Dear Josie,
The following New York Times' article borrows its title from a phrase Dave pointed out several years ago.
Timothy Egan's portrayal of the "hermetic seal" between Americans and "the natural world" spotlights the shortcomings of existing educational methods, methods that systematically damage children.
The following New York Times' article borrows its title from a phrase Dave pointed out several years ago.
Timothy Egan's portrayal of the "hermetic seal" between Americans and "the natural world" spotlights the shortcomings of existing educational methods, methods that systematically damage children.
It is also true that Life is a "mixed bag" and that the quest for "perfection" often provokes detrimental blowback.
Truth be told, the nation's schools do a great deal of good.
The essential problem is that American schooling provides "incremental goods" in a context of "enveloping impairment."
As increasingly happens with Uncle Sam's swashbuckling, we win many battles but lose the war.
Even as a child I knew there was too much schooling - not too little.
No matter how elevated the quality of "instruction," "education" gets short shrift.
"Instruction," from the Latin "in struire," means "to build into."
"Education," from the Latin "ex ducare," means to "lead out of."
Essentially, "instruction" imparts skills that enable individuals to make their "self-seeking" way in the world.
"Education" on the other hand imparts social responsibility and community collaboration.
Mitt Romney is well-instructed and therefore admired as a vulture capitalist.
Obama is well-educated and disdained as a community organizer.
The underlying orientation of "instruction" (when given primacy) contradicts the underlying orientation of "education."
This topsy-turvy inversion occurs because "properly ordered" instruction derives from education, whereas education is always truncated when the instructional "cart" is placed before the educational "horse."
In consequence, we Americans are highly-instructed, poorly-educated people for whom rugged individualism is primary while The Common Good is construed as an existential threat to self-interest.
"Education" And "Instruction" Are Antipodal Enterprises
School (as we now know it) is a "low torque exercise" in which students take up their daily position in the trenches, immediately hunkering down for a tedious, unnecessarily prolonged "school day" that seldom contacts Real Life and rarely provides deep learning down to the root of things.
If, as I believe, "the medium IS the message" -- which is to say "comprehensive context is more important than fragmented content" -- then the meta-level purpose of schooling (as currently manifest) is to teach students to "sit, listen and endure the imposition of vested/putative authority."
If, as I believe, "the medium IS the message" -- which is to say "comprehensive context is more important than fragmented content" -- then the meta-level purpose of schooling (as currently manifest) is to teach students to "sit, listen and endure the imposition of vested/putative authority."
In brief, the prime directive of "schooling" is to "get in line."
Another fundamental purpose of American schooling is to teach the twin skills of punctuality and "showing up," two closely related practices that comprise "90% of success" - or, at least, what we call "success."
By God... "Sit in those seats for 20 years and you will, "as night follows day," occupy your very own treasured place in The Middle Class."
Your work may be meaningless.
Your work may corrode culture.
Your work may undermine any clear sense of shared responsibility.
You may take far more than you give - a practice now normalized by American financiers - http://vimeo.com/23086688 /// http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=all).
But you will have "succeeded!"
When asked to write a chapter for a book entitled "Secrets of Success," Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, had this to say: "If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller (a reference to Merton's "Seven Story Mountain"), this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."
When asked to write a chapter for a book entitled "Secrets of Success," Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, had this to say: "If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller (a reference to Merton's "Seven Story Mountain"), this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."
William James - the brilliant 19th century psychologist who wrote "The Varieties of Religious Experience" -- provides a "bookend" to Merton's reflection: "The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word "success" - is our national disease." William James (You may also enjoy the following essay, written in Februrary, 2000, as the "anchor" of my "legacy" website, "Apokatastasis." http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/03/pseudo-success-and-undoing-of-america.html)
What can we do about our educational muddle?
Since meaningful re-orientation benefits from knowledge of the past, note that from the beginning of "schooling" peripateticism was an honored educational method in ancient Greece. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school
Although there is considerable debate concerning the "mythic" component of peripateticism, it is said that the ancients -- particularly those in Aristotle's lineage -- believed that learning was optimized by conversation that took place while teachers and students "walked about." (Similarly, symposia were relaxed gatherings at which people drank wine and discussed ideas.)
It is time to stop thinking of "the Grecian walk about" as a quaint anachronism and to start focusing -- as you first taught me -- the bedrock importance of "sauntering."
Here is the splendid excerpt you passed along from Thoreau's reflection on "Walking."
It is time to stop thinking of "the Grecian walk about" as a quaint anachronism and to start focusing -- as you first taught me -- the bedrock importance of "sauntering."
Here is the splendid excerpt you passed along from Thoreau's reflection on "Walking."
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre"—to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer", a saunterer—a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk. (The rest of Thoreau's fine essay is at
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre"—to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer", a saunterer—a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk. (The rest of Thoreau's fine essay is at
I have long envisioned a charter school operating across the U.S. - Mexico border.
In broad outline (and here I expand on my original concept of a "boarding" charter school in Mexico) there would be a state-side component much like the "outdoor" school we planned for Camp Chestnut Ridge... until the board of directors nixed the notion.
The "sequence" would be something like this: a half year's participation in an "outdoor school" in The Triangle would alternate with a half year in the Yucatan where students will enter into the warp and weft of daily life, learning what makes Mexico "tick" -- its history, politics, economics, religion, sociology and culture -- and what made Mexico tick from pre-Colombian times onward.
In particular, I envision archaeological digs, historian-guided field trips, full-sun field work alongside campesinos, daily gardening, poultry-raising, fishing from small commercial boats, hammock-weaving, basket-weaving, ceramics, snorkeling, marine-biology, open-air marketing, cooking instruction provided by Mexican amas de casa, ecological work, participation in the art, music and drama of las posadas, La Purisima, la Pascua y los dias del santo patron, participation in church-and-state-sponsored social service agencies, theater production, daily "out loud" reading, designated hours for Spanish language immersion, and on it goes...
(I should mention that the Yucatan is one of the safest places in the world. Its rural areas, small towns and cities are always safer than corresponding areas in the United States - http://www.r-bloggers.com/wp-
As you probably know, I am not suited to "bureaucratic process" and therefore seek collaboration with people who have this gift.
Interested?
Pax vobiscum
Alan
PS My decade-long work as guide and service coordinator for American Waldorf Schools has already taken me through the necessary learning curve. The plan outlined above is immediately implementable through the agency of my own guidance and that of my trusted Yucatec staff. http://yucatan.homestead.com/
Interested?
Pax vobiscum
Alan
PS My decade-long work as guide and service coordinator for American Waldorf Schools has already taken me through the necessary learning curve. The plan outlined above is immediately implementable through the agency of my own guidance and that of my trusted Yucatec staff. http://yucatan.homestead.com/
PPS Perhaps River Dave will be interested in this proposal as well.
Nature-Deficit Disorder
By TIMOTHY EGAN
TUCSON — Your day breaks, your mind aches for something stimulating to match the stirrings of the season. The gate at the urban edge is open, here to the Santa Catalina Mountains, and yet you turn inward, to pixels and particle-board vistas.
Something’s amiss. A third of all American adults — check, it just went up to 35.7 percent — are obese. The French don’t even have a word for fat, Paul Rudnick mused in a mock-Parisian tone in The New Yorker last week. “If a woman is obese,” he wrote, “we simply call her American.”
And, of course, our national branding comes with a host of deadly side effects: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, certain kinds of cancer. Medical costs associated with obesity and inactivity are nearly $150 billion a year.
This grim toll is well known. Cripes: maybe surgery is the answer, or a menu of energy drinks and vodka (the Ann Coulter diet?). Count the calories. Lay off the muffins. Atkins one week, Slim-Fast the next. We spend more than $50 billion on the diet-industrial complex and have little to show for it (or too much).
This grim toll is well known. Cripes: maybe surgery is the answer, or a menu of energy drinks and vodka (the Ann Coulter diet?). Count the calories. Lay off the muffins. Atkins one week, Slim-Fast the next. We spend more than $50 billion on the diet-industrial complex and have little to show for it (or too much).
But there is an obvious solution — just outside the window. For most of human history, people chased things or were chased themselves. They turned dirt over and planted seeds and saplings. They took in Vitamin D from the sun, and learned to tell a crow from a raven (ravens are larger; crows have a more nasal call; so say the birders). And then, in less than a generation’s time, millions of people completely decoupled themselves from nature.
There’s a term for the consequences of this divorce between human and habitat — nature deficit disorder, coined by the writer Richard Louv in a 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods.” It sounds trendy, a bit of sociological shorthand, but give the man and his point a listen.
Louv argued that certain behavioral problems could be caused by the sharp decline in how little time children now spend outdoors, a trend updated in the latest Recreation Participation Report. The number of boys ages 6 to 12 who engage in some kind of outdoor activity, in particular, continues to slide.
Kids who do play outside are less likely to get sick, to be stressed or become aggressive, and are more adaptable to life’s unpredictable turns, Louv said. Since his book came out, things have gotten worse.
“The average young American now spends practically every minute — except for the time in school – using a smartphone, computer, television or electronic device,” my colleague Tamar Lewin reported in 2010, from a Kaiser Family Foundation study.
You can blame technology, but behind every screen-dominant upbringing is an overly cautious parent. Understandably, we want to protect our kids from “out there” variables. But it’s better not just to play in dirt, but to eat it. Studies show exposure to the randomness of nature may actually boost the immune system.
Nature may eventually come to those who shun it, and not in a pretty way. We stay indoors. We burn fossil fuels. The CO2 buildup adds to global warming. Suburbs of Denver are aflame this week, and much of the United States is getting ready for the tantrums of hurricane and tornado season, boosted by atmospheric instability.
Last week, an Australian mountaineer named Lincoln Hall died at the age of 56, and in the drama of that life cut short is a parable of sorts. Hall is best known for surviving a night at more than 28,000 feet on Mount Everest, in 2006. He’d become disoriented near the summit, and couldn’t move — to the peril of his sherpas. They left him for dead. And Hall’s death was announced to his family.
But the next day, a group of climbers found Hall sitting up, jacket unzipped, mumbling, badly frostbitten — but alive. He later wrote a book, “Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest.”
Still, having survived perhaps the most inhospitable, dangerous and life-killing perch on the planet, Hall died in middle age of a human-caused malady from urban life — mesothelioma, attributed to childhood exposure to asbestos.
Various groups, from the outdoor co-op REI to the Trust for Public Land, have been working to ensure that kids have more contact with the alpine world than one lined with asbestos. And they don’t even have to haul children off to a distant mountain to get some benefit. An urban park would do.
This week, Michelle Obama appeared in the glow of spring’s optimism to kick off the fourth year of the White House Kitchen Garden, a component of her campaign to curb childhood obesity. If she is successful, it will be because people learned by their own initiative — perhaps at her prompting. A worm at work can be a wonderful discovery if you’ve never seen one outside of a flat-screen. But so are endorphins, the narcotic byproduct of exercise.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson. The First Lady supplied her own variation on the theme, with two powerful words that can go a long way to battling nature deficit disorder: “Let’s plant!”
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