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Copyright © 1997, Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 05:53:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Random Thought: Freedom to Teach
It's about
5:00 a.m. I just came in from an exhilarating six mile
walk that more than usual put me deeper and deeper into a
reflective mood with every step. Those pre-dawn hours are
inexplicable magic for me. These dark streets before dawn
are a meditative quiet and calming place and time for
"getting to know me." In those moments before
the interfering and energy draining noises of the day
begin their encroachment, I find the discipline and
rhythm of walking is my entranceway to my inner voice. It
is a time during which I settle with myself, coming out
from a night's rest and preparing for the rest of the
coming day.
I find it is a time when I stop hearing myself think and
start feeling myself feeling, when I get outside the
outside world and inside to my inner space and my inner
being. I find those pre-dawn moments it to be a
paradoxical time when nothing is happening outside and
everything is happening inside; it's a stimulating time
away from outside stimuli; a time of walking in the
darkness that is walking into the light; a time of
becoming quiet, venturing hushness, discovering silence,
escaping stillness, enjoying and annoying tranquility,
and exploring serenity; a place and time of a scheduled
appointment with myself for remembering, renewing,
reviving, refocusing, rebalancing, reentering,
restrengthening, and reflecting; an essential place and
time when I most reacquaint myself with who I a am.
I hadn't
taken a step out from my house when I started thinking
about some comments that popped up during several
conversations in which I was engaged on various
discussion lists during the past week or so. "Oh,
Louis. What do you know," someone wrote me,
"you've got it easy. You have tenure. You're free to
do what you want." Another said, "You're at a
university. You don't have to deal with...." Still
another argued, " Your students are motivated and
want to be there. You don't how lucky you are."
And you
know, I thought this morning, there was a time not too
far in the distant past when I had thought they were
right. I always had said to myself that as a college
professor I was free to do what I wanted in the
classroom, that the college classroom is closed tighter
than the bedroom door, that no one tells me what to do,
that no one interferes; that no one spies on me; that no
one observes without my permission; that no one keeps me
from acting as I wish, that I can run my class any way I
want, that I very, very seldom have to answer to parents,
that I can cover however much material in whatever way I
decide, that I am my own master.
Yet, as I
look back, that supposed freedom now seems so hollow and
shallow, so illusory. If I was so free to make my own
decisions, why did I often feel chained, restricted,
helpless, thrown about, trapped within a set of forces,
by the action and decision of others, and by a
"system" I could barely influence but certainly
not control: Presidents, Deans, VPs, department heads,
colleagues, memos, admissions, registrar, bursur, regents
regulations, accountability, transcripts, memos, grading
system, memos, deadlines, office hours, room assignments,
class sizes, advising assignments, evaluations, course
assignments, meetings, meetings, and more meetings, and,
of course, the type of students on campus. It was ironic.
Here I had pronounced publically that I was so free and
independent, that I was so free to make my own decisions
and do my own thing, and yet privately I so often felt so
impotent, so imprisoned, and so powerless within the
system. There were times I roared like a lion for all to
hear and felt so sheepish where no one could see.
There was
a time when I would find it so easy, yet so subtle I
almost hid it from me, to point the finger of blame at
something or someone for my problems: "The hell with
it, nobody appreciates me" or "I'm so worried
that they won't grant me tenure if I screw up" or
"I won't get that raise if they don't like what I
do," or "They won't grant me my promotion if I
stir up too many waters," or "If I'm too big a
pain in the ass, they won't.....", or, "If I
don't kiss ass, I can't.....", and so on. There was
a time not too long ago that when I didn't get that
position, when I didn't get that promotion, when that
paper wasn't accepted that I felt colleagues let me down;
there was time not too long ago when students didn't do
as I expected and demanded of them that I felt they let
me down. In truth, I was letting myself down and
surrendering myself to them.
Over the
past six years, I slowly came to realize that tenure and
my scholarly reputation may have given me a far greater
latitude with those external controls, to be able to
scoff at and snub them a bit more than my newly hired
junior colleagues with a shorter resume and lesser
professional reputation. But, I slowly and painfully
discovered I remained an inmate in a deeper, darker, more
confining, and more isolated prison cell: myself. Despite
my words to the contrary, I kept myself locked in by
having only one way of looking at myself, at what I do,
and at the students.
It was
only recently that I told someone that on my campus I
have the reputation for being "off the wall."
So, I am free to live up to my reputation and be off the
wall. But, now that I think about it, that's not really
true. I do what I do and believe what I believe because
six years ago, at the young age of 50, I painfully
discovered a way for changing my underlying belief in
myself, about things around me, and in others, as well as
for changing what I do. No sure-fire how-to-do formula.
No guaranteed fix-it technique. No, mysterious
incantation. No, magic elixour or dust. No, something far
more disarmingly simple yet profound that proved to be a
vast untapped resource and strength: telling the truth. I
came to realization that I "just" would have to
struggle to be honest with myself. And the truth was that
I thought I was free, and I had to admit I wasn't; I
thought I had been satisfied, and I had to admit I
wasn't. Now I have a relentless hunger and thirst,
relentless desire and need to root out the ways I had
limited myself and to discard those beliefs and
techniques I had used to deceive myself from seeing what
truly is. It meant trying key after key, going through
door after door, crossing boundary after boundary,
breaking wall after wall, building bridge after bridge.
It meant letting go of the self-satisfying, pat answers
and grabbing hold to the questions. It meant re-opening
the book and start reading the never-ending story, of
searching constantly for understanding, accepting that
there is no ultimate answer. It meant entering a state of
openness, accepting the truth that any "answer"
is at best an approximation that is forever subject to
modification, adaptation, reapplication,
improvement--never final. It meant letting a curious
"let's see" surface. It meant an unending
broadening of my self-awareness and awareness of others,
of trying to see more of the human playing field. It
meant continually deeping my understanding of myself,
people and forces. It meant "the spirit of
love."
That's a
hard word in academia, love. But, it is at the heart of
the true freedom of teaching--of anything for that
matter; it is the true soul of meaningful and learningful
classroom experiences. I have come to realize that love
has everything to do with attitudes and intentions--and
actions: of the commitment to serve the students; of a
commitment to something larger than myself; of
visualizing an academic world that is not deeply
self-centered and self-interested; of the willingness to
be open and vulnerable; of a willingness to suspend
certainty; of a willingness to exchange in the spirit of
the question mark rather than of the exclamation point;
of a willingness to share in order to influence and be
influenced, to teach and to learn; of the commitment to
the students'completion and his or her becoming all that
he or she can be; of the commitment to my own completion
and becoming all that I can be.
As I
slowly and humbly came to that realization--not by
intellectualizing, philosophizing, or theorizing, but
through personal experience--a deep chord resonated
within me that I still have trouble describing, even to
myself. There was something new inside me and something
new out there. It drew me into a whole new series of
commitments and connectedness, educational insights and
personal changes; it led me to see an invisible wholeness
in myself, in others, and in things that is so often
hidden by divisions and separations which we have
invented and by which we have become trapped. I began
experiencing teaching and life in a way I then had no way
to describe. I began involving myself in approaches that
seemed in line with my new understanding. I began
experiencing a broader vision, wider goals, a higher
energy, a true aliveness within me, an aliveness in
everything I did.
I am
forever learning the difference between "freedom to
be and do" and "freedom from." The former
is the freedom to create what I want I honestly desire.
It's the freedom of personal mastery. Freedom. It's the
heart of teaching; it's the heart of learning. I am
always working on the struggle for freedom. The freedom
to be free to be truly myself--free of the imposing and
imprisoning restrictions of my own self-prejudicies, free
of the traps of my confining preconceptions of others,
free of the chains of the limiting preconceptions others
have about me--to live and teach freely so that students
may be free to learn how to learn and live freely.
With that
inner sense of freedom, I ardruously discovered that each
of us can in some manner, shape, and form create
something new, something that has value and meaning,
something that is important, something that leaves tracks
in the sand, something that touches someone's soul,
something that alters the future, something that says I
was here. Every time I feel that freedom at work, it's
like holding each of my newborn sons!
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