Dear Lincoln,
I'm glad we've decided to have this correspondence. Your comments in class today about how discussing your possible research topic goes hand in hand with this exchange. That being the case I must ask, what is your present concern? THrough our conversations I know the way people interact and how that way of relating is learned or acquired has been on your mind. That is of course a simple version of it, but I hope this opens up a space where I will not interrupt you until you've at least made an attempt at finishing your thought.
My present concern, which is also a long standing one, is how do we make learning visceral? How do we broaden the discussion of learning beyond a simple intellectual pursuit.
Ironically, my interest is rooted in the foundations of the American Dream. It is grounded in democracy as it is presented purely and not conflated with capitalism. Democracy was founded on the notion of an educated populist. We need to understand our relationship with the world around us to be able to move about that world in a decisive way. A Decision rooted in a sense of responsibility in have decided is one of the principle aims of education. However intellectual this idea may appear it cannot be denied how visceral the act of making a decision can be. The anxiety of making a decision one way or another is enough to make a person ill. Indecision is enough to make a decisive person ill as well, and yet I find so many of our students decide (for lack of a better term) to remain within it. This mode of deciding pales in comparison to making an explicit decision. One is active and the other is passive. So many of our students seem to think, and this may be an assumption on my part, that their power is rooted in their indecision. This is their way of undermining a teachers control--for better or worse, if this distinction can be made by remaining indecisive, passive, whatever a teacher wills is irrelevant. How do we help students recognize that a certain degree of passivity helps in relation to the happenstance of life, yet this only further emphasizes the need to decide? Their freedom hangs in the balance.
These or perhaps this tendency I am bringing up may seem very big or abstract when we are faced with the day to day of the classroom, but it only makes dealing with it that much more pertinent..
I was hoping to be more conversational, but my pen took me elsewhere.
On a lighter note I'd like to share a story from school that happened today. Some background, I interjected myself in a conversation between a co-worker and one of our eighth graders a few months ago. They basically have a correspondence on sticky notes and at one point Torres--my co-worker, asked, "Fortier, who was that guy. . . the founder of Existentialism." He was referring to Kierkegaard.
I was excited by the thought of introducing a student to such a thinker and for the sake of expediency, walked G to one of the offices/book rooms in our school and gave her a copy of Camus' The Stranger. Before the week was out, between Torres and I, she had in her possession The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Present Age. The latter by Kierkegaard, the others by Camus.
Last week G told me she had finished The Stranger. She asked if we could talk about it because as much as she like the story, she wasn't sure she got the deeper meaning. We met today to discuss the book. It was quite a moment to hear G's response to my questions about what she thought the book was about, "It seem like the book is trying to say life is meaningless."
My response, "And?" I was only trying to imply she had caught the major jist of the book but what did that imply?
We talked for close to an hour and kept coming back to this idea of meaninglessness. G felt for the most part this was a negative thing. I simply mentioned the negative association with this was not so much implicit in the claim as it was conditioned. She sat for a moment and simply stated (I paraphrase because sadly I cannot remember her exact words) the idea of meaninglessness actually opened up more possibilities. I saw her face light up as the thought hit her and she stated it. Followed by, "I've never thought that before."
I cannot convey how amazing a moment it was to see. It only furthered my research interests. I will leave you with that, the thought of an eighth grader from Sunset Park reconciling the thought that life is meaningless in a positive tone.
Your Friend,
Nicholas J. Fortier
2/10/11
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