Winter Break, Dec. 17-Jan 2, 2006

Who took the Joy?

Wolfgang Yourgrau, then a professor at the University of Denver, a student of Albert Einstein and Max Planck, as well as novelist Thomas Mann at Berlin University, wrote an article in 1965 that has, perhaps, even greater relevance today. He titled it, "Who Took the Joy Out of Learning?" That question is certainly most appropriate at this time of year. And, like Dickens' ghosts of Christmas, may the ghost of Dr. Yourgrau haunt us.

The following are edited excerpts from that article:

"To make it clear from the beginning: according to my bias, I plead wholeheartedly for [education] as an idealistic nursery. A place where we may play marbles, ride rocking horses, and have gargantuan fun. [Education] should be a refuge for the dreamer, the star gazer, the Don Quixote. After all, some of the greatest discoveries have emerged from the abstruse speculations of oddballs who soldiered in the landscapes of fantasy. Is not the great scientist, the creative poet often a visionary, a crank, an outsider--an eccentric?

No doubt education is a training center for the professions. . . . But there is a dramatic difference between a university and a training college. [There is] the search for pure knowledge, our goal the pursuit of true insight. . . . [Education] should never be a mere teaching factory, a necessary evil to earn a diploma, an unavoidable market where one can purchase a veneer of so-called education or culture. . . .

There should always exist an interrelationship between the students and their teachers. [We] must attempt the grand and the sublime. Teaching a subject to youth must convey an ecstatic thrill. Monotony and repetition of textbook material are tantamount to killing any interest, any concern in the student's mind. Without intellectual passion, the teacher fails in the main task, namely, to communicate knowledge effectively. The chief enemies are mediocrity and dishonesty. The sole responsibility lies in one direction, to teach students to think independently, to condone one kind of fanaticism--veracity.

The devil once came to Cuvier, the famous French zoologist and threatened to eat him. Cuvier looked the devil up and down, shrugged his shoulders, and acidly remarked. You can't! You have horns and hooves. Go and eat grass--you can't eat me. I think that Cuvier's attitude is the paradigm case for how a genuine educated person should reason.

Let us never, never be satisfied with the superlativeness of the present; let us never lose the zest for striving for the impossible; let us never lose the zeal to approximate the ideal. The motto of the Delphic oracle was: Know Thyself. That of a European University: To the living spirit. And the motto of some of our education: To hell with all eccentrics. The cultural failure of [education] is sadly reflected in the fact that students have been apathetic, lacking convictions and deep respect for learning, for knowledge, for the excitement of reasoning.

Why are we so discontented with [education] today? [Because] we test the acquisition of data rather than imagination and intelligence. Small wonder then that tests dominate a student's mind, cramps style, performance, and spoils the ultimate results of teaching. We all agree that [education] is a human institution, not an automaton. Not buildings, offices, regulations, administrative activities shape the contour of education--students and teachers alone constitute a true center of learning."

Finality

Ringing Bells, Ringing Bells, it's finals time in the city. [Sung to the tune of Jingle Bells.] It is the end of the semester and teachers have visions of tortuous exams dancing in their heads. Or so most students imagine. While test anxiety can be a difficult stress for some, it is more like the anxiety of anticipation over any performance--the starting shot fired at a track meet, the solo in the choir, the first entrance on stage as the curtain rises. So, here's where the pencil hits the paper, and what's in the mind hopefully comes spilling out on pages and pages. All that missed work also has to be completed. [The picture above is from Eric Conveys an Emotion.]

This year, for some classes I take the opportunity to have students write a self assessment. Own their work and grades, in a way. Stopping to reflect on where you have come and set new goals for the direction you are going is probably more important for me to see than a mere analysis of content knowledge. That I can do any time. But the heightened anxiety of semester end and "a final" brings out the most honest reflections.

I am relatively pleased that many students, among spewing content knowledge that they have learned in the last four months, also note what they have learned about themselves, as a person and a student. Most are ready to take much more responsibility for their own learning, and that, for me, is a significant step on the road to autonomy and lifelong learning. Most are painfully aware of inadequacies in this area, and set appropriate goals for the next semester to help overcome those. But they are truly fledglings and will need a lot of falls before flying.

In a process like education where measurement is so difficult and no final product is completed, finals give that sense of completion and renewal. How do we see where we have come? What we have learned? Like Justice Stewart famously trying to characterize obscenity, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. It is an end to something, even if it is an artificial end. A time to stop, reset, and begin again.

Some final projects, and work, and reflections are inspired. Some not so much. Few are a disaster, and, if they are, it is almost always due to lack of caring and attention, not lack of ability.

Final. Finally. Finality. The end. Fini. Now we can begin again. Like New Year's resolutions, however, goals for the future need a lot of support to be successful. We'll see.

The Book of Daniel

Aaron entered the army after graduation. He was a good grunt and made it fairly easily through boot camp. After stationing and the beginning of training, however, things fell apart. Because of a family emergency, he received a call to return home and thereafter asked for a leave. But somehow, somewhere along the line of phone call, investigation, and leave request, the army discovered that like Daniel in Babylon, Aaron was a foreigner in a foreign land. He is "illegal."

I use the term "illegal" consciously in that way, since that is how the public and media discussion tends to run. However, Aaron isn't any more "illegal" than I am. He simply happens to be in the wrong country without permission. He may be in a country illegally, but no human being is illegal.

So, after a grilling, Aaron's leave became a dishonorable discharge and auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. I ran into Aaron last summer at the flea market. That's where I got the original story; there among the detritus, and treasures, and Spanish language. This time, Aaron visits school just to see a few friends and former teachers. He is bright, capable, willing to work hard, desperately needs and deserves a college education, and is working for a telemarketing company. Something about repossessions, too.

Odd how the fact of his immigration status may have saved Aaron from returning to Babylon in an American uniform. I'm sure he doesn't see it that way; I certainly do. The policies of the American government on immigration, or, perhaps their non-policies, have given birth to millions of Daniels, here in a foreign land, doing its labor, building its future, producing bright, capable people like Aaron, with far more potential than many citizens by birth. And we owe it to them to get this immigration thing right.

A wall won't solve that one.

The Personal and Professional

A work environment can either be therapeutic or pathologic. Positive, successful organizations must be or become therapeutic for anyone associated with them. Some of the rationale for therapeutic organizations is that the alternative magnifies and transforms personal struggles into organizational weakness. And we all, everyday, teachers, students, administrators, parents, staff, vendors, school psychologists, visitors, ad infinitum, bring our personal struggles with us.

As I reflect on more than 60 blog entries so far, much of the story of the learning/growing process that is lost in the sterilized public debates about educational institutions is precisely the interplay of the personal and the human among the organizational and professional. It is one of the advantages of studying history, a deep understanding of the human, irrational, and arbitrary in events both grand and minute. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his Letters to his Son, we should be grateful for knowing that Alexander the Great burnt down great cities not out of rational strategic cleverness, but out of impulsive drunkenness.

Education is one of the more "interpretive" enterprises, like health care and psychiatry, where the object of the process is ourselves. That makes it intensely slippery and vulnerable to all the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to. Divorce, illness, tragedy, joy, loss, alcoholism, marriage, aging, strength, weakness, fear. All are shadows and influences daily. I have seen teachers struggling with radiation treatments for cancer play the role of health and strength to continue teaching. I have seen students under radical radiation, chemotherapy and surgery demand daily tutoring at their hospital bedside to keep up with school. I have seen divorce turn an exemplary professional into a barely functioning worker. I have seen the joy of birth or marriage shine from classroom doors. I have seen alcoholism and psychological damage cripple careers. I have seen recovered alcoholics bring profound wisdom to everyone they touch. We all have seen it.

Professionalism is a role, a player that struts and frets daily upon a stage of duty and responsibility. Often we do it well. Sometimes we can't do it at all. Sometimes students play their student role. Sometimes their life just comes spilling out on everyone. And the way an organization is structured and functions, and how it integrates the personal, can make it a therapeutic place that helps mend wounds and melt hurt. Or. Or it can be structured and function in ways that make the personal a weakness and turn life struggles into pathological damage. Social places can do both at different times as well.

The challenge is not only to acknowledge the personal behind the professional costume, but to plan for the personal struggles and weaknesses as a part of a compassionate and healthy workplace. Schools are the contemporary public forum, a keystone in civic society, and the public has a professional responsibility to create and protect those places.

But it won't happen using a business model and measuring widgets.
[See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]

TAT2U: Brothers in Arms

Arm, Leg, Chest, Back, Hand, Ankle, Foot. Tattoos, once the province of the navy and the rebel have become popular. Long enough, in fact, that their popularity is somewhat waning. Nevertheless, many students sport tattoos, some as early as middle school.

AJ, a soon to be senior, trumpets into the room a few days ago to show off a new tribal tattoo circling his arm. Having tattoo avoidence myself, I can't help but comment. "How old are you? Did your parents approve? Did you think about this, you know, it comes off later only with considerable difficulty and scarring." My problems with tattos are there floating in my questions. For me, they are simply way too permanent. I know that no matter what design, what meaning, what color, I would want to change or eliminate a tattoo within a few years. I like change. I like knowing I can change. I don't like the idea of being followed by an impulse for the remainder of my life, pinned to permanence like a butterfly in a display. Plus, I hate pain.

Obviously, my views aren't shared by a good many students.

AJ then explains. "Actually, my parents don't know yet. I'm not going to show them until later. My older brother (23) and I decided to have twin designs put on our arms together. We picked out the design together." Hum, that actually changes my perception. Being basically an only child, I never had that kind of sibling connection. It seems almost pollyannish. But it has a certain primal meaning that can't be denied. I admire that kind of sibling connection, that level of symbolic family that both will carry with them the rest of their lives. It really doesn't come across as an impulse or childish stunt from AJ. In a way, I am touched.

"We just had the outlines done. Next, we'll go together and have them filled in, but we need to save up the money."

I can't say I would approved if AJ was my kid. But I find it hard to disapprove too. I have no idea what the underlying family dynamics are that led to their l(ink)ing. I don't know if it is healthy or dysfunctional, a search for permanance among unpredictability or simply a symbol of the solid upbringing in a close family. I do know that AJ is a fairly well-adjusted student, and that he views the tattoo as a symbol of inseparability.

I still wouldn't have a tattoo myself. But I perceive them, and the students who wear them, somewhat differently. Not with blanket approval now, that would be too black and white, but at least with a little less judgment or concern. Odd how often we need to relearn the simple ability of withholding judgment. Why do we feel so compelled to weigh and pass judgment?