Where do things stand?
To go back to basics: The New School name never was going to work. Seat's taken!
What about ROOT, to play off STEM (or STEAM)?--Reading Observing Orienting Talking.
The old motto, too, is too much of a mouthful, and I like the way Frankl talks about it (cited in McGilchrist), that rather than the image of pursuing happiness, it makes more sense to say that happiness ensues from meaning. Peterson says much the same. But I do like the word synonymous.
And as for a physical building, an actual institution, much as that might be a good goal to strive for, there's also a great deal of learning that can happen already without it. Not just capitulating to what is already available at Khan Academy and Outschool and Mythgard, but primarily I mean directing people to all the books and original works of art which are freely available online. The real immediate task may be to give shape to a curriculum, rather than a school as such. Alex, Brian, and I have each been thinking about how to arrange for this to take the form of remunerative consulting, one way or another. Then again, I'm happy enough just subbing and thinking about this stuff as a hobby for now.
Tedx Spokane, though I didn't make their event, did give me an opportunity to formulate my somewhat more current ideas about this project. Their theme this year is Beyond Ourselves. Here's more or less what I pitched:
As a sub, I am invisible. As you can imagine, I hear some interesting things. When students do notice me, observing and hearing them, and they do look at me, what do they see? White, male, around 30, somewhat educated, assume correctly that I’m straight or wrongly that I’m gay, if any of that matters--but it seems to matter to people quite a bit these days. Not a person, of course, at most a teacher, but probably as a sub I represent to them unfettered freedom, unbounded possibility--the saturnalia impulse, mayhem and glee. Which is great, because what do teachers, all hopeful adults, see when they look at students, but just such boundless possibility? Potential for incalculable good or, more pessimistically, for grave harm.
The first thing I do, what used to be called a captatio benevolentiae, to gain their attention and sympathy, to begin to humanize us all: the production of some moderately articulate but above all warm and sensible statement of greeting, such as Hello, how are you? As you can see, your teacher (insert name here--Mandy Manning, for instance, the national teacher of the year, I subbed for her at Ferris once last year, and got to know her wonderful students and co-teacher Maria Luisa Ovellana-Westbrook) wasn’t able to be here today. My name is Mr Schantz (or Sr, or M). I taught for four years at a great charter school in Arizona, moved up here in 2016 to be closer to family and escape the desert, recover seasons. Prior to that...if they’re still listening, I’ll talk about something relevant to the class, like teaching English as a second language in Uruguay on a Fulbright exchange, or serving with AmeriCorps in a Boston elementary school, or teaching online courses about video games. But quickly I need to move on to calling roll.
I think about this a lot, as it’s in a way my main job. I meant to ask, were any of you students in the public schools here? Did you ever happen to study the WA state constitution at all? I was just looking at that, preparing to give this talk...I’ll come back to why at the end.
As a student, whenever roll was actually called aloud, as subs have to do it, I became highly self-conscious, imagining everyone’s attention was on me, which was absurd, but that’s how it felt, and that’s how it feels for the kids in the classes where I sub. I’m invisible, and they become visible. If I mispronounce a name, woe! Whereas as a teacher, taking the roll becomes invisible, and you’re able to get right into the class--greeting students by name, asking about their lives since yesterday, and when the bell rights, diving right into the big idea for class that day. Here’s mine:
Public schools will be fine. They will. As long as they continue to provide three simple things: access to technology, to books, and to other people. Really just the last, but it helps to tell stories in threes…
Schools can fail all the tests, teachers can walk out, students can become apathetic, even suicidal or murderous--the next day we’ll be back, asking one another how are you doing, what did you get on the homework and what questions did you have on the reading. What accounts for this resolute normality?
Technology - I started thinking about teaching and schools in earnest as a junior or senior in high school. It was around this time of year, when the weather’s getting nice, summer is around the corner, testing season, and it occurred to me that my teachers must already know as I did that I would do well on all the tests, so why did I still have to take them? What was the point? Why was I there? I started to write about it and still blog about teaching and learning...Slowly I realized what by now should be obvious, that with access to technology, we have access to anything we might want to know. Making technology available makes everything available. And we don’t have to understand how it works--we can look it up--but enough kids will want to that they will drive the advance of new technology, until the robots can do it better than we can. Not far off--then realizing we rely on this thing we don’t understand
Books - Before cell phones, I read books. Students still do, remarkably. Shakespeare, Harper Lee, August Wilson...I should mention I hated school. Bored. And this served me well, finding all sorts of things to read outside of class. Socrates, who was the wisest according to the Delphic oracle whose motto was “know thyself”, claiming he knew how ignorant he was, questioning. Montaigne, “what do I know” exploring that through essays and civic action. Holding these sorts of authorities up as models, but not being hypnotized by the author or their context--they, too, become invisible in the reality of their work. As Flaubert says, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”
Other people - “Love your neighbor” says the book not to be read in school, the topic not to be discussed--and so it attains that much more glamour, becomes that much more interesting, even tempting--and that’s what the first story in it is about, isn’t it? - Pullman. So it’s ultimately not content, nor even skills, that schools teach--they provide a good chance of learning these in the form of access to technology and books--but insofar as attendance is mandatory, what they teach is how to be around other people. Schools will provide this above all else, at least in states like WA where their funding is tied to attendance: article IX: paramount, ample…
So when I am prompted by dissatisfaction with the resolute normality of school, managing to make boring and banal the most human of activities, learning, then I am learning the most. To ask, to seek what to value, how to live. School’s a joke. It’s life or death. Anytime you have something big enough to contain such contradictory multitudes, we should perk up our ears--there’s a story there. And especially if some people take it seriously, while others treat it like it’s a joke, there’s bound to be strong passions on both sides before long, as the buried significance is either pressed down or comes to the surface. Or when some take it as a literal truth and earnestly act on what it says--taking notes, studying,, caring about grades and even about learning--while others take it as a metaphor, a simulacrum of a lifestyle in a society that has systematically negated their importance, as a lie--perhaps a noble lie, but more likely a dirty one. For explaining the joke, for my tendentious exegesis on the matter, thank you for listening.
If you’d like to get beyond yourself at a leap, get a job as a sub, work when you want to, they always need more.
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