Induction & Theory of the Forms

EDU 6526: Week 2

I wonder if induction isn’t the foundation for affirming each our student’s sense of wonder with the world, even if they don’t realize or acknowledge the strategy. Induction places quite a responsibility on the intellectual capacities and motivations of our students as they are entrusted to gather and organize evidence. From there, they begin to recognize emergent patterns and draw conclusions about an evolving (T)truth; perpetually being drawn to what’s next. A mindset that furthers investigation and promotes a curiosity to uncover something new or mysterious about life appears to be the foundation for life-long learning. I hope that my students are compelled to pursue and uncover the mysteries all around them and that school empowers them to feel equipped and eager to embrace such a life.

This reminds me of a potent and pertinent quote from Franciscan friar Richard Rohr who says, “Mystery is not that which is unknowable, it is that which is endlessly knowable.” He is at once, beautifully poetic and right on the button. Our charge as intellectually capable and curious beings is to gather, organize, and scrutinize so that we may inform our thinking and allow the cycle to continue. We are all here, none of us knowing why, given the faculties and powers of observation that we have in order to observe and consider what we can learn and embrace in the time we’ve got.

Although it is slow and certainly not the most efficient strategy for conveying gobs of content (teachers sound just the like entertainment industry we over-emphasize our peddling of content), induction seems like the keystone for life-long learners to cultivate inquisitiveness and deep curiosity.

One example of induction that came to my mind during the reading is one of the primordial and essential contributions to philosophy: Plato’s Theory of the Forms. To understand this theory one must accept Plato’s assumption (which he’d inherited from previous Greek philosophers) that our inherent limitation as humans is our inability to properly or completely perceive the fullest truth and most accurate reality.  Plato argued that there existed an essential metaphysical Form of all objects we can perceive and that only by fully tapping into our mind can we perceive these Form and enter into the most accurate perception of reality. This theory applied to all objects of the known world. There were Forms for the essential human, the fundamental color red and even the perfect chair.

Plato believed that day-to-day human existence was actually an interaction between our senses and the mere shadows that mimic the Forms. That is, Plato believed that our perception was an approximation and but a glimpse of Truth and Reality. Plato asserts and expounds upon this theory throughout one of his most well-regarded works The Allegory of the Cave.

Plato believed that inductive reasoning and the process of investigation and refining the questions we ask about our observable and measurable world get us closer to the Forms and enables us to perceive more clarity despite the shadow world we are bound by. This philosophy undergirds the Socratic Seminar and the Scientific Method both of which were techniques employed and refined by Plato and Aristotle who believed that truth emerges the more we investigate and refine our thinking.

This is a heady notion that a more refined and accurate perception of reality is within the potential of each of our minds and how we choose to explore the world. I imagine that this mystical logic is, at first, not the most accessible explanation to students that they become life-long learners. However, I think when the intellectual time is right, a student’s embrace of inductive investigation will unlock the excitement for exploring all that is endlessly knowable. 

Dewey's Empowering Ideals

EDU 6120 Week 8

During the foreword of Parker Palmer’s compelling and contemplative The Courage to Teach, he bemoans the current state of American education plagued by standardized testing and false accountability measures. To illuminate his point, he offers an anecdote from education scholar and philosopher John Dewey. Dewey, who grew up on a farm, noted how curious a system his parents used to determine to value of their pigs before sale at the market. He described how his parents tied the hog to one end of a seesaw and added the corresponding number of bricks to the other side until the scale was level. Dewey criticized that standardizing assessments in education used similarly crude an inexact measures. We contend (Dewey argued), that after a prescribed and arbitrary amount of time by one standard measure we determine that student Sally knows 72 bricks worth of English and student Monee knows 83 bricks of English but quizzically neither teacher nor student alike have any real sense what one brick of anything is worth.

This was my introduction to Dewey before our deep dive into his education philosophy and contribution American education. I admired his zeal and critique immediately. As someone myself who has been swept up into new movement of individualized education or at the very least, find myself intrigued by the benefits and creativity of differentiated instruction, multi-modal assessment and more active and actual world relevance and connection in school, I needed the likes of Dewey to help me make sense of what I vehemently disagree with our current state of education. It seems that in Dewey’s My Pedagogic Creed (1897) he too, was advocating for and inspired by a charge to reform education and reframe it as social and moral imperative for democratic life to thrive.

As Dr. Scheuerman forewarned us, many passages of Dewey’s prose are verbose and complex. So many paragraph-long sentences, even this short piece, demanded a re-read. Yet, there are also streaks and bursts of cogent insight and statements of purpose that undoubtedly guide educators still these 120 years hence. For example, his idea about simultaneous psychological and sociological forces acting on each individual student and teacher provide a re-packaging of the nature vs. nurture dialectic and apply in more practical terms. His idea that our psychological education begins from birth and that we are inculcated, unconsciously, with world-shaping notions that are “saturating our consciousness” provides a nice lens to appreciate the individual/social paradigm we each try to make sense of and fit into. Dewey notes that an individual begins compiling and contending with the resources that have shaped social togetherness from their birth and that bestowed unto them is the foundation for each new human to become “an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization.” Wow. These are big statements and ideas that lay the foundation for the transformative potential of education and reinforce the societal onus to provide and uplift compulsory education.

Dewey complemented Tolstoy in that he too believed in the value preparing a student for life right now and not just only education of history or just a speculative education of what might be. He wrote, “To prepare him [a student] for future life means to give him command of himself, it means to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities.” School, Dewey thought, must be a part of the actual, current, and relevant life experience of the child and if not, such things were not educative. School cannot nor should not happen in a vacuum. It should be, Dewey thought, a delicate balance of the social space and the togetherness of society ignited by the passion, intrigue and spark of the individual. Beautiful.

Dewey’s ideas about the psychological and sociological educative realms offer values about the social purposes of education that appeal to my sense of vocation as a teacher and pride I have in pubic education. I appreciated that Dewey contends that “school is primarily a social institution…and education a social process” and that if school lives up to it’s potential and philosophy that such a positive experience can help an individual student to “share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends.” These are lofty and noble ideals of individual potential as well as a reminder of the democratic and civic potential and responsibilities inherent in public education.

Lastly, Dewey’s remarks about the practical application and relevance of education can be so useful to educators today as we try to successfully recoil and redefine our own relevance and purpose as we emerge from the NCLB era. Dewey advocates for vocational education and training in the skills of cooking, sewing and manual training as activities of the home and believes school can provide the obvious extension of such skill training. Moreover, Dewey’s conviction about the social, political and moral power and import of public schools serves as a charge to our shared commitment and validates the experiment of compulsory and public education. He wrote, “it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.” 

Discovering Virtue Through Socratic Seminar

EDU 6120 Week 6

Herbart wrote that virtue expresses the whole purpose of education. He defined virtue as the “inner freedom that has developed into an abiding actuality of the individual.” Put more simply, Herbart believed that education and the responsibility of the teacher was to create the environment where a student can grow by safely embarking down a twisting and challenging path of individual curiosity, discovery and as Maslow would say, achieve self-actualization. This, at first, might sound counterproductive to the democratic charge of education today, which focuses on socialization, multicultural awareness, and an emphasis on collaboration and collective responsibilities. However, I believe that exercises and strategies like dialogue circles, Socratic seminars and thinking routines simultaneously serve these two idealistic aims of education by empowering and awakening the individual all the while creating the space and patience for collaboration, understanding and listening across difference.

My first, and arguably best, experience with Socratic seminar came during my 12^th grade AP English course. Dr. William “Doc” Carter was an institution at AHS by the time I took his course. He taught my mother the same course 30 years prior, though he didn’t have his doctorate in philosophy yet. Question of the day, his brand of Socratic seminar, was a routine that today, 12 years later, I still reminisce about with my friends from high school. All of us agree, this practice was an indelible component of our high school education. And upon further reflection, I think it is memorable both because of its atypical and democratic design of a classroom (i.e. we all sat in a circle facing our classmates) and the premium it placed upon each person’s “air time” to work through their own ideas and truth.

Each day Doc posed a question for the groups’ appraisal and reflections. Sometimes it was as inane as: “what’s your favorite color and why?” and other times as essential and challenging as: “does the death penalty serve as an adequate punishment or deterrent?” Every individual would be given 30 seconds to a few minutes to share their own ideas before there could be any questions, debate or dialogue from the whole group. Some days sharing, listening and dialogue was discursive, other days it was cogent, reflective and pregnant with meaning – all favorite Doc-isms of mine. On occasion, the topic was so rich that we easily talked the entire 55-minute period – many of us eager to stay through lunch and keep going.

I only remember covering four texts that year: The Iliad, Plato’s The Republic, Hamlet, and Brave New World – in that order. How incredible (and meta) looking back that we read and explored the formulation of meaning through The Allegory of the Cave while in Socratic seminar. What a remarkable modeling of collaborative work that charged each individual with being reflective, present and contemplative. This was next-level democratic teaching. Doc’s carefully constructed routine was reliable for each of us and such a platform readily enabled improvisation and investigation.

During Hamlet we were tasked with memorizing Hamlet’s soliloquy “to be or not to be…” where he contemplates the merits of suicide. I can still perform the entire thing 12 years later and remember vividly each of us standing and reciting from memory as much of the soliloquy as we could. I remember that it was only one other band and theatre nerd (like myself) who could recite it in its entirety.

Additionally, we had spiral-bound journals that we submitted to him bi-weekly for feedback on our poetry, short stories, and reflections from seminar as well as personal musings. This exercise was a useful contrast to our usual outlet for self-expression in his class and often included extensive, detailed and probing feedback.

Through each of the pedagogical strategies, Doc imparted his educational philosophy: we were, in his class and throughout the rest of our lives, to embark on the work of knowing ourselves for the sake of our interaction with and pursuit of understanding others. We were challenged to continually ask questions of others and ourselves and never believe that we had answers set in stone – big or small.

During his 44 years teaching high school English, Doc modeled and imparted this philosophy to countless students. Both directly and indirectly he demonstrated the that the virtuous inner life and goal of knowing our true self meant continually challenging our assumptions and biases – especially when it came to listening and working to understanding another’s struggle, strife or perspective. Doc inexorably shaped my educational philosophy and practice. I hope that I can continue to cultivate the patience and strength to lead by his example and pay it forward just the same.  

Church v. Theatre: Elevating the Human Experience

EDU 6120 Week 3

The juxtaposition of our two readings for week three could not have been starker: the history of Judeo-Christian cultural and religious values on learning versus the practical and legal issues American educator face. It was a reminder to me the vast expanses of history, moments big and small, that good educators must consider.

The notes and scriptural passages about Judeo-Christian values and knowledge coupled with the highlights of Confucian beliefs and Lao Tzu’s contributions to inner-life and the role that education plays in personal awakening were particularly resonant with me. I was disappointed however, that despite alluding to Buddha early in the notes, there was actually no mention of Buddhism. The path to personal enlightenment – knowing myself as prerequisite to offering valuable care, service or help to another – was introduced through Jesus and my Christian upbringing and was more satisfyingly and cerebrally explored in my exploration of Buddhism. I believe it was the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass who said that we must go outside of the traditions in which we were raised to find meaning and critical appreciation of religion and its value in our life. The inner-work of Buddhism and the familial and traditional elements of Judaism have been those remarkable steps outside my upbringing for me. Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha was my introduction to Buddhism as a sophomore in high school. And yes, now looking back I appreciate the irony that it took a white German author’s interpretation of an Indian’s self-awakening and the Eastern philosophical tradition of one-ness with all beings to expand my horizon.

It was also valuable to see the Hebrew values of memorization, monuments, festivals and temple worship all laid out. All four of these remain integral parts of our culture today and are undoubtedly cornerstones of knowledge, sharing, storytelling and community that influence the majority of Christian traditions that followed. Growing up, I found religious traditions and rituals corny. I think it was likely because simultaneously, I grew up in and around community theater, which in truth, I found more compelling.

This is likely because there was transparency about the suspended disbelief of theater so it was ostensibly more honest to me. I found truth and wisdom in the dramatic experiences of Williams or Miller’s characters on stage, struggling through their slice of Americana, much more so than the struggle of Moses or Jacob. I found profound humor in Neil Simon or Noel Coward’s farces that I was seeing at 8 and 9 years old. Hell, at 10 or 11, I knew every word to the Rent cast album recording mere months after it was released. Theatre was my church. It elevated the human experience for me, allowed me to see other people’s struggles in comparison to my own and taught me how and why to be compassionate.

In contrast, I saw the strings of the performance and performers at church each Sunday. It seemed unrehearsed and disjointed. It seemed sloppy. It is also significant and worth noting that the local community playhouse, Driftwood, was separated by only a parking lot from Our Saviors Lutheran Church. The intimacy of geography plays such an important role in the framing of young person’s experience. My grade school was three blocks west and my high school was across the street from the church and theatre. I digress. The presentation of ritual, tradition and performance I witnessed at church was not only of lower quality than that of the theatre performers next door, but it was disingenuous because it seemed to honor the Divine (i.e. the belief in something bigger than our one self) less. People seemed eerily sycophantic to the pastors as well as other church leaders. All they had done in my estimation was read out of the Bible and in the case of the pastor have an exceedingly boring and often-overwrought monologue. This worship of the clergy not only seems to counter what Marty was objecting against with his 95 Theses (Happy 500^th anniversary btw!) but contrasted to the actors next door whose egos were not center stage but in fact it was the plays and stories that they were elevating.

Cut to 20 years later. I have since had positive church-going experiences – mostly at Unitarian churches, which don’t aim to create community by first labeling the “other.” I studied religion (Christian theology in particular) in college and find ruminations on the big existential questions of life to be some of my inner-world’s deepest satisfactions. Thinking back on my experiences in church as a child, in contrast to the community theatre, I am reminded of a problem that exists in education as well. When the lectern becomes a pulpit, when a teacher demands obedience and cultivates disciples rather than critical thinkers, I believe education fails to reach it higher purpose. A great teacher needs to have self-satisfaction in the work they do and believe in rather than seeking out external validation through the affirmation of their followers, I mean students.

None of us – pastors or teachers, educators both – can perfectly suspend our egos for the sakes of others’ learning. However, we must continue to grow ourselves and reflect on our own life and joy of learning so that the knowledge and wisdom that we impart is meant to motivate others to do the same and not intimidate others through our own self-congratulation.

To step out of the philosophical and reflect on the practical elements of our readings for a moment, I was fascinated by both the case studies involving the precipitating case that lead to FERPA and also the corporal punishment case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

The FERPA case seems so obvious to me that I had trouble imagining a time when teacher and school records about students would have ever been legitimately closed off to parents. I can’t quite imagine what the pedagogical or practical rationale was behind closing those files. Despite the laws distinctions regarding a teacher’s role in a student’s life, it is my understanding that the best outcomes for students arise when parents and teachers operate from the same understanding and data. The more secrecy, the more discrepancy and how does that best serve a student exactly?

Lastly, I think it is significant as a high school social studies and history teacher to have students consider the Ingraham v. Wright Supreme Court case where the Court decided that the 8^th amendment clause against cruel and unusual punishment was only meant to be applied to criminals and was an inadequate argument in the case of the plaintiff James Ingraham. Corporal punishment seems today both cruel and outmoded. It will be interesting to have students consider that the Supreme Court’s constructionist interpretation of the Constitution that did not protect the individual rights of students in the case of their own physical well-being and liberty.   

Spelunking Plato's Cave...

EDU 6120 Week 2

I have always appreciated the opportunity for a slow and intentional revisit to fundamental human philosophies. In the cases of Plato’s allegory of the cave, the theory of forms and Aristotle’s deduction that the science of politics is the philosophical pursuit of Good and virtue, I am amazed by how much these theories have foundationally informed my understanding of the world.

It is undoubtedly, with the hindsight of ten years since I have studied philosophy, that I can appreciate how these essential ideas have influenced my thinking about politics, education and certainly my pursuit of self-knowledge and care.

There are essential truths about human nature and humanity’s aims and aspirations that both Plato and Aristotle determined were either self-evident or could be empirically deduced. It never ceases to amaze me that both of these thinkers’ pursuits of truth have resonance with the human experience 2400 years later. Moreover, revisiting these, the most well-known pieces of their works, continues to stimulate illuminating insights for me. I feel similarly about Shakespeare. As I see Hamlet, Othello, and All’s Well That Ends Well for the fifth and sixth times, I continue to appreciate new – both shallow and deep – truths upon reconsideration. These examples are touchstones of human learning and wisdom. 

I learned that cardinal virtues (courage, wisdom, moderation) when in balance, give way to justice, self-knowledge and the capacities for viva activa – a life of action, service to others and pursuing ends beyond one’s own self-satisfaction. As I ruminated on this dedication and balance, I am surprised how much these aims have influenced my own life and trajectory. I have placed such value in the complementary Hamlet adage “to thine own self be true.” I have long-believed that some of the only progress and actual change any individual can manifest is knowing themselves for the benefit of others. This framework for personal growth and self-realization informs my vocational pull to education and is evident through the best – most mutual and caring – relationships and communities in my life.

I am curious about how moderation and a temperament regarding balance informed the personal excellence calculus of the Greek theorists who conceived and practiced it. How fastidious were those justice seekers in that balance? It would logically follow that a life too meticulously dedicated to balance would disallow the individual to ever break free from a life of precision and miss the outward-facing aim of viva activa entirely. Not holding too tightly the pursuit of balance would seem the ultimate wisdom of moderation. For moderation in excess would be asceticism, which despite being a chief pursuit of most religious mystics, has always to me seemed self-indulgent and not serving of a calling greater than one’s self.

I am also curious about what informed Socrates’ belief in the immortality and supposed metaphysical being of the human soul. Was the soul the human form? That is, was the form of the human soul, the perfectly realized version of our self once disentangled from this mortal coil? I would be interested to learn more about how Socrates concluded that a soul exists in the first place. That seems a pretty big assumption for a jumping off point.

The deep dive, or spelunking rather, into the Allegory of the Cave was remarkable this time around. I think that considering the different junctures in my life when I’ve read it, I’ve made new and important connections. The title alone “breaking the chains of ignorance” is a potent phrase and a critical way to frame the lesson Plato hoped to impart. Whether a slave in the cave or enlightened by the truth of the sun, the complacency and ruts that our minds can fall into demand re-awakening and challenging ideas to hone our critical thinking and force us to question our reality and truths we take for granted. This allegory is nowhere more readily applicable than education.

“Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the object which are now shown to him?” This reminds me of wisdom imbued in my favorite Master Yoda quote “first you must unlearn what you have learned.” We are so quick to reject both things and ideas that don’t agree with what we “know.” That is further evident in the line “pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to seek refuge.” The pain of change and challenge is nowhere more evident that American politics today. Plato’s call is all the more cogent and germane.

It would seem that Plato’s charge is that the enlightened among us – those comfortable navigating the transition between the sun and the cave, those eager to challenge the truths and existences in each world – have the onus to be stewards of transition and enlightenment for those unable or unwilling to change or challenge themselves. This again seems to be directly applicable to teachers. It is the duty of the steward or teacher to live a life not of mere self-congratulation and satisfaction, nor one of passive pity toward those who are stuck in their original habitation. Instead, teachers should meet people as and where they are and encourage them to achieve self-determination and fulfillment so they can contribute themselves.

“So too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being or in other words, of the good.” This enterprise is not something we can do as mere hobby or sport. Those who believe this to be the human condition must commit the best of themselves and their vocation to it.

Reflecting on Reflection

EDU 6120 Week 1

Metacognition plays a necessary role in the education process. As a contemplative and critical thinker a student can unlock their own continued curiosity, self-fulfillment and self-discovery, all of which are core aims of education. 

Students however, need to be given both structured time and strategies in the classroom to explore “thinking after.” It takes continued practice before it can become natural. I remember as a high school student finding it such “busy work” and completely boring when teachers would ask me to “reflect on my work.” My reaction was likely the result of my teachers only giving me the space and opportunity for reflection but not offering the most important components of reflection – the strategies HOW to reflect and also the WHY I was reflecting in the first place. Ultimately, a big hook for many students (especially I’d argue the higher performers in a class) is to let them in on the WHY of their work.

Students value intentionality and transparency especially when that deliberateness is what you are asking of them. As we discussed night one, the teacher plays a diversity of roles in the classroom and I have found that openness around ‘teacher as learner’ and what I am trying to learning from and about my students is simultaneously a way to gain their trust and also a way to model contemplative and meta-cognitive thinking as I investigate how my students are learning and what I can do to improve my practice.

Nowhere have I found the Latin adage “repetitio est mater studiorum” (repetition is the mother of study/learning) to be most true. The consistency required to get reflection exercises to stick can seem excruciatingly dull – not to mention the sacrifice to content time that reflection eats into. However, as Ellis notes, there are numerous academic studies that demonstrate the value of reflection and its benefits for the learning of knowledge. Thinking about how and what a student learned is of much greater value than simply getting students to recall key vocabulary words in a rote fill-in the blank exit ticket. 

I appreciated the tangible strategies that Ellis and Scheuerman lay out in their piece as a toolbox for daily self-reflections with my students. I must admit that I was a little worried that my first masters’ grad class about education history and philosophy might be too theoretical, but this list is already incredibly useful. I especially am interested in trying out the “Clear and Unclear.” This not only will provide me with critical feedback about what students took out of the lesson and how they organized it and will also provide a higher-order thinking task for my students (per Bloom or Marzano). This will challenge students to integrate and evaluate new information they’ve just learned and also provide me with crucial feedback about the day’s lesson.

I am also interested in using “This week in Review” to challenge students to make cross-curricular connections. Too often, especially in high school, students’ course work is so siloed that teachers and especially students are not making the useful connections between content and strategies in each of their classes. Whitehead agrees noting, “There is only one subject for education, and this is Life in all it manifestations.” Students noticing those parallels and zooming out to appreciate how their education is a unified process will help them to grow.

One of the easier ways I have found to introduce a metacognitive framework to my students is to begin the term with a learning styles inventory at the beginning of the term. This would ask survey-styled questions to get students thinking about their propensity toward visual, auditory or tactile types of learning.

Informally, I would poll them for moments or types of activities or even strategies (if they could frame it as such) that they had not enjoyed in previous classes. This probe served two functions. It demonstrated that I valued their opinion and wanted to learn from them. Moreover, it introduced the most basic form of metacognition – thinking about teaching strategies or environments that had not been effective for them.

This survey data gave me a starting point to gauge my different sections and could help me to create different small groups based upon different learning techniques and offer a diversity of media when it came to introducing and/or practicing content.