Nature Loves Redundancy (even if Eng&Creative Wrtg Teachers Dont.)

Dear Colleagues,

Enable on the one hand. (there! there!)
         Empower on the other. (suck it up)
 
Knowledge on the one hand.
(measurable, assess-able)
                Imagination on the other.
                  (“I’m a verb,” says
                  Buckminster  Fuller)
 
Discipline: yes!  (us disciples of
 sociology, anthropology,
literature, psychology…)   

Putting IT in Play
                      (hmmm).
 
Rigor on the one hand. (coherence,
consistency? or volume of work?)
        Innovation on the other. ( there’s
                              the rub, damnit)
 
The last pair is one of our  stated
strategic aims: to be both rigorous
AND  innovative.
 
Am I the only one
tempted, tickled,
tweaked, touched,
taunted, tantalized
by these minimal
pairs of potentially
complementary
but also  genuinely
hostile opposition?
 
Cast them all under the rubric, (say), of
what Gary Hawkins calls the  2 Economies,
because each  “side” or “team”or “hand”
or however youseparate, polarize &
characterize these ratios & relationships
is incommensurate to the other..
 
If I assess/measure, evaluate and privilege
one in  terms of it’s opposite,  I do  severe
injustice to both and to myself (caught 
inside my own gordian naughts) and  to
my effort  to showcase my academics..
 
Need we argue?  I wish we could.  And sustain.
Keep in play.  (Academics! got to love it.)
 
What’s at issue here (if I could  frame IT right, damnit)
is not  the  devilish details of curriculum, ways & means
and housekeeping items: alternate Fridays, release contact
time for exams,  more sabbatical funding, smart classrooms,
varied major offerings, travel & conference support…
 
But  something like what’s called  Frame-Discourse.
ongoing talk about the frames (environment, contexts)
inside which the detail work gets done.  Ongoing talk
about overall collective outlook, attitude: our Internal
Environment, Contexts for Learning: what’s cool and
what’s not regarding the Doing of Liberal Art, (and
the arts, too, of course)
 
When we “bullet” rigor and innovation,  as a strategic
plan, what do we mean?  Who wouldn’t  vote for it?
But what does that distinction and possible relationship
amount to?   Is it obvious? And in what venue does it
get figured-out? Argued-out? 

Meta-disciplinary matters. 
Algorithmic. Deep grammar
and ecologic. Local foodback.
No one’s expert. IT's a Free for All.
Anticipate emergent phenomena and values.

School and Be Schooled.
Rigor and Innovation.
In play (ludic frame) .
  
xxxooo, Sam