IMAGE NATION
In our current push toward standards and standardization of education we have become so pushed toward memorization that imagination has gone by the wayside. M.C. Richards made it very clear in her book The Crossing Point by saying “too many teachers are taking on the role of conforming to a syllabus such to prepare students for examinations.” She says and I concur, “that we have succumb to the Socratic Method in that we more often then not use a debating style of guidance in which students are forced into opposition just because their opinion is worded differently from their fellow classmates. Teaching through debate forces students to commit to verbal warfare.” M.C. Richards puts forth that upon the Socratic development of a student’s intelligence, later in life as an adult the student or person will have a “brain honed to play games to win and to escape traps and will set them for others. The person’s character will then tend to be concealed and explosive.” I whole-heartedly agree with Richards and find that she is right in stating that there is “a gap between behavior and knowledge” in our current educational systems. I accept as Richard’s suggests that “the brain is not developed by thinking, rather thinking develops the brain.” It is this existential view that yields me to say that while we as teachers possess the vocabulary of knowledge and wisdom, our students possess the imagination to bring forth the teachable moments that allow teachers to share their knowledge and wisdom. So what is the role of the teacher? I see a teacher as someone who is willing to share there “art of self study and receptivity” with students so that students can learn how to listen, hear their inner being speaking to them and avail them the opportunity to progress toward a large and great vision of clarity. A greater respect for our student’s imaginations must be given in order for the students to respond more eagerly and more often. A teacher must accept that they alone do not create the teachable moment. Teachers must accept that teaching is as the ebb and flow. While they guide at times, so does the student. It is the imagination that students possess in greater amount and it is the proven learning curve that students have over our slower adult minds that should cause us to give greater respect to our students and their abilities. And I say proven, due to that fact that studies have shown that children learn faster than adults. And while I know that many teachers agree with my statements, it is the legislators and politicians who must accept that knowledge and wisdom, intelligence, cannot be solely measured by memorization of numbers and words alone. Our great challenge as a nation, as we try to not leave any child behind, is how can we elevate the importance of the imagination such that it is given the same respect as memorization in our schools. Some student’s abilities to memorize is not as great as others. However, alternatives to assessment may prove that while a child may not memorize as fast as another, a child may imagine faster than another. I see our current regard toward testing as an incomplete approach toward developing our future as a nation through our children. As a result many students with boundless imaginations are getting pushed aside and left behind. Our nation must accept, as George Lucas has stated and many many others, art is the purpose and the connection between all the other disciplines. Our great inventors, often times were and are artists. They are the ones who did not and do not lose touch with their imaginations. Picasso is quoted as saying, “every child is an artist – the challenge is to remain one as you grow up.” Well, the challenge within our educational system is how do we allow every child to retain their imaginations into adulthood. And so our great struggle is the arguments being had behind measuring intelligence. Can we not say that a mentally handicapped savant is brilliant? We do say this. Could we not place the savant into a job that employs their brilliance? So I know our nation understands we are facing a struggle in balancing our methodology and pedagogical approaches toward teaching. I would only suppose that more artists would become more involved in the advancement of education both in the political arena and in our classrooms such that memorization can become balanced with imagination. I feel that our nation’s view of education has passed the crawling phase of infancy and is beginning to walk, almost as if our nation has started to develop it’s own superego and is finding a peace amongst the win and lose attitudes of our id and ego. During the industrialization and modernization of the American mind we stepped onto the international scene and began to pull from eastern attitudes so that we might stand up right and walk. While we now are titer tottering around and taking great steps, soon I hope that we might walk without handrails and move throughout the world as a leading nation in education. M.C. Richard’s referred to our nation during her times as gradually moving toward an awakening. She said, “People who don’t know how to listen will naturally tell you there is nothing to hear. It takes long and diligent work to awaken the inner ear. How is it one sage puts it? Oh yes, in order to know you have been asleep, you have first to wake up.” Richard’s truly possessed great vision as an artist, educator, poet and writer. M.C. Richards with her great insight and vision truly understood the super egotistical circular logic behind the recycling of culture, knowledge and wisdom. She thought of a person as a “tree filled with growth rings and as living both in time and outside of time with the hope of something time-less developing within so to feel the extraordinary in the ordinary and the sacred in the everyday.” It is that education to her was and to myself is the simple development of learning how to listen externally and internally with the goal of eventually leading the student to cross over toward wholeness and to grasp, as two hands together, knowledge and wisdom through our heart and memorization and imagination through our mind. And in closing, a final quote from M.C. Richard's book. "Who was it that said intelligence is measured not by what you do with what you know, but by what you do when you don't know?"
Inspirations
12 hours ago
Posts
