I’m jotting this.

I’m jotting this.

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Wearing a wristwatch

Just watched Ken Robinson’s Visions lecture for the RSA and am inspired, inspired, inspired! I immediately tried to subscribe to the RSA page, since anything that this organization — whose motto is “Removing Barriers to Social Progess” — produces, I want to know about! I’ve just started using an RSS aggregator, and I’m loving having my own personalized newspaper each AM, which includes special sections on education, technology, and (ok) decorating, along with the latest from the independent media at alternet.org. A little paradigm shifting from the RSA each day (or when it comes) would be a welcome addition to the mix.

But back to Robinson. As I wrote in an email to the new media contact at the RSA, I feel like I have found my soulmate in the RSA if not Robinson. HERE are people who are thinking about things the same way that I am. Which is not to say that I could ever aspire to Ken-Robinson- or RSA-stature, but that here is a group of people — an online intellectual community (nod to Will Richardson and Gardner Campbell) — where folks are approaching social change and educational transformation (as Robinson puts it, not reformation, which has been going on — without very impressive results — for a good long time), through eclectic, multi-disciplinary, out-of-the-box, cultural, economic and philosophical routes. I hope I get a response.

So what is it about Robinson’s talk that I found so inspirational? Why do I have such a mind crush on him? In addition to his insightful way of positioning himself vis-a-vis educational reform, and in addition to his presentation of constructivist methods and stances toward teaching and learning in a way that any layperson could understand, and in addition to the way he cites a lack of improvement in literacy rates over time as the principal evidence that all the increased spending on education and all these reforms amounts to little (or no) improvement, it was his suggestive and holistic paralleling of social, economic, and environmental crises with a crisis in education that was so exciting (and so spot-on) to me. The crisis in education, he suggests, directly relates to the way children’s creative thinking is systematically obliterated by the time they reach high school (Robinson’s data, by the way, is drawn from research on US schools, even though Sir Robinson is himself a Brit). He thinks this decline is directly related to standardized testing.

Now I may also be a critic of standardized testing and all the damage is does to today’s students, but it really isn’t Robinson’s powerful condemnation of this assessment mode that is the main thing I take away from his lecture. In fact, it’s probably not even in the top two. Equally important to his point is the way he makes it. Not only is his approach eclectic, drawing from numerous disciplines, but his point is decidedly non-didactic and suggestive (British?). In other words, he pulls together a bunch of data from various disciplines and a wide variety of popular and academic, print and non-print sources that all resonate with and inform each other; they are fascinating in juxtaposition, and seeing them all together like that, drawing conclusions for yourself that the speaker must have made himself allows you to glimpse into the mind of a genius and, for a moment, to share in his vision. Very poetic. Very associative. Very creative. In fact, his way of thinking demonstrates, I’d say, the very type of thinking he suggests we foster in students. A side note on mind crushes: maybe this is how mind crushes happen — you get inside someone’s head and want to know more, to get to know the person better, you conduct a google search, you view his favorites and delicious page, and so on and so on. Originally, I thought Robinson didn’t have much of a web presence, but I realized that I wasn’t accessing his page properly (click on the computer screen icon on sirkenrobinson.com).

But again, back to Robinson’s talk. My absolutely favorite thing about it is that it is geared for digital immigrants, for the generation of people who are over thirty and who tend to run things (education, government, the economy, etc.), but who aren’t in the habit of questioning the assumptions that underly the structures and institutions they run. Robinson tells a humorous story that begins with his asking how many people in the audience consider themselves to be Gen-X-ers? Boomers? Then he asks how many folks are wearing a wristwatch. Same people, different numbers.

He then goes on to tell this story about his daughter and his wristwatch, saying she just doesn’t understand why he wears one. For her generation, “time is everywhere,” he observes: on their iPods, cellphones, computer screens. “Besides,” she says, “It only does one thing!” Why invest in and lug around a single-function device? Robinson then asks this brilliant series of questions of his audience, which I do believe is not only the heart of what he’s advocating, but also the rhetorical heart of his lecture: “How many of you deliberated before putting your wristwatch on today? Should I? Shouldn’t I? How many agonized over the decision?” The answer to this rhetorical question is the point: we don’t question things that construct the fabric of our daily lives, we just habitually accept and do them. Thus we perpetuate the status quo. The point is to question these assumptions, their utility, their implications, their investment in power and the status quo (he doesn’t say all this, but I’m extrapolating here).

Robinson’s elegantly simple illustration demonstrates to all who hear the lecture (in the audience or via the web), that questioning these assumptions — critical thinking and self-reflection — is at crux of “educational transformation.” We need to take a good strong look at ourselves and the social architecture in which we have constructed ourselves, our dreams, our beliefs, our assumptions. Then we have to look at the young people for whose “benefit” we nurture and reform these institutions. And THEN we have to ask ourselves the tough question of whose interests are being served here? How are we inspiring these kids to be creative and revision the world in THEIR own best interests?

 

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Originally uploaded by cynderina

 

My top two favorite guys in the whole wide world (www)

I guess this is the “other stuff” part of my blog. It’s all of a piece, and these guys make me who I am. I suppose this is all part of my figuring out my “web identity” and what a blog does to construct that. Under construction…

 

Why blog?

My reason for doing this (from a letter to a colleague, 18 June 2007):

It does seem as if keeping up with netgenners requires more time than most of us have in a day. I know I can almost never find time to do the journalling that — I do know from those periods when I HAVE been able to sustain a writers’ notebook — truly feeds my creativity and scholarship and, regardless of the time it takes, actually serves to enhance my life and make me more productive than were I not doing it (I feel the same way about exercise). For myself, I know that I NEED to be journalling in this way if I am going be living and working at my full creative and scholarly potential.

A blog seems like the ideal place to do this kind of writing, both because I have more partially filled journals laying about my office than I care to count, a problem that a blog’s virtual and archival quality solves for me, AND because of the blog’s nonlinear (linkable) quality, which I would imagine nicely complements the way I think, and might actually serve to further my thinking than were I developing my thoughts in a vacuum. Which is to say that I imagine blogging, in it’s most engaged and responsive moments, to be something like a cross between being at a great conference and having discovered an excellent piece of scholarship that inspires you to annotate, research, and write. The difference, being, of course, that in the virtual manifestation (i.e., the blog), the normally limiting variables of space and time are completely at your command: you engage in the conversation at your discretion, choosing when (and if) to engage; and the annotation, research, and writing can happen instantaneously and pursued in infinite directions. But my fantasy of this vitual life of the mind might be simply that: I agree with you in that simply chatting for chat’s sake is something I have no interest in nor time for, and if that’s waht this turns into, I’m out.

In any event, your idea of a prayer journal sounds like a great one. My thinking about this blog thing — and all reflective writing, for that matter — is that whatever you do, it needs to be for you (i.e. not others) and add meaning to your life (which is why I made that comment today about my wanting to keep a personal blog in addition to one for our classes). If you kept your prayer journal online, perhaps you might be able to link some of your writings to online scripture, which could at the very least be handy. Or you might link to other contemplative sites, which might take your thoughts in other directions. WHo knows? You might even find yourself connected to other people interested in similar ideas, and together constructing knowledge and understandings that take you well beyond where you might have gone solo? I would be willing to bet money, that were you to do it for a year, it would begin to evolve in ways to reflect your many interests and facets. This is at least the way I am intending to go about it — start small — focusing on English Ed stuff — and commiting for a period of time in the hopes that as I learn the medium, it will evolve to be a more dynamic thing.

But, as in all writing endeavors, at your own pace and as it suits you (and me ). It’s amazing how much we learn about teaching from learning ourselves! See you tomorrow; if it’s anythign like today was, I can hardly wait!!

My commitment for the summer: blog regularly (at least 3x/wk) for the rest of the summer and see what happens.