A parable for Education

On my recent return to Trinidad during the Lenten season, I began to reflect and to articulate a response to questions and concerns posed to me by (Catholic) educators as they struggle to come to terms with the implications and challenges posed by the changing nature of the relationships among consumers, commodities, communities, cultures, environment, knowledge, values, spirituality, and education, and the human institutions which facilitate these for better and worse. In private conversations I offered a limited exegesis of a parable: the parable of the rich young man (Lk18:18-23) which I believe offer insights for inspiring our educational imagination.

The parable of the rich young man who is obedient to the law and commandments but finds it difficult to sell all that he has, give the money to the poor, and follow the Master teacher because of his attachment to wealth, offers an invitation, an opportunity to examine and learn what it is that we are in love with the most. Below is my retelling, interpretation, and elaboration of this parable in/for our context:

And so it happened that the principals of some "successful" and "prestigious" secondary schools sat at table with a teacher-educator and said, "What good things do we need to do in our school in order that all our children might experience success?" He responded, "You know the theories of curriculum and pedagogy. Do treat yourself, your students, their parents, your colleagues, and other stakeholders with an ethic of respect and care. Do request that they do the same. Do prepare yourself continuously for the mental, physical, and emotional demands and surprises that each day will reveal. Do enable those over whom you have authority and responsibility to share in the processes of negotiation and decision making necessary for the establishment of social norms that enable equitable, meaningful, and respectful participation. Do work to foster a climate which values reciprocity and risk-taking in the respectful exchange and challenging of ideas.

Do create time and space for meaningful and sustained engagement with significant ideas both individually and collaboratively. Do listen more and talk less. Do get your community more meaningfully involved. Do establish a culture of learning. Do not be afraid to experiment and try new things. Do follow through on what you have learnt.''

The group smiled somewhat contentedly, "We think we are doing all of these things. Yet we are very concerned about rising indiscipline, violence, inequality, and unequal accomplishment. What more must we do to stop the tsunami of terror and escape the kumblas in which we are confined?" Looking directly at them and speaking slowly and clearly he said, "Go back to your schools and open them up to difference and diversity. Find new, more just, ways to invite and welcome the poor, the less fortunate, the academically less successful, the disabled, les damnés, and the otherwise abject in this society and in your communities to fuller participation in the reformatting and reconceiving of your holy institutions. Learn how to create schools and curricula that are of the community, not merely in the community, or worse, that live on and off, and contribute only waste for life in the community. Refuse to participate in and profit from the unholy biocidal alliances, the carrion cultures that continue to reproduce anew, historical, material, economic, and discursive enslavements and extinction. Seek and teach the truths about the value of human life that lie beyond SEA and CXC success. Be patient. Compete to outdo each other in responsibility, goodness, imagination, virtue and generosity to one another, to the earth and to that which gives Life."

When they heard this they went away confused, angry, sorrowful, and deeply troubled, for while they wished to contribute to a better society they found that as yet they were very much bound to and by structures, institutions, and patterns of thinking and acting that narrowly defined and confined their beloved identity and ability to imagine what they might be through an "ill'' logic of success.

In the parable we are never told what happened to the rich young man-perhaps he reconsidered and returned to follow the teacher? Indeed, there are numerous examples of men and women who have taken this parable to heart-founders and members of religious, charitable, and volunteer communities. What is it that we so love that restricts us from seeking anew, paths to Life for all? I wonder, what our own "rich" young people's responses would be if the question were put to them today.

Casting the Net

"What is the net of an open-ended cylinder?" This is one of the most productive activities that I use to illustrate concepts related to teaching and learning and for providing meaningful opportunities to learn. Adults and students alike rush to give "the answer" - "a square" - quickly amended to the more general category, "a rectangle." "How do you know?" I challenge, which is usually greeted by an anguished silence as if the right answer was all that would ever be required.

A few brave souls eventually attempt an explanation that runs in one of two directions - cutting an open-ended cylinder, such as a paper towel roll, with scissors (which have been strategically provided) in a straight line along the vertical axis and flattening the surface, or folding a rectangular sheet of paper so that the two opposite parallel sides meet.

At this point, most are quite satisfied with their mathematical knowledge, and are prepared or can be easily instructed to handle the algorithmic computations that are instrumentally tied to the determination of (surface) areas and volumes of real-world cylinders like pipes, hoses, blood vessels, reeds, rods, and other structures with uniform circular cross section; tasks that frequently appear in SEA and CXC exams. This, however, is where the real lessons about teaching and learning begin.

"Examine the paper towel rolls in front of you. Are there any other nets that can produce a cylinder?" After short work and some discussion, many, having unfurled the roll along the continuous spiral where it is stuck, declare the net to be "a parallelogram." Some begin to make connections between the areas of parallelograms and rectangles, others between the shapes themselves. Continuing the investigation, "Are there any more?"

Encouraged by having found one more than they had anticipated, and armed with simple concrete materials - scissors and discarded paper towel rolls, investigations and discussions proliferate. Soon all manner of "shapes"-parallelograms of different sizes, V-shaped chevrons, serrated polygons, beautiful obzocky plane figures with no names-populate the learning space. All are nets of the same cylinder, all with the same area, and all with (at least) one other "mathematical" feature in common.

Looking across the seemingly endless variety of forms most beautiful and wonderful, two mathematical truths eventually become apparent to learners. However, it usually takes them a little while longer to be able to articulate their insight in acceptable mathematical language - "each 'shape' has one pair of parallel sides of the same length" - the reminder that this was and could become a cylinder. Secondly, they complete the generalisation, "the other two sides fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, they are geometrical 'opposites'."

Tracking back now we try to put our growing insights together with what we already know. The challenging question and task becoming the articulation, communication, and inscription (in acceptable mathematical discourse) of how these different nets are generated, that is, to relate the different ways in which "cuts" are made with the final forms obtained, to delineate the forbidden cut(s), and to understand the rectangle and parallelogram as the result of special cases of cutting.

Other questions arise - Why is the parallelogram used so frequently to construct cylinders? What advantages does it have over other forms? These lead in the direction of aesthetics, optimisation, the mathematics of spirals, fault lines, and structural integrity.

Unsettling questions emerge - both conceptually and pedagogically. Are these things really nets? Wouldn't students be confused and disadvantaged in their examination by learning how to think differently about the net of a cylinder when all they are required to know is what it is and how to find its area and volume? What about the people setting and marking the papers? Would they accept the answer that the net of an open-ended cylinder is something other than a rectangle or parallelogram?

Many teachers declare in our debriefing after the activity that while they have enjoyed the learning experience, "we were never taught this" or "in this way" or "I couldn't do this in my school," or ominously invoke the inviolable authority of "the syllabus." "Neither was I", "yes you can" and "So what?" I respond. Might we find the courage to shift the sole focus away from the requirements of a syllabus or an exam to support learning?

The curriculum is what we make it in our classrooms. I end by rephrasing the opening question and title of the lesson in the plural, more generative, form, "What are the nets of an open-ended cylinder?" The answer, hopefully, a rich space for experiencing meaningful and memorable learning.

Learning to Read

"There is no economic solution to the ills of the world until the arts of originality - arts that are driven by mysterious strangeness - open the partialities and biases of tradition in ways that address the very core of our pre-possessions. This involves paradoxical orders of readership...I find myself reading in continuously changing ways..." (Wilson Harris, The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination, p.251).

I was a precocious and promiscuous reader. This was partly a function of there always being books and literary material lying around—a consequence of there being an unreasonable number of teachers in my family tree as well as my father’s affinity for the spy/action novel genre. I was one of those “delinquent” children represented on television reading well past their bedtime with a flashlight under the covers. As a child I read everything I could lay my hands on that interested me. As a teenager I loved libraries and revelled in unexpected discoveries and delights when I picked up a title that sounded interesting. This is how I first encountered those authors, titles, and disciplines that I would later come to know more intimately within sociology, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, science, art and literature.

As a very young academic, I am always conscious that I have not had the wealth and diversity of experiences in education as my peers/colleagues who have spent significant time within schools and elsewhere performing different roles and crafting diverse identities. However, in examining my own story I realize I began to read education from a very early age. I think John Holt’s How Children Learn and How Children Fail were the first two education books I read, somewhere around age 14. From these I learnt about the “game of school” and how to play it successfully. Knowing this allowed me to get on with really educating myself about teaching by scrutinising my teachers’ pedagogical practices. This was soon followed by books on the psychology and sociology of education, which though conceptually interesting were literarily insipid. Sometime in Lower Six I began reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a masterpiece, but well above my then level of understanding. I left it and returned to more approachable material.

At 28 I learnt to read, again. And once again found excitement and intrigue. Following the post-structuralist turn in literature and the social sciences I learnt that one could read almost anything as a “text.” Coming from the hard and natural sciences this was a challenge. I attempted to read the then (perhaps still) popular multimedia phenomenon Yugioh as a pedagogical text. This required that I learn how to read and interpret the form and content of graphic novels and Manga as more than mere comic books. Once again I found and fell in love with “scholarly” books like The Rise of the Graphic Novel, Understanding Comics, and Superheroes and Philosophy, as well as more serious graphic novels including the Pulitzer prize-winning Maus, the acclaimed King (a biography of Martin Luther King), and the poignant Faxes from Sarajevo. Learning to read different textual forms opened my interests to cultural and critical theorists in art, cinema, and popular culture; and philosophers and educators who had been reading and writing in/about these forms for quite a while. This encouraged me to begin to re-read ‘familiar texts’ such as Carnival, or rather what Minshall calls “the mas” pedagogically. Learning to read is liberating.

"The reader...has to read differently, to read backwards and forwards, even more importantly forwards and backwards" (WH, UGotI, p.252)

This semester, as a mathematics teacher educator, I have selected Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics by Eric Gutstein as a text to be read by my final year students. Gutstein reacquaints me with Freire, who uses “reading the world” to mean “understanding the sociopolitical, cultural-historical conditions of one’s life, community, society and world” as a gateway into reading the word (textual/functional literacy), and as a position from which to Write and re-write the world, that is, to positively transform the world. It is my hope that these teachers will come, as did Gutstein’s students, to “use mathematics to understand relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities between different social groups and to understand explicit discrimination based on race, class, gender, language, and other differences…[as well as] dissect and deconstruct media and other forms of representation.”

Learning to “read” media is of urgent importance. We must teach children to read their “massively multimedia mashup” world. Unfortunately their world is less understood and frequently feared by adults. We must however encourage them to draw on and share their funds of knowledge. We must be especially concerned with teaching our children to critically read (resist and transform) what Benjamin Barber, author of Consumed, calls consumer culture’s “seductive infantilist ethos,” which threatens our (and our children’s) liberty, citizenship, health, and well-being and undermines democracy’s foundations worldwide.

To other bibliophiles out there: draw deeply from your funds of knowledge, learn for the purpose of reading the world. Read across boundaries, anywhere, everywhere. Be promiscuous readers…change the world.

Rumpelstiltskin Revisited

In June 2008, I gave my very first graduation address to the educational community of Malabar RC Primary School. I decided to tell a story—a simple fairy tale, “Rumpeltstiltskin.” I hoped, though, to challenge them to think more critically about what this story about a poor miller’s daughter, whose father boasted to the King that she could spin straw into gold, might really be about, and draw out some implications for how they might choose to live their lives.

As I told the audience, typically, this story is read to children as a warning against boasting, and was meant as a cautionary tale for young women. The little man, Rumpelstiltskin, is cast as a villain or demon for wanting a human child and for having what is seen as unnatural abilities—alchemy—the ability to turn base material (straw) into something of value (gold). But reading the story in this way is easy; it fits with the way many people see and construct the worlds in which they choose to live—worlds that often imprison their imaginations as well as their bodies and spirits. Our challenge in this century is to learn to read the stories that we have received in our childhood differently, to ask new and more challenging questions, and to seek answers that are not going to be found in textbooks. Another challenge is to write new stories—better, more hopeful stories. I sought to illustrate this in the remainder of the address.

Consider two questions about this story: 1) Who acts ethically? and 2) What are the values espoused? These are not questions about right or wrong, about rules, or about villains or demons. They are not about picking a character to follow but about learning about and from each character.

Let’s start with the miller, whose boastfulness and pride place his daughter in harm’s way. Does he act ethically? He is irresponsible with his daughter’s reputation and this irresponsibility places her at risk of being taken advantage of by the King, the symbol of nobility and justice. Does the King act ethically? Or does his greed drive him to the very brink of committing murder? And what of the miller’s daughter? She has the power to put a stop to the lie initiated by her father. However, she chooses to enter into an arrangement with the little man whose name she does not even know, but who promises and delivers what she is unable to do. She becomes indebted, reaps the rewards of her deceit, and places her future, and that of her child, at risk. Through her thoughtless and self-preserving actions, she promises away her future and that of the kingdom. She later reneges on this promise.

All three are complicit. All three have the power at every instant to transform the situation into one where their actions can create opportunities for others to acknowledge their responsibilities to each other and act more ethically. The miller can go to the King and admit his lie; the King can be satisfied with less gold and choose not to kill the miller’s daughter; the daughter can admit that she is unable to do what is asked of her. All of these require courage and strength of character. Sadly, in this story, and in those we hear, read, and enact most commonly today, these do not appear to be virtues that are widely practised. Instead, the values exhibited are boastfulness, deceit, greed, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, and cowardice.

Rumpeltstiltskin seems less a villain now and more a victim. His skills have been used and he does not receive the agreed upon payment. He offers several opportunities for the daughter to take responsibility for what she can and cannot do, and to face any consequences. He offers her opportunities to act ethically and responsibly towards herself and the King. He pities her, but he cannot choose for her; it is she who chooses to keep silent and benefit from the lie, fraudulently taking credit for what is not her work.

The educable moment always presents a gift – the opportunity for the enactment of an ethical practice. It presents opportunities to choose and model how to be unconditionally responsible for another and so build an ethically responsible society. In education, politics, and the public service, we are blessed every day to be offered opportunities to come clean, to take up our responsibilities, and face the consequences courageously. Sadly, many, following the examples of the King, the miller, and his daughter, choose not to do so.

Apart from an allegory of moral virtue and the necessary conditions for building an ethical society, what else might Rumpelstiltskin be about? Consider the central metaphor of the story, alchemy, the spinning of straw into gold. A substance that has many domestic and indigenous uses, but which does not have high economic value, is converted, on a large scale, into one with a more limited set of uses. For a King, these uses would include ornamentation, commerce, and the financing of political powows, military or industrial campaigns. This transubstantiation can be read as a metaphor for our (mis)use of nature to create wealth. The King seems unconcerned with how his wealth is created and what has to be promised or must be traded in order to pay for the currency of development and measures of prosperity. This is in sharp contrast to Rumpeltstiltskin’s values, which have an ecological, biophilic, flavour as he proclaims to the Miller’s daughter who tries to buy her way out of her promise, that something alive is dearer to him than all the treasures in the world.

Economic prosperity can buy a certain type of life. However, there is no value that can be placed on life itself and we are fast running out of life-sustaining spaces. Do we care where our food, toys, and clothes come from and where they will go when we are finished with them? Do we care how they come to be available to us? Do we teach those for whom we are responsible how to care for that which gives life, or are we only concerned with possessing, like the King, more and more at any cost? In this area, too, we have opportunities to act more responsibly than we have been and to cease from creating more and more of what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman refers to as Wasted Lives – the inevitable and disastrous consequences of our modern appetites – marked by fear, anxiety, deprivation, un-belonging and homelessness.

There is also the leitmotif of the power of one’s name and the power that other people have in naming us. Words and labels can be cages placed around us, restricting physical and psychological mobility or they can be heralds that go before us proclaiming our virtues and guiding our vision. An exercise I use with teenagers is to ask them, If your life were to be summarized in one word, what would that one word be? From a group of Form 5 Holy Faith Convent students at a recent retreat, I got examples like, “Love,” “Friend,” “Compassionate,” and “Generous.” How truly wonderful if one’s entire life could be oriented by and towards words such as these. On another occasion, I placed it before a group of Form 3 students of Fatima College, in a context where their Principal had just labelled the entire class “a Shame.” As he buffed them, re-naming them as “shameful,” I could see the defiance in these young men’s eyes grow as the playful light of youth left to be replaced by a mature anger. After he left, I implored them to work so that some other word, not shame, would define their lives. I saw something change in their eyes and body language—it looked like the beginning of sorrow.

Through re-naming we sometimes position others as less than human or self, an action that continues to underlie our justifications for committing atrocities (slavery, genocide, terracide) against other living beings. We must be very careful whom and how we name, and who we allow to name us in this century. We must not forget the painful lessons of human history.

As I ended, I placed the following question before the students, which I now place before us all, What is the word, the name by which you wish to be called, the name that is a true reflection of the life and person that you are and want to be? On that day, I proudly joined with their families in welcoming those students as Graduates, and reminded them that in the years to come it would be they who would decide what they would be called by their actions/inactions. They alone would determine whether they would create a wasted life or a life of waste for themselves. “Remember,” I told them, “you have the power at every instant to change the direction and course of your life and that of others. You have the power to author a better world. Choose wisely and responsibly.”

The Emperor's New Costume

Once upon this time, in a land not so far away, there lived a carefree Emperor with few official duties and whose chief concern in life was to preside over and participate in costumed parades. He loved playing d mas and putting on colourful carnival costumes. Unfortunately the Emperor was sometimes a little careless in his decision making and had twice now made serious miscalculations in his recruitment of masqueraders. His wounded subjects began to wonder what sorts of malfeasance might be afoot. Knowledge of the Emperor’s personal preferences, relaxed disposition and problems spread across the networked kingdoms of the common world. His subjects’ distressing concerns found their way to him also, interrupting his deserved vacation.

A cunning mass-(media)-man who was on vacation at the same and had heard of the goings on approached the morose Monarch. “Sir, I believe I can make you merry again, I have recently acquired a magical costume. It is imbued with Old World colonial magic and can deflect criticism away from you onto other individuals and structures making them seem incompetent and less than honorable. It can give the wearer the appearance of honesty, respectability and culpability and soothe your spirits so that you can enjoy the remainder of your vacation in peace. It will also make your critics appear unsophisticated and unintelligent, unable to move on and enemies of the empire and of democracy.” The monarch’s spirits rose, excitedly he demanded, “Give me this costume. I will pay whatever you ask.” They agreed to terms and the man removed from a pouch he carried a small cloth loin covering. “Simply utter the magical incantation, “I accept responsibility” and you will never have to explain your actions or be held accountable or answerable to anyone” the man instructed and went on his way. Putting on his new costume and repeating the magic words to himself the Monarch began to write a letter to his subjects which began…“The occasion arose in February of this year for the appointment of an entirely new membership of Commissioners to the Integrity Commission…” Afterwards he was very pleased with his apology and was able to enjoy the rest of his vacation in peace without further distraction.

But many of his royal court were not convinced and demanded an explanation from him upon his return. Finding himself troubled, under fire once again and growing angry, he turned to his sycophantic sorcerers of the air. After some time they counseled him, “Sire, you relied only upon Old World magic in your first address, you must also use New World magic if you are to be successful in besting your critics. We have concocted a magic glitter dust that we believe will complement your loin covering. Simply rub it over your body before you make a mas of your Office on the airwaves and your words will shine with brilliance and erudition, you will appear an honorable man, luminous in integrity, unafraid of challenge, and someone whose opinion while not infallible inspires confidence and trust. The dust will also lull your fixated detractors into a restful and forgetful slumber.” Agreeing with them he put his faith in the protective magic of his loin covering and the persuasive magic of the shiny dust and sitting under the spotlight addressed his kingdom…“I do not share the opinion held by some that I have brought the office…into disrepute and accordingly, see no reason to resign or to engage in further debate on the matter.”

A poor child who was awaiting her SEA results, and knew little of old or new world magic, watched the broadcast. After it was over she turned and said, “Mammie, look ah mas!” The child wondered…Soon however she would be in secondary school, relieved of the unnecessary burdens and luxuries of thinking, questioning, investigating and learning to act responsibly for oneself on behalf of others. In time she too might become a good masquerader for d band. The Emperor, still spellbound by his new costume continued to preside, pronounce, primp and prance fully believing in the power of magical incantations, that to utter something often enough, or in the right way, the right place/time, somehow made it necessarily true.

Personal opinion without a requirement to make publicly available and accessible evidence or the structure, sequence, and source of one’s reasoning apparently provides sufficient justification for publicly ineffectual and aconsequential policies and polities. In the meantime the child’s observation would take root, grow and work its way towards the summit.

Parable of Integrity

With regards to the ongoing Integrity Commission fiasco, consider the following re-telling of Jesus’ parable of the talents. Once a citizen of a small, talented, but troubled nation called together his servants, representatives of his estates, and entrusted certain responsibilities to them. Then he went about his other business. After some time, the citizen returned and asked his servants to account for themselves and their actions in his absence. The first, an investigator, who had been tasked with the responsibility for investigating corrupt activities in the management of the citizen’s monies, said, “Sir, I have worked with the tools and resources at my disposal and have found evidence of illegal practices and intent to deceive and defraud you, citizen, of your money.” The man replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have done your duty and your findings and recommendations will be evaluated forthwith without fear or favor. The second, man, a journalist who had been entrusted with the duty of watching over the other estates, said, “I have found evidence of misdeeds and malpractice by members of your other estates, indeed as a consequence one of your estates has come into disrepute. The man replied to the reporter, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have done your duty and you have brought to light things that might otherwise have remained hidden. You will be entrusted with even greater responsibilities.” The citizen called for his final representative, the most elevated and prestigious of them all, but was forced to wait patiently for this servant was on sabbatical. Receiving word that the citizen wanted audience with him regarding the less than satisfactory performance of his duties, the servant hastily penned an explanation in which he indicated that “despite the many affordances of my position and Office, I find an insufficient endowment incapacitating.” The citizen became angry with the response and replied, “You wicked and lazy servant! You knew that your task was of integral importance and yet you treated serious matters with scant regard. Why were you not more conscientious when you found that you could not adequately perform the tasks assigned to you? Why did you do nothing to transform this situation which has brought dishonor to all of my estates? Take his Office and entitlements away from him and give it to another. Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness where there is much weeping, bloodshed and gnashing of teeth.”
It is indeed a sad state of affairs that we don’t actually live in a country where this parable has more meaning than merely an entertaining story.

Letters to the Editor - Integrity Fiasco

The Editor:
Like many other members of the public and the intellectual community in Trinidad and Tobago I am deeply disappointed by the reported statements of President Richards in apparently treating so dismissively the knowledge of Fr. Charles' academic misconduct and broach of public trust and patiently await Prof. Richard's eventual statement on the matter. in the meantime, in addition to questions about whether or not he or someone should resign over what is clearly a dereliction of duty, serious questions are raised in my mind as to the integrity of his own professional record including supervision of students. In the departments in the University with which I am familiar such behaviour regarding scholarship is not treated lightly.