Education As Real Life

by
Douglas S. Johnson

At the end of this past Winter quarter, I received a lovely card from a female student that read thusly:

As a long-time follower of the pedagogical creeds of such great humanistic/educational theorists as Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Sydney J. Harris, and Herbert Spencer, I was quite obviously pleased to receive such a kind and warm-hearted missive from someone who had spent ten weeks in one of my classrooms. But beyond stirring up some salutary feelings of satisfaction and a glowing inner sense of having accomplished something worthwhile in yet another student, this little note got me to thinking again how little, on the whole, our educative system does for students; how poorly it prepares them for real living; how it still separates itself so rigidly from the vitals of everyday experience, so that students often make statements like "I can't wait to be finished with my education," as though it were something to be swallowed with difficulty like a pill or endured with clenched teeth like a vaccination, and then so that "real life" can be faced, supposedly with all need for organized learning left safely behind. Even now, at the turn of the new millennium, and at all levels of schooling, the approach of far too many teachers (given what I continually hear from my students) appears to be still a hundred years lagging and lends almost nothing to a pupil's "real life;" let alone the idea of the educative process itself being an integral part of "real life."

Simply stated, a lot of what is taught in school, presented as it usually is to the student, is an enormous waste of time. Many might wince at such a statement or rush to defend the idea of "knowledge in the abstract," but a couple of examples will show that such a proclamation about the curriculum widely offered in American classrooms is true in too many cases and that "merely knowing" something is, in fact, a waste of time and brain cell capacity. David Sobel aptly calls this "knowledge in the abstract" pushed in most American schools "a veneer of words, recitation without reality," and I think this makes a powerful statement about how education is administered for the most part in this country: that is, as a veneer, a gloss, a coating that never really seeps in.

Another of my Writing In The Social Sciences students this quarter made the following observation in a paper and gave me permission to use it in this essay: "there is nothing worse than waking up in the morning knowing that you have to go to a fifty minute lecture about what the difference is between a rock in North America and a stone in Europe." As a teacher and former student, I would wholeheartedly agree with this. What possible use in life is such information, at least when it is presented outside of any context which directly engages the student? when it is proffered as something to be dutifully soaked up, with no connection or relevance to experience, and then regurgitated on a test, only to be lost from memory due to the fact that it is, in fact, irrelevant to anything about which the student continues to think once outside the classroom?

"But geology is important!" many will insist, and my immediate response to that would be "why?" Actually, I would wager that most who maintain the vital nature of a subject like geology would be hard pressed to come up with a good answer.

A respectable reply to the inquiry might be "so that pupils can understand the nature of the earth and how the history of the world is penned in its underground tablets and so better comprehend the events that led up to the present state of the gigantic stage on which they play out the acts of their lives." Unfortunately, geological information is rarely presented in such a fashion in the classroom, but is rather put forth as abstracted material to be memorized in a rote fashion and then later reproduced on a test, still in its abstracted form: therefore rendering it a subject best not taught at all.

My niece, who is presently in the seventh grade, brings home loads of mindless material to learn every night. One of the most outstanding examples of absurd pedagogical practice of which I have ever heard occurred when, as a ten-year-old in the fourth grade, she was compelled to memorize the names and descriptions of dozens of birds and flowers from various provinces of Canada. Now what a ten-year-old farm girl in Missouri will possibly do with such positively useless information as this, I cannot imagine.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with studying the flora and avian residents of the Canadian provinces, for a prospective ornithologist/botanist from Quebec, but for a pre-adolescent from the Midwest with no innate interest in such things (or reason for interest), there could be no greater misuse of energies meant for productive learning. In fact, such meaningless tasks as poring over musty books on topics with no life-context for the reader and listening to boring lectures on abstract academic material are often worse than merely wasteful, but also actively harmful because they vitiate the life-connection that naturally exists between the child and the world; as Willi Aeppli rather poetically observes: "[if,] despite all our wonderful pedagogical knowledge, we have taught all morning as a fossilized schoolmaster, merely out of our highly developed intellect, then, provided our eyes have become sharp enough, we can read the effects of such teaching in the children. We see that their faces are somewhat paler, somewhat more drained of blood than usual...; or we may suddenly notice that the children no longer breathe as freely as before..."

With equal eloquence, the great Moravian educational theorist, John Amos Comenius, who has been deemed "the father of modern education," wrote in 1632, "for five, ten, or more years, they [instructors of his time] detained the mind over matters that could be mastered in one. What could have been gently instilled into the intellect was violently impressed upon it, nay rather stuffed and flogged into it. What might have been placed before the mind plainly and lucidly was treated of obscurely, perplexedly, and intricately, as if it were a complicated riddle." (How tragic that these words still ring so true almost four centuries later!) And then, "I, unfortunate man that I am, am one of many thousands who have miserably lost the sweetest spring-time of their whole life and have wasted the freshest years of youth on scholastic trifles. Ah, how often, since my mind has been enlightened, has the thought of my wasted youth wrung sighs from my breast, drawn tears from my eyes, and filled my heart with sorrow..."

Both Dewey and Spencer point out the obstinate and persistent tendency in Western culture to adhere to the ancient model of learning, that is, knowing as "decoration" rather than as "science." (This latter term, as employed here, transcends its common meaning, referring not only to erudition in the "-ologies," but to "inductive thinking" itself, to "inquisitive living" in regard to any and all subjects, including the fine arts.) In other words, knowledge is, for the most part, attained not for conscious and planned utilitarian or life-enhancing means, but rather only for the sake of having it (rather like possessing a gold watch not for telling time but merely for showing off one's accumulated wealth); in fact, I would venture to say that a great portion of what is memorized during the high school years, and perhaps even during the undergraduate years in college, is not actively utilized in life, except haphazardly and accidentally, since students are so rarely taught to use their learning in real life situations.

A friend of mine has a pet phrase for pedantic persons with little "real life"/common sense learning: "educated idiots." I admit that he is a hard-edged fellow, and the term itself is fairly harsh, but I do not think that it lies very far from the truth in many respects. I rather believe that there are a goodly number of "educated idiots" in our country these days, in the main because they were miseducated from the outset, fed "Facts! Facts! Facts!" Gradgrind-wise, with little means for employing these facts in useful/enlightening life-tasks. In short, they were never taught to employ what they learned with a view toward Dewey and Spencer's progressive, "real life"/common sense "scientific thinking."

There is something a bit pathological in this kind of approach to "teaching" and "learning" (if these terms may even be employed in this context), and we see such habits of [mis]learning in extremis in certain autistic children who can at once memorize all manner of facts, definitions, and mathematical formulas but have not the slightest ability to apply them to real life situations or even to see a connection between the abstractions they know and the outside world. A mere accumulation of dissociated bits of information, even if infinite in quantity, will do nothing for the betterment of one's living, and, in fact, will only serve as mental clutter---or, to use Spencer's analogy, "mental fat," as opposed to "mental muscle." The way to "mental muscle" is simple to state, but it will take a lot of educational reshaping and work to implement in the long-run. To quote Judith Williamson, "How do you get someone to understand an abstraction? By relating it to the reality that it is an abstraction of." This brings us back to Dewey and Spencer's "science."

Now, once again, do not misunderstand what is meant here by our term, "science," and thus how it is being used in this present context; that is, do not believe it to mean a reducing of all living to mathematical formulas and a robotic adherence to abstract, objective laws, or even a materialistic or industrial implementation of all learning; that is exactly what it does not mean.

In fact, as Carl Rogers points out, "scientific thinking," even in its more technical forms, is anything but robotic, objective or merely materialistic. Anything that humans earnestly and eagerly approach from an investigative stance is (or certainly should be), perforce, something that interests them for a good reason, something that, once learned about, holds potential to further the richness and purpose of being alive. Andrew Kimbrell echoed this notion when he wrote, "there is no such thing as an 'objective piece of information.' Like a word in a sentence, a bit of information means a particular thing only within a given context." Therefore, that which is explored "scientifically" (investigatively, imaginatively) is always subjective, subjective to the human experience, which, of course, is what drives human inquiry from beginning to end (or certainly should). (Anything that were in no way related to the sustenance and furtherance of real human life, no matter how "objectively true" [in the Platonic sense] should be of no concern and thus would not be studied and could not be considered "scientific" in nature, for there would be no subjective need or desire to learn about it and no way to use it for inquisitive and creative purposes.)

"Scientific learning," then, is merely the attaining of useful or life-enhancing knowledge (no matter what the area of study)---that which can be carried outside of the school building and taken immediately into experience and utilized, freely and creatively, even playfully, for the betterment of one's existence and for the beneficial expansion of human existence in general (physically, emotionally, intellectually, personally, socially, educationally, artistically, morally, spiritually, etc.)

Steven L. Talbott makes the distinction between the static, factual, purely-informational "science" usually taught in American schools (to the point where the very term "science" has been almost hopelessly tainted in the American mind) with what is termed "Goethean Science," the "science of qualities," or the "science of relationship." On a website entitled, simply enough, Goethean Science, five characteristics of this brand of thinking are detailed, as follows:

1) The attempt to step outside of theory and common place preconceptions.

2) A methodology that uses the full range of human abilities and sensitivities.

3) Practices which enhance the senses, or as Goethe says, "grow new organs of perception."

4) The development of a science of compassion.

5) The integration of science and art.

Natasha Myers states that this "science of quality/relationship" is a way of thinking/intuiting in which "we enter into relationship with the phenomenon [emphasis mine] as scientists, and our discoveries come alive with meaning, brought forth through the creative language of deepened experience in the natural realm," a way of knowing in which "we actively engage our senses, and trust that they can reveal the real world." In this article, when I speak of "scientific thinking," it will be of this inductive/intuitive/relationship-experiential variety (a la Spencer, Dewey and Goethe), the usual prejudices about the words "science" and "scientific" notwithstanding.

Now, those whom I may have alienated with my proclamations about "subjects best not taught at all," I shall presently try to win back with a clarification. The "knowing for knowing's sake" approach, the "knowing as decoration" and the "rote-memorization/test/forget" forms of miseducation, render any subject more or less useless, if not for all students, then for a good many. (Certain pupils with a beginning interest in a subject of learning can get a little something even out of the most boring lecture, like a dog may gnaw a few small strips of dry meat even off of a seemingly raw bone; however, most will not have that innate inquisitiveness and will drift away into some more entertaining world of the imagination, later cramming for a test they must pass in order to get that much nearer to "finishing their education.") However, the good news is that any subject, when presented in the right manner and under the right circumstances, when imparted for "scientific" (inquisitive, introspective, thought-producing) means rather than for "decorative" or "test-motivated" ones, can and will be profitable to the vast majority of pupils and so advance them in their lives. Below, we shall explore five important principles of teaching that may be employed so that students experience "real life" learning.

1) Whole group discussion/"real-life" demonstration. I believe that in classrooms with a reasonable number of pupils (a maximum of twenty to thirty), whole group discussion and "real-life demonstration" are marvelous ways for students to find out together how the curriculum relates to them and their lives and so actually unite themselves in a personal way with what they are learning. (This does require a certain group intimacy. I believe that an auditorium course, in which two hundred or so students sit and passively listen to an instructor lecture, is an unfortunate circumstance in which there will be little learning which goes beyond the merely information-gathering surface, and yet, as we all know, such courses are proliferate among the supposedly more reputable universities.)

Now it is true, perhaps, that this format of "talking about," "handling" and "acting out" the curriculum seems at first to lend itself particularly and almost exclusively to the humanities, to literature and art classes in which students can analyze works through the very subjective constructs of their own experience---but, many will ask, what of "real life" math, biology or social studies? (In relation to this, do remember the broad use of the terms "science" and "scientific approach:" that which encourages induction and creative thinking on the students' part; that which invites expansion and further cognitive process leading toward "real life" application. So it is that one could go at poetry and geometry in the same "scientific" manner.)

The key to all of this, of course, is intuitive, insightful and personally involved teachers (a topic which will be discussed further below), but, given this, "real life" teaching of any subject is imminently possible, and perhaps especially the sciences, since they are so very much alive, in and around us.

Here are a few very simple possibilities for "real life" learning in math, biology, history, literature and social science:

An elementary class could experience beginning fractions by following the recipe of a cake (1 1/2 teaspoons of this, 3/4 tablespoon of that, and so forth) and then cutting the final product into even slices before devouring it. These same students could learn about the plants and birds of their own region (as opposed to those of a foreign nation!) by collecting leaves, flowers or feathers, or by going on field trips with spyglasses and binoculars and then sharing with each other in "show and tell"/discussion what they have found. Junior high pupils could view corpuscles of their own blood under a microscope (those courageous enough to brave a fingerprick with a [yes, sterilized!] needle). Later, these same students could learn history by writing and performing in a play concerning a famous historical character/event of their own choosing. Similarly, high school students could learn their Shakespeare not hunched, half-asleep over a textbook the night before "the test," but rather by acting out the portions of the plays with fellow learners and then discussing what has transpired and what has been said during each scene, always analyzing the characters' moods and motivations in relation to their own. (Perhaps they could even re-write scenes, using the current vernacular.) College students in a social studies class could be asked to independently research attitudes in different cultures concerning alcohol consumption, sex, or rebellion toward parents, and the results could be covered in an open classroom dialogue. (If these suggestions seem somewhat dull and unimaginative---as they do to me this moment---ask students to come up with ways to make the curriculum fit in with their lives; they are wonderfully imaginative and unspoiled by too much pedagogical theory. Most of "my" best ideas for making a class more interesting, entertaining [and therefore more engaging] were first suggested by students.)

The point is, whatever the topic, the life principle or immediate application is to be taught/demonstrated first (the closer the student to the "action," the better), and then the abstract rule, definition or law secondarily---certainly not the other way about, which only breeds forgetfulness and confusion in many pupils. (Thus, when Eliza Doolittle told Professor Higgins, "I don't want to learn grammar; I want to learn to speak like a lady in a flower shop," she did in fact have something of the right idea.) It is true, of course, that this type of teaching slows things down a bit, at least in regard to the number of terms, definitions and rules a pupil is able to memorize during a given course, since there's all of that discussing and "acting out" to be worked in; but which is more productive, a hundred rout-memorized terms (most of which are quickly forgotten after tests) or thirty which a student clearly and thoroughly comprehends and recalls in the long-term, through "hands-on" experience? (It must also be considered that if this "real life" approach were used from the earliest grades, there would be, in the long run, a definite conservation of time and energy, as there would be more material understood and remembered, and so there would exist much less the need for the monotonous and endless review which plagues our current system.)

To sum up this concept, I call again upon a quote from a paper penned by one of my college writers: "if an instructor teaches at a student, the student very well may not learn anything; but if a teacher teaches to or with an individual, that student may not learn everything, but he will definitely learn something."

2) Encouragement toward students becoming liberated "self-instructors." Education is never a passive enterprise. It has been said that "no good thought was ever acquired while sitting down," and while I'm not certain about the literal quality of such a proclamation, its latent statement about passivity and productive, creative thinking is well taken.

Human beings are, by nature, self-motivated, actively investigative creatures. One sees it even in infants, who are constantly exploring the world with everything they have: with their eyes, their ears, their hands, their feet and their mouths. If this quality is not squelched or perverted somewhere along the line, it will endure, through childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood, and so individuals consistently encouraged in investigative, "scientific," "real-life" learning (in all subjects) will continue to search the world and study it with much interest and eagerness. They will do so because exploratory learning, when it is taken in its purest, unadulterated form, is not only interesting and useful, but also fun.

So how, then, is the investigative instinct so often curtailed or perverted so that education has come to be seen by so many students worldwide as a twelve to eighteen year chore to be ducked, avoided or put off whenever possible? In the main, this most wondrous inclination is corrupted by "one-way-to-learning," "sit-down-and-listen," "lecture-style" (and too often simply hostile) instructors who unwittingly train pupils to believe that "formal" education is something to be patiently endured as a means to an end (pleasing adults, eventually getting a high-paying job, or worst of all, simply "getting done" with learning itself). In other words, academia is separated from "real life" by a shutting off of the interactive element, and so the student is alienated from the central purpose of getting an education to begin with: namely, functioning more effectively, healthfully, happily and responsibly (physically, intellectually, emotionally and morally) as a person individually and as a person in society. (And with the loss of this "real life" connection, of course, so goes along with it the interest, usefulness and fun of learning.)

The investigative instinct is preserved through teaching that encourages individual thought and unique approach to subject matter, which encourages independent exploration, and which makes demonstrated use of real-life applications of principles before the presentation of the related rules or laws to be memorized. It is a style of teaching which respects the innate intelligence and human dignity of the student and views students largely as teachers of themselves and one another. It is a style of educating which is interactive, interpersonal, friendly and thoughtful, diverse and stimulating. In such an environment, pupils are free to reason and reflect and filter subject matter of all kinds through their own experience and so make it meaningful, useful and enjoyable to themselves.

We are somewhat improved over the system employed a hundred and fifty years or so ago, but, despite the pedagogical wisdom imparted by so many, including Pestazolli, Montessori, Spencer, Harris, Steiner, Flexner, Tobias, Gardner---and that towering intellectual giant of the twentieth century, Dewey---it seems we have not learned too terribly much as educators nor moved much closer to the ideal that these insightful educational theorists have set before us; and so we hear the constant lamentations concerning the current system and how students are so dismally failed by it. (Ironically, many of the "alternative" high schools ["special" institutions designed for those students who might be referred to by some less kind as "troublemakers" and "misfits"] are much more advanced in regard to interactive and "real life" teaching and thus often show remarkable results in learning in those who simply couldn't function in the "orthodox" classroom.)

3) Intelligently prepared coordinated studies. Dewey was one of the early advocates for demonstrating and optimizing the unity between the subjects taught in every level of school, and, given our present context, the meaning of this unity should be easily discerned: that all topics should ultimately blend together in their means for life-enhancement and moving learners toward inductive, creative thinking. Of course, this cannot be done in one fell swoop, especially after all of the "academic separatism" that has prevailed for so long in our present system. However, carefully prepared and properly administered coordinated studies can move a student toward better comprehending the hub which holds all subjects of study together: that being life itself.

An example of this has been given by Dewey and will serve as a springboard illustration for the creative teacher who wishes to seek new ways of combining topics of the curriculum. In Democracy And Education, Dewey suggests that the subjects of History and Geography should quite naturally be combined into coordinated study, because, as can easily be shown, the two are intimately related, even though one might not immediately perceive this fact, misled by a long-standing separatist miseducation.

History, we might suggest, is the human play, the peopled drama of time. The matter of Geography, then, is the stage upon which that play is set. Presented as they usually are in the classroom (that is, as segmented knowledge-bits to be swallowed rote-wise and then spit out again later in the same abstracted form on a test), the subjects mean little to the student and provide not much use in the way of later life application, unless the pupil at some point ends up on a trivia game show (or, God help us, eventually becomes another lecturing History or Geography instructor).

The only good way or good reason to learn History and Geography is having them placed in direct relation to current living so as to make life better through deeper understanding of how they are relevant to it. Taken together and presented in a dynamic fashion in which the student is encouraged to enter into an experience of the topics, History helps to vitalize Geography the way a drama brings life to a stage, and Geography lends vivid environmental context to History the same way a stage lends the necessary physical framework to a play. In other words, event and place are reunited, integrated just as they are in everyday life. "Show me the Greeks on an average day..." Thomas Wolfe once wrote. This task would involve the intricate study of both History, the events of the day, and Geography, the environs of the day (not to mention the implementation of Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Mathematics, and any number of other topics of academia).

The more real, rounded, relevant to current condition, alive, any fact, event, or circumstance becomes, the more it can be related to a student's present existence (absorbed into experience itself), and thus, the better it is learned and the more chances there are that it will be successfully employed as a "real-life" lesson to make current living better and present-day decisions more meaningful and judicious. A bare biographical sketch of Socrates does almost nothing for the serious student of Philosophy or Greek History, nor does a simple map of Greece, except to render a few pretty useless facts; however, an intimate understanding of the events of Socrates' life, his words and attitudes, the society of the day, the environs, and the state of philosophy and science at the time (presented in a dynamic, interactive, student-centered fashion), all work together to render a full picture of a personality, a place, a history, a culture, a living philosophy: circumstances as real and vital and interesting as any today. To study one-dimensional, abstracted facts about Socrates and his works is one thing, a prospect with limited benefit for the student; to enter into the experience of Socrates through coordinated study of subjects relevant to his life and times is quite another, which provides a full portrait of a significant person, and the significant places, occurrences and ideas of his era, which, made "real," can be related to the student experience and thus can serve for deep learning. As Henri Bergson wrote in An Introduction To Metaphysics, "description, history, and [superficial---dsj] analysis leave me here in the relative, while coincidence with the person himself alone gives me the absolute---" and "the more living the reality touched, the deeper the sounding." Personal intimacy with any subject of study is the only guarantee of useful learning.

(It must be noted with some due caution that "coordinated study" does not mean the simple sticking together of two or more subjects with tape and baling wire and calling it good. It is about presenting topics of study in such a way as to show their meaningful and useful unity with each other [and to imply their ultimate unity with all other topics of study] by demonstrating how they complement one another in the way of one's gaining the fullest possible understanding of life and thus of living life to its utmost.)

(It should also be emphasized that these types of courses still need to be driven more by students rather than by the teacher/teachers or any kind of concrete-set curriculum. Since there is ostensibly "more to cover" in such classes, many instructors will no doubt give in to the temptation to lecture, and quickly, in order to "get through it all" without much "interruption" from the potential learners. Once more, whatever is thoroughly taken in, by way of hands-on demonstration and discussion, no matter how much or how little, is going to be infinitely more profitable in the long-run than a lot of hastily copied lecture notes. Also, never underestimate the ability of truly interested students to make their way through a good deal of material [even if they don't get to it all "in order," but rather in a more roundabout manner] in a single quarter/semester of entertaining and engaging study.)

4) Presentation of material in class in a way in which a student must think "scientifically." Once more, we will find that the out-dated lecture approach to education is exactly that: outdated. It assumes a student/vessel into which the instructor pours static knowledge, not a vital being which may often possess more latent potential than even the instructor, a being that needs not to be filled up, but rather to be guided toward what is already inside. (Sydney J. Harris aptly points out that students are not "sausage cases" to be stuffed, but rather "oysters" which hold pearls within themselves, only needing to be wisely shown the latent riches that they already possess.)

In The Roots Of Education, Rudolf Steiner observed that "we [educators] teach them [pupils] to have clear, sharp ideas and become dissatisfied if their ideas are flexible and not sharply defined. Our goal is to teach them in such a way that they retain in their mind what we teach them, so they can tell us just what we told them. We are often especially gratified when a child can reproduce exactly what we taught several years later. But that's like having a pair of shoes made for a child of three and expecting them to fit when the child is ten years old. In reality, our task is to give them living, flexible ideas that can grow in the soul just as the outer physical limbs grow with the body. It is much less trouble to give a child definitions of various things to memorize and retain, but that is like expecting the shoes of a three-year-old to fit a child of ten." As Steiner indicates in this telling passage, it becomes obvious to anyone who has studied the way human beings best learn that presentation of material in the lecture style trains pupils to be passive in regard to information gained and does little to stir in them the inquisitive spirit which prompts them to investigate topics more broadly or apply acquired facts to real life (that is, to convert "mere information" to "knowledge" and "wisdom").

Likewise, the current trend in colleges toward "distance learning" (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) isolates students, removing them from an interactive, interpersonal environment in which they can experience "learning in action." They are robbed of both the vital presence of a mentor/guide and the collective wisdom of a body of peer learners engaged in eye-to-eye dialogue and hands-on demonstration. So again, there is a tacit training toward passivity and scant little to move the student toward "real life" application of knowing.

As we have already said, the inductive model is the most useful and profitable mode of learning, and so students must ever be guided toward this kind of "scientific" thinking. (Once more, "scientific" thought, as we have presented it, in its most liberal sense, can be, and must be, employed even by the poet and the painter and the musician as they seek that which broadens the human experience and leads to even more artistic investigation and creation, rather than that which lies in mere repetitive imitation: a redundancy of the worst sort, which is dead, profitless, useless to the human mind and spirit.) There should be little need for it to be said that, ultimately, the only real "scientific" thinking is educated, independent thinking for oneself (informed and influenced as this thinking might be at various points by peers, books and teachers), since this is the very definition of originality and creativity; anything else is simple reiteration or regurgitation of the thoughts and ideas of others (what most students are conditioned to do, and, unfortunately, what most teachers do every day in schools all over America).

In short, learning must be presented to students as would a fine meal: not rammed down the gullet or held back forever at a tantalizing but unfulfilling distance, but placed before them in such a way in which they are able to taste, savor, enjoy and digest it. Like a good meal, it must be nourishing, and the only way it can be nourishing is if it causes immediate growth and betterment and productivity in the real life of the student. The rapid-fire lecture mode of instructing (which is like having culinary fare forced down the throat before one can even stop to taste it) and the "distance learning" approach (which is like trying to appreciate fine food by watching a cooking show) can never offer this kind of deep-down nourishment. Just as foodstuffs can only be beneficial to the body when they are slowly and thoroughly absorbed, right down to the cellular level, so knowledge can only be nourishing to the mind and to living when it becomes part of the vital organism, when knowledge itself becomes one with living, and this can only happen when it is presented in such a manner in which the line between learning and life begin to blur: when what one learns and what one is become one and the same.

5) Realization of the teacher's need for independence as well. Ideally, the hierarchy of education should be structured thusly: of the highest consideration, the needs of the students; of secondary consideration, the needs of the teachers; of tertiary consideration, the needs of administration. Under the current system, the exact opposite is generally true, that is: of primary concern are the desires of administration (most usually related to finances and the acquiring of more revenue); then the concerns of the teachers (too often related to finances and the acquiring of more pay); and finally those of students (too often undefined and thus not pursued, even by the students themselves).

On the surface, this might seem to mean little to teachers, since they are stuck in the middle, one way or another, but the difference in the ideal system and the current one are enormous. Under the former, ideal way of doing things, administrators facilitate the work of teachers, and teachers facilitate the work of the students---that is, all accomplish their jobs as they're supposed to. (One interested in etymologies might find it interesting [or paradoxical, as the case may be] that the term "administrate" comes from the old French "adminstrare:" to serve; and "teach" is taken from the Old English "techen:" to guide.) Under the latter, currently-employed system, students cater to the whims of (too often despotic or uninvolved) teachers, while teachers must simultaneously fear and fight administration for support, rather than rely on them for the benevolent easing of duties.

Spencer once noted that management/administration/government are all originally conceived of as a means to facilitate and assist with business/academics/social life, and thus, in true function, persons in administrative positions would take for themselves a servile role; Spencer also insists that when things are perverted so that workers/teachers/societies begin serving the administration, rather than the other way around, all manner of evil ensues.

No teacher at any level of the educational ladder needs to be told this. We have all experienced the endless red tape borne of an over-bearing and constantly-demanding administration: paperwork, committees, and all sorts of political wranglings that keep us from what we are supposed to be doing with our whole hearts: that is, of course, teaching, tending, guiding and working with our students, rather than trying to keep up with the tedious work imposed on us by a body supposedly designed to facilitate our duties!

There are, however, further dangers more perilous and insidious than this undue busy work. The struggle against administrative efforts to "homogenize" the educative experience, and so shut off the innovations of individual teachers and the interactive dynamic which produces real learning, is a constant one. I have read recently of an elementary school system in the state of Washington which has employed a Third Reichean methodology which has each instructor giving exactly the same lessons at exactly the same time in exactly the same manner as all of the other instructors of a given grade level, each allowed a very specific time limit in regard to covering administrative-approved materials. The goal, as one of the proud proponents of this method stated, is for one to be able to walk down the hallway of the school and hear all of the instructors instructing in unison (high-maintenance tape-recorders, it would seem) and all of the students responding together like little robots (those who do not understand left to be ground beneath the wheels of the system, no doubt, or conditioned to "fake it" as best they can).

Now those who embrace this horribly misguided form of mis-education are all too ready to point out that children put through this litany of heard-and-repeated facts score better on standardized tests, but, of course, standardized tests are like any other tests: once they are over, the information regurgitated for them is promptly forgotten if the student does not have a deep, real-life understanding of the material studied. If we are training our students to do well on tests, this method is the one to employ; however, if we want to teach our students to do well in life, it is another matter altogether, and this method will never suffice to accomplish this loftier goal. (I cannot help but think of Huxley's Utopian nightmare portrayed in Brave New World, in which everyone is controlled "for their own good," by those who do not realize that freedom itself is the only good in human life, ranking far above mere "happiness" or "efficiency.")

Michael W. Apple in Cultural Politics And Education speaks well to this issue from a cultural standpoint, claiming that no curriculum can ever be homogenized, petrified and/or "objectified" according to the standards of any governing/empowered group, local, regional or national. (Alas, I must also save my thoughts concerning the considerable dangers of a national curriculum and national testing for another time.) "Rather," he says, "it [the curriculum] must constantly subjectify itself. That is, it must 'acknowledge its own roots' in the culture, history , and social interests out of which it arose. Accordingly, it will homogenize neither this culture, history and social interests, nor the students." In Dewey and Spencer's language, the curriculum must remain constantly in flux, "scientific," but in that way that Rogers and Steiner stressed: plastic, flexible, subjective to the constantly changing human experience. In short, teachers must always maintain (and administrators must always help/allow them to maintain) a dynamic, expanding learning surface relevant to the students who are studying it: in short, a variable, "real life" curriculum.

Talbott makes the very astute observation that any proper student-centered education is also teacher-centered education; that is, that learning is always about student-teacher-group relationship much more than it is about prescribed duties and tightly-regulated curricula. It is a distressing thing indeed that we, as teachers, must too often take up vigilant battle against an administrative body which is supposed to be our ally rather than our enemy in regard to the way our time and energies get spent, but, nonetheless, we have to do what we have to do until that day (which, mayhap will never come) when the entire system is re-vamped so that priorities are straight. Additions to the often already crushing load of extraneous duties placed on teachers must be protested, and loudly, as must attempts to fit everyone in hob-nailed boots for goosestepping to the beat of an administrative drum.

All of this ultimately brings us around to the primary functions of the teacher in the classroom. Many people still believe that the role of the instructor, is, of course, to "instruct," to speak facts that are copied down by students and are then recited back by these latter in one form or another. This is certainly not the case if "life wisdom" is to be gained. If "scientific learning" is to be kindled in the pupil, that is, the brand of inquiry that will be continued on by the student long after the coursework has ended, a teacher must serve as a facilitator to a deep knowing of the self in relation to the material being presented. In other words, students must be properly connected with themselves and their own life purposes before they can properly connect with any course material, and it is the true teacher's primary duty to see that this happens. (For more on this, see my article Essaying To Be: Creating Room For Self-Expression In The Classroom, Kansas English, Summer, 1998.)

(The older I get, and the longer I am involved in the educative field, it occurs to me more often that the quality of the teacher is, at last, more important than the purity of the methodology; and, while methodology certainly has its place, the best of pedagogical approaches can be rendered useless and even detrimental in the hands of a poor teacher, and an inferior method can always be infused with some life and so be utilized to some advantage by a good one. So it is that I shall spend a good bit of time below on the role of the effective teacher, since, ultimately, the "real life" aspect comes from the teacher rather than from any theory, no matter how well devised.)

There are several different modes in which a teacher must function in order to bring about felicitous circumstances in which "real life" learning may transpire, and, not surprisingly, most entail the teacher becoming involved at a real life level with students.

1) Teacher as encourager. This mode is primary, and, like the others to follow, it must be a constant throughout the span of the tutelage (which, good teachers will discover, with some students often extends years beyond the initial contact in the classroom).

I find that there are countless pupils who are perfectly intelligent and who have interesting lives and experiences enough to make learning quite deep and meaningful, but who have been in some manner or another beaten into a passive submission which hinders them in taking part in their own education. I am sorry to say that this is often enough due to some traumatic experience (or multiple experiences) during the [mis]educative process. (This most usually entails a young child who has been repeatedly berated for "not doing it right!," despite having tried very hard to comply with the demands of a one-way-to-learning instructor.)

I have mentioned in another paper a forty-year-old woman I had in one of my interactive composition classes who was at first terrified even to read aloud from the text, having been psychologically brutalized by a despotic reading instructor in the second grade! Tragically, she had made it all the way through elementary school, junior high, high school, and then most of the way through college without ever having to open her mouth, thus making her entirely passive in her learning---so what little she did get, she got second-hand and not by finding it within herself.

In light of this, it is clear to see that many students have to be shown (and I tell them on occasion, too), that they are worthy, intelligent people, capable of so much more than has been demanded of them in the past. Showing them their worth (or rather, getting them to show themselves) is not something that is so very difficult to do, and it can be accomplished while the texts of the curriculum are being presented. I find that simply engaging the students in the process at a primary level, mainly through whole-group discussion and interaction in relation to the subject being entered upon, and then sincerely and consistently praising their successes, no matter how seemingly small, will soon build stores of self-esteem in pupils. ("Sincerely" must be stressed; better not to give commendation at all than to put forth with some sappy or disingenuous bit of hypocrisy which any student, no matter the age, will know is false-hearted. The key, I suppose, is a heart for the work and for the people one works with; if this is in place, the sincerity will naturally follow.)

It must be noted, I suppose, that this is not always so very easy. Bashful students must not be allowed to retire into passivity, but must be pulled forth into the interactive environment, and many are not used to this, and some do not take to it very kindly at first. Still, it must be done.

The extreme of this situation I witnessed recently in a college student who was so pathologically shy that she cried whenever called upon to speak, overwhelmed by a long-term social anxiety. (Again, this person had been terrorized by some Hitlerean elementary school teacher, who, as it turned out later, was mentally ill herself!) Biting my lip nervously many times throughout the whole process, I continued to pull this student into interaction with the group, despite the tears, desiring that she add her very interesting and intriguing flavor to the class' experience. Though I had a very genuine liking for this person (seeing much of myself and my own personal angst in her, I suppose), I do believe that, early on, she wished for me nothing more than the deepest, darkest anti-chamber of hell, knowing that, each day, I was going to shove her into the icy shower of self-exposure. Over time, however, the tears did diminish, and, I noted happily, often enough a smile (almost tinged with pride!) came upon this young woman's face as she entered into discussions of her own accord, and so enlightened the rest of us, and herself, with her presence and participation.

Thus, encouraging students becomes an active process, far more so than merely giving vocal tribute to good work (which is profitable too!) It is an entering into an educative confrere with students, making them and their lives an integral part of the learning environment.

I have a sign on the door to my office which reads One student, one life, one opportunity. I do truly believe that to let one student sit passively by, to allow one life to go unexpressed and unblessed by its own expression, to miss the opportunity one has to encourage a student and so engage that student at the "real life" level, is a tragedy of waste and a loss to all the world.

2) Teacher as mentor. Even the dynamic individualist and adventurer Odysseus knew the importance of having a "real life" teacher, a trusted advisor, an experienced master, a loyal friend, to which one could turn for all manner of learning. It is from the name of his advisor/master/friend that we get the word "Mentor."

I suppose if I were free to design what I believed to be the ultimate educational system, I would go back to the old Grecian model of the master/mentor/apprenticer and the willing follower. In other words, I would simply let people find their own teachers to gain from them whatever was deemed important to living. (Parents, I suppose, would seek out the best teachers for their children, just as they seek out the best doctors for them.) There would be no need for big, elaborate buildings and classrooms, as much of the teaching/learning would take place in the world at large or in homes. There would certainly be no need for administrators. Classes would meet at any hour of the day or night, at the whim of the teacher and the learner(s).

Realizing that this is not going to happen any time soon in our present society, I still will assert that something similar has to occur within the framework of the current system. Students must choose to be with the teacher at a deeper level than occupying space in a classroom, feeling a "real life" connection and the ability to approach the teacher on a "real life" basis. Likewise, the teacher must wish to be with the pupils at a dedicated, heart level, to be available to them on a "real life" basis. A forced confinement on either part will never be conducive to deep, "real life" learning.

"Mentoring" (as opposed to simply "instructing") can entail such things as frequent visits with pupils in one's office, impromptu talks with them on campus outside of the classroom, and guidance or reassurance given to them via the phone and e-mail. It can mean listening to students' problems, sharing one's experience and insight with them in regard to things that extend beyond academia, or perhaps visiting a sick pupil in the hospital. In other words, "life-teaching" is like life itself: it consumes a lot of time and energy. (Again, I must stress that with certain pupils, this process will go on for a long time after the ten week quarter/sixteen week semester is over---and it should. I am still teaching/learning from many students that I haven't had in a classroom in years. With certain of them, I hope it's a life-long adventure.)

Yet, even given what we will have to put into it, how could we ever think the multitudinous good results we attain with such an approach to be unworthy of every moment and ounce of our energies spent? When a student comes to us and gives us thanks because we have made human existence more real and enjoyable and comprehensible---when we know that we have, in fact, made someone more alive to life---then the thought of how much our work pays, let alone how much it costs us, seems inconsequential indeed.

On that sign on my door, just below where it reads One student, one life, one opportunity, there are the following words: Every time we connect with a student at the heart level, we prepare the mind for learning. Perhaps there is no greater lesson in education that we can acquire: we must touch the heart before we can truly influence the mind.

3) Teacher as psychologist. Perhaps I am a bit biased in this area, since my minor at university was in psychology (literature as major) and this subject continues for me as an ongoing interest and portion of study; but I do not think it at all too much to insist that a good teacher must be versed somewhat in the workings of the human mind and emotions. In fact, what field of study lends itself better to the process of education, coupled with the knowledge of the topic at hand to be taught?

Now, of course, again, when I use the term "psychology," I do not mean "psychiatry" or "psychoanalysis." I simply mean a working knowledge of how the human mind processes information, associated thoughts, and emotions, and how to best use such knowledge in the way of getting other people into learning.

a) The processing of information. As we have already discussed at length, human beings process information best when they can see the relation it has to their lives, and the more immediately they are able to apply the information in a beneficial or enjoyable manner, the better they are able to remember it, and the more likely they are to employ it to their benefit again and to add to this beginning information with the fruits of additional independent study.

This is why, in composition classes, I encourage students to begin by writing about themselves, this long before they approach anything more abstract, such as philosophical principles or theoretical analyses of texts. The cathartic or self-explorative nature of many of their first attempts at writing gives them instant rewards and makes them wish to do more, simply because they can connect intimately with what they are doing in the classroom.

b) The processing of associated thoughts. We noted in the section on coordinated studies that learning is facilitated when there is an interconnectedness between subjects and when each has a more or less direct bearing upon the others. The human mind always seeks unity and order out of chaos and strives to find the connecting points of what it knows in any given situation. It seeks after ways to add islands to the main, and so widen and lengthen the continent of knowing. (For an everyday evidence of this tendency, consider the constant and worldwide passion for puzzles of all sorts, those things which challenge the mind toward solution, classification, and organization.)

The effective teacher will recognize this tendency, respect it, and so will be able to facilitate this union of curricular subjects in a wide variety of creative and inventive ways, in the process utilizing the knowledge of the students in the class by way of discussion and interaction of many kinds, and bringing to bear his or her own wide study. (A teacher, in order to help students toward association of different fields of learning, must have a broad base of knowledge in a wide variety of subjects and make learning a lifetime venture for him or herself. We shall see more to this in the section immediately following.)

c) The processing of emotions. This is always going to be the most difficult of the three basic tasks of the "teacher as psychologist," but, in ways, it is most pivotal, especially when one is doing "real life" teaching. Each person is a more or less delicate balance of feelings and attitudes, and this must be recognized, respected, and utilized in the educative process.

Emotion is a good thing in the classroom. One cannot thoroughly know anything without having an emotional response of some sort to it. An entire lack of emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, zeal, fear, etc.) toward a particular subject indicates a lack of interest, and so one will never learn about anything about which one does not have some passion or propelling sentiment. (How many times have I heard students complain of some essay or another that the class has been assigned to read, "it just didn't make me feel anything...") Getting at a students' emotional response to a subject (yes, even math, geology and history!---all of which can very easily inspire a driving enthusiasm, when properly presented) can mean the difference between a deep and useful, or a surface and meaningless, absorption.

"Real life" teaching also demands that one be sensitive to students' feelings while drawing them out. During a discussion about the ethics of war, the teacher must be constantly aware of how much participation he can ask of the Vietnam veteran in the class in order to get the maximum benefit of his feelings and his experiences (for both speaker and listeners) and still not cause great personal upset. In regard to the student who has been in the past the victim of parental or academic demands and pressures which have caused undue emotional strain, a customized, encouraging tenderness and patience is called for. A student of intense shyness, as the one mentioned above, must be handled with gentle firmness, a manner which does not allow retreat from group interaction but which does not further traumatize and so drive the pupil that much farther away from profitable learning. In order to strike these often precarious balances, a teacher must not only be versed in the workings of the human intellect, but in the processes and capacities of human emotions as well.

4) Teacher as example and co-learner. A good living example of what education is all about, in the form of a worthy teacher, is worth a thousand textbooks, and if this same is filled with wisdom and is gifted with drawing out knowledge from students, the textbooks can very well be thrown away.

a) Teacher as teaching learner and learning teacher. If I may quote one more student from this past Winter quarter, it will be well worth the space: "I always thought the student needed teaching more than the teacher; but the best teacher learns to be student to the teaching..." This, I think, is one of the most insightful statements about the effective educator that I have ever come across. The best teacher is, in fact, "student to the teaching," in that he or she will always realize that good teaching is inevitably good learning: in the presenting of one's knowing or insight to others, there is, not only in the others' reactions to it, but simply in the expression itself, something new and worthwhile (to quote Emerson), "like the kick from a gun." (I always say that I never really know something until I have taught it.)

In regard to this, Gertrude Stein wrote that expression "can be a kind of listening." Conversely, listening can most decidedly move toward original expression---in that in deep reception of another's ideas or insights, in real listening, there is inevitably the generation of a novel concept or perception: the hearer's mind made anew by way of the hearing-understanding. So, there is complement to our original precept in that good learning is also good teaching, in that an internal alteration of one's thinking will eventually produce an external expression of an understanding deeper than that which before was possible.

This is what the wise teacher realizes and partakes in and, by example, teaches students to realize and partake in: namely, that in an interactive educative environment, new thoughts, opinions, insights and ideas will be in constant flow, presented to everyone and available to everyone---and again, these thoughts and ideas will be beneficial not only to hearers, but also to their expressers, since there is always a boon in making a thought manifest in the world.

Thus, the effective educator understands that the edges of good teaching and good learning (and thus of teacher and student) begin to blur, until, at last, ideally the two become one in the same thing. So he or she will stand not above the pupils, but with them, as a paradigm of the insightful speaker and receptive hearer: as one who learns through teaching and teaches through learning.

b) Teacher as member of the world. Is the instructor living what he or she is teaching? Is the writing teacher writing and publishing? Is the science teacher employing the knowledge related to his or her field in "real life" in an investigative way in order to expand the field? Does the teacher of education actually employ the methods put forth in the classroom while in the classroom? Does the psychology teacher have (even a very small) side practice? (The reduction of administration-imposed duties in order to allow time for more "real life" employment of what one teaches is another paper...)

These are important questions. I am always amazed that many of my students are amazed that I write daily and publish often. I should think that they would expect it of me. In regard to this, I always ask them, "would you take swimming lessons from someone who doesn't swim?" Of course, one never would, and so why would one take science from someone who wasn't a scientist (that is, someone actively working and expanding the field)?

To begin a tirade here concerning coaches as English and biology instructors and other such ludicrous "double (and triple) duty" strategies of instruction commonly found in U.S. high schools would simply take more space than I have; but I must say that a man or a woman holding a book on a certain subject or even a graduate degree in a certain subject does not make that person a fit teacher of the subject. (The long-time belief that it does is one of the main things that has reduced the American educative system to what it presently is.) In addition to the other qualities enumerated above (which, as we have said, are quite vital), I believe that a true teacher, one who is showing students how to employ a certain body of knowledge in real life needs to be doing exactly that: employing a body of knowledge in real life. Otherwise, the teacher becomes like a virgin trying to explain sex: the mechanics may be made manifest to the understanding, but the whole spirit of the thing will be lost.

5) Teacher as primary resource. In his often eloquent attack on the American farce called "distance learning" ("Digital Diploma Mills: Rehearsal For The Revolution"), David Noble insists that "education is a process that necessarily entails an interpersonal (not merely interactive [emphasis mine] ) relationship between people---student and teacher (and student and student) that aims at individual and collective self-knowledge. Whenever people recall their educational experiences, they tend to remember above all not courses or subjects or the information imparted, but people, people who changed their minds or their lives, people who made a difference in their developing sense of themselves." (I shall save my elongated diatribe about the ridiculous notion of "distance learning" for another article and in the meantime refer readers to the fine writing David Noble and Abraham Flexner have done on the subject... My short diatribe on computerized, "distance [mis]education" may be found in the essay "On Proximity Learning" FACTC Focus: Is The Lecture Dead? Fall, 2000.)

There are many resources of learning, and all relatively useful and good for students when well-employed; in fact, these days, there are more means of learning than ever before: endless books and fingertip means of acquiring them; audio and video tapes; extensively stocked public and college libraries; webpages; educational television channels; and so forth--- but none of these resources are primary to learning. The only primary resource for learning is the present human being, the available human mind, the living, shared human experience.

It is a curious circumstance that in the year 2001, there are the beginning technological whirrings of rumor that soon the flesh and blood teacher will be obsolete, replaced by telecourse videos and internet correspondence courses, curious in that such a proposal has exactly the same basic fatal difficulty as does the supposedly outdated model of education employed a hundred years ago.

In the "old" model of the classroom, the lecturing instructor was (and, unfortunately, often still is) seen as a kind of informational-overlord, or perhaps to use a more timely metaphor (and to complete our comparison), a high-maintenance computer programmed to download knowledge into the minds of twenty to thirty (or, in worst cases, several hundred) passive units. In short, the classroom was not a place for personal contact, but rather for passive-receptive silence and note-taking for a looming test. The computerized classes of today are, if anything, even more impersonal than any kind of teaching ever before proposed, removing the instructor completely from the immediate learning environment, and thus, the American educational system is set up to become even less effective than ever before.

Simply stated, to the degree that one moves toward this passive-distance "learning" model, deep and useful education decreases, and to the degree that one moves away from this model and toward the one detailed above (one based in interpersonal interaction), the chance for real-life learning increases; and this is true because what David Noble says is true: deep learning is attached not so much to books and videos and lectures as it is to real-life interaction with caring, knowledgeable people able to help others better understand topics of study by helping them better understand life and their own place in it (and so, in turn, their relation to any given topic of real-life study). Steven Talbott echoes this valuable sentiment when he states that "when you finally understand that learning is not primarily a matter of content shoveled into a container, then you must also recognize that what the student learns most decisively is a set of human gestures, a strengthening of certain inner movements, a way of grasping (and being grasped) by the world." Talbott goes on to say that, finally, the last "outcome" of education is something that can never be measured on a standardized test---for it is not about a "shoveled heap" of information, but rather "a way of standing in the world."

Thus, in the end, the effective teacher must come to see himself/herself not as a god, or even as a superior to pupils, but rather as nothing more than another humble and striving human being with a tiny bit of learning ("tiny bit" compared with "all learning") which can be combined with the collective knowing of other human beings in order to make the world a more effective, more friendly, more productive place to live.

A teacher is a resource, yes, but not like books and videotapes and sets of lecture notes are resources (and hence, not replaceable by them). A teacher is a living, loving, nurturing, knowing resource of life, love, nurture and knowledge who interacts in an interpersonal manner with other people who, ideally, bring all of themselves and their experiences to the learning process, and so become powerful resources as well.

Spencer wrote that one must "always remember that to educate rightly is not a simple and easy thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing: the hardest task which devolves upon human life." Anyone who is even partially successful with the methods of presenting material and being a teacher, as detailed above, will readily testify to such a statement. We educators are not mass-producing widgets but assisting individuals of all types and vicissitudes in the formation of their lives and in the discovery of who they are and what they will do with those lives. One of my writing students once proclaimed in a paper "every little thing you do makes the shape of your life;" but it is also true that every little thing that we do helps shape the existence of everyone else around about. So it is that our students will carry something of us with them everywhere they go in the world, and we will carry something of them always; and so the benefits of all of those experiences will traverse the planet "as the spirit bloweth the flame." This, at last, brings us to the final, mutual reward of the educational experience: a life spent in reciprocal teaching and learning, no matter how long or short, never really ends.

Post Script: I have been the full Spring quarter working on this rather long-winded article, off and on, and today, after the last meeting of my Writing 101 class, I got another note from another student. She wrote quite simply:

How could anyone have a more wonderful job than this one I stumbled into a little more than a decade ago?

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