Verrry Interesting... Well, To Me At Least

I know, I know.  This one is Boring (with the capital B and all), but definitely worth a once over. 

I get in these phases on occasion where I crave intellectual stimulation to my very core.  It becomes a need almost as essential as eating and sleeping.  So I found myself today.  Usually my research has to do with education, and today was no different, but it turned into a very interesting discussion with my Jefe, and I'm pretty sure Reid and Tim would have really enjoyed this one.

It all started with my ideals of a small (10 student max.), multiage, progressive classroom.  I know, cool, huh!  Then I ran into some articles on Jean Piaget and his ideas on genetic epistemology (!)  (I'm pretty sure Reid and Tim are the only ones who are still reading now... If there's anyone else, you're awesome!)  So, Jeff and I began some kind of chameleon discussion which took so many color changes that somehow it transformed from my little family-type classroom ideals to empowerment of people over institutions and why we allow ourselves to turn our brains off to what we deep down know is happening around us.

While Jeff was studying his geography book, I was reading an article by a very eloquent and intelligent man named Parker J. Palmer entitled, "A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited." His premise is that while people become more and more educated, they do not necessarily become more humane or even in tune with what they know deep down to be right and true and just.

He spoke of being born during the time of the Holocaust and how, as a youth he felt that if only people were more educated, things like that wouldn't happen.  Then, upon entering grad school he learned that some of the most educated people in the world, "had seen the barbed wire fences and the flames in the night. They knew what occurred. But, taught to value intellectual detachment above engagement with the world, they refused to recognize what they knew. Thus they collaborated with evil."  Yikes.  Knowing, but not attempting anything to change it = bad bad bad!

He gives several examples of individuals who allowed practices of the institution they were employed with to override what they knew in their hearts to be right, including a brand new medical resident who allowed a patient to die because she was too scared and overwhelmed to raise a fuss about the patient's symptoms.

Anyway, Jeff looks up from his textbook at some point and says, "Did you know that there were solar powered water heaters in use in America as early as 1905, but that natural gas was cheaper and easier, so it took over?" 

I said, "Crazy! Guess what I just read!"

"Does education humanize us? Sometimes, but not

nearly often enough. We have yet to uproot the myth of

“value-free” knowledge, and hence we turn our graduates

loose on the world as people who know, but do not recognize

that our justice system often fails the poor, that

corporate logic usually favors short-term profits over sustainability,

that practical politics is more about manipulating

public opinion than discerning the will of the people,

that our approach to international relations is laced

with arrogance about our culture and ignorance of others..."  (Palmer)

Then we got on this crazy topic of the big bad oil industry that people continue to give a facade of power to because of its money.  Why, oh why, do we allow money to equal power?  Isn't it derived from us?  As unchoosy consumers we are allowing big industries to build themselves up in power, but we could snatch it all away if only we really figured out what is right versus what is easy.  Of course it's not easy or convenient.  I'm pretty sure John Adams (and of course other founders... I just have a thing for John), Ghandi, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton didn't do what they did because it was easy or convenient, and yet look at some of the lasting outcomes.

Anyway, just thought I'd give you something to think about. When you give up cable, you find all kinds of ways to fill the time!  Just think- no cable bill and you could learn to become a social revolutionary!