Quotes

This Just In…

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Emotions are an authentic human response – at least that’s what people say when they agree with those emotions. If it really is true, that would mean emotions are just as authentic a response when people disagree.

Probably just a handful of posts on this blog fall into the ‘rant’ category although Hey! that includes the one that started it all.

So at least the following emotions don’t lack precedent.

This Just In…

A lead on the morning news one past winter about heavy snow: “Great for skiers, bad for drivers.”

The past year, the past decade, and longer, you’ll have noticed an unquestionably gradual and ceaseless severity of weather effects, here and around the world. Heat domes, atmospheric rivers, bombs and cyclones, vortices and hurricanes and typhoons. You may also have seen news reporting that characterises the planetary climate as the enemy of motorists at the same time as it’s the victim of greenhouse gases, not to mention the harbinger of far worse to come.

From one TV news story: dozens of vehicles, some halted, some helplessly sliding, all paralysed by snow… enough to bring any motorist to tears. I’m almost paraphrasing the anchor’s light-hearted sympathy.

Each flake imperils the “unprepared” driver, who seems to risk the same foolhardy decision year upon year – though, let’s grant, it’s hard to know every circumstance. Let’s also grant that no enemy threatens winter driving quite like the reckless shitheads who lord their superior winter confidence over every other fool and sage behind the wheel: “Go home!” shouts the DB passenger of a white Eff-150 as they showboat past every stranded car they can scorn. “Go home,” as if they could. If you’re keeping score, weather thus far is not the enemy.

Someone far wiser than me will surely be explaining by now that Enemy Bad Weather is simply an affectation of our Harried Rat Race by the Charm of Morning News.

Could be… or could be the augury of addled brains, muddled thinking, and the subtle catalyst of still more unpredictable beliefs and behaviours yet to come, the kind that take decades to manifest before they’re detectable. Did you also know, you can pretty much say “shit” on TV now, and “eff” puns too. Still, as helpful as it would be, it’s hard to know for sure how long it might take culture to change as detectably as it took the climate. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Anyway… what’s to come of having reached millions upon millions of people, for whom a daily wish for good suitable weather competes with a daily war against undesirable bad weather… and all this, maybe – but, then again, maybe not – aside from an existential fight to “save the planet” while also chasing ambitions of travel and leisure and global what-not… sorry, by the way, all that was a question: ‘What’s to come of it all’?

Well, back to the news… literally the next story: “Massive overnight snowfall is the perfect storm for local ski resort!” which of course is code for ‘financial windfall’, which of course is not one but two weather metaphors to keep things light in an offhand way that says, “Have you got your shit together?”

And this from a few weeks earlier: “… forecasts predicting a risk of frost.” I can remember in the past hearing a “chance” of frost. These days, though, it’s a “risk.” A “risk” of frost. Frost.

One bleak headline even pits nature against nature although, sure enough, the frost in that story is mere backdrop for the Science that saves vulnerable naked vineyards, which of course is code for ‘commercial investment’. Granted, a belligerent “cold snap” isn’t exactly Daniel Plainview, or even Cobra Commander, but this story, with its closing remarks about “the silver bullet” – especially up against severe 60° temperature swings – betrays little beyond concern for our wine.

And exactly how do our priorities measure up with our frivolities – or, sorry, is that no longer a distinction? Anyway, I’m told we don’t use upmarket words like “frivolities” because too much Inside Baseball gets us too deep in the weeds… a risk of losing the audience, you know – must be that eff-word thing again.

Same week, same newscast… multiple winter tornadoes: “destructive” and “devastating.” A few weeks prior… once-a-century local flooding that restores a lake upon the flood plain, at the cost of homes, livestock, and livelihoods. Two weeks later… winter wildfires: “frightening” and “deadly.” In truth, all of these were terrible and damaging events – and all preceded the catastrophes of Lahaina and Los Angeles by two and three years’ time.

Against these events, and their human cost, rate this post as little more than a callous, self-absorbed tantrum.

Then rate the incoherence of news outlets, as they forewarn “Icy danger!” while smirking at “Snowy fun!” – nothing seems amiss? News outlets that prosecute seasonal war against the bitter “risk” of frost, and a cold-hearted enemy known only as “snow”… then broadcast the roar of trucks and ploughs and blowers, and hail those diesel heroes who salt and clear our roadways for the very traffic that helps to pollute and push our climate – and us – toward severe and unquestionable doom…

Against all this we might ask whether the recasting of “Global Warming” as “Climate Change” instead might have been, “Global Just Pleasantly Wintry-slash-Summery Enough Everywhere All the Time in the Place I Live – but, I mean, not too hot, and not too cold, and not too rainy, but not so dry… especially for, like, Vacation – but, other than that, yeah no, totally! yes! Save the Planet and all because, like – are you kidding me? – look what we’ve done, I mean, it’s just awful.”

Which brings us to one last cringe-worthy critique – this one not a headline but a slogan: “We’re killing the planet.”

Is there really no better statement to replace this ridiculous assertion of self-importance self-impotence? … no statement that captures the human species’ relatively momentary historical insignificance in contrast to the vast entirety of the planet??? … its perpetual environment, its magnetic and gravitational forces, its eons of solar formation and space-time existence at 4.5 billion-with-a-‘b’ billion years, it’s out-and-out gargantuan volume, mass, and physical composition – really? We think we are killing that?

Imagine that dolly shot from [ latest streaming dystopian holocaust ] with all the shrubs and weeds reasserting themselves through twisted concrete rubble, as the sun shines down once more. And, let’s rant – er, let’s grant – that we have reached a point where I could hardly blame the Planet for preferring to sustain life without us – except, of course, the planet has no preference because the planet is no enemy. It’s a planet.

A.I. Image Credit: Jack Drafahl on Pixabay

So… sorry, not sorry: we are not killing the planet.

And looking back on our 0.007% share of its history, there isn’t a soul alive or dead who could boast otherwise. Flipside, for those who have been keeping score: consider in return the number of people over our centuries upon centuries upon centuries of 0.007% history who have been affected – killed or otherwise – by the Planet’s natural geological activity… at worst, we’re a nuisance upon its face.

“We’re killing the planet.” Does nothing in this statement betray the same hubris that caused all our problems in the first place? Rest assured, the Planet will see to us and be just fine long after we’re gone.

If we’re killing anything, it’s hope of our own tolerable survival as planetary inhabitants so, yeah no, we do face real urgency to get behind a perspective that fears an existential threat because it fears the planet – which, by the way, is one last subtle play on eff-words.

As for the influence we continue to inflict upon the face of the Planet, we’re all of us indisputably reckless shitheads for our collective failed stewardship. And any triage of priorities and frivolities – of enjoyment and antagonism, danger and fun – will confirm that these are not the planet’s response to all our spewed contaminants – these are our response(s). If you have been keeping score, by now you’ll surely see: the enemy is us.

We imperil only ourselves.

“Pogo” by Walt Kelly

Learning As Renovation

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I have already offered an analogy for learning as a kind of renovation. It’s no perfect comparison – no “analogy” is meant to be – so feel free to use your imagination. What I like is the suggestion of integrity and the potential for improvement: something original remains, upon which we build and rebuild.

From that earlier post:

“Renovation also happens to suit a constructivist perspective on learning, i.e. learning as an active process during which someone integrates new experiences with what they already know. Yet this distinction between ‘what is known’ and ‘what is new’ has also been an avenue for critiquing constructivism’s overwhelming predominance, as has the general notion that active learners mean passive teachers, as has the nuance of what ‘active’ even means – thinking about stuff or doing stuff. Other nuances distinguish something learned from something experienced and something internal or uniquely derived from something external or belatedly accepted as consensus.”

With all that said, what statement about learning is credible without some thought afforded to teaching – I began sketching that out, too, at the time. So… Take 2: ‘learning as renovation’ means what for teaching? What exactly is teaching?

Photo Credit: Brett Jordan on Unsplash

For me, these questions just prompt more questions. One, well known to educators for being contentious, asks ‘What is worth teaching?’ As compared to the die-hard habits of so-called traditional teaching, our 21st century constructi-verse might hone a laudibly more nuanced sensitivity for whichever teaching better suits the thing being learned. But since education today seems wholly fixed upon the future, we might better proceed from ‘What is worth teaching?’ to the deeper complication that Pinar carves inside the politics of curriculum: ‘What knowledge is of most worth?’ By this, of course, I take him really to be asking, ‘Whose knowledge…?’ and on it goes, that contention.

Of course, values change, even as change takes decades or more. But what these particular questions implicate – or, rather, who they implicate – seems to be haves and have-nots as the future sends the past on its way. Put another way, the general response to ‘Whose knowledge is of most worth?’ seems to be one more clarification: ‘At which moment in history do you mean?’ which prompts questions further still, such as those arising more recently about Truth and Reconciliation and how educators might most appropriately respond, given the unknowable future.

In my doctoral work, I conceptualise curriculum as relational, i.e. an interpretive process underway between and among each student-teacher pairing, such that each person involved is contributing to every other by sincerity of their shared interests, i.e. “whose interests…?” Of course, since everyone has a backstory that no one else can know completely, peoples’ lives are more complex than first glance can suggest. That means any assumption made is a leap to conclusion, which is true, for instance, of even our closest relationships, much less between students and teachers.

Less commonly posed than ‘What knowledge is of most worth?’ is a question that seems to reach a likelier core of contention: ‘Whose knowledge… ?’

Likewise, as each teacher has a unique perspective on learning – like this reflection of mine – a teacher in the classroom is bound to know their school and its students in a way the rest of us never could and, thus, that teacher will apply their perspective in ways the rest of us never would. This, too, is true of us all in relation to each other, and any constructive way forward would seem to rest upon a sincere and joint interaction.

In that way, as teachers are able to grant each student’s unique perspective and backstory, they are also obliged to acknowledge each student’s needs, then offer a curricular experience that informs and persuades while still leaving space for each student, i.e. “whose needs, whose space…?” in order that each might make more meaningful sense of their own learning.

By analogy, then, this would seem to make teaching a kind of renovation plan, loose yet backed by at least two key factors: (i) sound foresight, which translates to careful, informed planning that aims for some defined vision, i.e. “whose vision…?” and (ii) a set of reliable tools, which is really to say the resourcefulness, compassion, and patience required to apply each tool in the most suitable way at the most appropriate time.

… that ‘Toolkit’ you hear so much about? For me, no, in fact… not exactly
Photo Credit: Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash

Of course, all this as metaphor sounds ideal whereas, in practice, nothing is guaranteed; renovation is seldom so tidy a business. More famously, it tends to get more complicated and even turns out some rather untimely outcomes.

Classrooms, by comparison, while complex can also be the most enjoyable places, and unlike renovations as we typically know them, I’m not sure learning needs to get more complicated than respecting the dignity of everyone involved. Beyond that, the rest is up to us as teachers and learners, albeit in distinctive roles, as we nonetheless learn and teach each other in ways that leave space where everyone is able to build and rebuild.

Tech Trade-Off: III. Thinking Differently about Learning

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Click here to read Tech Trade-Off: II. Learning to Think Differently

III. Thinking Differently about Learning

Learning, the singular thing, is generally considered an accumulation of acquired knowledge. We also call it ‘information’, ‘content’, even ‘skill’ – think ‘learning’ as something contained, the only thing left but to bottle and sell it.

Sometimes, you’ll also hear the insipid head-shaker “learnings,” with that plural ‘s’ tacked on the end, which I gather means “lessons” or “wisdom.” I’ve also heard “teachings” used the same way. By this usages, we’re back to a gerunds being the-verbs-that-is-a-nouns, where “students can share their learning(s)” as they might share a refreshing cases of Pepsi-Cola.

Photo Credit (edited): Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

As for being a misconstrued process, someone might attribute to learning a ‘start’ and a ‘finish’, as if sitting down to learn were like sitting down to dine. On the grammar front, I’d simply note how this conception of learning likens the noun to another verb form: the infinitive, i.e. to learn.

Altogether, such a singular concept of learning differs from my own concept of learning… a bit like how apprehension differs from comprehension, where the one is a sense that something is the case while the other is some fuller knowledge about whatever we’re sensing. As the one is more immediate and discrete, at my fingertips, the other transcends and perdures, by contemplation.

For me, learning means something continual, if not continuous – and maybe this is just idiosyncratic to English, somebody let me know. My own conception of learning suggests dynamism, neither the stuff getting bottled nor the bottles themselves, nor even the process of getting stuff into bottles; indeed, the image of filling learners’ minds is a big no-no in education, as is delivering a lesson the way Amazon delivers packages.

How about this… after delivering my daughter to piano lessons, I enjoy a coffee at Tim Horton’s while she and her teacher share 52 keys for sixty minutes. Later on, at home, I enjoy listening while my daughter practises apart from her teacher. During all that time, though, my daughter is learning, each situation helping comprise her whole underway experience of ‘learning piano’.

In her case, that process continued over several years, and I could even imagine it might have ‘begun’, as it were, well before she ever actually sat down next to her teacher – some earlier moment when she felt that inner stirring about even ‘getting to take’ piano lessons. By contrast, once she had begun, at no point did some single ‘part-of-the-whole’ cap off ‘all-that-it-was’. That occurring dynamic, that underway-ness – that process – that, for me, is the gerund of learning.

Image Credits: Taken on Pixabay (Edited)
and Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

The gerund, please remember, is the verb-that-is-a-noun, e.g. “Learning takes time and patience.” Yet the gerund can also be part of a predicate verb construction: “I’m still learning to play golf.” This is why Martin Hall keeps devising new and inventive props and drills for practising your golf swing… although, granted, it’s a poor example for those who’ve mastered all 18 holes.

Apart from mastery, the only way I can see to curb any learning process would be some intentional notion to cease learning that particular thing, like when my daughter decided to lift no-longer-willing fingers from the keyboard. Not long after no longer apprehending 52 keys, her comprehension was finding new things to contemplate. Yet, since then, as she’s decided to play piano a little more now and again, so also has her ‘learning piano’ experience re-commenced, albeit in a less formal way.

How about this… a teacher in a classroom steps away from these students over here to visit those students over there. Unlike the piano example, where a student visits the piano teacher, a classroom teacher is the one who circulates, doing their part before stepping away to another table. Yet each time I step away from these students over here to visit those students over there, I must admit, I tend to think I’m simply closing Part I’s laundry door: sure enough, after I step away, the students over here are still chugging along, now learning in my absence, as they were earlier learning in my presence, as they were learning before I arrived.

And in a class of two or three dozen students, plus me – one teacher – I must admit that I depend on learning to be a continuous process. At my best, what I’m really doing is shepherding a process. At my worst, students are left shepherding themselves… which is totally fine if you just want to enjoy playing, but not necessarily if you want to be learning, piano.

How about this… the Solar System is a singular thing, but as a dynamic ‘system’ underway, it has many components, all moving by way of their inter-action: the Sun, each planet, all those moons, all the asteroids and comets, cosmic dust, and even people – everything with mass affecting everything else with mass, all relating continuously, endlessly, while revolving around shared centres of gravity. What better analogy for a classroom full of students and their teacher?

Now you see why teachers bargain for smaller class sizes…
Image Credit (edited): ZCH on Pexels

The misleading conception of learning as a singular event is as if to say, “This is Learning. He’s a gerund.” I just don’t think learning is like this. You can’t save Learning a seat, you can’t buy Learning a green fee, you can’t play Learning a nocturne, and Learning won’t be pouring you a cup of coffee tomorrow morning. Learning isn’t born to live and die because learning isn’t singular or quantifiable or determinate. More importantly, the singular notion of learning as a thing is not only misleading, it’s contrary to education and any possible meaning we might ascribe to ‘the learning process’. Yet how often does any utterance of the word denote this nuance?

Recap:

(a) In apprehending surplus time, I fear we’ve misconstrued the significance of committed time, and I think the resultant surplus mind-set owes at least some debt of thanks to our tendency for shorthanding. And I fear we’re mistaken to dismiss old-man grousing about the way things used to be. The time that has passed, where we’ve come from – going back generations, lifetimes, centuries ago – has left us readied to continue with a frame-of-mind for reduction and abstraction. Even while it’s something we’re learning, I fear it’s something we’ve learned.

(b) As a picture is worth a thousand words, so a word is worth a thousand details, and if words really do matter, so actions are apparently louder still, even when that action is underway up between our ears. As we think, so we do.

So, with a pedantic hat tip to Parts of Speech, let me suggest that we curb our shorthanding and take greater care for ourselves, by way of our thinking. Let’s curb the shorthand notion of learning as a finite event and start recalling learning – like thinking – as an underway process.

And, to be fair, if process can even approach anything like a singular thing, maybe let’s imagine it as time-lapse photography, or those Cracker Jack holograms, where you had to tip the cardboard back-and-forth to move the picture – like CGI, just way more interactive.

As for anyone still arrogant enough to say, “I’m doing the laundry” – go beat your clothes in the creek with a rock.

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