What just happened?
This is not meant to preclude others from attempting to make sense of the scant two hours spent in Tishman this evening. Talking to people after the event (Class? Talk? I’m having difficulty classifying it) proved to me that some of us will be thinking about it – interpreting it – for a long time.
So: What on earth just happened?
Between forty and fifty people – students, administrators, professors; citizens all – gathered in the Tishman Lecture Hall to listen to the president of Bennington College talk about re-conceptualizing education in a way that takes into account the monumental changes taking place in our society.
Last class when we were busily recreating Luther’s 95 theses (if we translate the problems with the Roman Catholic church of the early 1500s to our contemporary education system) on the blackboard of Barn 100 one student, Tyler Baker, brought up that we may be taking the idea of ‘schooling’ and ‘education’ for granted, that maybe the structure – inside and out – needs to be rethought.
For me, tonight, Liz took a step in that direction.
Now, if you think that I’m sounding like a sad fanboy of some kind by all means make yourself heard. But please be aware that the thing I was most impressed with tonight was that together we turned Tishman from a lecture hall into a discursive classroom. And now back to my fawning over the greatness of Liz.
When Liz spoke about the intensity of the classroom, both in Chicago University and in Rethinking Education, I got it. I got it in the sense that the word ‘got’ can be used unabashedly. The life of the mind, the exposure to intellectual community have only served to create a passion that is only augmented through conversation, discussion, and writing. Ever since my freshman year when I wrote a paper on the Patriot Act for Mansour, or my sophomore year when Mac told us that he expected a level of work that could be used as research in a piece of scholarly work, that passion has fueled itself and my work. After I told Eileen that I was tired from all of the work I was doing (long before I was actually doing much work at all, in hindsight) she told me, and I’m paraphrasing here, that didn’t quite understand tired. That to be tired was a goal to strive for. That you should be tired when you allow yourself to be consumed by your passions and ambitions. That you have to earn your tiredness.
These days I crave my next class like the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation drag themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. I can understand why Liz was stuck as soon as she came to this place.
The reason I have such a love affair with this place, and I’ve only begun to understand this over the past few months, is that Bennington (or at least my Bennington experience) typifies what I think education should be. There can be no doubt that in general the education system of this country is failing. One need look no further than the recent economic crisis for proof of this. Robert Beiner, author of Political Judgment, commented on Hannah Arendt’s conception of the humanist as follows, “Arendt views the humanist as a non-specialist who ‘exerts a faculty of judgment and taste which is beyond the coercion which each specialty imposes upon us’” (Beiner 18). This humanist is, for me and I think for Liz as well, the product of a liberal arts education.
I don’t fear experts. I don’t fear expertise. I love postmodernism – a domain Liz referenced as under the purview of experts. I salivate a little when I get to read social constructivist theory. I don’t fear complication. I feel like most things worth learning come with a lot of effort – and I’ll come back to that point. However, I do fear general apathy, and that is what I think Liz was saying is the result of the rule of the expert. She painted a picture that one can see if one turns on CNN or any version of NBC or FOX. (Some) experts obfuscate issues, to a degree. They do away with the big questions that they don’t have the answers to (i.e. what kind of world should we help construct?) in favor of smaller and more specific questions limited in applicable scope (i.e. what is the role of urban anthropology in confronting stereotypes?). This flies in the face of the common sense idea that social problems are interconnected. For example, talking about environmental issues without referring to economic or political dimensions of those issues cuts out important aspects of the problem.
I feel like most things worth learning require effort. Blood, sweat, and tears. Just try not to get any of it on the nice new iMacs in the computer center. For me this effort means combining thought and action. Allow me another Beiner quote:
It is only when we are confronted by the demands of action in the context of a particular set of circumstances that we get a true understanding of what our ends really are, and reassess these ends in relation to a new understanding of our life as a whole. Action in the particular circumstances of life is a continuing dialogue between what we think our life is about, and the particularities of moral and political exigency. (24)
And in the same way, it is only when we are confronted by contextual circumstances that thought is given impetus and meaning. I’m not saying that everything we do needs to be applicable. I’m saying that thought with action in the world as a goal requires the kind of effort that makes you earn your tiredness.
And the New Liberal Arts? Concentrating on problems instead of disciplines? The logic behind such a move is strong. The world is in the midst of a few crises. We are in a unique place at this institution. Our school can be a beacon of change that attempts to engage with these multifaceted crises. Gearing a liberal arts education towards the advancement of public good is a re-conceptualization not only of education, but also of citizenship.
Here, however, allow me to offer some criticism. I still cringe when I hear a phrase like, “secular church,” a phrase Liz used to describe CAPA. Even though my Facebook profile lists my religious views as “Vonnegutian,” (as Kurt Vonnegut was probably the most impressive of those that call themselves secular humanists) I dislike the idea of secular indoctrination that is conjured by the above stated phrase (the words just give me the heebie jeebies). I understand how such a (frightening) phrase can be rhetorically seductive. It has power (my visceral reaction is one example) and is a pithy phrase. I just don’t think that it is the exact idea that this college will realize. It’s just not our style.
Here’s a point of departure for further investigation if there is interest. What is the classroom? In a previous conversation with Liz she equated ideal students to ideal citizens. For Liz, it seems to me, the ideal citizen is voluntarily engaged and actively participative in politics in the Aristotelian sense of the word (as opposed to the CNN version). Like these citizens, ideal students are engaged and participating in a creative and meaningful educative context. So what does that make the classroom? If it is imbued with the virtues of citizenship, how can we (the education forum) achieve that?
Also, if this idea of a New Liberal Arts begins a re-conceptualization of education and citizenship, where can it lead?
Beiner, Robert. Political Judgment. University of Chicago Press, Texas: 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment