Sensibilities 3: educating as the practice of freedom, considering everything an experiment, and the
Welcome back to Sensibilities! The Workshop Workshop is exactly, to the day, two months away -- and as always, we wanted to compile some of the far-ranging resources, ideas, and inspirations that have been bouncing around in our heads lately, in the hopes that they pique your interest, jumpstart your creativity, or simply add a little intrigue to your day. If something here inspires you or your thinking about your workshop, we'd love to hear about it!
(The Puget Sound Workshop Workshop is a summer camp where everyone's a teacher and everyone's a student. For more information or to get started on registration, please click here!)
1 is thoughts from and about educator/organizer Paulo Freire, the leader of the Critical Pedagogy educational movement!
From Jenna: "The thing that felt revolutionary to me when I encountered this model of teaching was the idea of honoring the collective wisdom in the room, decentralizing the role of the teacher-as-authority-who-will-impart-information-to-the-students, re-framing the classroom as a space in which we all learn from each other...."
“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.” -- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“… Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an approach to education and organizing to transform oppressive structures and create a more equitable, caring and beautiful world through action and reflection that is co-created with those who have been marginalized and dehumanized.” -- Levana Saxon of Partners for Collaborative Change
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” -- Richard Shaull, Foreword to Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” -- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
For more about Freire's work, check out the Freire Institute!
2 is radical thinker bell hooks' concept of engaged pedagogy, from her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom!
“To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.”
“Progressive, holistic education, “engaged pedagogy” is more demanding than conventional critical or feminist pedagogy. For, unlike these two teaching practices, it emphasizes well-being. That means that teachers must be actively involved, committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students."
bell hooks' other seminal works include
3 is 10 Rules for Students and Teachers!
This list made its way to us via artist/composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, but was evidently created by artist/educator/nun Sister Corita Kent while she was teaching at Immaculate Heart College in the late 60's.
4 is the art of starting all over again with writer Jhumpa Lahiri!
From Devan: "In 2012, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri decided to abandon her working language, English, and fully embrace the language she had been circling around, at that point, for over a decade: Italian. That year, she and her family moved from the U.S. to Rome, and her memoir In Other Words is the chronicle of the messy, joyous, frustrating, freeing experience of essentially relearning how to express herself, this time in a language she chose. It is her first book in Italian, and the English edition is, surprisingly and wonderfully, bilingual. Each page of her Italian original sits side by side with Ann Goldstein's translation.
"It's a poignant journey with its fair share of disappointments, but she stresses again and again how freed she feels by the limitations of her new vocabulary. Beginning again means discomfort, unpredictability, and frustration, but its destabilizing power simultaneously allows her the space to slow down, experiment, and relish every word. In her (translated) words:"
"It’s as if I were writing with my left hand, my weak hand, the one I’m not supposed to write with. It seems a transgression, a rebellion, an act of stupidity. [...] I don’t recognize the person who is writing in this diary, in this new, approximate language. But I know that it’s the most genuine, most vulnerable part of me. [...] The new diary, although imperfect, although riddled with mistakes, mirrors my disorientation clearly. It reflects a radical transition, a state of complete bewilderment. In the months before coming to Italy, I was looking for another direction for my writing. I wanted a new approach. I didn’t know that the language I had studied slowly for many years in America would, finally, give me the direction. I use up one notebook, I start another. A second metaphor comes to mind: it’s as if, poorly equipped, I were climbing a mountain. It’s a sort of literary act of survival. I don’t have many words to express myself—rather, the opposite. I’m aware of a state of deprivation. And yet, at the same time, I feel free, light. I rediscover the reason that I write, the joy as well as the need. I find again the pleasure I’ve felt since I was a child: putting words in a notebook that no one will read. In Italian I write without style, in a primitive way. I’m always uncertain. My sole intention, along with a blind but sincere faith, is to be understood, and to understand myself."
5 is this interview with artist William Kentridge!
In this contemplative, playful and handsomely crafted half hour interview, artist William Kentridge discusses and illustrates being “rescued by his failures” in order to find his way as an artist, the danger of certainty, the discovery of metaphors that arise from the questions that science provides….
William Kentridge and How We Make Sense of the World:
6 is the songs Motion Movement & Blue School by Blue Scholars!
From Devan: "Blue Scholars, the Seattle hip-hop duo of Geologic/Prometheus Brown (words!) and Sabzi (beats!), make music with integrity. Their songs are as compassionate as they are clever, as concerned with personal history as they are with the larger arc of political responsibility. They think hard about the world, and they want you to, too -- but they are living proof that that act of engagement can be full of delight. Motion Movement and Blue School, both off of their first album, do that balancing act particularly well, inviting you to think expansively while also making you feel like you're driving with all the windows down on the sunniest day of the year. Enjoy!" From Motion Movement: I'm just a word in the rhyme And a kick in the snare Swimming in inkwells to see if my spirit is there But you can find me inside of a pen, waiting to burst Drowning in a reservoir, quenching my thirst ... Motion, movement Architects, blueprints Showing, Proving Teachers, Students Reaching for truth in a self-revolution The roof is on fire, what's your solution?
And from Blue School: I'm a blue scholar worker studying the art of labor to create Flavor to relate to listeners, alleviate The danger associated with strangers Isn't it strange how we estrange ourselves from our neighbor? ... I bleed for what I believe to be the truth Nurturing the seed planted in the fertile youth The poetry, hanging from the branches, eat the fruit
and 7 is the mysterious magic of starlings in flight!
The more you learn, the more you have to learn, and sometimes, there aren't answers -- at least not yet, or in the form we may expect.
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