|
Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 18:29:30 -0400 (EDT)
Random Thought: My Dictionary of Good Teaching--My Long Reply
I think some people still don't like the words that I am offering
Kenny. This last one, WILBY," prompted someone to lash out and say, "You
sound like an impractical greeting card." Hallmarkish? Well....Yes....I
do care enough to send the very best, and mean the words. Impractical and
useless? I think not. I think my words are very practical. Let me tell
you why, but first a disclaimer.
Not all things, probably most things, are as easily defined and
therefore subject to observation, definition, and evaluation as we may
think. And "teaching" is up there with the best of them. I know.
Aristotle must be doing pinwheels in his grave. And, most of us
academics love words. Now, I am not the best student of language, but
I think we too often may be putting too much faith in words and think they
are far stronger and precise than we think. How often do we have an
experience or wake up from a dream and say, "I wish I could put it into
words." If I want to measure my height, it is easy to use a tape and find
that I am 5'7". But, whether I am "tall" or "medium height" or "short"
is up for grabs. At what precise point do I stop being medium height and
start being tall. The same is true for caring, trusting, loving, bad,
good, sensitive and all those other "mysterious" and "magical"
descriptives. They are conditions of existence, however uncomfortable it
may be to acknowledge, that are immediately distorted when hemmed in by
words, most of which, Socrates might have said, have a kind of read-into
"oh, you know what I mean" fly-paper quality to which anything can be
stuck. And to make the attempt to create this unnatural condition of
imposed precision may be to create what Huck Finn call "the truth with
some stretchers.
So, I admit that this often indefinable, mysterious, magical,
glorious thing we call "teaching" isn't as precise as a lot of people
would have you believe. It is a complex, slippery, and difficult
intangible. Most things involving people are. And, this thing called
teaching is, contrary to much information, pedagogical and technological
thinking, a very personal people thing operating in a "people world." It
rests heavily on that often neglected human dimension far more than it
does on inanimate information and technique and machine.
Nevertheless, as Elie Wiesel recently said, it first starts with
words and then it becomes actions. I would modify that statement and say
the movement of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips are not much different
than the movements of other body parts. Words are resounding with sound
that powerfully move. Words, however imprecise, are reflections,
extensions, insights, symbols. When we speak or hear words--honest or
dishonest--we speak or hear emotion, intention, belief, character, values,
attitude. When we speak or hear words--authentic or counterfeit-- we
speak or hear soul and spirit. When we hear words, it is the heart and
mind and soul speaking. How we think and feel, consciously or otherwise,
dictates our actions, intended or not, subltly or overtly. They are most
powerful, for better or for worse, when we put our money where our mouth
is; when we walk the walk rather than merely talking the talk; when what
we do is compatible with what we say; when we just don't feign and say the
right and expected words; when we are honest enough that the words are
portals into our spirit. Words can be life-giving, life-sustaining,
productive: no less sweeping than an artist's brush, no less hammering
than a sculpture's chisel, no less graceful than a dancer's step, and no
less melodic than a composer's pen. They can be passive and silent:
non-chalant, indifferent, detached, distanced, fearful, unspoken. They can
be murmuring and complaining when things don't go the way we want, expect,
or understand. They can be idling and non-working that won't let you walk
the course or run the race. They can be immoblizing and dangerous
reflecting bitterness, fear, anger, malice.
I told Cassandra Buncie from Penn State this morning, in response
to a question something that my rabbi and I discussed last week. To teach
children--to teach ourselves--not to ostracize, separate, and diminish
themselves and others, we have to broaden our vocabulary beyond merely
inanimate information, technique, technology to include humanity; we have
to make our vocabulary fuller and more inclusive beyond merely the
intellect. We have to stop talking "cliqueishly" using depersonalizing
terms like nerd, geek, Greek, jock, yuppie, preppie, honors, at-risk,
"don't belongs," developmental and the like. We have to stop looking at
individuals and stopping sizing each up according to a mere grade or GPA
and treating them as if they have signs drapped around their neck like
millstones. We have to acknowledge and attack our own biases, prejudices,
preconceptions, perceptions that are our own millstones. We have to
recognize our hurts --personal, professional, social, cultural, religious,
gender, physical, etc--that have evolved into halts and hates. Then, any
only then, when we have begun to engage in such courageous soul searching
will we slowly be able to convert our hurts into touchstones of helps and
hopes, will we start using and living a vocabulary of repecting each
individual with a faith, belief, and hope in his and her uniqueness and
unique potential.
Of course, our true vocabulary, then, is our spirit, our heart,
our soul that is sounded out by words and acted out by body. Consequently,
my words are not solely words of information gathering or dissemination.
They are not limited to pedagogical words of method or technique. And
they certainly don't center only on the technology of hard drives,
CD-Roms, programs, and web pages. I freely admit without reservation,
hesitation or equivocation that my words often dwell on matters of spirit
and attitude. Why not? We are not only thinking people. To be sure,
that's what we narrowly call ourselves, HOMO SAPIEN--thinking man. A hold
over from the 19th century. But, are we each not also a "feeling person?"
And yet, how many times have we ourselves said and heard from others that
emotions have no place in academia, that we should leave "the trash" or
"dirty laundry" at the threshold.
Oh, emotions are okay in the artist workshop, on the theater
stage, in the orchestral well or in the church pew or on the playing
field. But, in the classroom far too many proclaim that we academicans
are not artists or actors or musicians or clergymen or athletes, and to
admit entrance of emotion is like experiencing reverse Darwinism,
succumbing to a primal trait better to be diminished or put aside or kept
outside the pristine and hallowed halls of ivy. It is as if we academics
are saying, "If you want to be in your head, you have to be out of your
heart." We struggle so hard to untie and separate the natural
intertwining of heart and head. That separation is a hijacking of our
natural wholeness no less than when we "go off the deep end." Of course,
the caveat is that it is permissible to be both in your heart and head to
have a passion for your subject, but about anything or anyone else? Well,
then you are poisoning the ivy.
Have we become shortsighted in our attempt to be farsighted? Have
we distorted in our attempt to clarify? Have we become lost in our
journey to discover? Have we so flattened ourselves unnaturally that we
lack or refused to acknowledge that knowledge is three-dimensional, that
it is the whole behavior--body, mind, and spirit--of the whole person,
that the real mistake of too many academicians is to focus only on the
mind and deal only with the material? Isn't feeling, call it emotion or
spirit, a powerful shaping, directing, driving force? Isn't it as
important if not more important, than the intellect? After all, what you
feel controls what you think and what you do. Now, I'm not sure what I
mean by emotion. It's that imprecision of words again. I suggest I am
talking about feelings, passions, moods, temperment, attitudes, spirit,
distractions, concentrations; I'm talking about an inclination or
disinclination to act that has physiological and intellectual
consequences: anger, saddness, love, hate, joy, humility, arrogance,
shame, disgust, encouragement, discouragement, belief, disbelief, faith,
hope, hopelessness, courage, cowardice, fear, daring, boredom, excitement,
grumpiness, irritability, timidity, cheeriness, friendliness, kindness,
pride, satisfaction, unhappiness. Well, you get the point.
So, if I emphasize words of feeling, it is not because I
depreciate, ignore, denounce the significance of knowledge or technique.
It is, because we academicans so depreciate the wholeness of education,
the role emotion or spirit plays in both teaching and learning. It is, I
suppose, a small attempt on my part to broaden our teaching vocabulary and
bring us back into balance closer to a natural wholeness, and to what I
believe is the first principle of teaching. That principle, as I have
said so often, is not the "what" we teach anymore than the "how" and
"why." It is the "I," the "me," the person who teaches.
Yet, most of us academicans love to talk about what we teach, a
bit less about how we teach, and still less about why we teach. I can
understand that. We are trained almost exclusively in our subject. We
are most comfortable roaming the data of our discipline since we know the
terrain so well, can show students how much we know and how prepared we
are. We are a bit less comfortable talking about how we teach. When we
talk about the "how," it is usually about "tips," "tricks of the trade,"
and technology. Maybe we will talk about something vaguely called the
"traditional way," or "if it was good enough for me, it's good enough
for...." We talk still less about why we teach the way we teach since we
generally have very little training in or given little reflective time and
energy to the philosophy or purpose of education beyond transmission of
information and acquisition of a job. But, when it comes to the "who" of
teaching--and learning--the "I" or "me," there is a perponderance of
silence.
So many of us, in order to evade and avoid the "who" of teaching
and learning, attempt to step back in the classroom and view everything as
objective, impersonal, distanced, and disengaged onlookers. We shun
personal experiences as opinions, we depersonalize particulars into
generalities or depreciate them as anecdotal, emotions are cloaked by
sterile abstractions, events into theories. We develop a spectator or
passer-by consciousness; we are professional tour guides, just passing
through, taking a quick I-can-tell-everyone-I-was-here look, never
engaging, never stopping for more than a pit stop. People become
impersonal stereotype, objects, numbers, charts, diagrams; students become
Detachment is the rule; sensitivity is suppressed; involvement is the
sin. Authenticity is replaced by play-acting. Subjectivity is cloaked in
objectivity. We so love to point out from a supposed and safe distance as
if we are not taking any stands, making any judgements, do any analyzing
that "the literature says...." "the data is preeminent," "according to the
studies...." "the data demonstrates...." "in so and so's book its
says...." "the statistics tell us..." We practice safe teaching by
putting a condom over the classroom. Woe be it if anyone uses an "I" or
is real. Then, they are attacked as self-promoting, pontifical,
self-righteous, narcisstic, subjective, etc.
Nevertheless, without any equivocation, I assert that good
teaching does not emanate from information or from technique or from
technology. Good teaching is rooted in the heart and soul of the person.
Anyone in dogged pursuit of good teaching must first look within
him/herself for what he or she seeks. If you're looking for it somewhere
and/or at someone and/or in something outside yourself, you're looking in
the wrong place, for the wrong thing, and at the wrong person. What you
do inside and outside the classroom is an outward expression of who you
are inside at that moment. So, if you want to walk sure-footed through
the terrain of the classroom, you have to scout out and know your own
inner topography and geography.
So, these words I offer Kenny, after a great deal of reflection,
deal with the breathe of life that is within each of us, and breathing
life into us wherever we are and whatever we do. These are not
flash-in-the-pan, one-time-only, surface tinkering words. They are what I
call tough "always" words that have a demanding "sticking-to-itness"
describing a style of existence. They are "transforming" words that talk
about an inner vitality; they are "forward" words of growth, change,
improvement, development, imagination, creativity. They are words of
stimulation, sensitivity, empathy, understanding, arousal, enhancement,
excitement, inspiration, enjoyment, stirring. For to me, that is what
teaching is all about. Whatever words we use, they should be dynamic and
authentic; they should not be words that muffle, repress, wall, inhibit,
prohibit, chain, restrict, mask, hide, control, subdue, suppress,
extinguish, quell, and squelch either ourselves or each student. They
should be words that form community and webs of connections; they should
not be words that separate, isolate. They should be words that elevate,
not denigrate.
So, maybe in the process of striving to become better teachers we
have to change our vocabulary. Only when we change our heart, however,
will our mind change, will the words in our mouths change, will the
movements of our bodies change, will the thoughts in our minds and the
looks in our eyes and the compassion in our hearts change. All this, I
find, to be a very practical matter.
Semester is almost over and I still have one more word to find if
I want to complete Kenny's assignment and get a good grade. To
paraphrase Dick Vitale, "It's 'Cram city.' baby!!"
|
|