happening no longer. We can recreate what happened into a new thing that is an interpretation of our history as our history has shaped us to interpret it: self-recreation. What’s happening now is the feeling of remembered feelings, the color of the memory of color, a wholly new color. Accuracy is impossible at best and misleading at worst.
S. Joyce did not ever get it wrong, but did he ever know he was getting it right. As he looked back, whatever love he had for his brother as he wrote certainly filtered and shaped how he remembered his brother some fifty or sixty years earlier. If he knew that, and he may well have, he was not just his brother’s keeper, he was his brother’s recreator.

Filed under Composition, Reflections Tagged with

At the Farm in the Fall

8 December 2011 2 Comments

A long straight rolling road

Brown between autumn fields

Late at night on the high plain

Comes a brilliant shooting star

Arcing through the twinkling black

Burning fiercely fast and bright

High across the inky starry night

Through thin and unsustaining air

Flaming hot and dying in a wink

Briefly seen alone that night

And now

Gone.

We reconvene at the car,

Loaded with our pumpkins.

We return to young lives,

Still burning bright.

December 2011

Filed under Poetry, Reflections

Now, Many Years Later…

4 November 2011 1 Comment

Now, many years later… How many years? …

Even now, I feel the sight you in the dry August dawn,

Running, bounding fawn-like through the dry grass.

One, two, and then flight, arms rising, fingers spreading…

Wings, dispelling those unwary spirits caught basking in the early sun.

Four, five, and once more leaping, cervine, chin rising, eyes blazing…

Their enchanting fire snaring my unwary gaze in their net of golden flight.

 

And once again the feeling opens my heart,

And you leap in to take possession.

You wrap me around you in this unimaginable way,

Imprisoning me in your freedom.

You, leaping down the hillside, barefoot and laughing—

At me? behind the glass? looking out?

 

How many times has this scene shot my thoughts?

How many nights has this morning sun lit my dreams,

Drawing shadows around my heart? And I have said nothing.

And I say nothing now, years later when still I cannot part from you.

 

To you, the absent companion to everything in my life,

I said nothing.

When you, my heart’s enchanter, said that soon you’d have to die,

The words froze in my heart,

And stuffed my mouth with dumb confusion.

I could not say, “Let me go.”

 

And now, many years later still, I look into the void and see

The bounding, fawn-like boy floating away from me.

My heart imprisoned in his grip, my freedom in his eyes,

And even now beyond life,

He once more takes up residence in my enraptured heart,

And still, I cannot say the words, “Let me go.”

 

November 2011

My comment:

This is based on an event from 46 year ago in Evergreen, Colorado. The image lasted a few seconds, but struck me so strongly at the time that I have never forgotten it Nor have I been able to describe why I was so captured by this moment. The subject of the poem fell victim to AIDS in the 80’s, while living in California. He called me here in Minnesota shortly before that. The image of his running down the slope outside his mother’s house the morning after I met him returns to me like reminders of unpaid medical bills over the years, often in a dream. It is not the history I have tried to capture however, but the almost indescribable feeling that accompanied the moment and accompanies the recollections of it. Any comparison to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is coincidental, but serendipitous. I think a symphony could perhaps capture this better, but is certainly outside my scope.

Filed under Poetry, Reflections

Critical Thinking for a Sustainable World

6 October 2011 Leave a comment

Introduction

To teach others to think critically, we must start by thinking about their thinking—and to do that, we start by thinking about our own thinking.

Teaching critical thinking is teaching to improve, enlarge, enhance thinking. Students must therefore become as completely aware of their thinking as they can be, just as they will have to know something of how their body works to be able to manage its healthy development. To think critically, as we shall see, we must consciously control how we think: When and what do we ask? What ideas can be put together to work and what cannot? And so on. Notice I have shifted to “we” over “they.” We teachers must be or become consciously aware of our thinking and practice critical thinking skills in order to teach it. Critical thinking is what we teach and the path by which we teach it. We need to be able to play basketball to teach others to play, to read to teach reading, to do the math to teach math. We need to know how to think critically in order to teach critical thinking.

This takes the ‘us’ and ‘them’ out of our classrooms, as it should. Step back for a minute. We have had it drummed into our heads that we are teaching so that students can do well on standardized tests. Okay. These tests are indicators of our educational health, especially as compared with other nations in the global market place. This is something of a leap, but it is a fairly clear assumption. If test scores are assumed to correlate to our economic standing in the world, they don’t. Zero-growth France (July 2011) scored better one tests than thriving (0.1% growth) Germany. and the U.S., having score lower than both grew more (0.9% growth) in the same period, while none of these approached China’s 9.0% growth. Now, guess who isn’t taking the tests?

In fact, our students and ourselves need to be learning in preparation for a much more important global crisis looming on the horizon. We are expending our host planet. We are already suffering millions of avoidable deaths through weather conditions, natural disasters and seemingly insatiable violence. In education, this situation is both a mandate for action and an opportunity for success. By addressing our educational systems to these crises, and ignoring the cries of the gored ox of corporate America, we not only make a start on solving the biggest problems we will have faced, we also have an authentic arena for teaching and learning – an imperiled world.

Teaching critical thinking and using authentic instruction may often seem to be subversive activities. Meeting standards and classroom evaluation is not only possible, but may even be better achieved when lessons include conscious teaching and learning of critical thinking mind-sets and skills. As you work through this class, try to be intentional of serving both masters. The motivation to learn what is needed to accomplish authentic tasks will overcome the learners’ reluctance we see directed at empty lessons seemingly taught for their own sake. The foundation skills of reading, writing and math are among the tools used for mastering the more engaging skills of making decisions, solving problems and planning real change. The learning in school not only carries over into students’ lives, it becomes a directing force in those lives. And your students will be those to whom others look as leaders.

We have so far succeeded in disconnecting learning in American schools from virtually everything in the lives of the students and the world around them. American education has become an end. It needs to be reestablished as the means to the best life we can make for ourselves and our future and our world. Educators and their students must always be thinking about what’s next and where we are taking ourselves. So, as you started out thinking about your own thinking, think about your role in creating a world sustainable into and beyond the 21st century.

Definitions

Cognition is a term referring to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension, including thinking, knowing, remembering, judging and problem-solving. These are higher-level functions of the brain and encompass language, imagination, perception and planning.

Mets-cognition is often simply defined as “thinking about thinking.” In actuality, defining metacognition is not that simple. Although the term has been part of the vocabulary of educational psychologists for the last few decades, and the concept for as long as humans have been able to reflect on their cognitive experiences, there is much debate over exactly what metacognition is. One reason for this confusion is the fact that there are several terms currently used to describe the same basic phenomenon (e.g., self-regulation, executive control), or an aspect of that phenomenon (e.g., meta-memory), and these terms are often used interchangeably in the literature. While there are some distinctions between definitions, all emphasize the role of executive processes in the overseeing and regulation of cognitive processes.

Critical Thinking “What is critical thinking and how to improve it.” Fisher, A. (2001) Critical Thinking: An Introduction, from chapter 1. Cambridge University Press.

Authentic Instruction is a model for high-quality instruction developed by Fred Newmann (1993). It lists five major components of the teaching process:

  1. Higher-order thinking. Higher-order thinking requires students to “manipulate information and ideas in ways that transform their meaning and implications, such as when students combine facts and ideas in order to synthesize, generalize, explain, hypothesize, or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation.” When students engage in higher-order thinking, they must solve problems and develop new meanings for themselves. There is an element of uncertainty and unpredictability in the process.
  2. Depth of knowledge. Depth of knowledge means that students deal with the significant concepts or central ideas of a discipline. Students use knowledge to understand arguments, solve problems, or construct explanations.
  3. Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom. This third feature of authentic instruction connects the classroom to some “real world public problem” or personal experiences that the student can relate to.
  4. Substantive conversation. This feature involves considerable discussion and interaction about the ideas of a topic that develop and build on ideas presented by others in the conversation. It involves the sharing of ideas and multiple exchanges in which students and other participants develop shared understanding of a theme or topic.
  5. Social support for student achievement. This last feature involves the development of “high expectations, respect, and inclusion of all students in the learning process.” Social support is more than token acknowledgement or praise for participation. It occurs when teachers convey high expectations for all students and encourage all students to participate in the learning experience.

Sustainability “As Nancy Tierney writes …, for the purposes of this journal, sustainable activities are those that meet contemporary needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This definition derives from the Brundt land Commission (1987) report and has been accepted by many as the root meaning of sustainability. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1993), the word ‘sustainability’ as an adjective to describe that which is “capable of being maintained at a certain rate or level,’ seems to appear first in 1972. To put this in context, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, a collection of essays on a land ethic and conservation, was first published in 1949; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a treatise on the unintended ills caused by the pesticide DDT and considered by many to be the catalyst for the environmental movement in many industrialized nations, was published in 1962; and the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. Over the last 30 years, as scientists, environmentalists, and policy makers more closely examined the world’s ecological systems, the word “sustainability” has gathered force and turned into a movement. Reports from the field started coming back, raising our awareness of ecosystem degradation; air pollution; global climate change; depletion of freshwater stores; loss of biodiversity; major industrial accidents, such as Bhopal, resulting in thousands of deaths; and chronic industrial pollution, such as that found in Cancer Alley in Louisiana. It is doubtful that many of us would wish to turn the clock back to pre-Industrial Revolution times and suffer the miseries and uncomfortable conditions of those centuries. However, we can strive to improve and even radically alter the systems we’ve created over the last 200 years to acknowledge our burgeoning understanding of the role of contemporary human impacts on our planetary environment and our social relations with each other.”

(Kirk, Camille M. “Sustainability: Taking the Long View.” Planning for Higher Education, March-May 2003, p 9-12)

Editorial Note:

So we are working toward a world that provides the best achievable quality of life for the greatest numbers of people over the longest time. That may be our goal, but where are we starting?

It has been more than 40 years since the first Earth Day, when playing outside with a Frisbee was a gesture of oneness with our blue-green planet. What direction have things gone since? We see a world sickening with waste and resource abuse, while millions are seduced by the opiate of plastic geegaws and electronic gadgets, the very production and disposal of which contribute to the world’s ills. We have been conditioned to consume stuff at a great cost to the Earth. Is this the progress we anticipated? Can we have progress without a clear goal, thoughtful planning and the ability to think beyond our personal wants?

As long as we are focused on the material things of this world, and as long as we design our educational systems to create competitors in such a materially valued world, we will continue in the thoughtless consumption of our planet, seven billion bacteria consuming their host. To change this will require millions over decades at least. Some have taken the first steps. Steve Jobs will not be there at the end, nor will any of us, if only because there should be no ending in the plans. But what would have happened to Apple without the steps Jobs took? Or those that lead on from his foot steps? Each of us may only represent a few steps along the road, but it will take us all and those who follow on. Those others are our students.

Critical thinking can enable all of us to look at decisions and see where they may take us. It can help us make sound decisions ourselves. Critical thinking can help with solving problems rather than buying “solutions” that turn into problems. It can help us avoid creating problems for ourselves, while we can better solve the problems life throws at us. Critical thinking can help us plan a better course for ourselves and plan in concert with others. It can allow us to look ahead of today and know we have to plan for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Critical thinking can help us to be reasonable. It can make our choices and actions understandable, and invite cooperation from other reasonable people. Critical thinking is simply living together thoughtfully and valuing the idea that thought and creativity are our greatest human qualities.

We teach critical thinking then because it enables students to become their best selves, fully actualized human beings, something more than components in a board game of global economy. We will not be able to do enough alone, but if we don’t try, if we don’t start, we must bear the criticism of the adage: If you are part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. We may never reach our ideal, but the goal of moving in the right direction may be achievable.

Filed under Education Policy Tagged with ,

Girls’ Basketball á la Camus

10 August 2011 Leave a comment

The gym is only half an arena.

Bleachers are pulled out on one side but not the other.

Maybe the opposing team, because they are in opposition,

Couldn’t send supporters. So they don’t need bleachers.

Or maybe because God is their support,

All they need, and he doesn’t need bleachers.

 

Our girls run out onto the floor,

Black and brown and short and tall,

A couple white; a couple fat.

There are cheers and some clapping hands. Our supporters.

What an unlikely looking team! How can they be contenders?

How can these voluptuous, brash children win?

They see me here and smile.

They are not the stuff of pros.

 

The other girls run out onto the floor.

They are not black or brown or yellow or red.

They are white and blond as straw.

They are tall and thin and only tall and thin.

They come from a small Christian school.

Are all the girls at their school white and blond as straw

And tall and thin? Are all the boys?

Maybe there are no boys at their school,

No Christian boys at their Christian school.

 

They play basketball, these girls, ours and theirs.

More home team fans show up, late.

They are mostly black and brown, but not all.

They do not all look alike.

They do not look at all like me.

They see me here and smile.

 

The girls play basketball.

We score; they score.

We score; they score.

We score; they score.

 

I cheer for our team. I know them and love them.

I call our players by their names.

They see me here and smile.

I don’t cheer for the other team. I don’t know them.

I don’t know their names.

I can’t tell which ones have scored.

They all look alike to me.

I don’t know the name of their school.

They don’t see me and they don’t smile.

 

August 2011

Filed under Poetry, Racial Issues

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