Category: Content

Education is a mess – is there an integrative way to teach?

I have updated an introduction to the SunWALK model of human-centred studies; 

SunWALK: Summary of the main meanings of the components represented in 
the model and its ‘logo-diagram-mandala’ – providing a teacher’s process model 

 

sunwalk-logo

.

SunWALK: Summary of the main meanings of the components represented in 

the model and its ‘logo-diagram-mandala’ – providing a teacher’s process model

Give me a brief introduction:

SunWALK grew out of reflection on many years of teaching children and adults and particularly a period of five years teaching in a RC middle school – theorizing my practice via a PhD and practising my theory day-to-day.

SunWALK simply says that the quality of all of our lives will be higher if we undertake all education within the framework of deepening our humanity.  

Deepening our humanity is a matter of developing technical competencies within the chief dimensions of the human spirit; Caring (the Humanities), Creativity (the Arts) and Criticality (the Sciences & Philosophy) – all in local, national and world Communities.  These are the ‘4Cs’ of the model – 3 intra-personal, 1 inter-personal.

We and our one planet will be better of if all of the technical stuff, from learning to read to Masters degrees in engineering, take place in the context of humanization/the 4Cs.  This requires international, national, school & classroom commitment to deepening the best of being human as the context for learning the technical.

We can’t afford to have character and morality and compassion as hoped-for accidental outcomes.  Moral Education, PSME, RE etc. don’t work as bolt-on extras.  They need to be the general context in which competencies are developed.

It is a model based on the energy flow of the human spirit – that is the given. That is physical, mental and spiritual energy that flows through all living human beings.  

That energy, the human spirit, is the true ’stuff of education’.  With the best of the past teachers need to equip children to face tomorrow’s challenges which will always be a mixture of new problems combined with eternally recurrent problems.  Building all education with will be the medium with which the teacher works to nurture and challenge balanced development.

Today we have lost the balance between specialization, and whole-systems thinking and acting – SunWALK model brings into harmony the best of ‘Western’ & ‘Eastern’ world-views. 

OK – so what’s the ‘Sun’ and the ‘WALK in the model’?

The ‘Sun’ = the individual’s spiritual inspiration & values sources – accumulated and ongoing, as operating internally and as expressed in speech and behaviour. 

WALK = Willing & Wise Action through Loving & Knowing – here seen as the general goal for education, and as the interiority, character and behaviour of the student. 

The model/logo combines a range of sub-models including the following:

a) An ‘interior’ model of the human spirit – in relation to ‘the world’.

b) A model for re-positioning education within being & becoming human – in the world with others.

c) A general model of the curriculum – for primary, secondary and higher education.

d) A framework for the analysis and evaluation of teaching episodes or projects.

e) A model of education that makes non-faith-specific spiritual and moral education intrinsic to all learning.

 

THE MODEL AND THE PROCESS IN ONE (long) SENTENCE: – 

The SunWALK model of spiritualizing pedagogy sees human education as the 

storied

development of 

meaning, which is 

constructed, and de-constructed, 

physically, mentally and spiritually, through 

Wise & Willing

Action, via 

Loving and Knowing – developed in 

Community, through the

‘Dialectical Spiritualization [1]’of 

Caring, Creativity & Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the 

‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order

values and beliefs, using best available,appropriate 

content.

These underlined concerns are central components and focuses of the practice and theory in the model. 

This is an intense combination of theory and practice.  It automatically requires the teacher to practice their theory and theorise their practice – dynamically as practice-based research.  It automatically enables the classroom to be connected to the school & community as a whole and to e.g. a relevant department in a university.

It attempts to suffuse all teaching with the demands, challenges and joy of being human in the world with others.  But it seeks to bring together the Whole and the parts, the ineffable and the concepts – not just concepts because as Heschel (1971:7) says, “Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

The diagram/logo/

The outer ring of the SunWALK logo combines two dimensions:

1 ‘Community i.e. the social,interpersonal dimension of interaction with other individuals or groups.

2  ‘Cultural sources’ including such dimensions as the traditions, the political & the legal.  

The three major divisions of the arts,sciences and humanities are here thought of as the stored, yet potentially dynamic, accumulation of knowledge and beliefs and procedures – everything from galleries to written laws of physics that the individual can draw upon or be influenced by. This is the ‘stuff out there’ rather than the interiority of consciousness in which there is the perpetual flow and re-shaping, focusing de-focusing etc. of heart-mind.

In SunWALK everything within the inner circle = a representation of ‘interiority’, i.e. human consciousness – the human spirit. 

The human spirit is presented intra-personally as 3 ‘voices’ – 3 modes of being & of engaging with reality & of knowing.

The three emanate from the singleness of ‘heart-mind’, consciousness.  

They are presented (metaphorically) as the ‘primary colours’ of Creativity (the yellow of inspiration), Criticality (the blue of reason) & Caring (the red warmth of love). 

Creativity is the ‘I’ voice of subjective engagement via an artistic medium – it is concerned with subjective knowing and is particularly related to the core virtue ‘beauty’ and its products are of course ‘the Arts’. 

Criticality is the ‘IT’ voice of objective engagement which enables progress in the Sciences ( & Maths., Philosophy and ‘critical’ studies). It is concerned with objective knowing – and it is related particularly to the core virtue ‘truth’.  The products of course are the sciences and technology  – but also philosophy and critical studies.

Caring is the ‘WE’ voice which enables moral engagement – for progress in the moral domain and in service of others. It is concerned with social knowing – related particularly to the core virtue ‘goodness’ and to ‘the Humanities’. 

All three of course need to be conditioned by the pre-eminent virtue of justice.  All students need to have these ways of engaging with reality developed in a balanced way.  High technical competence combined with moral dwarfism leads to ……

The physical dimension is seen as the instrument for the flow of spirit in all of its forms – e.g. via dance, drama & PE and sports.

Each individual develops her/his I, WE and IT voices, the 3Cs, via socialization, starting in the family, the local community and then later in formal education. A sense of justice is seen as paramount intrapersonally as well as inter-personally i.e. it enables us to engage with that which is beautiful, good or true with balance, clarity & due weight.

The essential process in all 4Cs is multi-level dialogue. In the case of the individual dialogue is seen as meditation, reflection and inner-talk. In the case of groups it is dialectical process via consultation.

The ‘Celtic’ knot that surrounds the central shield indicates that the 3Cs are simply aspects of the one human spirit– the flow of ‘heart-mind’.

The white shield at the centre represents the meditative state in which there is no ‘focused’ engagement via one of the 3Cs – and in which there is relatively little of the interference or chatter that we experience in the unquiet mind. 

This can enable us to ‘go beyond ourselves’, i.e. transcend our normal knowing – any of the 3Cs (I, WE or IT modes), as gateways, can be a pathway to the transcendent and to subsequent improved insight into reality.

The black dot at the centre is the ‘well-spring’ of consciousness. For artists (and great scientists) it is the Muse. For religionists it is the voice of God within (albeit distorted by the dust of self). For non-religionists it is the inner source of spirit as energy & inspiration – the bits of realization and insight that come to us for which we don’t make an effort.

Educating the human spirit is seen as nurturing, and cultivating, the life-force which culminates in the developed human who, through higher-order consciousness, realizes abilities from within Caring, Creative or Critical engagements. 

Teaching is seen as nurturing and cultivating what is normally present, almost from birth, & certainly by the time we go to school – namely the flow of spirit expressed in nascent forms of Caring, Creativity, and Criticality – in Community with others. Holistic Learning takes place when the learner uses Creativity, Criticality and Caring – in Community – inspired by higher-order values – in dynamic combinations such as Creativity providing texts for criticality – which then, via dialogue, produce/attract the spirit for more creativity.

In SunWALK spirituality is not a dimension; it is the model as a whole. In SunWALK moral education is not a dimension – it is intrinsic to all of its praxis. 

The SunWALK logo can also be seen as a mandala, or even as a plan drawing for a fountain or an ‘arts centre of light’!  

SunWALK is a major shift to a process view of the world, of being human and of educating our young people. It rejects a worldview that is limited to the mechanistic, the ‘human-as-computer, the fragmentary and the materialistic; seeking instead modelling that is based on flow/process, holism and the spiritual.   

SunWALK is designed to enable teachers and students to become agents of change to transform a world that is still operated as atomistic, mechanistic and materialistic into one that is holistic, dialogic, and derived from the best processes and products of the human spirit.

The SunWALK logo and model of education Copyright Roger Prentice 1995 & 2009

.

 

—–0—–

SEE ALSO these allied blogs ––

 Human-centred courses –

 Dictionary of Concepts

Home is HERE i.e. my ‘meta-blog’ -The ´1000 ways …of Celebrating the human spirit

 

—–0—–

 

Wilber, heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

Heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

The three intrapersonal ‘voices’ of human engagement, have previously been presented as Caring, Creativity and Criticality.

Our Caring, Creativity and Criticality ways of engaging are developed through internalizing the voices of parents and family and then all of the Humanities, the Arts and the Sciences experiences we have at school and in the wider society.

 

Corresponding to the three voices we have three ways of knowing:

1 the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing – in the case of Caring

2 the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing – in the case of Creativity and

3 the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing – in the case of Criticality

So;

Caring, the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Humanities, and is about engaging with reality via the moral viewpoint

 

Creativity, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Arts, and is about engaging with reality via the subjective viewpoint

 

Criticality the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing = the internalized moral voice of the ‘Sciences’ and is about engaging with reality via the (supposed) objective viewpoint.

 

NB Criticality is wider that what is normally meant by the Sciences and scientific methods. It includes philosophy and such activities as Eng Lit criticism. Why? Because it is about reasoning and other ‘left-brain’ objective activities. The participant assumes the position of being objective and is learning or teaching about phenomena – s/he is not learning or teaching in the phenomena – a distinction that correlates with that between ‘knowing that’ (Paris is the capital of France) and ‘knowing how’ (being able to dance a response to a tragic event).

 

Heart-knowing and head-knowing, left-brain and right-brain

Heart-knowing, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’, is seen as partly an innate, intuitive way of knowing and seems to relate to right-brain activities.

 

The ‘methods of the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’’voice’ seem to relate to right-brain activities.

 

The third form, i.e. social knowing, is seen as deriving from the cultural interpersonal matrix of family and community relationships, internalized as the Caring seems to draw upon both sides of the brain (as do architects!).

—–0—–

NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

 

 

 

 

Perennial Philosophy or Primordial Tradition?: Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley and Ken Wilber – a view by James Baquet

James Baquet has a very interesting site – Take a look at Baquet’s site HERE It has a lot to say about Perennial Philosophy an the Primordial Tradition;

The modern popularity of the term can probably be attributed to the work of Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), who used the three words “The Perennial Philosophy” as the title of his erudite anthology of religious ideas. (See the Table of Contents here.) In defining the Perennial Philosophy in this book, Huxley doesn’t lay out the same four steps I described above; rather, he (fittingly) gives a more “esoteric” definition:

the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; [and] the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being (vii)

(I discuss this definition, and the following one, more thoroughly in my article “This World and That“, in the section subtitled “Two Definitions of the Perennial Philosophy.”)

Closer to my formulation, but still not identical with it, is the definition he gives in his Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (as translated by Prabhavananda and Isherwood):

At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

  • First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness–the world of things and animals and men and even gods–is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
  • Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
  • Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
  • Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

(bullets added)

My four points are implicit in his, but I spell them out differently. As described here, they are quite similar, but Huxley’s 2 and 3 are reversed in comparison to mine.

Huston Smith

Huxley died (on the same day as JFK) in 1963. While he was still alive, another, younger, scholar was already making his mark on the “world religions” scene. Huston Smith, now in his late 80s (born 1919), has been both expounding and living the Perennial Philosophy for all of his adult life. (I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Smith speak in 1997, before I went to Japan; someday I’ll post my notes from that afternoon.)

Dr. Smith uses the term “The Primordial Tradition” to discuss what I have been calling the Perennial Philosophy. He believes that, since “perennial” means “at all times,” it neglects the “everywhere” aspect of this philosophy. You can read more about this in this interview. In a nutshell, Dr. Smith says that the Primordial Tradition is both timeless and spaceless as well, “because it was not only always, but everywhere”–echoing Vincent of Lerins. The universe, he says, “fits into the primordial tradition but does not exhaust it. There are reaches beyond the physical.” He says that science is doing a fine job of learning about “the physical reaches of reality,” but that we are in danger of losing sight of the “other regions of reality which continue to exist whether we attend to them or not”–in other words, the “something bigger.”

He also noted that in writing his book The Religions of Man (now published as The World’s Religions), which focuses on what is different in the individual religions, he “became more and more struck by recurrent themes which seemed to surface just time and again like echoes.” Later, in another book entitled Forgotten Truth, he explored these “common denominators that ran through them all.”

Forgotten Truth examines our place in the various levels of the world around us. The modern view, Dr. Smith says, reflects the primordial, in that humans are in the center between a “world above” and a “world below.” Look at this chart, from page 4:

Dr. Smith’s footnote points out these parallels:

2-views.jpg

Modern=Scientific=Secular

Primordial=Humanistic=Sacred

In the Modern/Scientific/Secular view, humans occupy the “Meso-world,” between the larger (in simple terms, “galactic”) world above and the smaller (“microscopic”) world below. The Modern hierarchy is based on both size and the strength of the binding forces; these are measures of Quantity.

Both of the Primordial models, on the other hand, look to measures of Quality: in the popular notion, happiness or “Euphoria” is highest at the Heavenly level, and lowest in Hell; we on Earth are in between. The more sophisticated, “Reflective” Primordial view sees Being as the source of this hierarchy: the Higher Planes participate in Being in greater amounts; the Lower, in lesser. Again, Euphoria and Being are measures of the Quality, not Quantity, of things, and this emphasis on quality unites the Popular and Reflective worldviews.

This kind of connective thinking, seeing that worldviews have changed but that they are still based on hierarchies of Things Above and Below, will be returned to in the discussion of Neo-Perennialism below. But I offer them here as evidence of Dr. Smith’s deep thinking about how the Elementary idea (in Campbell/Bastian’s term) of Hierarchy has manifested itself various times, and even in different forms to the popular and reflective minds of the same era.

Ken Wilber

Reluctantly leaving Dr. Smith for now, we turn to an even more contemporary thinker, Ken Wilber (born 1949). Best known for his Buddhist and psychological writings, Wilber is also a proponent of Perennial themes. In the heart-rending story of his wife Treya’s battle with cancer, Grace and Grit, Wilber presents a long interview on his “Seven Points of Timeless Wisdom,” conducted by Treya before her death. You can read the full interview here; I will present only the Seven Points themselves:

  1. Spirit exists
  2. Spirit is found within
  3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within
  4. There is a way out
  5. The way leads to direct experience of Spirit
  6. This experience marks the end of sin and suffering
  7. Social action and compassion result

Looking again at my Four Points, we see these parallels:

Neo-Perennialism Wilber
1. There is something bigger than us 1. Spirit* exists
2. Spirit is found within
2. We either are (West) or seem to be (East) separated from it 3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within
3. Through various means we can become reunited with it (or realize that we already are) 4. There is a way out
5. The way leads to direct experience of Spirit
4. Once the separation is overcome, we will lead larger, richer, fuller lives 6. This experience marks the end of sin and suffering
7. Social action and compassion result
*Wilber’s use of the word “spirit” leaps ahead and assigns a value to the “something bigger” in a way that my Point 1 does not. Needless to say, that this quality “is found within” is a further elaboration of something I am not yet willing to concede. This will become clearer in my discussion of Neo-Perennialism below.

Again, a reading of the full interview will give you a better idea of Wilber’s thinking.

So this Perennial Philosophy (despite its immense implications) is a fairly simply idea to grasp. It reflects humankind’s universal impulse toward union with something bigger, which has been exercised in myriad ways throughout human existence. With that, I conclude my comments on the Perennial Philosophy itself.

Take a look at a range of materials on Baquet’s site HERE

—–0—–

NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Key photography quotations toward defining a photographic aesthetic

This is a running list of quotations selected to help me move toward an understanding of my own photographic aesthetic – based on the SunWALK model.

“The camera is an instrument of detection. We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don’t know. ” Lisette Model

The book (Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes) develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. Wiki

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~Dorothea Lange

A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into. ~Ansel Adams

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams

The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don’t find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges. ~William Albert Allard, “The Photographic Essay”

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams

The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. ~Author Unknown

A photograph is memory in the raw. ~Carrie Latet

All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth. ~Richard Avedon

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. ~Harold Evans, “Pictures on a Page”

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. ~Ansel Adams

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure. ~Tony Benn

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. ~Ansel Adams

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. ~Ruth Bernhard

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don’t think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won’t take an interest in it. ~John Loengard, “Pictures Under Discussion”

I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. ~Mary Ellen Mark

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. ~Edward Steichen

The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine

A photograph is like the recipe – a memory the finished dish. ~Carrie Latet

Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. ~Author Unknown

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. ~Sam Abbel

A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both. ~Author Unknown

One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style. ~Author Unknown

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this – as in other ways – they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it. ~John Berger

I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature. ~Wynn Bullock

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. ~Duane Michals

The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance. ~Ansel Adams

Useful sites

http://www.photoquotes.com/ Blogs on Photography

http://photosleavehome.blogspot.com/2005/03/john-berger-understanding-photograph.html

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/

http://moma.org/collection/depts/photography/index.html

http://www.photo-seminars.com/fame.htm

—–0—–

NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

 

Story and storying: the teacher’s self as text in reform of education

Parker Palmer in, The Courage to Teach, (1998 p.3), says that his book:

explores the teacher’s inner life, but it also raises a question that goes beyond the solitude of the teacher’s soul: How can the teacher’s selfhood become a legitimate topic in education and in our public dialogues on educational reform?

It turns out that this site is an attempt to answer Palmer’s question.

In a similar vein Sondra Perl (1994), (in Laidlaw, Mellett and Whitehead 2003) says:

Stories have mythic powers. To know this … is to know the shaping power of the tale. But how, I wonder, do we see beyond the boundaries of a familiar story and envision a new one? What, in other words, are the connections between texts we read and the lives we live, between composing our stories and composing ourselves?

Stories are one answer to the question; ‘What is it that makes of the parts a whole?’.  Story-making of our experience is in-built.  Conversely we tend to read the world according to the stories to which we subscribe, or that we ourselves have created.  A religious world-view would be an example of the former.  Concerning personal stories and how we construe the world see the psychology, and methodology, of George Kelly HERE

I am seeking on this site, and have sought in my thesis, to see beyond the familiar stories of my life, and of education as it is has been, and, through ‘a re-composing’ of my life via autobiography, my teaching and dialogues, I have sought to envision a new story for education.  This is what is meant by ‘applied autoethnography’.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney; resonance, memory, self-understanding and depths of the soul

well-of-life.jpgSculpture the ‘Well of Life’, Zagreb – source

I chose the following poem by Seamus Heaney (1996 p.14) as ‘the poem’ for my doctoral thesis because it shows beautifully how we resonate now, in relation to what we sensed and experienced as children. It also shows how, through metaphor, the objective connects with the subjective to thrill, to the very quick of our being.

About the poem, Personal Helicon Pelligrino (2003 p.1) explains;
Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, that was, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed two fountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration, the “dark drop” into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of the wells in his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands and knees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry – and, thank God, so do we.

Of course if Heaney was reading it we would have that wonderful voice, like an aromatic tree giving up the sap, and perfuming the air with all the good things from the soil.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Story and Personal Myth in making our selves, and our education, whole

island.jpg

My personal myth Island, Shoreline and Ocean –

a view of story in Personal Development and in Holistic Education

Introduction:

By way of an introduction here are a few succinct thoughts. Skip this if you want to go straight to my ‘personal myth’;

Myth operates in us – its part of being human – like philosophizing. Therefore we should make the most of it – in terms of the mythology we make, and that with which we choose to identify.

Story is central to our meaning-making and how we (choose) to make sense of the world and give account of our encounters and experiences.

Myth, as opposed to story generally, is about our deepest concerns and is characterized as narrative that gives account of the unknown and unknowable as well as some of the known. E.g. we die but we don’t know what, if anything, happens after that. Myth creates and is derived from beliefs.

Myth intrapersonally is the clothing we give to the psycho-spiritual dynamics of inner experience.

Myth interpersonally is the stories we tell each other to explain encounters with the (mainly) unknown and unknowable.

Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth is a must because it makes clear the relationship between myth and religion and world-views.

“Without myth, cult, ritual and ethical living, a sense of the sacred dies,” says Armstrong. Without the discipline of mythical thinking and practice, it was difficult for many to avoid despair. The dark epiphanies of the 20th century can be blamed on “the absence of a viable mythology” that could help us face the unspeakable. Guardian review by Tim Radford

A personal myth operates in us whether we choose to articulate it or not. It is closely allied to what one psychologist called ‘our personal script’ and the another (Kelly) called our set of ‘personal constructs’.

We can help in healing ourselves by articulating our personal myth in comparison and contrast to the group myths around us – or that exist as historical artifacts.

Restorying, (e.g.by writing different versions of) our personal myth can enable us to re-frame our personal experience and gain degrees of control and depths of energy that previously were denied us through locked-up pain.

Creating a personal myth can facilitate better self-understanding and there is potentially a powerful tool for teaching and learning.

My personal myth is here;

The ‘Island, Shoreline and Ocean’ personal Myth

The personal myth that follows was written as a ‘one-page’ way of expressing a) a sense of the relationship with the cosmos, the Whole, and b) of a range of the ideas in, and behind, SunWALK. Jane is part of me, perhaps the same Jane as in Jane’s Short Story in Chapter 1.

The personal myth is an attempt at re-storying one kind of knowing. A felt need to undertake a re-storying of knowing can lie in acknowledgement of the fact that we know, and need to know, and need to express that knowing, in more ways than the empirical-reasoning mode – hence Island, Shoreline, Ocean. To admit other ways of knowing, is to admit that in our wholeness we are more than our senses and our reasoning. It is also to admit that in our knowing we are surrounded by mystery, which we encounter. We in various ways give accounts of those encounters.

3:3 Island, Shoreline and Ocean

a personal myth concerning the nature of mystical experience & its relationship to consciousness, & to knowledge creation – as such it is an attempt to include as much as possible of what I learned during the eleven year journey of the thesis – in a ‘one page’ story

The sun always woke her. Every day Jane walked through her garden, inspecting this plant and that, analysing what needed to be done. The quest was never-ending. Sometimes she sat a while on an old tree stump in order to consider the tasks and challenges, trying to work out the feelings and puzzles of what didn’t seem quite right, what didn’t feel quite right. What she couldn’t physically arrange she sometimes tried to paint or write – she had an imaginary garden as well as a real one. Sometimes she looked at her neighbours’ gardens, wondering if that would give her inspiration, but she was always left with the feeling that her most important answers came from elsewhere.

Every day beneath the practical considerations she felt a longing. Having made her review of her garden Jane walked over the fields, across the two streams that eventually made their way down to the sea, and along the cliff, and down to the shoreline. At the shoreline she breathed in her sense of the infinity of the ocean, along with the ozone-heavy, sea-weedy, sea air.
Frequently she imagined the island’s shoreline around the island’s circumference. In her mind’s eye she saw each place being shaped in some different way by the ocean – which was sometimes gentle, and was sometimes awesome in its relentless might. Sometimes the feelings that filled her were so powerful that she was overcome. Sometimes the beauty of being in the presence of the ocean was so great that she felt that neither garden nor painting nor poetry would ever fully satisfy the deepest longing.

Often after such reverie she slipped into the sea.

The sea had so much salt that she just floated. And, when the temperature was right, in floating, eyes closed, she lost all sense of where she ended and where the surrounding sea began. There was no separate sea, no separate self – it was just ….. being. It was always that way, just being. At such times she felt both full and empty, both powerless and at that same time she felt herself to be the very ocean that insistently carved and re-carved the island shoreline.

Mostly at that point she just wanted to stay, to be just part of this place between land and sea, like a driftwood sculpture, ocean-polished, that had been thrown up after a long journey from some river bank, high up some vaguely-remembered river. The shoreline was exquisitely the best of places. But she always took that first step. A first step on the walk back to her garden. And with the walking the experience that was ineffable started to give up insights and possibilities to both refine the garden, and to extend it into some more of the island’s familiar, wilderness, space.

In the evenings she and her friends sat beneath the moon, in whichever was the most interesting of their gardens, at that particular time, and they discussed the issues that concerned them. They all, more or less, had similar such deep experiences as Jane. The ongoing conversation was what united them, along with their respect for how they clothed so differently, in imagination and form, the experiences that were ineffable.
C. from an unpublished doctoral thesis by Roger Prentice, Northumberland ver July 2003

—–0—–

Karen Armstrong’s book A Short History of Myth is HERE NB Read the Customer Reviews which are excellent and ignore the Editorial Reviews which are carping, mean-spirited and self-serving!

Relevant book that looks interesting Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection HERE

Island map SOURCE

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

From ‘Summer is a-coming in’ (1250) to ‘Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block’ (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration

bob-dylan-freewheelin-lyrics.jpgSource – and lyrics for the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

From SUmair is IcUmin in (1250) to Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration of values and beliefs

Great song lyrics are inspiring. Of course when they are coupled with great music the two have a multiplier effect and become ‘transcendent’. Why? How do the words when combined with the music become so powerful – so powerful that they can ‘take us out of ourselves’ and transport us delightfully?

Once or twice I’ve heard teachers and/or preachers refer to lyrics in popular song and I’m sure a lot of work has been done in schools and colleges. Here I just post one or two ideas and hope that I get to hear about more such work.

 

I did look many many years ago at some of the lyrics used by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan with secondary school pupils in the context of teaching English in the first school in which I taught. (I’m afraid I am one of those who thought that Bob Dylan did fall from grace with the electric guitar – but no one can take away the diamond-like clarity and poetry of his early work!) Still good stuff!

 

If you can avoid too much initial resistance folk song is, of course, a very interesting vehicle to look at historical events and work-related and class and geographic issues.

 

One of the earliest songs is SUmair is IcUmin in (c.1250)

SUmair is IcUmin in, lU-duh sing cUckU
GrOweth sAd and blOweth mAd and springth the wUduh nU
ow-uh blAteth after lahhhmb, lOth after cal-vuh cU
Bullock stairteth, buck-uh vairteth, mUrI sing cUckU
Well singst thU cUckU; nA swick thU nevair nU
Sing cUckU, nU….

Translation:
Summer is coming in, loudly sings the cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo….
The seed grows; the meadow blossoms, and the woods alivens anew.
The ewe bleats after the lamb; the cow lows after the calf;
The bull leaps; the goat capers*; merrily sing cuckoo!
Well sing you, cuckoo–don’t ever stop now.
Sing cuckoo, now….

Hear the music HERE

Lastly I want to mention films – probably like me you are astonished in having watched a film to see that it had used 30 or so songs and yet you were not aware of them – so looking at the use of popular music in films is another very interesting area.

TASK/LESSONs – a few ideas

1 Look at some lyrics that stand up as poetry and some that don’t but get transformed when coupled with the music.

2 Explore the multiplier effect’ when lyrics and song come together – via a good/great singer.

3 Use song lyrics (and photographs/photography) in ‘reminiscence work’ with senior citizens and multi-generational work.

4 Explore why each generation gets attached to and is defined by (?) the songs that are popular.

5 what are the down-sides of music in films? What part does music play in ‘Hollywood’ type movies?

6 Watch some key/favourite/ important sections of films with and without the music sound-track – what’s the difference and what’s going on?

7 Cows are said to like music – why. If its true and what is known about music in the work-place?

8 Get children to interview parents grand-parents about key music in relation to key events in their lives.

9 Get children to develop a set of images in relations to a particular song that is important to them e.g. Strange Fruit

HERE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE LYRICS AND EDUCATIONAL SOURCES FOR THEM

Every time we say good bye (Cole Porter)

We love each other so deeply
that I ask you this, sweetheart,
why should we quarrel ever,
why can’t we be enough clever,
never to part.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry single time
we say goodbye

Source

Miss Otis Regrets
“Oh, hi! A-heh heh! Is Miss Otis in?”
“Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.”

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, mmmmmm.
And she’s sorry to be delayed,
but last evening down at lover’s lane
she strayed, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When she woke up and found
that her dream of love was gone, madam,
she ran to the man
who had lead her so far astray.
And from under her velvet gown
she drew a gun and shot her lover down, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When the mob came and got her
and dragged her from the jail, madam,
they strung her up
on the willow across the way.
And the moment before she died
she lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

Source

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Source

All the things You Are

You are the promised breath of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song
You are the angel glow that lights the stars
The dearest thing I know are what you are
Someday my happy arms will hold you
And some day I’ll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine

 

Source

There is a very funny (and strangely moving) version of All the Things You Are by Peter Sellers – you can hear a bit HERE

 

Of course neither have the lyric and romantic charm and transcendental sweetness of Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block;

 

Author/Artist/Singer: Artifacts
Music Title/Track: Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block
Theme ID: 31545
N/A

 

featuring RedmanTo the beat y’all
*rat-a-tat drumming sound*[all] Make it funky (4X)
[Red] My nigga Tame [all] makes it funky
[Red] My nigga El [all] makes it funky
[Red] Redman [all] makes it funky
[Red] Huh, check it outVerse One: El Da SensaiI Ego Trip like Ultramag, sag my Girbauds I drag
competition so listen and raise the white flag
Cause the instructor, of the New Jerz verse dusts
another motherfucker I discover what no other brother
can do, hard to handle and to, stamp
I play Tramp like Grace Jones in that movie Vamp
I’m fit to wreck shit, I dip into the skit
Spit lyrics exquisite, blitted as I hit it
I suppose I knows the ways of the pros
Bros be like, “Oh that nigga’s got mad flows”
Creep’ll get it deep, I got it when it’s strict against
ducks who suck, and didn’t have the best defense
I make shit nice, defies with my device
And if I’m in a rap fight, you can catch a cap, right
Bust it, whassup what did ya ask me?
Crafty with my sassafrass P-Funk, thought been handy
Dandy Mayor Ave., back in the lab create my trap
Dibble dabble in the midst of the Artifact we have
swiftness, I blitz, specific and you dig it
from N.J., the Notty Headed Terror and da SensaiChorus: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
(repeat 3X)
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin!!

Verse Two: Tame One

Well I come live from the Artifact exhibit as a misfit
Larger than Jurassic Park I lick off like Wilson Pickett
Drama like a talk show I hit more cheese than nacho
Feelin Machu when I Pi on; a Coltrane like Roscoe
Hostile underground fossil, nigga bout to rock ya
So peep it how I freak it check the technique yeah I rock ya
I glide like drips and blaze a trail like I was Portland
When ill stressed, I still rock a vest like Ed Norton
The ill king, taking all things cash, crash, and asses
Backstage passes, V.I.P. all access
I got the props pon cock, fuck the know-nots
Whose techniques are weaker than the graphics for the Gobots
I rock with raw steel like Sue Richards, when Rick smacks her
Up motherfuck that I got more funk than muskrats
With my hocus pocus I can fuck up where ya focus
wit my left hook, dip right jab shuffle I can smoke ya
it don’t matter, cause all my shit is fatter than the
pads on MPC-60’s, hit me you got five second to jet G
Straight from the Bricks, now back to the N.J.
The Notty Headed Nigga and da motherfuckin Sensai

[Red] Hoooaaaahhh! One two, one two, one two
This is for Jersey, haha ahh, ah hah
One two, one two

Verse Three: Tame One, MC El

I’m the black king, quick to grease my naps with Royal Crown
and aloe vera representin for the Notty Headed nigga era
However whatever my Posse Packs the Pistols
and my Skwad got the Boom, rid the room, get the bitches

The exact Artifact, who is that, you speak of
Leak my speakers, unique and freakin beats track in fact
I be dat, nigga who you look for, in your worst fears
Peace to my nigga Lord Sear and Samere
Display, niggaz from N.J.
Notty Headed Terror and da motherfuckin Sensai

Outro: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s that Notty Headed Nigga cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] Big up to Boom Skwad’s cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Booyaka
Pump! Pump! (6X)
[Red] For nine-fo’
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Artifacts get dapped like that y’all
*sound of rat-a-tat drumming again*
[Red] Jersey’s in the fuckin house y’all
New York’s live in the house y’all
Newark is live in the house y’all
E-O’s live in the house y’all
Word is bond in the hizouse y’all
I’m in the motherfuckin hizouse y’all
So niggaz get the fuckin balls y’all

 

Source

 

Endpoint

Question: If ‘sewage’ is the spiritual food of choice how precisely did we fail to develop the appetite for the sublime?

 

In parenting we go from almost total control to indirect influence. Intrinsic worth, value, meaning, taste, discrimination are the kinds of qualities most of us hope our children acquire. In this process we have to stay conscious of the fact that if we don’t have (a reasonable degree of) control over our children’s environment someone far less benign will be manipulating them.

 

 

 

‘Practical theory’ re: Jane’s Short Story, meaning, interpretation, stories, meta-thinking, the teacher – and generating an antidote to fundamentalism!

logo_triskelion.gif

 

     Teachers, and other professionals, deal in a) texts (written and other kinds) and b) discourse about their meaning and interpretation with students every day.

 

     When we engage with texts we do so in one of three voices – the philosophical-scientific, the creative or the moral-caring. This article comprises the first of a few reflections about hermeneutics in relation to the process of teaching – and in relation to the SunWALK model and ‘what it is to be fully and positively human’ – the main focus of this site.

 

‘Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.’ Wiki

 

     1 It makes sense for middle school children, and above, to come to understand that texts represent possible meanings and ‘critiques’ represent readings of texts. It might also be useful from this to understand that readings can both change over time in our lives, but principles might remain constant.

 

    
Developing meta-thinking via periodic re-visits to a useful text

     There are calls for teachers to help children to achieve meta-thinking and one enjoyable way is to re-visit a story in succeeding years with the discourse centred around such questions as;

“How do you read the story?” and

“How do you feel what you’ve learned over last year has changed your views and, what you value – in relation to the story?” and

“In what respects have you, and your thinking, changed and developed over the last year?”and

“How do you read the story now compared to when you first ‘met it’ – what’s stayed the same and what has changed?”

 

     One re-visiting was to Jane’s Short Story in a Roman Catholic middle school. Jane’s Short Story was posted to this site yesterday (8th Aug 2007). I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see how good Year 7 children (11 to 12 year olds) were at de-constructing and critiquing a piece that was deliberately stream-of-consciousness, oblique and cryptic! They surprised me the first time we used the story as a text and they also impressed me with their reflections on how their thinking had developed and the differences they saw on their second encounter.

 

     Such work is also an antidote to the shallowness and superficiality that blights much of what children suffer in school. If you treat children as profound thinkers they show that they are profound thinkers – that’s part of the genius of the process in Lipman’s Philosophy for Children

 

What’s the connection with the SunWALK model?

sunwalk-logo.jpg

 

     PFC Philosophy for Children is the exemplary programme for the ‘IT’ voice, the objective mode of engaging with truth. The spirit flows even more powerfully if we combine IT engagement with working with the ‘I’ voice of creative expression. This means that the children can treat the text, including occasionally pieces by the teacher and/or other pupils both as literary text and as philosophical text. Switching back and forth between the two activities and the two treatments of text becomes a very powerful mode of teaching – including for the third voice, that of the moral and other-centred i.e Caring.

 

What’s the connection with fundamentalism?

     There are many including;

Once you have separated out the different forms of truth-telling, the IT voice of philosophy and science, the ‘I’ voice of Creativity and the ‘WE’ voice of Caring you no longer have to defend texts in inappropriate and very dangerous ways. Treating religious texts as the supreme sources of inspiration for acting with justice, truth, beauty and goodness makes sense. Treating such texts as finite and fixed in their meaning as if they were simply mathematic formulae doesn’t.

     It is we who make the meaning, not God – which is why we should always be tentative in how we assert our interpretations (including this one!). Sacred texts are gifts of meaning-making possibilities. Of course part of the texts is time-related and part constitutes eternal realities, but understanding what we are doing as we engage in objective, subjective or moral truth-seeking helps minimize confusion.

     Literalism is the denial of God because it is the denial of meaning-making possibilities in relating to sacred texts – it limits the text to fixed and finite meaning – and tends to take us away from the focus on the need to act in the world with justice, truth, beauty, goodness – and all of the other so-called names and attributes of God.

 

     It also allows people to start believing that the ‘others’ have broken whatever covenant is deemed to have existed so that no ‘rules’ of war’ need be complied with.

     Its only in early life that we can prevent the kind of indoctrination of hatred for others. Understanding that spirituality, be it theistic or humanist, is simply the process of gaining the will to act morally is vital. Understanding the ‘voices’ with which engage and the texts that we engage with are all either objectively focused or subjectively focused or morally focused is vital in developing the truly mature mind-set and world-view.

 

Everything you wanted to know about kissing (and philosophy) – HUMOUR

kiss-close-up-web_1_med.jpgNB Marc Quinn’s sculpture – NB SEE Great museum-based learning content resource!

The Philosophy of Kissing (HUMOUR)

This witty view of kissing that satirically is in the style of the respective philosophers deserves even more readers so here it is. My favourite is the Hegelian kiss – what’s yours?

Dear Doctor Rude,

I think I understand what a “platonic kiss” is, but could you explain to me the difference between the following kisses?
Aristotelian kiss
Hegelian kiss
Wittgensteinian kiss
Godelian kiss

Signed,

Flummoxed in Florida
————————————————————————————————————————
Dear Flummoxed,

That’s a very good question; nowadays most sex education courses focus on secondary and tertiary sources, so much so that few people really get exposed to the classics in this field any more. I’ll try to make a brief but clear summary of some of these important types of kisses:

Aristotelian kiss
a kiss performed using techniques gained solely from theoretical speculation untainted by any experiential data by one who feels that the latter is irrelevant anyway.

Hegelian kiss
dialiptical technique in which the kiss incorporates its own antithikiss, forming a synthekiss.

Wittgensteinian kiss
the important thing about this type of kiss is that it refers only to the symbol (our internal mental representation we associate with the experience of the kiss–which must necessarily also be differentiated from the act itself for obvious reasons and which need not be by any means the same or even similar for the different people experiencing the act) rather than the act itself and, as such, one must be careful not to make unwarranted generalizations about the act itself or the experience thereof based merely on our manipulation of the symbology therefor.

Godelian kiss
a kiss that takes an extraordinarily long time, yet leaves you unable to decide whether you’ve been kissed or not.

Socratic kiss
really a Platonic kiss, but it’s claimed to be the Socratic technique so it’ll sound more authoritative; however, compared to most strictly Platonic kisses, Socratic kisses wander around a lot more and cover more ground.

Kantian kiss
a kiss that, eschewing inferior “phenomenal” contact, is performed entirely on the superior “noumenal” plane; though you don’t actually feel it at all, you are, nonetheless, free to declare it the best kiss you’ve ever given or received.

Kafkaesque kiss
a kiss that starts out feeling like it’s about to transform you but ends up just bugging you.

Sartrean kiss
a kiss that you worry yourself to death about even though it really doesn’t matter anyway.

Russell-Whiteheadian kiss
a formal kiss in which each lip and tongue movement is rigorously and completely defined, even though it ends up seeming incomplete somehow.

Pythagorean kiss
a kiss given by someone who has developed some new and wonderful techniques but refuses to use them on anyone for fear that others would find out about them and copy them.

Cartesian kiss
a particularly well-planned and coordinated movement: “I think, therefore, I aim.” In general, a kiss does not count as Cartesian unless it is applied with enough force to remove all doubt that one has been kissed. (cf. Polar kiss, a more well-rounded movement involving greater nose-to-nose contact, but colder overall.)

Heisenbergian kiss
a hard-to-define kiss–the more it moves you, the less sure you are of where the kiss was; the more energy it has, the more trouble you have figuring out how long it lasted. Extreme versions of this type of kiss are known as “virtual kisses” because the level of uncertainty is so high that you’re not quite sure if you were kissed or not. Virtual kisses have the advantage, however, that you need not have anyone else in the room with you to enjoy them.

Nietzscheian kiss
“she/he who does not kiss you, makes your lust stronger.”

Zenoian kiss
your lips approach, closer and closer, but never actually touch.

Doctor Rude

Source

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education in a nutshell

nutshell1.gif

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education

The SunWALK model of
spiritualizing (or humanizing) pedagogy sees
human education as: the
storied development of
meaning, which is
constructed, and de-constructed,
physically mentally and spiritually, through
Wise & Willing
Action, via
Loving and
Knowing – developed in
Community, through the
‘Dialectical Spiritualization’ of
Caring,
Creativity &
Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the
‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order values and beliefs, using best available, appropriate
content.

So Sun = the values we internalize through which we read the world and see the path ahead.

WALK = Wise and Willing Action driven by Loving and Knowing.

We do the WALKing in the light of the ‘Sun’.

Working with such a model enables teaching and learning to be a spiritualizing/humanizing process and reduces the tendency for education to be just materialistic, mechanistic and atomistic.

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

TOO CONDENSED? – LONGER VERSIONS HERE!

DIAGRAM of the SunWALK model

Diagram of the SunWALK model

Who are you? Who am I? What is human being?

heschel-with-king-selma.jpg

Saw this today – with some quick ideas for a lesson;

“You are the average of the five people
you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn

Are you? Am I?

Do we have an essence? Or are we each an admixture of the roles we play and the relationships in which we are embedded?

Or both?

The best answers I ever found were in Who is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The Photo is of Heschel with MLK at Selma – they consider each other to be a ‘prophet’

Is my essence the sum of that with which I identify?

Or is there an essence that is independent of the accidents of personal history ?

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE