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Serving a Life Sentence: View from Inside Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 Hi folks, "Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it." When Henry David Thoreau spoke these words, he could not possibly have envisioned the challenges and potentials that we who are concerned with learning currently face on a daily basis. The metaphor increasingly goes in both directions, as schools and jails begin to resemble each other in terms of effectiveness, being widely perceived as a drain on public resources, and yet a necessary investment for societal order (hard to tell which cheek holds the tongue? which industry enjoys increased public support at the moment?). Bonnie Bracey's recent posting regarding the sudden, cyclical attention to education reform, and thoughts about how sincere and/or serious some of the efforts currently garnering media attention really are, reminded me of an experience that I couldn't quite place. Then it hit me: I'd seen this before two decates ago, in the "scared straight" era, when the spotlight held our attention on troubled youth, prison reform and the like. The commonality is that most of the talking is being done from the outside looking in, with much emotion but little agreement upon such fundamental issues as purpose (punish/rehabilitate easily substitutes for back-to-basics/reform as disingenuous extremes for purposes of political debate), and even less interest in the perspectives of those living their lives within these institutions. Meanwhile, quietly and far from any media attention many of us are engaged in the task of preparing ourselves to renew our approach to learning via the Internet. I've watched as people (some teachers, some administrators, some nurses, some school board members) confront their individual frustrations, bewilderment and excitement that comes with entering a new world. We also encounter echoes of the resistence Thoreau faced from his own school committee, who said "You *will* teach the textbook, sir", to which Thoreau responded "I find your texts somewhat behind the century, sir", before resigning after being ordered to flog students for being "disrespectful". I learned of this today, in Unitarian Church (Thoreau being a noteable Unitarian), during a play ("The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, adapted by Richard O. Swain). We know that people working in educational institutions are Prisoners of Time (Bonnie has shared this important study with us often) but we are also the prisoners of our imaginations. Only the smallest slice of the population can imagine that which it has not experienced, and many times dreamers, poets and visionaries scare off the mainstream people anyway. So what can we do to broaden the basis for experience *from the inside* to those who don't yet feel they've been accused of premeditated curiosity, and thus couldn't possibly be sentenced to lifelong learning? Here, online, we are experiencing daily that of which Thoreau could only dream. He said, "I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside." We need not ask permission from anyone. Using what we already know, we can connect minds that send with minds that receive, aligning ourselves to help one another serve our life sentences. To do so, we have only to break down the walls of habit, that divide us into roles that are "inside this" or "outside that", which is indeed risky business. Schools and communities have been notoriously slow to forge arenas for mutual trust and activity, but such links are the key to our survival, or perhaps more accurately, keys to the evolution of the new structures that may very well supplant those whose functionality is waning. All of us are serving time, but too many of us are ending up without hope in our communities, alone and unsupported. What we do with our precious time, how we are able to weave into our daily experience the ebb and flow of needs and knowldege between us may help shape the direction of the places where we live (both physical and virtual). It is neither too early, nor too late to begin. |
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