Evocations

The World is Noisy and So Am I

I find a lot of books in odd places, including on the streets and in Good Will stores and in bookstores and in sharing libraries in the places I live. And today, I am writing about a paradoxically wonderful book called In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise by George Prochnik. It is a bok about searching for silence; and thus, paradoxically, it is a book that devotes a lot of attention to noise. Noise pollution (and attempts to address it), noisy trains and the near ubiquitousness of headphones form which leak louder and louder music as we all. . . . search for silence? Or, at least, try to block out the distractingly noisy world within which we live. 

Prochnik, a descendant of James Jackson Putnam of fame witin the history of psychology, lives in Brooklyn and writes books. And, living in Brooklyn is not exactly silent. So, he goes in pursuit of it in various ways -- from traveling to a Trappist monastery to reading scientific literature, to identifying pocket parks near where he works to explore in search of a moment's peace (aka a bit of quiet) and visiting Gallaudet to investigate the notion of Deaf Architecture. Of course, nowhere is it entirely silent, but quieter moments allow him to hear the unexpected -- birds and church bells, and other aspects of the world within which he lives. (And, indeed, we all live.) He becomes fascinated by the notion that it is clearly bad for us to create so much noise -- we are increasingly unable to hear as we age, and the situation deteriorates quite quickly today in large measure because we are exposing ourselves to such high levels of noise, often voluntarily. 

Why is this relevant? Well, it is not unrelated to the notions of bewilderment with which I began this blog, or of pausing (slowness) which I have also addressed. First: Prochnik is bewildered in a particularly fruitful way that leads him to reflect in very interesting ways on his topic(s). Second, and more importantly, perhaps: Listening is one of the skills, I would argue and I think faculty/facilitators would agree, required to think. And, it is a key part of the sort of dialogical education  offered at Shimer. Listening, perhaps, is really all about distinguishing meaning from noise, and thus in some sense about silence. I think. (and I say that as someone rarely silent.) 

Reading the book teaches one about why malls are so darn noisy (of course, they think it makes us buy more -- and a whole new profession within the marketing world has emerged to create the "soundscapes" of consumerism), the notion of noise maps and the entanglements of public policy around noise, and a lot about how our ears work (and do not). Perhaps my favorite parts -- the part that really shifted me -- was the discussion of Deaf Architecture. The openness of the world enabling people to see each other to speech is a very intriguing one for developing new notions of listening and hearing. 

So: is one of the unsung outcomes of a liberal education at the individual level the capacity to listen? To distinguish meaning from noise? And, is it more then utilitarian? Is one fo the unsumg public outcomes the capacity to create a world with less noise pollution? (It is, one discovers, responsible for an enormous amount of our health concerns -- and more.) Hmmm. 

PS Prochnik has a lovely blog here. 

A Novel Bookstore

This novel, entitled A Novel Bookstore, was written by Laurence Cosse, and published by Europa Editions. It is translated from the french. Hence the accent (invisible here, above the e in the author's last name.) 

The story is of a person who starts a bookstore which chooses its books by a very intriguing route. There is a mysterious committee (no one knows who they are, and they are kept, even, from knowledge of one another) which picks llists of 300 or so books, and the contents of the bookstore come from those lists. Each year, they may add some more. So: the bookstore incldues only good books. Yes, a quality distinction. And, the owners -- and the committee -- actually choose wonderfully good books -- even acting in such a way as to create a demand for some long out of print. Their bookstore, it seems. finds a wonderful audience -- and has an impact. All those rather trashy books -- sometimes called peanut books, often selling huge numbers (sometimes even in airports), arriving with great hoopla to big box bookstores and piled in heaps near the door -- are set to the side so that one can actually find the "real" novels. 

Hmmm.

In the book, this leads to all sorts of consequences -- including competition from other like minded (or apparently like minded) capitalists, protests about their elitism in the media (and suitable defenses), and even more. 

I will not spoil the plot but I will ask: what does this have to do with Shimer? Is the notion of choosing only good books at all like proclaiming oneself a great books college? 

Here the complexity is (as articulated in the novel even), that one cannot choose everything. And, one does wish to steer away from sheer junk. But are there limits to this approach? who gets to be the committee? Who chooses the committee?

And, another question: in what ways are bookstores and colleges alike? How are they different? How do they (respectively) relate to the notion of a business or a non profit organization?

I liked this novel novel. Can you tell? Thought provoking and a good read (in the  sense of well translated and articulate as well as in the sense of a romp I enjoyed. )  

For a review in the Washington Post, click here. For some quotations from A Novel BOokstore, ripped out of context, but still worth a gander, click here. 

Violence

Dear Shimerians:

Recently a student asked me “why are you writing to presidents of colleges that have experienced violence?” I answered: once I had a terrible experience when I was acting as an administrator (it involved several accidental student deaths) and I received a few notes from utter strangers.  They helped carry me – and indeed, our whole campus – through what remains one of the worst experiences I can imagine. (If you do not know about the stabbings and gun violence to which I refer, click here or here, for example.) 

At a recent meeting of the American Council on Education, I attended a session in which presidents talked about their experiences of crisis. One voice was an Illinois president who lead an institution that experienced the significant impact of a shooter on campus. It was the first time he spoke publicly of events that happened several years ago. Violence happens. Tragedies happen. And, they change the worlds of everyone.

So, I have taken the opportunity in recent weeks to reach out to those whose campuses have experienced stabbings and gun violence. Yesterday (by the time you receive this), there was more violence in Boston that left 3 dead and about 140 wounded.  While not a campus event, the explosions at the Boston Marathon remind us of the many ways our optimism is tempered by violence and sorrow. Indeed, Shimerians live – and read – in a city that experiences violence each and every day, including all too many murders. This past weekend, for example, was a particularly violent one across our city. We are not immune.

So: I am writing all Shimerians, asking that we take a moment from the work that seems so important – from the writing (or reading) of senior theses or bureaucratic filling out of forms, from budgetary management to reading for class, from fund raising to working on administrative reports, to extend our community to those in Boston who we may know, and others who have experienced violence in their lives. (And, they are not only strangers as we, too, include amongst us people whose lives have been shaped in this way.) I ask that we remind ourselves that every day we have the opportunity to work against violence in our own city and in our own lives, and elsewhere. As we read together, let us not only ask how our experiences as Shimerians improve our individual lives – but how our experiences help us to make a less violent world. This, indeed, is an enduring question that calls us to live in renewed ways with renewed commitments.

In Nelson Mandela’s youth, when he was tried for the crimes that led him to spend a lifetime in prison, he argued for violence. By the time he emerged from that prison, he was a vigorous and respected proponent of nonviolence.  Regardless of our positions on the particularities of his arguments – or indeed of the representations of violence in the Iliad or other great works – we know that destructive violence is one of the enduring problems that we face together as a species. I urge us all to do what we can to support victims and survivors of violence – and to work together for a world where we do not sigh and look away, but act as one of our t-shirts calls us to act – for change.

Please take care. And please let us know of the safety and well-being of Shimerians who may have been at the Boston marathon. For, we too run, we too work in cities, and we too must change the world. 

Presidential Tomfoolery (Yes, It is that Dangerous Day of Days)

Pressed Release

Shimmer College

April, 2013

Shimmer College is pleased to announce the beginning of several new programs. Each will draw significant revenue to the College, and enhance its academic reputation in important ways.

Apocalypse Now is a new graduate degree program in crisis management. Students and staff will work together, in dialogical mentorship relationships, on problems and possibilities associated with the possibility of an impending apocalypse. Interdisciplinary and imaginative solutions will be rewarded with a space in the bomb shelter or, should the team so choose, a lottery ticket.

Journeys and Stories is a new under graduate program that provides training in the development of mobile higher education. The Mount Carroll degree will focus on preservation and small towns. The Waukegan degree will focus on inspirations from Ray Bradbury. And, the Chicago initiative will be focused on the Red and Green Show, aka the red and green lines.

Pharmacopia and Farming is a mentorship program rooted in connecting our alumni with current students around experiential learning. ‘Nuf said.

Nacirema Aimedaca is focused on the development of obstruse (and long winded, usually non-evidentiary) argumentation skills.   Graduates are expected to enter leadership positions in politics, higher education, and unions. A special certificate is available in this degree program called Assemblages. Here, the skill involves meetings for the sake of meetings. A second certificate is in the works tentatively called homoynm-ology investigating such topics as the relation of

 

• liberal education, liberation, libertarianism and liberal politics
• conservation, conservative politics, and consommé
• deliberation, deliverance, and delicacay
• opportunistic, opportunity, and optional
• great, grate

 

To apply for admission to one of these programs, please click here – your email will immediately go to our admissions office – and we will immediately bill you for the smile.  Media inquiries should be accompanied by food.

 

The Mind /Body Problem OR, Are You Losing Your Mind?

Today's quotation for the day reminds us that educational institutions sometimes embody (pun intended) the Western split of mind and body (or perhaps even fact and value) and at other times challenge those binaries. 

    "The separation of mind and body is a central idea in much of Western philosophy, and it has become the basis for many of hte policies and organizational models of education. This idea may be for some a reassuring existential construction or a pleasant and relatively low-risk form of self-aggrandizement that helps us feel justified in claiming some superiority over other creatures or distancing ourselves from the relentlessly corporal facts of human life. Regardless, it is complete fiction. " (Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh, We're Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education, New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, p. 71).

What does this mean about reorganizing higher education for the 21st century?  

About Keeling and Associates, click here. 

Wrongology Qua Education

Great neologism, right? It is not my own, of course, but it has a delightful ring to it. It comes from a book I just finished entitled Being Wrong, authored by Kathryn Schulz. The subtitle is Adventures in the Margins of Error. It has been out for a while, and there is a lot of buzz about it. And, to be honest, I enjoyed the read. 

So: wrong is joining other words that nudge us along by seeming so wrong to attach to the best of liberal education -- bewilderment, dead, glee, wrong. Really? Thoughtfulness seems obvious. It even seems right. It belongs. But wrong? Really? It seems so wrong. (Say that aloud in the right tone of voice.) And yet, it seems so right. (Even Bill Clinton agrees. Click here.) 

Schulz's book is persuasive and thought-provoking. Wrong is important -- and not just as something to be avoided. It is something from which we learn. Something we need. Something that defines us. All of us. It is, she argues, part of what makes us human. (And thus more than animals in some sense.) She draws on all sorts of intellectual -- and personal -- examples to push us along. And her comments draw on authors from Aristotle to . . . . well, you know. 

So, connections to liberal education? To Shimer? There seem to me several. 

First, on neologisms per se. I like them -- they remind me that language grows and changes. Yes, there are rules (grammar; my own obsession with the correct use of apostrophes) but yes, things change.  English is a living language. Hack no longer is principally a word for a kind of carriage. Nor, did I, in my youth, know what to google meant. [Well, there was a song from well before my time about googly eyes, but. . . . you know my point.) Neologisms build on the past and somehow link that to the new, the future. In some senses, that is what liberal education is about -- connecting us to history, but doing so in a way that imagines (and allows us to build) a future that is both like that past and challenges it. Neologisms, in some sense, face both directions -- to tradition and to invention, as do neologisms. So, too, I would argue, does the best of liberal education and the best of Shimer. 

More directly, though -- how are being wrong and being educated, liberal education and Shimer connected? Let me quote from Shultz as I move to a second set of connections for us by offering a few quotations from the book. (My citatons are to the kindle edition). 

        The feeling of knowing something is incredibly convincing and inordinately satisfying, but it is not         a very good way to gauge the accuracy of our knowledge. (kindle location 1103) 

        How can we square this feeling of rightness with the very real possibility that we are wrong? This is         a question that haunts all of wrongology, not just errors of memory. (kindle location 1171) 

By discussing confabulators and literature, memory loss and neurological dysfunction, conversion and lying, this author nudges us along to be thoughtful about ourselves -- and yes, to my mind, the role of being wrong in higher education as about cognitive, social, and emotional processes. Are we more error prone when we follow the masses? When we trust a source? Can higher education be groupthink? Or is its role to disrupt groupthink? Is error blindness a moral problem? How do we move beyond the conviction that we cannot possibly be wrong? (And how do we avoid the view that we are always wrong?) Is certainty toxic? Or is uncertainty toxic? 

And a third set of reasons we may find this book of interest? Well, the book is profoundly interdisciplinary (or is it multidisciplinary? Transdisciplinary? Antidisciplinary?) In any case, it draws from a variety of intellectual arenas (and life arenas) to think through a topic (and indeed, make an argument) from a variety of angles. As it does so it addresses the complex relationships between being wrong -- moral error, factual error, dramatic changes in our belief systems, etcetera -- and various epistemologies and metaphysics. How do we know? And in what ways do we learn? Is this about multiperspectivalism -- or is it an admision that most of the things we are most interested in are not divided up into the kinds of arenas that academia uses to demarcate intellectual arenas?  Hmm. Might she be right as she writes about being wrong? (She cites Montaigne. How can she be wrong?) 

Finally, just a personal bit: I find it hard to be wrong. Do you? There are moments when I have been so wrong -- in various ways -- as to been challenged in a very fundamental way. And not just when the theories of religion's disappearance I learned in college and graduate school turned out to be utterly wrong. Because I have, on occasion, been utterly wrong. Have you? Is that part of what it means to be educated? 

And yet, as the author of this book notes about many of us, I too enjoy the paradoxical experience of being wrong sometimes -- when it comes to optical illusions, for example. As she puts it: "emotionally, illusions are the gateway drug to humility" (kindle location 1027). Hmmm. 

For some of the press on the book, though collected by the book's own website, click here. And for a video that is kind of fun, here. To buy it from indiebook.com try here. Or, try this site for some video that is not TED. Or try this bloggishness from a site with one of the best names I have seen in a while -- the accidental theologist. Or this, from an even more wonderful blog, overweening generalist, whose mission seems oh so Shimerish. 

Related articles

On being wrong: Kathryn Schulz on TED.com

Are You Slow?

At the start of the 2012/2013 academic year, the Dean of Shimer College, Barbara Stone, focused on the ways busy-ness shapes us in her convocation talk. It was a delightful, wry, and deeply important talk. It reminded listeners to ask the following question about higher education: are we better off if we "get through it" more quickly? It reminded us to ask about the value of pausing, of slowness, even, perhaps, of dawdling. I return to those themes today, because I am in need of a reminder that busy-ness is not everything. In fact, it is not much, in the great scheme of things. And, perhaps more importantly, education is a process embedded in time. 

A mentor of mine, Peggy Williams, Emerita President of Ithaca College and Lyndon State College, sent me a book some years ago which speaks to this theme.  The book is entitled In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. The author, Carl Honore, writes about slow food, slow cities, and, what surprised me at the time I first read it, slow education. While many of us are familiar with the first of these, a movement that began in Italy and now has "chapters" across the globe, the section on slow education may be less familiar. And yet, it is so obvious once one thinks about it. There is, in fact, a slow movement in many arenas of life, resisting the ways speeding up seems so obviously crucial to all of who we are. Why is becoming educated in less time better than taking more time? Why are we rushing? What happens to how we learn if we take our time? 

While the slow education movement seems to focus a bit on kids, the possibilities are much wider. For example, we often meausre the efficacy of colleges and universities by focusing on what percentage complete in 4 years. Of course, this is really about seeing if colleges and universities are fulfilling their promises to enable completion in that time. Having said that, as we face economic challenges, some universities are approaching the future with an eye to the 3 year undergraduate degree. Is a speedier degree a better degree? 

Thought about another way, the word pause is relevant. In this case, the fear of "gap years" and the fear of stepping out of school may be as relevant as the need to pause and consider one's reading and writing, problem solving and dialogue as one pursues a college degree. Here are some words of wisdom from Sharon Parks,  The Critical Years: Young Adults and the Search for Meaning, Faith and Commitment (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986):

    The modern academy had its genesis in the contemplative monastic tradition, but we have in large     measure lost the essence of our heritage through our inattention to the power of pause. Though     pause is essential to insight, the structure of the academy offers little time for contemplation.     Congested urban campuses, lockstep class schedules, mass-feeding dining halls, crowded     dormitories with little private space, interminable committee meetings and office appointments,     competition for grades, pressures for ‘excellence’ in research and teaching evaluated by the requisite     amount of publication – all conspire to erode the quality of contemplation essential to the     achievement of wisdom. Though the academy engenders a good deal of conscious conflict, it often     fails to allow the pause so necessary to the gestation of new images and insight. . . (pp. 145-146)

Words like slow and pause, as for me the word Shimer, remind us that thinking well is not always about thinking  now, this moment, immediately, and as quickly as possible. It is also about stopping and reflecting. 

PS: If you are in Chicago, here is the local slow food convivium. And, if you are in education, here is a website that Carl Honore recommends on the topic of slow education. 

PPS After this was written, but before it was published, a blog on Inside Higher Education published this on a related topic. Great minds. . . Great blogs. . . Great schools. . . . 

Is Russ Kick a Shimerian?

I had never heard of Russ Kick until I read a NY Times Book Review of his edited work, The Graphic Canon Volume 1 ( there are 3 volumes; 2 have been published and one is due in April). Probably, I would not have noticed the review had I not become a Shimerian myself this year. And yet, as soon as I read it, the question of Kick's Shimerishness came to mind.  I was startled to find that the graphic canon was not an attempt to identify, select and canonize extant graphic novels, but rather the creation of works that conjoined the imaginations of wonderful artists with works that, as the review itself notes, almost all appeared on Harold Bloom's list of the "Western Canon." (For Bloom's book, click here. For his list, try here.) While not identical to humanities lists taught at great books colleges, and certainly not identical to Shimer's curriculum, still, there seemed to be something sympatico here. Somehow, the review made evident that what some see as oxymoronic -- the notion of graphic (novels ) and of the (western) canon  conjoined -- was, well, not contradictory at all. In fact, the two might belong together in some important way. 

At first glance, though, the answer to today's question is obvious. No. Russ Kick neither attended nor graduated from Shimer College. And yet, the question remains. As I explored, I continued to believe I had to ask: Is Russ Kick a Shimerian? He has a tumblr. He tweets (where he says he is "avante garde old school." [Does that persuade you?]) Heck, there is an extensive wikipedia article about him. (Does that dissuade you?)  

What leads me to ask the question in this, Shimer-related part of the blogosphere are the following main points:

1. First and foremost, of course, is the list of works contained in the 3 volumes of the Graphic Canon. That is what attracted my attention in the first place. It seemed like such a Shimerish list. It includes such figure as: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, various Brontes and much much more. 

Why else? Because I find myself drawn to certain aspects of popular culture that re-represent similarly canonical figures (most especially, in my case, Freud or others appearing in murder mysteries, usually more social scientific in some ways, but still), I felt somehow validated seeing the review. (For Freud in popular culture, see everywhere around you, or click here for a related paper.) See, I thought to myself, there are good connections -- and a wide(r) readership than we sometimes think for such works, and thus a wider set of Shimerians or friends thereof. Hurrah! 

(Or, is this an unfounded belief, confirmed a bit like that well known phenomenon where, if you buy a redf car, you somehow start to see red cars everywhere?) 

2. As I explored beyond the confines of the graphic canon, I discovered, of course, that there is a lot more to know about Kick. He is best known, probably, for his work at a web site (now definct) called The Memory Work. And, thus, for his political work on the left.  Among the things he has done, which I knew but did not know: he was in part responsible for reintroducing us all to visual depictions of war dead. The presence of war dead in news casts of my youth mattered to me; in some ways they defined me. Their reintroduction, controversy and all, seems to me important. 

Here, as well as in his association with something called the Disinformation Company, Kick seems to be pressing on the notion of what counts as "open" -- a term which is used a lot around Shimer, and so this too made me wonder about his Shimerishness. While this particular version may be a tad (seriously) to one side of whatever political spectrum you believe defines our era, it is still, perhaps, part of the great conversation that is democracy. 

3. And then there are his other books. With titles focusing on things we are not supposed to know as well as anthologies around major topics like death (not to mention the canon itself), Kick seems, here as well, to push on opennesses door.  

Yet, most crucially, there is the graphic canon. Here are a few of his words in that regard: -- yes, you have to click -- the link is to his related blog site. 

Here he is, probably long excoriated by many proponents of the "Western Canon"  not to mention many oponents of the "wester Canon" -- creating new ways into those same texts for new generations and new people. Kick may be a walking -- and certainly a writing -- paradox. I admit -- I find some of his writings deeply troubling; deeply deeply troubling. I do not know what to make of him. I do, though, like thr graphic canon. Thought provoking -- totally. Of course, I should note the publisher, and it is Seven Stories Press. 

Of course, this is all about the meta-question: what exactly counts as Shimerian anyway? But it is also about the grsphic canon -- which reminds us that many many people out there are reading away in new ways and encountering books we'd like to discuss with them. The fact that Kick was once associated with a blog called Books Are People too, perhaps, says it all. Or does it? 

Ruminations? 

 

Abraham Maslow's Footnotes

On page 51 of my edition of Religions, Values and Peak Experiences (Penguin, 1970) by Abraham Maslow, in the chapter entitled "Values in Education," there appears a set of footnotes that are among my favorite footnotes in the world. Admittedly, I love footnotes; I especially prefer them to end notes! (I get it; end notes are cheaper to print, but really? Here on the issue of the footnote, as a Shimerian recently said to me, is one of the values of interactive texts. I love that I can find notes -- one no longer distinguishes footnotes from end notes -- easily.) 

The context of these notes, of course, is Maslow's attempt to distinguish (as he does in the case of religion as well) between educational institutions (which sometimes mitigate against education) and education per se. (If you do not know who Maslow is, here is one place to look.) So, here are the three footnotes, with a few comments. Perhaps it will drive you to read this book which appears to be about religion (and is) but is centrally about education(in all its complexities).

Footnote 1 says "Isn't is a pity that my daughter left school in her senior year just before she finished her education?" 

Footnote 2 says: Professor Pangloss would have been delighted by the fact that all human knowledge happens to fall apart into exactly the same three-credit slices, like the segments of a tangerine, and that they all happen to last for exactly the same number of class hours. 

Footnote 3 says  "No man can call himself educated who does not know the Iliad (or constitutional law, or chemistry, or descriptive geometry, etc., etc.)." For that matter, one college I went to refused to give a degree unless the student could swim. Another one required that I take freshman composition even though I had articles in press for publication. Faculty politics are silly enough to supply us with many more examples thsan we need.

So: footnote one requires me to ask: what does he mean by this? Out of context the answer is not obvious. In context, Maslow is trying to get us to ask why we assume that leaving school means the end of education. Might it be possible that leaving school immerses you in a different form of education? This, of course, is not a question unfamilair to us a decade plus into the twenty-first century, given arguments for the educational superiority of drop outs, for example. (Though, I, personally, do not think this is quite his point.) 

Footnote two, of course, points to some of the ludicrous (and serious) parts of the organization of higher education in Maslow's time (the book was written mid-twentieth century). And, yes, the state still has an interest in saying "this is what a credit hour is" and this is how long a course must meet to be a college level course. This emphasis can become silly as when some states calculate the difference between a B.A. and a B.S. by the number of classroom minutes required. On the other hand, of course, is the need for some comparability in the interest of students. Hmmmm. (If you are sure this is an exaggeration, click here for one example. Read carefully. I am not saying this is wrong; I am saying: hmmm.) 

Footnote 3 is, of course, about the rigidity of requirements and the ways curricula can be misconstrued as "merely" political in the sense of his use of the phrase "faculty politics." Of course, even then, the decision to require things in curricula was not always taken for intellectual reasons; even then, money followed enrollment for various reasons, at least in some contexts. And, sometimes requirements are enforced with no flexibility emerhging from an understanding of this particular student at this particular time. And yet, we know, that our best institutions create requirements for reasons other than those implied by Maslow here (and other than those endemic in the commodification of higher learning). Here, the key is what we mean by best. And, given Maslow's desire to udnerstand humanity not through the lens of our pathology or failures (a la psychoanalysis, for example) but through persons who exemplify what is most aspirational (best) about some of us, I think this is his message to us here: we must think through what is best in all of our educational work. 

Of course, these footnotes are out of context, so I do suggest a re-reading of the book. Having said that, Maslow does successfully raise the question of how we can ensure that what we know as educational institutions are truly about education, in its deepest as well as its more immediate sense. He demands his readers ask whether, in fact, our institutions impede or enhance what we might think of as "truly" educational. 

A great question for Shimer -- and for all of us, once again, decades after Maslow wrote these footnotes -- and after much intervening debate about the purpose and delivery of education. Today, too, bringing questions of value to bear on how we think of education is key -- and here, value is not merely about the value proposition (though that is important) or cost versus value versus price (though those are important as well) but about that other meaning of value -- implied crucially in Maslow's version of the "value of education." 

Your views? Are footnotes important? What is the value of -- and what are the values in -- education? 

For an interesting piece on Maslow, click here. For a bit on his views as linked to education, try here. 

Speaking with the Dead

Shimer education – perhaps all excellent liberal education – is enriched by conversations we have with folks as disparate as Plato and Durkheim, Audre Lorde and Sigmund Freud, Lavoisier, Darwin, Frederick Douglas, and Virginia Woolf, Franz Fanon and . . .  .

What do these thinkers have in common?

They are dead.

Liberal education is , thus, entry into a relationship with the living dead.  Not vampires. Not zombies. Neither gods nor ghosts. We meet these particular living dead through the power of what they have written – and the many ways that subsequent generations have interacted with their work. Of course, our community with the dead is rooted in a community of the living as well, a community of inquiry, of criticism, of generosity and hope.

Here’s what Parker Palmer, a thinker whose focus has often been on the nature of teaching within community, says in his book, The Courage to Teach in describing a teacher who profoundly influenced him:

     Through this teacher and his lectures, some of us joined a powerful form of community marked by     the ability to talk with the dead. This is not a mark of madness but of an educated person. Learning to     speak and listen in that invisible community of history and thought makes one’s world immeasurably     larger and forever changes one’s life. (Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 137)

Parker Palmer’s reflection, of course, is not the only worthwhile way to think through the relation of living thought – and living thinkers – to the dead. There is, for example, Simon Critchley’s relatively recent publication, The Book of Dead Philosophers, which builds up, through accretion of multiple tales, a philosophical approach to life by looking at how the deaths of philosophers. A fun book, truly, not a morbid book, all cultural repression of death to the contrary notwithstanding. (See here for more on  Parker Palmer.) 

But one need not look only to such places for a reminder of the importance of speaking to, about and with the dead. An author who is popular amongst some Shimerians  -- and more broadly across American culture -- is Orson Scott Card. In his book, Speaker for the Dead, and in his work more generally, there is a tension between life and death, between xenocide and redemption, between truth and its consequences, and more. In the novel, there is imagined a form of “religion” which is non-theistic, in which one calls for someone to investigate the truth of someone’s life – not merely what happened, but why, and for what reasons, focusing perhaps upon the gaps between intention and actuality.  As imagined by Card, the practice of speaking for the dead is not about eulogies in the form of avoidance or hagiography or euphemism, but the recognizing of deaths (and thus lives) as meaningful. The notion that the dead go on living is re-imagined, beyond the views of the religions we all know, filled as they are with resurrection,  reincarnation and the like.  Here the telling of lives and deaths is also about active meaning making.  It is, in some sense that Shimerians might recognize, dialogical. Card’s work is often categorized as science fiction or fantasy; too often such genre fiction is dismissed as unimportant. And, yet, perhaps its historical legacy will be longer than we imagine.  (We must not forget that Dickens was paid by the word, and other classics, too, were the popular writing of their era.)

Speaking for the dead, is perhaps, though, different from speaking with the dead.

In thinking about the latter form of conversation with, we are, of course, considering how we speak – and listen – across the limits of radical otherness. So too is Card, who addresses this topic not through the lens of re-readings of Edward Said, but through the metaphor of alien species. As he does so, he asks what it truly means to encounter ideas – and lives – that are dissimilar from our own. He asks how we might do so without obliterating that difference – or even obliterating others quite literally – while also avoiding the creation of a morally (or cognitively)  relativistic world. Card asks what it means to build fences and to encounter – or create – openness. As he does so, he takes up the pain of encounter, the risks of openness.  Across histories or cultures  or lives that differ, how we speak and listen becomes of central importance.  (Whether Card fully agrees to this or not, it may be notable that he teaches now at a small liberal arts college, within the LDS tradition. And, his controversial, often homphobic, views of LGBTQ matters may speak against his work as a model of openness. For more on this, try here.) 

Here, then, is our question:  is the idea that we can meet Freud, or encounter Sappho, or reach across generations to enable a conversation between those long dead and living thinkers like Sandra Harding (for her faculty site try here) or Carol Gilligan (for her faculty site try here) --   or dare we say, ourselves? --  fiction too? Is it fantasy? Some thinkers have labeled religion a fantasy, others a chain of memory. Perhaps that is what education might be at its best as well – a chain of memory and a making of the future through conversations with and amongst the dead, in the context of an imagined future.

Do you speak with the dead? 

 

For a different version of this published elsewhere, click here.