LISTEN. The morning after the Super Bowl is always when I begin my countdown to the true arrival of Spring (Training): pitchers and catchers report, at several camps at least, in 8 days.
Attempts by the host cities in Arizona to postpone Cactus League 2021 have been withdrawn. Fans of course will still be discouraged from flocking to the desert and to Florida's Grapefruit League, and should be. But just imagining the anticipated sound of balls popping mitts and cracking bats has already returned the bounce my step has been missing since March. That's my "faith in the promise of spring," or (as Margaret Renkl says) of bluebirds. It's Cardinals for me. But as for the Boss's plea for a re-united USA, I'd like to agree that "there's hope on the road up ahead." I don't think a jeep in Kansas is going to get us there.
This week John Dewey is up, in Democracy. (When I say Democracy, these days, or DemMALA, I mean my Master of Liberal Arts course Democracy in America.)
Dewey appreciated our national pastime. "The sources of art in human experience will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd," he wrote in Art as Experience. Maria Popova, like E.J. Dionne discussing American democracy: 21 historic answers to 5 urgent questions, is also Dewey-eyed. The rest of that book's subtitle is Dewey's own phrase, "the task before us."
Democracy, wrote Dewey in Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us (1939), is "a belief in the ability of human experience to generate the aims and methods by which further experience shall grow in ordered richness." But ability should not be confused with probability. This attitude is indeed an aspirational article of faith, no less than it was on the eve of America's entry into the war against fascism abroad. Today the challenge is closer to home. The late Dewey devotee Richard Rorty was blunt: "Dewey's dreams of participatory democracy will never come true." Oh he of little faith. I still want to believe, and to affirm the possibility at least, that there are enough Amanda Gormans and Greta Thunbergs out there to wake their generation to the dream.When our girls were small I was, for a time, a public school activist. I started an online discussion group called Nashville PTO Talk, that got a bit of play in local media reporting. The tagline on all my posts was Dewey's statement in The School and Society (1899): "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy."
“The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.” John Dewey, A Common Faith (1934)
I love what Dewey acknowledges in his quote from A Common Faith. He simply says that we are only here now, and know what we do because of all the humans who came before us. Its profound because people seem to have this tunnel vision view that your life or my life or all our lives here on earth are only temporary and nothing we say or do will have an effect once we are gone. That couldn't be any farther from the truth. We have such a GIANT impact on future generations who are not even a thought in their mothers mind yet. We are fortunate enough to be alive in this current chapter of human history, and to have the ability to communicate with anyone in the world to learn or pass on information is truly mind blowing. I think what Dewey is saying in the quote that was shared is this; we have a very important job in this current chapter of human history. Our job is to continue passing down knowledge that will benefit humans now and in the future. Just because we have a great opportunity at life now, doesn't mean we should not try to make the future better for all humans everywhere too!
ReplyDeleteExactly. We are all links in the chain of the "continuous human community," and chains are no stronger than their weakest link. I've found that perspective empowering, inspiring, sobering, and above all meaningful.
DeleteI googled “Nashville PTOTalk” and found this:
ReplyDeleteWednesday, December 31, 2008
NashvillePTOTalk gone
While most of us were tending to holiday celebrations a valuable Nashville education asset disappeared. The Yahoo Group NashvillePTOTalk was deleted in its entirety. The last message I got through it was dated Saturday, 12/27/08. If one of the regular posters on the list hadn't written a note to other active posters I'm not sure I would have noticed for another week or more.
The list was created in March of 2002 by Phil Oliver with this mission statement:
"Nashville PTO Talk" is a forum for parents and teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, who want to support responsible public school reform. Nashville's metro schools are pursuing the announced goal of "strengthen[ing] parent/community ownership of the school system," with significant increases in parental involvement in PTOs and as classroom volunteers; and the board of education has issued a strong mandate to the director of schools to raise student achievement. Parents have a crucial "ownership" role to play, along with teachers, administrators, and the larger community, in insisting that achievement not be gained at the cost of real learning: learning that is both challenging, lasting, and fun. School should be a positive and nurturing environment where children learn to love learning, and where teachers are given the resources and the freedom they need to foster that kind of environment. Here is a place for all of us in Nashville who care about the future of our children and, therefore, of our schools, to talk about it... and to assert our "ownership."
Phil was kind enough to welcome this homeschooling mom's participation and I have very much appreciated the give and take that occurred on the NashvillePTOTalk list. In May of 2005 he handed the list over to MNPS parent Carol Hanson. I've written Carol for an explanation of the list's disappearance.
This is a bad time to lose a valuable salon for discussing public education in Nashville. I hope the effort to recreate it goes well. Stay tuned and we'll let you know where and when it's reincarnated.
Her last entry-
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
"For the children" has lost its luster
http://kaybrooks.blogspot.com/2012/05/for-children-has-lost-its-luster.html?m=1
Thank you for this post. As I mentioned in last week's DemMALA class, my daughter graduated from LaVergne High School in 2020. It was tough to watch her schoolmates struggle through with limited technology and resources while the other high schools in the same area always seemed to have more than enough. I, too, am Dewey-eyed (although I did not know the philosophical reference prior to this class) in the sense that I feel strongly that education, public education, is the corner post of the progression of society. Students who are not educated will grow into adults who don't know how to learn, I'm afraid. But, while public education is the vehicle, I believe it's also up to the student & families to take the wheel. My daughter made the best of her high school experience, graduating at the top of her class and qualifying for scholarships that is getting her through college with zero student debt. Additionally, and even more importantly, she learned from the multi-cultural students that she spent her days engaged with. She learned about cultures, acceptance, empathy, collaboration, responsibility, dedication, resilience, patience, and fortitude. She learned from teachers who practiced those values and worked to instill them in their students. She forged valued friendships in that diversity that would not have been afforded to her in a different environment. So, while her formal education might have been confined to available resources, her informal education was limitless. So, I will continue to be a vocal advocate for diversity and rousource equality in public schools.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. As I mentioned in last week's DemMALA class, my daughter graduated from LaVergne High School in 2020. It was tough to watch her schoolmates struggle through with limited technology and resources while the other high schools in the same area always seemed to have more than enough. I, too, am Dewey-eyed (although I did not know the philosophical reference prior to this class) in the sense that I feel strongly that education, public education, is the corner post of the progression of society. Students who are not educated will grow into adults who don't know how to learn, I'm afraid. But, while public education is the vehicle, I believe it's also up to the student & families to take the wheel. My daughter made the best of her high school experience, graduating at the top of her class and qualifying for scholarships that is getting her through college with zero student debt. Additionally, and even more importantly, she learned from the multi-cultural students that she spent her days engaged with. She learned about cultures, acceptance, empathy, collaboration, responsibility, dedication, resilience, patience, and fortitude. She learned from teachers who practiced those values and worked to instill them in their students. She forged valued friendships in that diversity that would not have been afforded to her in a different environment. So, while her formal education might have been confined to available resources, her informal education was limitless. So, I will continue to be a vocal advocate for diversity and rousource equality in public schools.
ReplyDelete