Re: where is the learning? Posted by Kate Hammer on June 17, 1998 at 14:11:23:
In Reply to: Re: where is the learning? posted by Peter Cameron Rowland on May 16, 1998 at 10:23:21:
Peter suggests that educators infuse the process with love. I begin with the reaction that I think the best already do.
It leads me to think about my own practice in education.
I wonder if genuine dialogue is love in action. When I teach, I love my engagement with students and with material more when the dialogue is dynamic. Part of dialogue is understanding and acting upon this recognition: that hearing and listening are related but distinct. As a student, as a teacher (I've been being both) I listen for what's unsaid but implied, hidden wishes, quiet fears; but I also hear things that anger me, that delight me, that worry me and things that make me wonder.
As a teacher, I feel I've succeeded when a student gains an individual perspective which can be articulated. In other words, when they too act like authors, creating texts (spoken or written) which they can sign their names to.
I've been working for about two years on thinking through how authorship and authority relate.
Authority abused kills love. The late philosopher and psychoanalysis Cornelius Castoriadis warned his readers that someone is always speaking, behind the anonymous authority. I think love-full learning is about embarking with students on the adventure of seeking, chasing, identifying and losing all the someones who speak the rules which make us who and how we are but which we in turn resist, re-envision and remake. In some cases the rule-makers are our history, our society, the structures that lord over our everyday lives. But sometimes the rule-makers are ourselves. Facing this is something that both student and teacher do, on occasion, in one another's presence. It's painful, but it builds trust. Trust feeds the active dialogue.