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I'm interested in holistic approaches to language and literacy: learning style theories, multiple intelligences, reader-response theories, and non-cognitive approaches to composition and literary studies.
Some Developing Thoughts on an Integral Education
Young Adult Books with Spiritual Themes
Brother David Steindl-Rast notes that on a superficial level, being
grateful and giving thanks can be merely a social convention.
The commercialized and sterile forms of politeness and gratitude of the
recorded message that thanks me for using AT & T is an example of socially
acceptable form of ritualistic, unmindful behavior that I am exposed to on a
daily basis. Bombarded
by such empty forms of gratitude, I tend to become a bit cynical about any
expression that would have me become a member of a big, happy family.
I am pulled and shaped by so many different influences I am wary of any
attempt to lump me into collective membership in any one group.
While postmodern thinkers have deconstructed the withered shells of
cultural forms that have lost their vitality, they have also made me wary of
oppressive domination.
The continuing emphasis on individual rights has shifted the focus away
from collective responsibilities.
One key area where this absence is painfully obvious is in the cynicism
of the past decade or so.
We are rarely surprised about anything anymore.
In one media interview after another, when an expert in any field is
asked were you surprised by X?, invariably the answer is "no."
Perhaps this attitude is yet another example of our wanting everything to
be predictable. Perhaps extensions
of the aura of being totally in charge with a concomitant attitude of being
fully prepared for anything that happens: an intellectual sense of macho
behavior. How should I
respond?
Plato recognized that surprise was the beginning of philosophy.
It is also the beginning of wonder, gratefulness, and thanksgiving:
elements that are sadly vanishing in today's culture.
Thanksgiving used to be one of my favorite holidays because it was a
special day. My family celebrated
that special day with church, traditional football games, parades, and the feast
of the year. Are we so sated with
everything that we find it hard to say thanks anymore?
Do we take everything for granted today?
One of Rachel Carson's most memorable books was A Sense of Wonder, an account of a summer in Maine with her young nephew, exploring--not labeling--the wonderful lichens, rocks, and ferns of that rugged state. Wonder is no more than a beginning of that fullness we call gratefulness. Moments of surprise want to teach us that everything is gratuitous. All is a gift. The degree to which I am sensitive to this truth is the measure of my gratefulness and engenders in me an overwhelming sense of thanksgiving and interdependence. I am joined with others through the bond of a grateful give-and-take, a bond of belonging to something larger than our individual selves.
SNEA
Presentation
Learning
as Integral Vision
Two
major roadblocks for educators on the road to what I will refer to this evening
as Integral Vision are the following: (1)
An inflated ego, and (2) becoming too intensely subjective.
Let me illustrate from my own personal experience.
When
I student taught, back when dinosaurs roamed Western New York state, the twelfth
grade Williamsville North High School English class and my cooperating teacher,
Linc Blaisdell, had just completed viewing a fine video version of Arthur
Miller's play, The
Crucible. Understand, that I had been observing and sitting on
my hands for several days at this point. Linc
asked me if I would like to lead the discussion of the play.
Of course, I was loaded for bear at that time and was itching to face a
class for the first time from the other side of the desk.
I was certain that my discussion of the play would be so brilliant that
Linc would become essentially, the "missing Linc" for the next few
weeks. We must have had about 25 to 30 students in that class; and
one student teacher with delusions of adequacy.
I kid you not when I confess that the first words out my mouth to that
group of students was: "Now
that we have viewed this moving video, what are some of the metaphysical
elements of Miller's play?" Silence.
Then one student asked, "Meta-what?"
This was followed by a low undertone, shuffling feet, much moving about
in seats. Other remarks followed.
"Who is that guy?" 'Mr.
Blaisdell?" At that point,
Linc stepped in and said, "As Mr. MacLennan has said, this is a moving
video. Before we move into the
larger dimensions of the play, let's talk awhile about reactions to what we
think about John Proctor, the girls and their influence on the judges. Why don't we break down into about four groups?
Mr. MacLennan and I will be around to see how you are all doing and we
will get back together in about ten minutes."
My
inflated ego had not made the adjustment. I
was still approaching my discipline as if I were still hanging out with English
majors. Louise Rosenblatt, whose
wonderful book, Literature
as Exploration, is in about its gazillionth edition, once asked a group
of her students--all prospective teachers-meeting with Rosenblatt for the first
time that semester, "What do you teach?
"Reading," "English," "American
Literature," were some of the responses.
She rejected everyone's response and said, "No you don't; you teach
students and don't you forget it." Even
though I had read and discussed Rosenblatt, my ego got in the way of my
remembering that bit of advice when I should have remembered it.
In front of a class for the first time.
I'll
share another embarrassing teaching moment with you because it occurred after I
had somehow completed student teaching and was hired to teach at Clarence
Central Senior High School in the fall of 1972. This example is perhaps a blend of ego inflation and my own
subjectivity. I thought I had the
definitive answer to designing effective writing assignments.
My strategy was to provide an open-ended structure and options galore for
my students. I firmly believed that
they would all learn to love writing in this Jeffersonian democratic learning
environment. I proudly stated that
the first writing assignment that year was for them to write about anything they
liked. My strategy actually worked
with a handful of students. A much
larger number kept raising troublesome questions about what I really wanted them
to write about, some grumbled about abstract writing assignments, some
attributed their problems to third degree writer's block and became what James
Britton called "recalcitrant writers."
My naïve assumption, based primarily on my own subjective experience as
a writer, was that anyone could learn to write my way taught me another humbling
lesson about the various strategies and approaches people use when faced with
any learning task.
Twenty
years of teaching and hanging around writing centers taught me a great deal
about learning styles. Observing
the different ways students work together in small groups; how they read and
respond to each other when they share journal entries; and listening carefully
and, as much as possible, uncritically as they describe their learning
experiences, proves to me on a daily basis that there are many paths up the
learning mountain. One of my first
experiences of learning as integral vision came through working with Tony
Gregorc's notions of learning styles. Most
learning style theory is a variation on Herman A. Witkin's studies of field
dependence-independence aspects of cognitive styles.
Briefly stated, field dependent students favor math, engineering, and
science--all areas that call for analytic
skills; field independent students favor areas that require interpersonal
skills, such as the humanities, social sciences, counseling, and teaching.
One of the key benefits of sensitivity to various learning styles is that
it makes it possible to teach and learn through multiple intelligences and to
provide the classroom variety that is the best antidote that I know for teacher
burnout. It also embraces what I
have earlier referred to as Integral Vision, which, for the balance of my time
with you tonight, I will try to illustrate.
My
major challenge, as an educator committed to an integral vision approach to
education is to dig deep into my own nature and express segments of that
experience without inflating my own ego, as I certainly did in Linc's class as a
student teacher, or becoming too intensely subjective, as I did in designing my
first writing assignment. Integral
Vision is centered on one thing alone, namely seeing into the integral vision
that is in each person. Teaching
this way means orchestrating your classes in such a manner that each person
feels free enough to explore their own inner worlds.
Students exposed to the type of teaching proposed by people such as
Nancie Atwell, Linda Reif, James Moffett, Patricia Stock, or, locally, Arlene
Owens at Leland Middle School. In
these classrooms, students are propelled into a world where they can grow in
mind and body. Students in these
classes are asked to explore important questions:
"Who am I?" "Where
Am I Going?" "What is the
nature of my life?"
In
the process of uncovering the heart of integral vision we have to explore our
own feelings, intuitions, and compassion. Nowness
permeates those interested in teaching Integral Vision.
It provides the life and energy that we want to share in our classrooms.
It relates directly to our notions of mental well-being by encouraging
students to pour their energies into the present moment.
It is making them aware that there is little they can do about changing
the past, hardly anything about the future, only now can I make decisions.
Integral
Vision notes that change is both
desirable and healthy. It explores
the implications and nature of change, a sense of change which begins from being
rather than from becoming. It is
centered in an awareness of self and others in a variety of social structures
and institutions.
One
of the key elements of such a teaching approach is in the continuing capacity to
put one's own self-interests second to the needs of the student.
Integral Vision encourages the student's greater independence rather than
enhancing the teacher's personal feelings of power.
If you read Atwell, Moffett, Rosenblatt, Reif, of Stock, you will see
ample examples of what I mean.
Teachers
influenced by Integral Vision are compassionate teachers.
Lately, that word suffers because many academics associate it with what
they disparagingly refer to as "touchy-feeley, New Age" thought.
Integral Vision implies commitment, involvement, caring, love, and
generosity of heart. It is far less
dangerous to be cool than to be compassionate in our society.
However, compassion lies at the heart of all helping.
Openness, intimacy, and sensitivity are the herbs of compassion.
When we are stressing our commitment to being Integral Vision teachers,
we see directly into the other person and we feel her needs and wants.
Being compassionate does not
mean having people always yield to your beneficent wisdom either.
Compassion
begins both to teacher and student in decreasing the number of judgments.
The teacher begins to see what is there without constantly labeling the
events with the colors of her judgments and values.
Compassion means giving people room; opening doors rather than closing
them; asking questions rather than giving answers.
It means becoming sensitively aware of a student's situation and
feelings. It also means listening
with our whole being and giving back to the student something more meaningful
than merely prescriptive advice. The
nature of compassion is to widen choices rather than narrow them.
Getting my own way as a teacher is not the object of the process at all.
The
Integral Vision teacher does not see compassion as necessarily making people
feel better. It is a much more
robust process than this. Saying
the right or socially acceptable thing is not usually being compassionate at
all. Being nice is a simple ongoing
social device to avoid undue disturbance and pain.
Compassion
is being in tune with oneself, our students, and the whole world.
It is goodness at its most intuitive and unreflective.
It is a harmony which opens itself and permits the flowing out of love
towards others without asking any kind of reward.
It helps students recognize closeness and oneness rather than difference
and separation.
Some
Developing Thoughts on an Integral Education
Integral
Education is a deep psychological revolt which comes with self-knowledge through
awareness of one's own thoughts and feelings. Intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only
true guide to life. Education, if
it does not cultivate an integrated outlook on life, has very little
significance.
We
must recognize that education is more then learning a particular technique or a
profession.
Instead
of awakening the integrated intelligence of the individual, education is
encouraging persons to conform to a pattern and so is hindering comprehension of
the individual as a total process.
An
individual is made up of a number of entities: body, mind, and spirit.
Education should bring about the integration of these three separate
entities--without integration, life becomes a series of conflicts and sorrows.
What significance has technical and industrial capacities if we use them
to destroy one another? Of what
value is knowledge if we continue our confusion?
We
have all been trained to seek personal gain and security and to fight for
ourselves. Though we cover it with
pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system
which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
Education
is not merely a matter of training the mind.
Training makes for efficiency, but it does not bring about completeness.
Most education emphasizes secondary values and merely makes us proficient
in some branch of knowledge.
Efficiency
of love goes far beyond the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which
brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency can breed ruthlessness.
To
understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and
ending of education.
Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts, it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part--which is what governments, organized religions and authoritarian parties are attempting to do. Education should create human beings who are integrated and therefore intelligent. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others. That is education.
Some
Young Adult Books with Spiritual Themes
Anaya,
Rudolfo. Bless
Me, Ultima. Berkeley: TQS,
1972.
Bach,
Richard. Jonathan
Livingston Seagull. Avon, 1970.
Coatsworth,
Elizabeth. The
Cat Who Went to Heaven. Aladdin/Macmillan,
1990.
Craven,
Margaret. I
Heard the Owl Call My Name. Dell,
1973.
Fraley,
Carol. Ms.
Isabelle Cornell, Herself. Atheneum,
1980.
Hesse,
Hermann. Siddhartha.
New Directions, 1951.
Highwater,
Jamake. Anapao:
An American Odyssey. Lippincott,
1977.
Kerr,
M.E. Is
That You, Miss Blue? Dell,
1975.
Levitin,
Sonia. The
Return. Fawcett Juniper, 1978.
Marshall,
James Vance. Walkabout.
Sundance, 1959.
Paterson,
Katherine. Jacob
Have I Loved. Harper Trophy,
1980.
Paulsen,
Gary. The
Island. Dell, 1988.
Potok,
Chaim. The
Chosen. Simon and Schuster,
1967.
Rylant,
Cynthia. Missing
May. Dell Yearling, 1992.
Rylant,
Cynthia. A
Fine White Dust. Dell Yearling,
1986.
Service,
Pamela. The
Reluctant God. Atheneum, 1988.
Staples, Suzanne Fisher. Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind. Knopf, 1989.
It
has become popular lately to apply the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese book of wisdom that is pivotal to
the philosophy of Taoism. Some
examples of what I mean are contained in the following book titles:
Capra, The Tao of Physics, Nagel,
The Tao of Teaching, Hoff, The
Tao of Pooh, etc. Some of these
insights can help us better understand living in this complicated world of ours. The concepts discussed in the 81 chapters of the Tao
Te Ching, as old as they are, align well with current ideas for
learner-centered practices, holistic views, interdisciplinary instruction, and
constructivist education.
The
yin/yang symbols characterize the way intuition is to be balanced with reason;
patience is to be balanced with progressiveness; kindness is to be balanced with
the application of intelligence. In
other words, there is always yin within
yang, yang within yin.
For
some time now, I have been disappointed that education seems to be moving more
in a linear direction. We write a
lesson plan and list objectives that are, at best, a fiction.
We talk about the student, as if we could ever compress that construct into such a
simple notion. Which student are we
talking about? The one who falls
asleep at the desk because s/he is working extra hours at a fast-food restaurant
to help pay for that new car? The
AP student who may spends as much time buttering up instructors as s/he does in
preparing for class? The student
athlete thinking about Friday's big game? Maybe
we mean the student who has missed half of this semester's classes because of
illness or injury? Can we
really reduce something as intricate, complex, and beautiful as learning
into such a quantifiable commodity?
Is everything in our lesson plan measurable in cognitive terminology?
How do we account, in our lesson plan, for students who discover and are
moved to tears by the relationship between Ellen Foster and Starletta?
Or, Huck's discovery that friendship with Jim is a boundary breaker and
he can no longer consider an African-American a "commodity."?
There are some things that are measurable and others that are not.
We
need to transform our conception of teaching/learning to encompass a dynamic
interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis.
So far we have not done this in education.
Our mindset has been much too linear--absolute, rational, aggressive; all
yang. What we need is
more yin--intuition, sensuousness, and
subtlety--to bring back a delicate balance.
Students might then learn those other basics: the wholeness and unity of existence, the art of living in
harmonious balance with nature and with each other. I just wonder what that might do to the drop-out rate?