I picked up C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image because I read A.N. Wilson's excellent biography of Lewis this spring, and a mention there made me think I'd like to see it. I'm glad I did.
The "discarded image" to which the title refers is the worldview of human beings in the western hemisphere--Greek, Roman, Jew, Arab, European (heavy on the Europeans--this is C.S. Lewis, an Englishman, and what we may call the Middle Ages happened largely in Europe)--between, say, Homer and the Renaissance. Lewis's argument is that in order to understand Medieval literature, it helps to understand the worldview from which it springs. No doubt. And, in going through the literature, brilliantly--is there anything Lewis hasn't read and digested?--and adroitly--his style as a writer is lucid, charming, and respectful--Lewis paints a picture of a world so different from ours it's hard to imagine.
But the task he has set himself is to imagine this world as he discovers it in literature, and he shows us how we may do the same. This, then, is as much an exercise in history and appreciation of historical difference as it is an introduction to literature. The literature becomes the lens through which we see the Medieval mind.
Lewis's tour of the heavens (imagine looking up into a bowl of beautiful, meaningful actors, not out into unfathomably empty space), the earth, and its inhabitants leaves me yearning not to return to those violent, muddy, ignorant times, but to achieve with the benefits of modern consciousness the same relationship to a meaningful world.
For those who find Rudolf Steiner a crank, idiosyncratically spouting nonsense about the spiritual world, The Discarded Image shows, by inference, that Steiner's attempt was not to inject ignorant fantasy into the hard realities of the modern world, but to recover the meaning of spirit, soul, and cosmos as they were understood in earlier times. Read Lewis's exposition of Vegetable Soul and Sentient Soul, based in several Medieval works, and see how these relate directly--they're talking about the same thing--to Steiner's concepts of etheric and astral lives. Find threads going back through the Middle Ages to Aristotle, Plato, and Herodotus that illustrate what Huston Smith calls "the perennial philosophy."
Lewis is not espousing one view over another. He's not seeking a return to older ways of thinking and knowing. He acknowledges that the medieval view of the world is largely and fundamentally wrong, or that it contains many untruths.
But he is clear that medieval thinkers were sensitive to the limits of their knowledge, acknowledging the tentative, theoretical or hypothetical nature of their concepts. Toward the end of the book, he contrasts this openness and sensitivity to the insensitive way in which we approach the apparent "reality" that we perceive given not only our scientific knowledge but also our unacknowledged, unquestioned assumptions about the world we believe we live in. In a nod to his friend, Owen Barfield, Lewis notes that the change from the ancient to the modern world is not so much a change in the facts of the world as it is a change in our understanding of what is meant by a theory.
Lewis is clear that much of what Medieval people believed was factually wrong--we needn't quibble about that--but their appreciation for logic, fact, and theory was more highly developed than ours is.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
A Dissent on the Wall of Laptops
In the summer of 2000 I walked into a class for the first time to encounter what I came to think of as the Wall of Laptops. Two dozen doctoral students sat around a large conference table, and all but one or two had their laptops proudly open before them. We started class, and it was clear within a few days (maybe within a few minutes to more sensitive types) that this wasn't working. The core of my teaching, based on the methods of the best teachers I had in graduate school, is presentation and discussion. With the Wall of Laptops, presentation became a PowerPoint flogging, each bullet point another not-memorable nail in the coffin of engaged thinking. And discussion became a sort of lobbing out of the foxhole, then back to email checking or whatever went on back there behind the laptop. I put up with it as long as possible, giving the new technology time to work itself out. Then we derailed class for an hour to sort it out. Fortunately, these were adult students who quickly realized what they were doing to themselves and each other. The wall folded and humanity returned.
The following summer, I was pleased to have Ian Parker's "Absolute Powerpoint" from the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/05/28/010528fa_fact_parker) to wave when I requested in the first class that laptops generally be left closed. Here are the first few paragraphs of that excellent article:
I was reminded of this story today when I read "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom," by Jeffrey Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/) The second paragraph of that article reads:
Hear, hear.
And all this reminds me of a conversation from earlier in the summer regarding the high school at which I teach. A dad asked his son, a student who could have attended any high school he wished, more or less, private or public, but chose our small Waldorf high school, why he made the decision he did. His son answered something like this: "At every other school I visited, the teacher stood in the front and lectured the kids, who sat there with textbooks. I don't want that kind of learning. At the Waldorf High School, the students sit around conference tables with the teachers and have real discussions. You can ask real questions and get real answers."
I don't know that other Waldorf schools teach this way, but I'm clear that this is a good way to teach. We live in the information age; access to information, for me or my students, is simply not an issue. Conversation, interpretation, and discussion. Listening, thinking, speaking, and writing. These are the roots of engagement with the world, in a classroom or outside it.
For that matter, when I read Rudolf Steiner on education, I picture a much more collegiate model of education than I find in most schools, Waldorf or otherwise. In the U.S., perhaps largely for economic reasons, we have adopted what I call the "Mother Hen" approach to education (this might also be called the "Martyr" approach), in which teachers spend so much time in class, on the playground, at lunch, and even after school with students and colleagues that their focus narrows and so does their engagement with the world. To perpetuate this nurturing-to-the-point-of-smothering model, especially in high school, simply doesn't serve students, parents, or teachers very well. For a high school teacher to model herself after a college professor (the best college professor, that is)--engaged with students and subject and world, not one at the expense of the other--and to bring that engagement in a mature manner to her students, that's educational.
The following summer, I was pleased to have Ian Parker's "Absolute Powerpoint" from the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/05/28/010528fa_fact_parker) to wave when I requested in the first class that laptops generally be left closed. Here are the first few paragraphs of that excellent article:
Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little
like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the
lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living
in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren’t
listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So,
one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft’s PowerPoint
program, and typed:FAMILY MATTERS An approach for positive change to the Wyndham
family team
On a new page, she wrote:·Lack of organization leads to confusion and frustration among all family members.
·Disorganization is detrimental to grades and to your social life.
·Disorganization leads to inefficiencies that impact the entire family.
Instead of pleading for domestic harmony, Sarah Wyndham was pitching for it. Soon she had eighteen pages of large type, supplemented by a color photograph of a generic happy family riding bicycles, and, on the final page, a drawing of a key—the key to success.
The briefing was given only once, last fall. The experience was so upsetting to
her children that the threat of a second showing was enough to make one of the
Wyndham girls burst into tears.PowerPoint, which can be found on two hundred and fifty million computers around the world, is software you impose on other people. It allows you to arrange text and graphics in a series of pages, which you can project, slide by slide, from a laptop computer onto a screen, or print as a booklet (as Sarah Wyndham did). The usual metaphor for everyday software is the tool, but that doesn’t seem to be right here. PowerPoint is more like a suit of clothes, or a car, or plastic surgery. You take it out with you. You are judged by it—you insist on being judged by it. It is by definition a social instrument, turning middle managers into bullet-point dandies.
But PowerPoint also has a private, interior influence. It edits ideas. It is, almost
surreptitiously, a business manual as well as a business suit, with an
opinion—an oddly pedantic, prescriptive opinion—about the way we should think.
It helps you make a case, but it also makes its own case: about how to organize
information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world.
I was reminded of this story today when I read "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom," by Jeffrey Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/) The second paragraph of that article reads:
More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from
using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a
crutch rather using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for
discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures
online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on
their college years later in life, they're going to remember challenging debates
and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all
about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections
of slides.
Hear, hear.
And all this reminds me of a conversation from earlier in the summer regarding the high school at which I teach. A dad asked his son, a student who could have attended any high school he wished, more or less, private or public, but chose our small Waldorf high school, why he made the decision he did. His son answered something like this: "At every other school I visited, the teacher stood in the front and lectured the kids, who sat there with textbooks. I don't want that kind of learning. At the Waldorf High School, the students sit around conference tables with the teachers and have real discussions. You can ask real questions and get real answers."
I don't know that other Waldorf schools teach this way, but I'm clear that this is a good way to teach. We live in the information age; access to information, for me or my students, is simply not an issue. Conversation, interpretation, and discussion. Listening, thinking, speaking, and writing. These are the roots of engagement with the world, in a classroom or outside it.
For that matter, when I read Rudolf Steiner on education, I picture a much more collegiate model of education than I find in most schools, Waldorf or otherwise. In the U.S., perhaps largely for economic reasons, we have adopted what I call the "Mother Hen" approach to education (this might also be called the "Martyr" approach), in which teachers spend so much time in class, on the playground, at lunch, and even after school with students and colleagues that their focus narrows and so does their engagement with the world. To perpetuate this nurturing-to-the-point-of-smothering model, especially in high school, simply doesn't serve students, parents, or teachers very well. For a high school teacher to model herself after a college professor (the best college professor, that is)--engaged with students and subject and world, not one at the expense of the other--and to bring that engagement in a mature manner to her students, that's educational.
Love and Critics
I have spent some brief time on the Waldorf critics list (if that's what it's called) recently, and I have engaged in a couple of exchanges that I intend to continue when I have time. It is stimulating and challenging to enter a discussion that involves different points of view.
It seems to me that some of the Waldorf critics, at least, actually love Waldorf education and anthroposophy, that the tension between the highly imperfect practices of Waldorf schools and Waldorf teachers and the high ideals that they espouse drives a desire for criticism. As a noted anthroposophist told me once, "I love Waldorf education; it's just the schools I can't stand." Tongue-in-cheek, but, all too often, understandable.
What I mean, for example, is this: I have no interest in astrology. When people at a dinner party start talking about it, I tune out. When I come across references to it in my reading, anthroposophical or otherwise, I tend to start skimming. Astrology may be total bunk or it may contain great truths of which I will remain ignorant. But I just can't bring myself to be bothered. I recognize that others take it seriously, on the one side for its apparent value, and on the other for its apparent idiocy. But to have a stake in a discussion about it is beyond me. And I recognize that I could only have strong feelings about it if it connected to my life somehow. I do not embrace it and I am not critical of it; I am indifferent.
If I grow, eventually, through interest, to love it, fine. If I grow to hate it, however, I must recognize that beyond the hatred is love for something that I wish to see born. In the phenomenon from which I distance myself is a kernel of truth that draws me. (Similarly, as the rabbi said to the atheist, "The god you do not believe in, I also do not believe in.")
To turn this around, if I experienced astrology as connected to my life, I would have strong feelings about it. So, in manifesting strong feelings, great interest--many of the Waldorf critics are as well read in Steiner as any anthroposophists I know--Waldorf critics demonstrate the connection of Waldorf education with their lives.
Unfortunately (from my point of view), whereas my education in a Waldorf school (after nine years in three mediocre public schools) and my experience as a teacher lead me to see great value in it, the experiences of many critics is the reverse. They or their children were wronged by someone or something in Waldorf schools--dogmatic teachers, heedless governance, even educational malpractice. Rather than writing off this experience, however, as we all do with wrongs done to us every day (unless we aim to carry a lot of baggage wherever we go; fewer than one child in one thousand is educated in a Waldorf school in the U.S.; if our primary motive is improving education, there are better ways to spend our time...), some Waldorf critics have engaged with it, in part through their on-line list or group.
Their motives, even if they seek to destroy Waldorf education, are beyond reproach. They aim (as I do) to make the world a better place, and what, in the end, is more loving than that?
Similarly, we may disagree, even after long conversation, but if we shun each other we exclude the possibility of mutual understanding. And there's no love in that.
It seems to me that some of the Waldorf critics, at least, actually love Waldorf education and anthroposophy, that the tension between the highly imperfect practices of Waldorf schools and Waldorf teachers and the high ideals that they espouse drives a desire for criticism. As a noted anthroposophist told me once, "I love Waldorf education; it's just the schools I can't stand." Tongue-in-cheek, but, all too often, understandable.
What I mean, for example, is this: I have no interest in astrology. When people at a dinner party start talking about it, I tune out. When I come across references to it in my reading, anthroposophical or otherwise, I tend to start skimming. Astrology may be total bunk or it may contain great truths of which I will remain ignorant. But I just can't bring myself to be bothered. I recognize that others take it seriously, on the one side for its apparent value, and on the other for its apparent idiocy. But to have a stake in a discussion about it is beyond me. And I recognize that I could only have strong feelings about it if it connected to my life somehow. I do not embrace it and I am not critical of it; I am indifferent.
If I grow, eventually, through interest, to love it, fine. If I grow to hate it, however, I must recognize that beyond the hatred is love for something that I wish to see born. In the phenomenon from which I distance myself is a kernel of truth that draws me. (Similarly, as the rabbi said to the atheist, "The god you do not believe in, I also do not believe in.")
To turn this around, if I experienced astrology as connected to my life, I would have strong feelings about it. So, in manifesting strong feelings, great interest--many of the Waldorf critics are as well read in Steiner as any anthroposophists I know--Waldorf critics demonstrate the connection of Waldorf education with their lives.
Unfortunately (from my point of view), whereas my education in a Waldorf school (after nine years in three mediocre public schools) and my experience as a teacher lead me to see great value in it, the experiences of many critics is the reverse. They or their children were wronged by someone or something in Waldorf schools--dogmatic teachers, heedless governance, even educational malpractice. Rather than writing off this experience, however, as we all do with wrongs done to us every day (unless we aim to carry a lot of baggage wherever we go; fewer than one child in one thousand is educated in a Waldorf school in the U.S.; if our primary motive is improving education, there are better ways to spend our time...), some Waldorf critics have engaged with it, in part through their on-line list or group.
Their motives, even if they seek to destroy Waldorf education, are beyond reproach. They aim (as I do) to make the world a better place, and what, in the end, is more loving than that?
Similarly, we may disagree, even after long conversation, but if we shun each other we exclude the possibility of mutual understanding. And there's no love in that.
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