I'm in a strange place today with a lot of thoughts swirling inside me
about capturing what I call the "soul of education." So, I want to talk about
spotlights and houselights. Weird, huh? I'm here because I been thinking
about something a couple of things I came across on the internet. One was
Derek Walcott's poem, "Love After Love. The other " "the time will come when
with elation you'll greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own
mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome and say, Sit here. Eat. You
will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back
your heart to yourself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom
you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love
letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your own
image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life."
For a long time, we've all had discussions around a bunch of cliched
centering, a supposed inclusive centering that really has an air of exclusive
centering. In the last decades, as everyone has examined educational goals,
objectives, and strategies, the proverbial spotlight has swung from one extreme
of illuminating the podium to the other extreme of beaming on the classroom
seat, throwing the professor into an anxious shadowy state. By that I mean, in
"learning centered" what happens to "teaching centered?" In "student centered"
what happens to "teacher centered." In focusing on the intellect or cognitive,
what happens to emotion or affective?" In focusing on emotion or affective
center what happens to the intellect or cognitive?" So, often there seems to
be more than an implied and applied either/or. It's as if when one is the
center of the classroom universe, nothing or no one else is. It is as if we're
closing ourselves off to both our life and that of others. There should be no
spotlight; it should be turned off and the house lights turned up so the entire
classroom is revealed. After all, we're all participants in education. No
spotlights. Just house lights.
This centering creates a contentious struggle that weakens or strips
away meaning, commitment, and sense of service; it numbs, wounds, and
diminishes us; it strengthens cynicism and fatigue in us; it shifts priorities
for us to look outside the classroom for excitement and purpose. So, the
classroom so often doesn't seem to be worth it. It is like we--teacher,
student, administrator, Joe citizen--see another human being in the room or on
campus with us and have this need to label her or him, and in so doing label
ourselves. At the same time, we're labeling what it is we're doing or supposed
to be doing? At the instant we do that, we're not seeing another human being,
we're in our thoughts about him or her, and ourselves; we're in our thoughts
about what is we are doing. And whatever it is, we're getting away from the
heart of the matter. Judgments creep in that balkanize our views; that
isolate, separate, diminish, elevate, inflate, deflate, devalue, value, and so
on. We accommodate; we stop listening generously; we stop reflecting; we stop
looking and seeing; we stop hearing and listening; we stop being surprised at
the sight of another human being; we stop treating another human being as a
work of art; we become content sitting in our office or carrel in the library
or at the lab table. We become content with playing with numbers, pie charts,
and graph lines. We dig a chasm without mutual admiration and inspiration
rather than weaving a web of respect by which we are aware of all we have in
common: we all are human beings; we all have brains; we all have hearts; we
all have an individuality; we all have unique potentials; we're all frail,
imperfect, and fraught with foibles; we all have hopes, dreams, fears; we all
have stories, experiences, and memories that act as backbeats to what we
believe, feel, and do. No spotlights. Just house lights.
But, if you want learning to be the center of the classroom, good, so
is teaching. If you want the student to be the center of the classroom, all
well and good, so is the teacher. If information is the core business of
academia, so are people. If transmitting information and developing skills is
your central purpose, that's fine, so is preparing people to use that
information and those skills to do good, as well as to live the good life. If
our job is to deal with the issues in the classroom, I'm fine with that, so it
is our job to help students stand up to the yet unseen stresses and challenges
after graduation. If the cognitive is the center of academics, okay, so is the
affective. Whatever or whoever is the center, so is everything else and
everyone else. So is everything else and everyone else! So is everything else
and everyone else!! So, that means in a sense there is no center. There is no
center and there is no periphery; there is no field of play and there are no
sidelines. There is no center stage and there are no wings. There's no
either; there's no or; there isn't even a both; there's only an organic all.
And, that generates what Rabbi Abraham Herschel called a "radical amazement," a
banishment of indifference to some that makes a difference for all. No
spotlights. Just house lights.
I think one of the great tragedies is that we love to carve things up
and separate in all walks of personal and professional life, and, thereby, lose
the organic nature of things. We're creating distance. We're losing a mindful
connection. We're losing meaning. We're losing a sense of service. Maybe
it's an occupational hazard of labeling, role playing, stereotyping, and
generalizing: student, professor, administrator, teaching, learning,
intellect, emotion. Each comes with limits, perspectives, expectations. The
whole of academia is outside and something or someone is at the center. Maybe
we should stop with all this "centering" and familiarize ourselves with the
full perspective, the full interfacing, the full dimensionality of what
education really means and what it takes to educate and become educated. We
cannot have academic institutions based on just sound economics or expertise;
we also need an academic institution resting on the integrity of our commitment
to fight for a sense of meaning in human relationships.
It was Proust who said, "The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking
new vistas, but in having new eyes." Maybe in our thoughts, feelings, actions,
and emotions we need an audacious interfacing, and ought to break down barriers
we have created, build bridges, forge communities, and nourish togetherness.
No spotlights. Just house lights.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
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