Before we get to the lessons, the tests, the grades, the report cards, and the rules of formalized education, in institutional settings, is there anything that might serve as a prior foundation? If society had not invented schools, what would curriculum look like, and how would it be enacted?
One way to think about this question is by exploring the idea of parents as the first teachers. There is a long history of doing this--assuming that the ideal school is a sort of family, and the ideal teacher is a substitute parent. In some ways, this was Dewey's view of the matter. For as he famously noted, "what the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.” Parental wisdom was, for Dewey, the standard by which pedagogical relationships were measured.
If we start at the beginning of life, is it fair to say that food is our first curriculum? And if that food is milk, how does the nature of the alimentary relationship put us on a trajectory of growth and development? With these questions, I want us to approach the history of breastfeeding in this wonderfully interesting article by Jill Lepore. As we read, I think we can productively think about the analogy between food and curriculum.
As children grow, parents make decisions about the content of their child's everyday experiences--deciding, in this way, how much freedom the child can have, what degree of risk is acceptable, and how failure and pain should figure into life. In this way, I want us to think about recent trends in parenting and childhood that have removed children from the natural environment and rendered unsupervised play and exploration a privilege of the few. We will do so through an article by Jessica McCrory Calarco and the introduction to a wonderful book by Richard Louv.
Next, I want us to look at two articles--by Jardine and Kissling and Bell--that explore what and how we can learn about our relationship to the Earth through formalized schooling. These two articles take us into spaces where we learn not just about ourselves as human beings, but see ourselves as earthen creatures, inextricably intertwined with our environment and the rest of the universe, living out relationships of inter-being and inter-becoming.
When all is said and done, we are left to ponder the deepest truths of our lives--our journey from ashes to ashes, where, in the words of Dr. King, "all life is inter-related. All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
To end this cycle, I turn to the Time Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg. She describes her disability, her history, and her hopes and fears. It is, I think, a fitting place to pause as we move through this year of perfect vision, 20/20.
We must come and see our past, our present, and our future--working through our strengths and weaknesses, our courage and vulnerability, on this Earth, our common home, with all of humanity, our common family.
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