School and Be Schooled?
“Insanity: doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting
different results.”
"We can't solve problems by using
the same kind of thinking we used
when we created them. " (A.E.)
Dear Colleagues.
I admit to insanity—which word literally means
unsanitary. Unclean! Unclean! Get thee to a
sanitarium. Clean and sober. Consummation
devoutly desired. Wash & wash & wash in the
blood of the lamb: cleanliness next to godliness.
Sometime around the shooting at Columbine , I
had re-read Marshal McLuhan for a Media course
I was teaching and was inspired to take him seriously.
We swim in a post-literate neo-oral environment.
Incessant Talk going on driving and crying, walking
and stalking. I imagined a new whirl of ongoing
communication across the curriculum—global village,
local food -back kind of a deal that would generate
sustained converse action and a plethora of emergent
values and properties.
Doing the same thing over and over again but no
longer expecting different results. ME: amateur.
I write every day (as Anain Nin claimed) without
hope nor despair: unponed posts.
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind
of thinking we used when we created them.
I think this is true, but don’t know how unilaterallly
to characterize the kind of thinking we’ve used to
create our problems or the different kinds of thinking
that might emerge in addressing the kind-of- thinking-
we’ve-used.
Google? Go-to-the-library-research? Put IT in play,
zero-base, start-up from old scratch and reinvent the
wheel locally?
I appreciate with enthusiasm, the new position of Dean
of Teaching and Learning (the “center” which is Gary
Hawkins, but as a spirit of exploration & encouragement
—maybe lunch meetings on topics but no chairs, coffee,
copy machine, shelves with resource books, no place you
can go, no location other than Ideas and Analogies
Across the Curriculum accessible 7/24/365 . . .
this possibly suggests a new kind of thinking. (Local
Food and Feedback) up for grabs and home- groan, non-
professional (no tuxedos necessary), amateurish in the
best sense (for the love of it), conversational (no thesis
sentences needed), digressive, epistolary, (bell letters),
oppositional (bring it, O contrary) ongoing hacky-sack-
like up in the air, best we can where the activity of back
Nforth communication is itself the VALUE and the
possibility of some GetRDone: mere spin-off.
Are you familiar with:
”That’s a conversation for another time”
“Good point: we’ll have to schedule a
conversation on that next meeting.”
“Yes, but we need to stay on task here.”
Etc.
Take your publishable papers and
perishable presentations and fly
away to the O’Hare Sheraton for a
weekend of professional expertise
and exchange, name tags, cash-bar.
some resume-building and long-
distance contact relations. Same
as it always is, not that there’s
anything wrong with that. A good
thing. Old school.
But, on the other hand…also clapping …
Look.
See.
Be here now.
(Unpostponed Joy.)
A resource fullness like never before.
xxxooo, Sam
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I tend to want to give a book to read to people who don't want to read a book.
ReplyDeleteWe're right here, we might as well talk.
Or people send birthday and thank you cards, when they could express a heartfelt greeting and thought right here.
Or they say: I'll pray for you, when they could pray together on the spot.
It takes more courage but it also takes practice.
Extemporaneousness is not the easiest for bookish people.
You are still on moderation.
ReplyDeleteI've checked settings and other stuff and haven't been able to figure out not being moderate. Face to face is a different mode than all the various indirections --I don't care for public speaking but have no trouble exposing/expressing myself on line. Can't succeed in getting my colleagues to play. But like trying.
ReplyDelete