Encomium

In grade 9, at the age of 14, I had Mr. Sharpe, the English teacher, for my first high school homeroom class. On the very first day, he came into the classroom and without a word, started to write (in a beautiful cursive hand) on the chalkboard. “The motive for metaphor…” he wrote, then proceeded to fill all of the chalkboards in the room with his explanation. When he was done, he walked back to the first chalkboard, erased it and continued writing. He never stopped writing, or spoke a word, during that 90-minute class. 

Nor was that his only quirk of teaching. He was in the habit of writing, on foolscap paper, these seemingly unrelated treatises on such things as the history of language, or a caricature of one of the students who had expressed a dislike for the book we were reading at the time, and dropping these artifacts, without a word, onto the student’s desk. I’m pleased to recall that I received several of these transmissions, including an explanation of the physics of flight for 20^th-century airplanes, and another that quoted Aristotle, Søren Kierkegaard and Cyndi Lauper. Like most of the students to whom these comments were given, I was perplexed by their meaning and relevance to the course, but unlike them, I quickly grew to cherish these wacky but somehow fruitful scribblings because they gave me new ideas to consider and different perspectives to explore. I began to write poems and stories based on Mr. Sharpe’s notes, and though I found it too difficult to emulate the style of his favourite poet, e. e. cummings (see “In Just” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176657), Mr. Sharpe and I enjoyed a correspondence throughout that year that has certainly formed the basis for everything from my preferred method of learning to my love of modern literature to my preference for wordy handouts.

Sometimes I wonder what Mr. Sharpe would make of the material covered in this course. I wonder if he would agree with Michael Tomasello’s final claim in The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition that “all human cultural institutions rest on the biologically inherited social-cognitive ability of all human individuals to create and use social conventions and symbols” (1999, p. 216), which I take to mean that our cultural achievements rest on the foundations of our ability to create and understand metaphor. I wonder if he would read Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity and interpret its fundamental educational paradox in similarly metaphorical terms:

if one needs an identity of participation in order to learn, yet needs to learn in order to acquire an identity of participation, then there seems to be no way to start. . . .In the life-giving power of mutuality lies the miracle of parenthood, the essence of apprenticeship, the secret to the generational encounter, the key to the creation of connections across boundaries of practice: a frail bridge across the abyss, a slight breach of the law, a small gift of undeserved trust – it is almost a theorem of love. (1998, p. 277)

And finally, I wonder if Mr. Sharpe would recognize his unpredictable yet stimulating foolscap notes in the last words of Mark Bracher’s Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation: 

To the extent that we can formulate pedagogical practices that help our students develop more capacious and complex identity structures, integrate more of the rejected components of their selves, and experience their sense of self more through benign identity contents and less through malignant ones, we will contribute significantly not only to our students’ psychological development and educational achievement but also to social justice and the reduction of human misery in the world at large. (2006, p. 207)

This is not to say that I don’t see omissions in the writing we’ve read for this class: I think the biological determinist perspective of Tomasello is a little limiting for understanding the ways in which learning can potentially occur, though I don’t necessarily dispute Tomasello’s version of events. I believe that Wenger’s myriad functions of communities of practice and their tools are overly structural for the fluid nature of exposure, practice and mastery of knowledge, again that may or may not take place. Finally, although Bracher’s radical pedagogy of supporting multiple identities within learners satisfies my own fantasies, and I feel comfortable in his context of literary studies, I see major issues of disconnect if historical thought and canonical works are no longer taught to students.

But these considerations are ongoing; I am sure they will remain, or be resolved, or be replaced with new considerations as I continue in this program of study. I will continue to puzzle out those concepts I don’t understand, disagree with those ideas that I think disadvantage certain groups or learners, and, when all else fails, write myself a little note or doodle (thanks, Mr. Sharpe), say, perhaps, one that turns lifelong learning processes into the metaphor of a blog: you work hard, share it with the people you can, thank your lucky stars the Internet exists, and sign off as gracefully as possible. 

Best of luck to everyone,       

     

Stephanie

References:

cummings, e. e. [in just-]. Retrieved March 31, 2012, from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176657.

Bracher, M. (2006). Radical pedagogy: Identity, generativity, and social transformation. New York: Palgrave.

Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

P.S. As this is a blog about endings, I couldn’t really leave without a final comment on 

The Best Endings Ever

1.       Post-scripts.

2.       Elmer Fudd’s sign-off from Warner Brothers cartoons: “Th-th-th-th—that’s all, folks!”

3.       The final bite of your meal that has equal parts sauce and food.

4.       Consummation (relate it to what you will)

5.       ….. 

A Dressing-Down for Not Dressing Up

Top 10 Hallowe’en Costumes I Have Worn (in no particular order):

1. Witch
2. Devil
3. Ninja
4. Ghostbuster
5. Flapper
6. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
7. A two-headed, four-armed monster
8. 1950s bobby-soxer in a poodle skirt
9. Hot dog liberator
10. Cowboy

Next to my birthday, Hallowe’en is my favourite holiday (okay, I know, my birthday isn’t a holiday, but the way I treat it, it really should be). I like the origins of Hallowe’en (check out http://www.albany.edu/~dp1252/isp523/halloween.html or http://www.halloweenishere.com/history.html for thoughtful, if short, discussions of the beginnings of Hallowe’en), its trappings (I can carve a pumpkin like nobody’s business), and its foods (specifically, candy). But most of all, I love dressing up, and costumes, and masks, and disguises.

Selecting a Hallowe’en costume was always a very deliberate process: you had to not look like a goofball in your costume, that was the most important thing. Then you had to wear something that could adapt to the unpredictable weather found in Southwestern Ontario in late October. Then you had to check with your friends to make sure your costume was unique (there’s nothing worse than showing up to trick-or-treat in the same sheet, for example). But the choice of costume always resonated deeply with me, because I believe that a costume should indicate some hidden feature of your personality, some half-concealed identity that you permitted the world to see on that night and that night alone.

Now, I’m sure you, and Mark Bracher, would have a fantastic time psychoanalyzing exactly in what ways I see myself as a Ghostbuster, for instance, or a revolutionary leader for the hot dogs of the world, but I stand by my claim. Imagine, then, how delighted I was to read this in Bracher’s Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation:

The strongest identities are those whose structures are complex enough to incorporate all significant components of the self in a manner that minimizes conflict among them, providing a time and place, a context, and a mode in which each component can be enacted in a way that produces minimal threats to other components. (2006, p. 59)

A strong identity, then, for Bracher, is one that works in conjunction with those contradictory parts of itself so that many/all elements can be expressed without undermining the overall identity.

This accurately describes my attempts to wear a costume and still see. My eyesight is catastrophically bad, so from the age of 9 I had glasses with lenses so thick that Coca-Cola bottles envied them. Now, picture trying to pull off a fantastic, historically accurate ninja costume while wearing 1980s glasses that looked something like this…

Yet, undubitably, my identity as a nerd who cared about school and reading was at least as valid as my perspective of myself as sly and disciplined and coordinated (!!), just like a ninja.

Similarly, the Hallowe’en costumes I chose were also a useful means of distinguishing myself from my peers, who were all pursuing their own identity elements in selecting their costumes. I can honestly say, for instance, that I know of no other 7-year-old who has ever asked – asked – to dress up as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I certainly felt an unspoken affinity to the role of the outcast, whereas I think my best friend that year dressed up as a princess.

Bracher references Greenspan in characterizing this understanding:

Greenspan describes this development in terms of an increasingly large context within which one’s identity is located. First the child differentiates a dyadic sense of me and you, where the child recognizes an other that is separate from but nonetheless linked with herself, such that her actions affect the other and the other’s actions affect her (Greenspan in Bracher, 2006, p. 61).  

Bracher situates this relationship as a reciprocal affective relationship, but the link between an other and oneself seems to have a greater effect on identity. Whereas Greenspan (via Bracher) sees this identity-shaping as occurring contextually (say, in the messy wig and pillow-enhanced hump of a Hunchback of Notre Dame costume), Tomasello, in his book The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, finds instead a definition of learning that distinguishes humans from primates:

At nine months of age human infants begin engaging in a number of so-called joint attentional behaviours that seem to indicate an emerging understanding of other persons as intentional agents like the self whose relations to outside entities may be followed into, directed or shared. (1999, p. 61)

But the distinction between one and the other is paramount, whether identity is being shaped or learning is taking place. These two concepts, identity and learning, were for me merged in the attitude of my mother, who not only proposed the two-headed, four-armed monster costume, but bent umpteen wire hangers and bought me suspenders to hold up the whole contraption. She was fully supportive of my flair for the dramatic, making scary noises tapes to play at our front door long before the idea became a holiday industry, and never vetoed any preposterous costume idea. What I now understand is that both my identity (as a strange kid with weird Hallowe’en costumes) and my learning (to encourage and foster the dreams and passions of others) was wrapped up in my mother’s faithful dedication to creating or helping me create memorable Hallowe’en costumes. I am familiar with many ways in which I owe large parts of my various identities to my mother, but I confess, Bracher has led me to find this one anew.

And, since you asked, yes, I do have a costume in mind for Hallowe’en this year: I am dressing up as a Muppet. Which one? Well, that’s for my identity to know, and me to find out…

 

References:

Anonymous. 2012. Silhouette vintage large style designer spectacles. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://www.theoldglassesshop.co.uk/categories/Choose-by-COLOUR/Red/.

Bracher, M. (2006). Radical pedagogy: Identity, generativity, and social transformation. New York: Palgrave.

Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

It’s Not You… And, Apparently, It’s Not Me, Either.

Dear True Love:

I know you weren’t expecting to get this letter from me, but there are some things I’ve been thinking about and I think it’s important for our relationship that I tell you them. 

First of all, I never did actually win you that teddy bear from the fair last fall – I waited until you went to buy some cotton candy, then I paid the ring toss guy $20 to pretend that I’d won it. Sorry. But you liked the bear, so that worked out fine.

Second, I don’t like avocadoes. Never have, never will. Every order of extra-guacamole nachos we’ve shared for the past four years has been a lie.

Third, I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship lately, and I’ve come to realize that my identity is being shaped by who we are together, and how/whether or not we belong together. For instance, when I asked you about an engagement, I think you thought I meant something different (or I assumed so, judging from the way you ran from the room). What I meant was that we have to devote our energies to building something together, to sharing something, so that other people start to see us as a couple, and then we can meet other couples that also like to watch 80s movies or take their cats for a walk. I need you to start to contribute to the ways we are as a couple; if you do that, I’ll be able to start seeing myself as part of a couple. This relationship is a two-way street, you know.

I also need you to start being more imaginative (and no, I’m not talking about using the camcorder like that). I mean about taking risks, about seeing new possibilities for who we are and where we might be heading. Here’s a quotation from the book I’ve been reading, so try and think about it like this: “Imagination requires an opening. It needs the willingness, freedom, energy, and time to expose ourselves to the exotic, move around, try new identities, and explore new relations” (Wenger, 1998, p. 185). If there’s no imagination, I don’t think there can be an engagement from either of us in our coupledom. Basically, I’d like to play more with you. 

I also need you to put your energies with mine to move in the same direction, to align with me. I need to be sure that we’re on the same page, but I don’t want to bully or threaten you into anything you don’t want to do. I know that visiting my parents for dinner every Friday night, and hearing them list their friends’ illnesses, is a little bit boring, but I think that deep down, you want to be part of my family and you really care about them, too, so that’s all right.

If we can negotiate our relationship like this, by taking responsibility for it and making it what we want it to be, then I think we’ll be able to learn a lot. We have to see ourselves, and our relationship, as part of a social network that is constantly changing (unlike your habit of never refilling the toilet paper roll – what do you do when it runs out, anyway?...) and that affects the way we learn.

But, I would add, I think we can only work if both of us recognize that we don’t learn in a straight line. By which I mean, learning isn’t always about moving ahead, or reaching a goal, or totally commanding everything there is to know about a topic, or even a person. Learning is like a tide: it ebbs and flows, sometimes really strongly and sometimes so quietly you can’t even hear it coming, it trickles down like rain or it pours for hours, sometimes it pulls out things that were already there, and sometimes it throws something up at your feet you never thought you’d see. 

I know you don’t like it when I speak abstractly like this, but I’m actually trying to reach out and connect with you through this language, and these thoughts, and this letter. Listen to this: “a more plausible scenario is that all human cultural institutions rest on the biologically inherited social-cognitive ability of all human individuals to create and use social conventions and symbols” (Tomasello, 1999, p. 216). As a couple, we're also a symbol, but in order to make the idea of a couple work, make that symbol work, then we need to be engaged, and imaginative, and aligned. If we are, then we become part of social convention (like winning teddy bears at fairs or sharing plates of nachos), which involves ongoing learning processes. And I think we have to look at learning as a part of belonging together: we might learn new things (are you sure your tattoo says ‘belief’ in Japanese? Because it looks a lot like the word for ‘toothpaste’…), or something we never meant to learn (I had no idea your mother loved karaoke that much), or even forget some things (the dishwasher really isn’t going to empty itself, ever), but we’ll keep learning.

I want to keep learning, with you.  

Forever yours,

Pookums

PS. I know that this is important to you, so when we come home from work tonight, we can start to talk about us; we can even stay up all night if you like…

References:

Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.