...observations and ramblings from a learner and traveler...

27 June 2017

Understanding, Listening to each other, and Knowing

 I will be posting tidbits from my grad school reading here. Much of the recent stuff doesn't relate directly to teaching; it relates to humanity and learning. The chapter mentioned below by Curran was particularly good.

The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become - and such lucidity is a form of joy. 
Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation

The preservation of the self-image is the first law of psychological survival. Therefore, in any social encounter each person exposes for public scrutiny and public testing - and possibly for intolerable undermining - the one thing he needs most, which is the self-perception that he has so laboriously fashioned. This mean that the stakes in any social encounter are incredibly high. No such encounter, therefore, can be merely routine.
- Earl Stevick, "A View of the Learner" (emphasis added)

This is a common major or minor tragedy of the human condition: two people meet each other, both seeking to be understood, and neither of them are able or willing to make the effort to understand. This could be like two performers in a circus trapeze act - both expecting to be caught and no one catching. One can almost feel the pain as they crash into one another after both have leaped off the trapeze. 
(...)
Consequently understanding between people cannot be presumed, even though it is a basic need of us all. That is why it is necessarily an acquired skill. To assume it, as many do, is to mislead oneself. In the assumption, one can be in the narcissistic bind of presuming one is a very "understanding" person when one has, in reality, never left oneself and one's own world. Others seldom tell us this even when everyone around us knows it. We can therefore remain in a self-deception trap. 
- Charles Curran, Understanding: An Essential Ingredient in Human Belonging (emphasis added)

15 June 2017

Struggle - Together

 Some of you may know, and others may not, that I have started an MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). A reading this week resonated deeply with me, not simply as a student or teacher, but also as a person and as a follower of Christ. The article was by Leahy and Gilly and was entitled, "Learning in the Space between Us." It's available on JSTOR if you care to go peruse it; it's excellent. The subject is Collaborative, Transformative Learning - education towards change, together. Here are some excerpts:

[Parker] Palmer said, after all, "there is no knowing without conflict."

Commitment to "together" means that persons are welcome to bring body, mind, heart, and soul; their skills, ideas, and learning styles; and both endearing and maddening idiosyncrasies. ... Cultivate the intent to include as if to say to others: do not withhold yourself; allow us to come to know you; engage with your whole self; let us value and use our diversity.

It was our commitment to "together" that oddly enough was both source of and solution for the tension. It was not an option to win the argument by dismissing the other. Ultimately, even when exasperated, we each chose to honor not only the commitment to struggle but also the commitment to "together." We were committed to producing things; our conversations were not intellectual speculation, however, getting something done never trumped "struggle" and "together."
(emphases mine)

 That last seems to me to be great marriage advice as well. I cannot say that I have 'learned' it, but as we celebrate 8 years of marriage, it makes a lot of sense to me in many, many ways.