Throw Back 1993 when I completed my work for the Ph.D. from The University of Iowa with a wonderful mentor who was a clinical psychologist; a sociologist who specialized in school-community relations; the author of the Iowa School Finance legislation; an elementary principal and reading expert; and the Editor for many years of the Iowa Review, the premier publication for writers from throughout the world. What a privilege for me; Im not certain I lived up to these distinguished educators expectations for me. I simply tried to enact an idea I had about myself. In the true spirit of dissertation, I present my still-emerging views of the immensely personal act of learning and the pivotal role educators play in enhancing or detracting from the possibilities that lie within all children, that lie within all of us. An arduous, often unsettling task, this work is only a beginning to a vision that may well become a life-long obsession. It is not a quantitative research study, but a wide-ranging disquisition on the mysteries of how we teach and how the individual learns, two often incompatible pursuits. The most cogent expression of the skepticism I have intuitively felt for many years was translated by Thomas Kuhn in THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS. Viscerally discontent with schooling and impatient by nature, I was compelled by Kuhns words to bring together my reflections on twenty ( now 40 some) some years of experience in the classroom, my philosophical bent, and the work of people from Dewey to Demasio and Howard Gardner. Was that possible I asked myself. If it was, would I add any insight to the slow progression of educational thought and any mitigation to my own restless obligation to wrestle with the way things are? Not only does education lag behind in a time when knowledge multiplies every day, but it is profoundly negligent of its moral purpose. In spite of the difficulty, and slowness, of shifting paradigms, it is my belief that we do not have the luxury of leisurely jousting with the intractability of the old paradigm represented by a deeply entrenched behaviorism. A behaviorism born of the necessity to educate a burgeoning population at the turn of the century and justified with the theories of scientific management no longer has a legitimate basis for support. Our society has little room for such manipulation, and it is long past time that educators and citizens challenged the status quo and question, as Paulo Freire suggests, in favor of whom and for what purposes do we promote education. It is probably appropriate to characterize public schooling today as chaotic, without a compelling mission. In a dramatically changing demographic climate, schools cling to unworkable paradigms in which a dialectic is impossible. It is my contention that schools are floundering, afraid to give up a disproportionate reliance on testing and reluctant to accept an inclusive paradigm that moves from right answer responses to an interactive environment in which thinking and creativity are valued. Recent research in neuro-science, anthropology, and cognitive theory verifies what Dewey promulgated years ago. Learning is useful only as it is internalized, and as research in such areas as neurophysiology becomes more sophisticated, educators are formulating incontrovertible evidence that when children interact with natural and functional environments, they are invited into an active community of leaners. Disregarding significant findings in allied fields of scholarship, education has propagated what, at best, is a reductionist approach to how we view thinking and learning. Little attention has been given to the idea that education is a form of experience in which children and teachers have the opportunity to enact their lives with an uncommon degree of power and energy. This, of course, is a more strenuous and demanding road to follow, but it is a road that leads to innumerable possibilities that are purpose-serving and which shift our thoughts from the old metaphor of the factory to an inclusive metaphor in which the issue of how we structure whats going on around us becomes a symphony of musicians working together harmoniously to produce a collective melody. If you want, as an experiment, to hear the whole mind working, all at once, put on THE SAINT MATTHEW PASSION and turn the volume up all the way. That is the sound of the whole central nervous system of human beings, all at once ( Thomas, 1980, p.128).
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 19:28:52 +0000
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