Evocations

Thoughtfulness: A New Year's Quotation

The calming voice of Mark Schwehn in Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America (OUP 1993) is one I find useful, calling for understanding all that we do as teaching and a reframing of that work around notions of phillia and charity. Citing Leon Kass, he describes the objectives of our work as follows:

    colleges and universities ought to provide education ‘in and for thoughtfulness.’ The word thoughtfulness conveys, as Kass has noted, both the notion of being filled with reflections about important matters of human concern and the notion of being considerate of others. The same double meaning applies to the corresponding vice: to be thoughtless is to be both foolish and inconsiderate. . . . I have been suggesting that one cannot be truly thoughtful in either of the two senses Kass specified without being thoughtful in the other as well. (p. 58.)

 

Bewilderment as a Journey (to Learning)

As a teacher, I often think that confusion is a good thing. It is not the aim of education, of course, but it is a place along the journey which ought not be frightening. If education is, in part, about rendering the complex simpler in order to think about it, it is also about rendering the simple more complex in order to think about it. Like the oft-repreated saying about making hte familiar unfamiliar (and vice versa), these are stages along the sometimes wandering journey of education. 

What made me think about bewilderment as connected to education was a book entitled Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion (University of Virginia, 2007). Authored by Frederick J. Ruf, I admit to having stumbled upon this book only because a co-edited book of mine was also published by the University of Virginia Press. And, it was one of those reads that lingers and tumbles through one's mind for quite some time. In my case, Ruf's ideas lingered not because of the focus on travel but because of the focus on bewilderment. (In fact, I may just read Ruf's other works which include disorder and chaos in their titles!) 

In some ways, the role of bewilderment in higher education is most obvious when one is teaching (and learning). All too often students think this is a sign of failure -- to be confused, bewildered, lost. All too often I felt that same worry. And yet, this may also mean we are struggling with important matters in significant ways. To believe one must find ideas easy, that struggling means one is not smart, or that confusion is an insoluble end rather than an opening for exploration, are feelings that appear in office hours and probably as temptations for all of us. And yet, our route to inspiration, to comprehension, to learning, may be enabled by this very sense of bewilderment. 

Are you bewildered? Confused? Is it helping you learn? 

 

Community of Criticism?

I have been calling Shimer a community of inquiry, criticism, generosity and hope almost since my arrival in July 2012. Much of Shimer's literature focuses on the notion of a community of criticism, so that is the focus today; and yet, I think remembering to be generous and hopeful is also crucial. 

I was reminded of this matter by our "social reading" of Utopia, by Thomas More. Stephen Duncombe, Associate Professor of Media and Culture at New York University, created Open Utopia, a project perhaps best described by Duncombe himself:

    When Thomas More’s Utopia was published in 1516 it included copious marginal notes, some     profound, others silly, likely contributed by More’s friend and co-conspirator in the Utopia project,     Peter Giles. Since then, and with the exception of a few scholarly editions, the practice of     reproducing marginalia has fallen off. Using the Institute for the Future of the Book’s SocialBook     platform, the Open Utopia is an effort to restart the tradition — and open up the practice. 

Here is part of what Dumcombe writes about criticism in his introduction, after describing horrific examples of Utopian dreams gone bad through totalitarian and fascist pursuits of political ideals at the expense of human life and meaning :

    But without political illusions, with what are we left?Disillusion, and its attendant discursive practice:     criticism.⁶ Earnest, ironic, sly or bombastic; analytic, artistic, textual, or performative; criticism     has become the predominant political practice of intellectuals, artists, and even activists who are     dissatisfied with the world of the present, and ostensibly desire something new. Criticism is also     Utopia’s antithesis. If Utopianism is the act of imagining what is new, criticism, derived from the     Greek words kritikos (to judge) and perhaps more revealing, krinein (to separate or divide), is the     practice of pulling apart, examining, and judging that which already exists.

    One of the political advantages of criticism–and one of the reasons why it has become the preferred     mode of political discourse in the wake of twentieth-century Utopian totalitarianism–is that it     guards against the monstrous horrors of political idealism put into practice. If Utopianism is about     sweeping plans, criticism is about pointed objections. The act of criticism continually undermines     any attempt to project a perfect system. Indeed, the very act of criticism is a strike against perfection:     implicitly, it insists that there is always more to be done. Criticism also asks for input from others. It     presupposes a dialogue between the critic and who or what they are criticizing–or,ideally, a     conversation amongst many people, each with their own opinion. And because the need to criticize is     never-ending (one can always criticize the criticism itself), politics remains fluid and open: a     permanent revolution. This idea and ideal of an endless critical conversation is at the center of     democratic politics, for once the conversation stops we are left with a monolithic ideal, and the only     politics that is left is policing: ensuring obedience and drawing the lines between those who are part     of the brave new world and those who are not. ⁷ This “policing” is the essence of totalitarianism,     and over the last century the good fight against systems of oppression, be they fascist, communist or     capitalist, has been waged with ruthless criticism. 

You can join a debate about this -- and more (pun intended) by seeking out Duncombe's Open Utopia project. For details read on! 

SocialBook is a new publishing platform based on the idea that "a book is a place" where readers can congregate. SocialBook makes it very easy to annotate a text and to follow a conversation in the margins. Using SocialBook, Open Utopia allows for readers around the world to annotate the text in the margins and comment on the annotations of other readers, creating a conversation that is both dynamic and preserved for future participants. SocialBook also makes it possible for us to create a specific reading group composed of Shimer faculty, staff, students, and alumni: Shimertopia. Others may join in the more genral groups reading Utopia as well.  Regardless of where you may find yourself over winter break, you can still share in a text-centered conversation with other Shimerians.

If you would like to participate in this experience, please first sign up for SocialBook here. SocialBook is entirely free, and in addition to Open Utopia, you will find dozens of other texts that you may read “socially”. Please note that SocialBook works only with Safari or Chrome browsers. It will not function properly with Internet Explorer, Firefox or other browsers. If you do not already have a compatible browser, you can download Safari for Windows here or Google Chrome here. If you use a Mac or I-Pad, Safari should already be installed on your device.

After you have signed up for SocialBook, please email SocialReading@shimer.edu and ask to be added to the Shimertopia Group. You will soon receive an email from SocialBook with a link to the Open Utopia text with a tab for My Group.

When you click on the My Group tab, you will be able to follow the comments of other Shimerians in the margin. You may add comments of your own by highlighting a passage in the text and typing your comment which will then appear to all of us in the margin. You may also click “reply” on others’ comments and continue the conversation they have started. Once someone has replied to a comment, that comment cannot be deleted. It becomes part of a permanently preserved conversation about the text.

What do we mean by criticism?  Is that something we ought to discuss? Please join us. 

 

Conversation

As Judith Berling, former Dean of the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley has written:

 

IN TRULY PLURALISTIC CONVERSATIONS, AGREEMENT ITSELF WILL BE RARE AND DIFFICULT. IT IS THE CONVERSATION, NOT THE AGREEMENT, WHICH IS SIGNIFICANT IN THIS CASE; THE PROCESS, NOT THE TELOS. (BERLING, “RESPONSE TO DAVID TRACY,” CRITERION 25(3, AUTUMN 1986), P. 27) 

 

Is Shimer a Hole in the Wall?

No. I am not insulting Shimer – for its aesthetics or its size. Nor would I be insulting liberal education if I simply replaced the word Shimer with that phrase. Rather, I am asking a very important educational question. Sugata Mitra’s work on education may seem entirely dissimilar from that of Shimer (or many other small liberal arts college).  The phrase links to a well-known, if somewhat sentimental, representation of Mitra’s work, the Oscar-winning film  ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’  And, yet, to speak about Mitra’s work is, I would argue, to speak about Shimer (and excellent liberal education more broadly) in many ways –  at the very least there are significant parallels.

Here’s why I think that.

Let me begin by noting what Sugata Mitra’s “Beyond the Hole in the Wall” describes. (The essay is available as a kindle single.) Then, I will get to the subtitle of this short work – for it is in large measure where I see the parallels.

Mitra’s work began when he, quite literally, installed a networked PC (aka a personal computer) in a hole in the wall in a slum near New Delhi.  Over time, he learned that he needed to ensure that the computer was accessible only to children (by placing the screen at a certain level, and installing it in such a way that taller people could not use it, for example). And, he learned to consider children’s safety by ensuring  that the locations were out in plain sight and the computers could not access pornography.  He located these computers in holes in walls where literacy ran low and poverty ran high. He placed them where schools fail and where people all too often thought no learning could take place. He did so over and over again. 

Beyond the wonder of seeing children create small communities of learners and teach themselves how to use the computers, came also the wonder that they learned more – including languages and skills. While they might label the cursor something else entirely, they knew what it did and how to use it. And, they came to know how to navigate the net, gather and evaluate knowledge, and more.  Hence, the subtitle of Mitra’s essay: “Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning.” This is the conceptual result of his repeated experiments with these “holes in the wall.” And, perhaps most crucially, for many of us, his project tells us not merely about learning computer literacy – or even language or math  literacy – but also about how such groups learn what some might call “subject matters” as well. Among the crucial views Mitra arrived at through his project:

• Learning to learn is more important than rote learning
• Learning is collective and conversational
• Learning is intergenerational, but not a process of the elders dispensing wisdom to the younger, but of learners working together across generations
• Deep learning is an emergent phenomenon

He summarizes his conclusions, as all too many thinkers do, in acronyms – SOLE (“self-organized or self-organizing  learning environment”)  --  and new phrases, such as minimally invasive learning, for example.  And yet, in challenging the ways education has been institutionalized, in which learning and teacher satisfaction, for example, are inversely correlated, Mitra returns us to much that we ought already have known. To quote from his work:

         . . . the teacher’s role becomes bigger and stranger than ever before. She must ask her ‘learners’         about things she does not know herself. Then she can stand back and watch as learning emerges.          (kindle location 586-590; Mitra, “Beyond the Hold in the Wall”)

Where else can you learn about this? The work of Paulo Friere, and of others, who have challenged prevailing models of education across centuries and cultures.  

For Shimerians, this is a familiar model -- for what is Shimer if not a self organized learning environment?  Through the strength of conversation and dialogue, the role of students and facilitators, here too is the power of SOLE, reaching across generations. For other liberal educ ation institutions, this may also be true -- or an aspiration. 

Right?

Want to know more? Try the official site  or this sample TED talk by Mitra or try Mitra's own blog, here. Or, ask yourself Mitra's question: Is education obsolete? (Read related material here.) More importantly, let us know how your experience of education is or was -- like or unlike what Mithra has to teach us all. 

Welcome to Evocations: The Shimer Presidential Blog

 What is a great book? What is a great conversation? What counts as a great class? a great education? a great idea? a great life? For that matter, what is a conversation? an education? a life? As a great books college, Shimer College is about the questions -- questions which we carry with us across our lives as we work, play, think, read, live. We are about acting responsibily in our world with joy and seriousness. So, Evocations is about higher education -- but like higher education about much more.  Please join our conversation today. Scoll down and read more! 

Was Gutenberg a Shimerian?

I have been referencing the kindle single “Gutenberg the Geek” by Jeff Jarvis on and off since my official arrival at Shimer College as the new president. So, I thought I would write just a bit about why I have been doing so.  Of course, it is not because I am trying to raise Jarvis’s royalties, though I am thrilled to learn he is a pal of a Shimerian (or so rumor has it).  I read it before I arrived to start working as President of Shimer College – and truly like it. Plus, I think it pushes us to ask new questions.

What is “Gutenberg the Geek” about? Well, it describes Gutenberg’s inventiveness in several ways. The essay reveals the many ways that his inventiveness was not a single individual’s but in some major sense social. And, it draws an analogy between that inventiveness and the inventiveness we now associate with the word “technology.”  Gutenberg, Jarvis indicates, was the Steve Jobs of his era. Thus, the technology of book creation associated with Gutenberg is rendered similar to that of creating computers and their attendant innovations within today’s culture. In fact, Jarvis argues that Gutenberg’s challenges can be understood as parallel to those of a Silicon valley start up.

Why do those of us in liberal education care? Why might we especially care at places like Shimer?

As Shimerians, we may care because Gutenberg was, in Jarvis’s language, a great disruptor. He was an entrepreneur. While some critiques of the essay (and it is truly a short one) argue that there is not much there, what is there is the reminder that analogy is rooted in similarity and dissimilarity. Therein lies one of our major routes to intriguing questions. For Shimer, these questions include:

• What is a book? Is it a technology of information storage and cultural memory? Is it an artifact of an entrepreneurial culture? Is it a static entity or is it one of many technologies that allow us to encounter enduring questions and both enduring and new answers?

Perhaps the following queries are the same questions, but they feel and sound different?

• Is reading a book the same as reading a screen?
• Is the social revolution of accessibility associated with Gutenberg’s work (remember, the idea of vernacular access to books was revolutionary for many, for example, as was the free exchange of ideas through a capitalist form of book production) similar to or different from today’s social revolution of accessibility of ideas and information?

And, for us, another question: If Gutenberg was a Geek, if books must be understood within the context, among others, that Jarvis offers, what then is a Great Books College? For that matter, what is college? what is education? 

For other commentary on Gutenberg the Geek, try here or, for a perspective fro Inside Higher education,  here. And, if the phrase "patron saint of Silicon Valley" seems to intrigue you, click here.