"Introduction to Constructivism"

Taken from a demonstration I gave at NWP summer institute:

 “In the art of living, man is both the artist and the object of his art;

he is the sculptor and the marble; the physician and the patient.”

-Erich Fromm

            Students are being terribly mis-trained about the nature of knowledge, about the way that we learn, and about the connections that exist between all things that can be known, and they are being mislead by their own educational system. I have had students remark that I was drifting from my subject matter during my occasional forays into science, social studies and mathematics, and I expected those comments to some degree. I realized there was a problem when a student appealed to me in my English class: “Why are we reading so much? This is English class!”

            The general education that students receive in public school creates a false impression of the world being divided-up by subject when there are no such walls in the real world. Students are taught to think linearly, inside several different boxes, and to never let thoughts from one box interfere with those of other compartments.  A superior education is both broad and deep. It enables students to view the world in an objective, quantifiable way as well as with a subjective and philosophical eye. The late Dr. Philip Phenix, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Education at the Teachers College of Columbia University once summed up a person of superior education as (1964):

            

“[being]  skilled in the use of speech, symbol, and gesture, factually well informed, capable of creating and appreciating objects of esthetic significance, endowed with a rich and disciplined life in relation to self and others, able to make wise decisions and to judge between right and wrong, and possessed of an integral outlook. These are the aims of general education for the development of whole persons.” (Phenix, 1964)

             So what does this have to do with writing? In Write for Insight: Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-12, is says “If students are to make knowledge their own…they must struggle with the details, wrestle with the facts, and rework raw information and dimly understood concepts into language they can communicate to someone else.” (Strong, 2006)

            If we want students to really learn information, and not regurgitate it, they must interact with it, through writing, and through communities of learning where they can teach what they have discovered to others.

A happy Hamlet, if there could be such a thing...

This is something I wrote before going home to visit family a few years ago. I live far from my family and only see them once a year. As you get older, you start to understand that you stand outside of the circle of your family when you miss so much time with them. 

'Nebraska—a month from today: I have to go home. I want to go home. I need to go home. I hate to go home. “You can’t go home again.” It’s been said so many times, and become such a cliché, that it has started to compile a dry irony that makes it nearly tolerable to express again in Literary circles.

Visiting home is like visiting ghosts. My family isn’t dead. In fact, go to a family gathering, and you’ll probably find me the least outgoing in the bunch. I mean that they have stopped growing, developing, and changing for me, as I know I have for them. I remember them the same way that I remember my dead grandfather—I didn’t get to attend his funeral, you see, so he is still alive to me. My family is forever young, forever stuck in one place. And when they demonstrate their evolving person to me, I wonder: Are these the same people? Are they who they say they are? I am confused. But I am also home. I’ll have a beer, a chat, and a hug on the patio with my dad—a happy Hamlet, if there could be such a thing.'

Why Write?

            I was never a big writer until I began college. I have ADD (which I use to great effect now, but which used to cause me all sorts of trouble in high school), and a reading problem caused by learning to read using whole word recognition from memorizing the books my parents read to me and then teaching myself to read the memorized words, rather than learning through phonetics. I am a slow reader who requires a lot of breaks. Writing is even worse for me. It will take me several hours to write this paper, and I will get bored and play on Facebook, read a few Wikipedia articles, take a shower, go on a run, and maybe wash some dishes during the course of writing the first draft. I might even get a nap in there, if my kids will abide it. That said, I will keep what I’ve written turning in my head while I avoid the actual work. I do a lot of revision in the shower.

            Anyway, it wasn’t until college (begun five years later than my peers) that I knew who I was and how best to turn my “deficits” into benefits, and only then was I ready to sit down and really write, rather than just doing the least amount of work possible to [maybe] pass a class. In the past year, I have started publishing a serialized novel on Amazon.com. I’m really enjoying the experience of uncovering the story and learning about the characters as they emerge from the base clay of what I teach my students about standard plot structure. I think Stephen King (a really very under-valued writer of character and mood) said in his book On Writing something like: being a writer is like being an archaeologist. The story is already waiting there under the soil, and it is up to the author to uncover it.

            Though writing was, and is, still difficult for me, I find it clarifying and calming, and at the same time exciting and eye-opening. As far as my personal story goes, writing is an act of exploration for me; it helps me find what I’m looking for, whether it’s a story, a central theme, or a personal revelation. But there remains a larger question, right? The question of Writing: Why do we do it? Why do people, as a species, write? There’s the obvious, pragmatic, use of the technology of putting thoughts into symbols that can be preserved semi-permanently so others may make use of discoveries. But why novels? Why journals? Why this paper that I’m writing write now? The answer lies in the way that we think. In Write for Insight: Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-12, it says “[we] must struggle with the details, wrestle with the facts, and rework raw information and dimly understood concepts into language [we] can communicate to someone else.” (Strong, 2006) If we want to really learn information, and not regurgitate it, we must interact with it, through writing (and through communities of learning) where we can teach what we have discovered to others. In short: we don’t really know what we know until we take the time to organize it, and the most pragmatic way to do so is to write it all down.

            I often find this to be true. As an experiment, let’s see what happens when I write a paragraph about why I don’t seem to be able to settle, politically—not just in this Presidential race, but ever. The experiment begins now…

            I am an ideologically moderate but emotionally passionate person. This results in situations where small changes in temperament or political circumstances can cause me to lean conservative or liberal in what appear to be dramatic swings (because of the emotional element, I can get quite vociferous).  The swings of political opinion are not actually very great; it’s just that I stand so close to the middle of the scale that only slight adjustments in weight on the left or right play major havoc with my political leanings.

            I am an introspective person. You can see that in how I began my experiment by trying to determine what the variables were, and I looked inside first, rather than blaming my friends for being idiots with their heads up their butts, or casting stones at the candidates for…well, for being idiots with their heads up their butts, too. I determined my own limiting factors and how those affected my reaction to changes in external variables. I learned a lot about myself in writing that paragraph, and it will probably become a blog entry as soon as I’m done with this assignment.

            But why would I feel the need to make this personal piece of information public? What service could such a transmission of data from writer to reader serve?

            The first reason might be that readers of my blog may suddenly see some of the same traits within themselves. They may have been living for years wondering why they couldn’t remain static in their support of a party. They wanted to belong, but there was no group into which they fit. Now that I have written about a pattern of behavior and/or belief that they recognize within themselves, the reader can apply that same introspection to their own situation, and maybe feel better for it.

            The second reason was summed-up nicely by Pearl S. Buck, who once said that “Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.” Essentially, what she is talking about is the need for community in creative endeavors. There is no doubt that a certain catharsis can be reached in the simple act of creating something new—something expressive; but the implication of externalizing an emotional hue as a physical product is that the creator is lending permanence in the hope that others might witness and empathize with the piece. We are a social species that is alone in the natural world in its realization and fear of mortality. As far as we know, the natural urge to create art is uniquely human. Writing, and creation in general, is our attempt to lash out at the death that we are guaranteed from the moment of conception; creation is our lowly effort at an immortal act, and we need each other---if for no other reason—as witnesses to our creative memorial acts.

Strong, W. (2006). Write for Insight: Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-12. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Misunderstanding Technology in Education...

            I think that we have a major failing to understand what exactly technology is and what it means to us as educators, as well as what it means to our society at large. I keep seeing discussions of technology as if it were an extraneous element that is being forced in to the curriculum. The very definition of technology should impede this reading of tech’s place in our schools. Merriam-Webster’s definitions are:

    

        1a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area : engineering 2 <medical technology>b : a capability given by the practical application of knowledge <a car's fuel-saving technology>

            2: a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge <new technologies for information storage>

            3: the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor<educational technology>

            When you look at these definitions, what you see are references to practicality and ways of doing things. The definition doesn’t include “any of the variety of electronics or social-media websites available or popular at the moment”. Books are technology. Pens are technology. Whiteboards are technology. Masking tape is technology. Each has a specific use, and when that proscribed use is deviated from, the result may-or-may not adhere to expectations. Books are for transmitting masses of information that have been vetted and appropriately edited and revised. Books are not for teaching. Books are not for punishing. Books are not for hitting. Just so, this “technology” of which we speak—and let’s be clear, we mean computers, smartphones, and websites—have specific uses that are apparent when you really step back and look at them. The smartphone is for communication and information dissemination/retrieval. It is not a teacher. The computer has some of the same uses as the smartphone--lacking the convenience, but making up for that with versatility and the ability to produce texts which resemble books in their clarity, quality, and format (a format which has served our species long enough that it may have caused changes in the way that we think and accrue information). Websites are also extremely versatile, and their practical use is usually overt and easy to understand.

            What I’m getting at is that I am extremely troubled by statements such as this one found in Kenneth Henson's Curriculum Planning: Integrating multiculturalism, constructivism, and education reform: “Close attention must be paid to possible disadvantages and shortcomings inherent in technology as well as to its merits” (84). The treatment of “technology” (electronics) as a foreign entity that is being crammed sideways into curriculum denotes a lack of facility with the technology that should preclude its use in classes. If a teacher doesn't understand the tech, or using the tech doesn't make sense in the situation, you shouldn’t even bother because it’s just a political shtick, rather than useful. Moreover, plenty of teachers also misuse technologies such as books, worksheets, three-ring binders and hole-punches, just because they think that a student who is busy doing something is a student who is learning. That same thought-process is now not only being applied to electronic technologies, but is being encouraged just so it can be said that “tech is being used in this ‘21^st Century School.’” Our job, as teachers, is to prepare our students for the future by proficiently disseminating raw knowledge and helping our students to process it efficiently and effectively so that they will be better prepared to lead a life in which they find happiness and meaning. Our job is not to jam the administration’s Website-of-the-Moment awkwardly into our lesson plans, exposing ourselves as fraudulent in our abilities as designers of curriculum, or as disinterested advocates for our students.

          All technology is designed for a specific use, and though it may sometimes work in alternate situations, attempting to force a specific electronic technology’s use in an ill-suited situation makes sense as much as using a Glock as a hammer.

Henson, K.  (2010).  Curriculum planning:  Integrating multiculturalism, constructivism, and education reform (4^th ed.).  Long Grove, IL:  Waveland Press, Inc.

technology. 2011. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved February 6, 2012, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker

New painting: we are all science fiction...

Somewhere in the universe, someone thinks that it's science fiction that life abides in an environment so cold that dihydrogen monoxide vapor coalesces, freezes, and falls to the ground.
Isn't it beautiful and amazing?

"Snowy, Today"