Meta-Sustainability & Transformative Educating
Environ Mentalism: Changing Mind-Set, Frames-of-
Mind, World View, Attitude, Directional Navigational
Algorithms (dna) - or you represent it your way, so as
to distinguish from subject-object matters & content
& courses, new majors & positions, funding, sabbaticals,
load, professional development, maximum caps in classes
& parking on campus not that there’s anything wrong
with any of THAT in these turbulent and troubled times
of economical adjustment.

Excellence of Desire (the Liberal Art)
Excellence of Achievement (the liberal arts)

A new concern: begs for a new approach.
I remember attending work shops on
student-centered educating conducted
entirely in a teacher-centered structure.
Bullet presentations on developing
emergent phenomena in the classroom

Be Here & Now: any one can improve my
terms--punch reply-to-all and we've begun
to consider transformative and creative
"education" across the curriculum.

For what it’s worth: ex-cellence = “from the column,
from the hill” is literally : a view from the top. Climb
a tree. Excellent! Over seeing. Aesthetic.



Excellence Going On

Anyone can Google Up Transformative Education
and see how many ways it’s defined and approached.

At base: a fundamental split between analytical,
rationalistic “critical thinking” (reflective, snuffling
underground for submerged assumptions, biases and
beliefs that are my formations to be trans-formed and
reconfigured) on the one hand…

and then on the other hand: intuitive, non-rational,
affective cultivation: practicing meditative receptivity
and “obedience” (literally: “to listen, to hear”)

Barbara McClintock leans in to
“listen to the corn shoots” she said:
explaining how she won her Nobel
Prize: : obedience.

The two approaches (cerebral/affective) are radically
opposite and incommensurate, and that’s what makes
them complementary: in relationship.

Transform as opposed & related to reform.
Evolve as opposed and related to revolve.

Complementary oppositions in the same way as
Doctor & Patient, Lawyer & Client, Mentor
and Mentee. NOT relative oppositions like hot
and cold, cops & robbers, noise and news,
random and order: opposition on the
same level of logical type.

I turn up these two kinds of opposition
(complementary & relative) so that talk
of transformative educating isn’t conflated
with talk of reform and considered in the
terms of reform—which would be like
considering evolution in the terms of
revolution—or meta-sustainability in
our own terms of sustainability.

ENVIRONMENTALISM

If, say, among us interested in considering
Transformative Education: a fundamental
distinction can be sustained—manifested
in such appropriate oppositions as

achievement & desire
instrumental &. liberal,
vocational liberal arts &
Liberal Art, intellective &
affective emphasis; Gary
Hawkins 2 economies,
plus other representations
of the split between the
get-R-done mindset and
what? what the?what the hey?
inquiring mind-set: the
practical and ideal (as in
ideas for ideas sake. liberal
art for liberal arts sake.)

then I think our consideration might gain
by seeing IT as an ENVIRONMENTAL
ISSUE.

What kind of environment can sustain
the separation of these two radically
incommensurate Value Sets (continuity
of status quo and its benefits on the
one hand, and transformation and its
reconfigurations on the other hand.)
and then maintain the distinction so
as to encourage the relationship.

It’s an environmental issue. It takes
an environment that can contain and
nurture opposing sets of value without
letting either dominate.

In my own efforts to engender and
foster an antithesis to dominant mode,
the biggest challenge has been to frame
it so that the “hostile” values of both
(dominant and supplemental) are protected
& preserved (like building an ice cream
parlor in hell with no injustice to hot or
cold: loving hell as much as ice cream
or forget about it. )

2 competing economies, as Gary Hawkins
would describe it. 2 radically different
environments—where the opposition
doesn’t collapse the “polarities”—but
preserves and encourages the relationship
between.

Formative on the one hand
Transformative on the other.

A 3^rd environment (es-cellent) over-sees,
frames and justifies the ongoing necessary
interaction between forming and transforming.

Here’s how the pros talk about it.

"Transformative learning is the expansion
of consciousness through the transformation
of basic worldview and specific capacities
of the self; transformative learning is facilitated
through consciously directed processes such as
appreciatively accessing and receiving the
symbolic contents of the unconscious and
critically analyzing underlying premises “
(Elias, 1997, p. 3).

That’s the intellective approach.

“While this learning process is certainly rational
on some levels, it is also a profound experience
that can be described as a spiritual or emotional
transformation as well. The experience of undoing
racist, sexist, and other oppressive attitudes can be
painful and emotional, as these attitudes have often
been developed as ways to cope with and make
sense of the world. This type of learning requires
taking risks, and a willingness to be vulnerable
and have ones' attitudes and assumptions challenged.”
See hooks and Freire

Affective.

Beyond intellective and affective? Excellence.