Still Sadly Relevant

 

What strange times to be talking about my book, with such unprecedented acrimony between SFUSD's Board of Education / teachers' union and parents angry and frustrated over "Distance Learning."  It is more relevant than ever, say I, with its themes of 1) learning requiring real engagement with others, and 2) the critical need in our culture to figure out how to engage in actual dialogue / listening / problem-solving as a group of people who have some small dream and hope for democracy.  (Deep Sigh)

 

I'm sending this abridged quoted section out to radio shows, hoping to lure them in...

 

 

"Learning is easy to encourage but hard to control. It could lead anywhere: to new relationships, new understanding, new ways of moving and operating in the world. And, unlike what we memorized while cramming for a test, real learning stays with us. As Cesar Chavez once pointed out (in so many words), once our consciousness has been raised, it cannot be put back where it was before.

 

 

"I have come to see life as a dance of intelligent communication. Whether we are talking about tissues and hormones in the body,the intricate workings of the natural world, or members of human society, everything responds and adapts to everything around it in intricate and complex ways. Wherever we have a block in communication--whether in body, mind, or human organizations or institutions--we have dysfunction..

 

 

"When we hold two ideas in our mind which both seem true but are not in total agreement, we experience some confusion...This disorientation and lack of certainty--no longer knowing what we thought we knew--is what learning experts call "cognitive dissonance" (or "cognitive conflict") and consider to be an essential ingredient in learning. Many would say that it is fundamental to poetry as well." (pp.38-39)

 

 

"We are learning as a society that the traditional mainstream mindset is not working. In fact, it is spelling our doom. It is an old way of thinking which includes all sorts of assumptions: about the superiority of the industrial model which reduces everything to a commodity; about our separation from nature; about the supremacy of the supposedly rational, disembodied mind. In its denial of nature, the body, and other people, it is heavily influenced by Puritanism. (The Puritan tradition of blaming the poor for their condition can still be clearly seen in the punishment and stigmatization of teachers and schools in the neediest communities over their below-average test scores.) Our belief in the superiority of Western thinking--that is, in the supremacy of the cerebral mind itself--has caused us to look with insidious condescension on traditional knowledge, wisdom and stories acquired by human cultures everywhere, which are seen as being 'backwards' or 'superstitious.'

 

 

"For decades we have been steadily moving away from these supremacist beliefs towards a more holistic model of survival and healing. We have been slowly coming to terms with the insidious and lingering effects of cultural traumas such as Native American genocide, slavery, internment and wars. We have been learning the value of a more humble relationship to nature and the body, as well as to other people and cultures. We have had opportunities to become more immediately and painfully aware of the great harm caused on so many levels by working against nature.

 

 

"But the federal educational reforms, with greatly misused tests at their core, represent a return to a highly dismissive viewpoint towards people with perspectives outside that of the U.S. industrial mainstream, which we might accurately call the Military-Industrial Complex. This reactionary mindset holds forth, backed up less by healthy debate than by sleight-of-hand numbers and raw force, on what is worthwhile, valuable, and true. Real change requires real learning, which signifies a change in perspective." (pp. 41-42)