I am headed to New Zealand to present at an International Peace Conference and have been thinking of resistance so needed today. Music, poetry, and art play a significant role in resisting violence, including that imposed by governments and other institutions that are supposed to protect.
One of the first albums I bought was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I was about 16-years old and I still have the album. It is iconic with songs like Blowin’ In the Wind (melody based on a spiritual called No More Auction Block), Masters of War, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, Oxford Town about resistance to desegregation in the American South, and Talkin’ World War III Blues. Dylan covered Lead Belly’s version of I Shall Be Free.
Talkin’ World War III Blues is my favourite song on the album. Dylan was at his best in the spontaneity of the song and it fits with the talking blues genre. In I Shall Be Free, he sings about making love to Elizabeth Taylor. Even in the early 60’s a was a way to avoid the reality that hung over the world was to turn to popular culture as a distraction from the threats of nuclear war.
About the same time, I wrote a poem in school. I know Mr. P. writes poetry is hard to imagine for my students. The poem was about the tragedy of war and it stole lives in absolute ways whether through death or through the physical and psychic damage done to those who were forced into service in a war they did not understand. Many of those who died or were left deeply scarred with the trauma of war were from the African American population, which was about 12% of the American population at the time. Their deaths alone represented about 25% of the casualties, so statistically overrepresented. The personal narratives within their families and communities can not be quantified.
The recent killing of the CEO of United Health Insurance reflected the violence (himsa) we find ourselves embedded in. I refuse to condone violence in any form. What flies under the radar is the daily violence humans are subjected to when they are denied healthcare, when it is delayed. Hannah Arendt introduced us to the term “the banality of evil”, which underscores both forms of violence, although the former is more obvious than the latter. Schools and teachers can play a vital role in educating children, youth, and adults in ways that help them unearth the roots of violence.
For the past 2-3 years, I focused on re-imagining teacher education as an andragogy of hope and nonviolence. A third pillar is dialogue and civil discourse. One objective is to have a manageable endeavor for teachers from the moment aspiring teachers enter schools of education to the end of their careers. The second is to move away from what Paulo Freire referred to as a banking model of education where information is deposited in students to a dialogic form with teachers and students engaging as teachers and learners. When I enter K-12 classrooms, I observe how little has changed in our schools and this conditions education students the banking model. It is embraced by those who decide how schools and teaching function.
Currently, teachers experience top-down mandates reflecting a neo-liberal , market-driven, top-down process set down by politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, and autocrats. Those in ivory towers design schools where competing for marks, individual rankings, and accreditation are the focus as opposed to considering the collective good and forming of character. Fortunately, good teachers do grow to explore, navigate, and discover ways to overcome top-down and politically motivated mandates.
Schools limit the ability to think critically and discern what systemic issues exist that prevent real change from occurring. It is easier to allow unfounded, unwarranted conspiracy theories, instead of considering other potential causes that require this critical thinking and discernment. For example, global warming likely has more to do with increased illnesses and syndromes than vaccines. Global warming means we have to make committed and transform how we each live and living collectively. Conspiracy theories carry no such weight. Critical thinking gives way to accepting opinions largely based on opinions. Dialogue gives way to supposed free speech.
Anyone who undertakes a challenge of this magnitude faces inertia of immovable forces. Having said this, it reminds me that Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed [humans] can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The change we seek calls for the volition and will to press forward, express one’s self in a human and humane way, and make those changes in the face of opposition and resistance. What we need to avoid is acts of violence as acceptable to achieve our goals. This lowers and debases those who seek humane ways forward to the level of those who excuse the systemic violence and oppression that permeates us.
The word humane is essential to this re-imagining as much of the violence is associated with inequity and oppression. Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, my mother, hardly a Marxist or social democrat, used to tell us “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and we should be grateful for what we had, as many others had less. It is also essential to speak out and advocate for a world where it is unacceptable to put material wealth before human life and the life of the planet.
Poverty and oppression are forms of violence that exist as a products of the banality of evil and the system that promotes it. Gustavo Gutiérrez argued “the poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” Part of a different social order is educating teachers and, in turn, teachers educating themselves to create a humane, equitable social order.
This was a challenging post to write with many edits. It is different than other posts, however it is consistent with my recent presenting, writing, and publishing. When I received a PhD, I did not anticipate traveling this route, but one thing led to another and here I am. It is “the path less traveled” as Robert Frost suggests.
I leave with a Wendell Berry poem: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion – put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
And a Bob Dylan video, a song I forgot about until this morning. He reminds me conspiracy theories, and a need to address violence and its underlying causes have been with us for a long time.
I looked at this poem a month ago and decided not to post it. As I listened to music today, a song came on called Getting My Mojo Back and felt it was time to post it.
I wrote this during a retreat on Bainsbridge Island based on the work of Parker Palmer. It was at a time I was wrestling with staying in teaching due to the politics. I felt I was not giving it my all and lacked confidence in my teaching.
During the retreat, I reflected and had candid conversations with others and concluded it was time to control what I could control. Interestingly, it was in the conversations with others that I had to choose to be all in really came to the forefront. I went back to my classroom, spent another 5 years teaching, and giving it my all.
I think, when we lose confidence, we do not realize it. It sneaks up on us, rather than being a cataclysmic shift. Recovering confidence is similar. It is done in small steps and realizing we are not alone in the moment.
I had to realize anger was born out of fear and loss. Once I acknowledged this, I was at ease with letting go and moving forward.
It just happens–
Letting go;
Speaking without anger–
Embracing one’s sadness;
For what is lost.
Staring into an abyss–
Sitting with unformed questions;
Terrifying darkness–
Sensing incompleteness,
Feeling uncertainty.
Taking stock–
Looking inwards;
Accepting extended hands–
Discarding baggage
Moving towards a place of light.
Mojo gaining momentum–
Emerging at its pace;
Creating healing space–
Living one’s own truth;
Living in each moment’s question.
I attended a John Lee Hooker concert in 1972 or 1973. I grew up listening to jazz, gospel, folk, and blues with traditional country, early rock and roll. I took it for granted that I attended a John Lee concert until an American, who shared a love for the blues, told me he never did. African-American performers toured in Canada on a regular basis at a time they did not have that same ease of movement in their own country.
When I used Langston Hughes’ poetry in my teaching, I remembered he wrote from a different understanding of what America was. This was an outgrowth of an awareness of my privilege as a white Canadian male.
Gandhi stood for a non-violent way of life. In our lives, we find the extraordinary in the ordinary. When we look around us and inside ourselves, we can find God in many forms.
We discover and journey along a spiritual path through relationships with others, the world we live in, and ourselves. When we are mindful and attentive to what those mean, we find love in the world.
We have many people around the world who are imprisoned for their political and religious beliefs. Usually, I find when we put a face on those that are somehow different they become real and human. It is important to reach out and take the hand of those who suffer persecution at the hands of others regardless of the reasons. It is important to make people real and human.
When I did my undergraduate work, I was able to take one special education course. In the course, a point that was made several times and stuck with me was that we are more alike despite obvious differences than we are different. It is overwhelmingly so.
Do we need science to tell us the obvious? Or, can we see the humanity that lies beneath the differences we want to see?
The link is not to a poem, but rather to a series of quotes about hunger and the personal shame that comes with it. Politicians use hunger and other social justice issues as talking points and not seeing it as a matter of private and public shame in countries such as Canada and the US with their wealth.
On the left, we have politicians who would subscribe to giving people something. On the right, politicians would blame those who go hungry including the children. Giving people a hand up is important and walking with them is a part of the longer journey. Solving issues such as hunger is community work. It takes neighbours helping each other in those moments of need. Regardless of what we have, we share. Wouldn’t that be a powerful learning in our schools.
I will change my routine week and post less often. I need to work on my dissertation topic. I want to enroll in the proposal seminar in June. If not, it will be next fall. I need to begin to set the table for the next part of life’s journey.
Today, I commented in an online forum about the state of public education. Another commentator asked, “Is there no hope for real change in the schools of America?” I am not American and cannot answer that specific question from where I sit. Instead, I answered, “I do have hope and, more importantly, I have faith that we can make the necessary changes despite the obstacles. What do we want for our children and grandchildren? This seems like the question we need to ask. Does change offer a sustainable future, not for me, but for future generations in an unimaginable, complex, and chaotic world? This need for real, flexible, and sustainable change reminded me of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I found this beautiful poem by Brazilian poet Rubin Alves. He spoke of hope, but not hope as a soft and gentle aspect of life, but hope matched with suffering and resiliency which gives rise change and the hoped. I particularly enjoyed: “So let us plant dates/even though we who plant them will never eat them./We must live by the love of what we will never see.”
What is hope?
It is the pre-sentiment that imagination
is more real and reality is less real than it looks.
It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality
of facts that oppress and repress us
is not the last word.
It is the suspicion that reality is more complex
than the realists want us to believe.
That the frontiers of the possible are not
determined by the limits of the actual;
and in a miraculous and unexplained way
life is opening up creative events
which will open the way to freedom and resurrection –
but the two – suffering and hope
must live from each other.
Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair.
But, hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté
and drunkenness.
So let us plant dates
even though we who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
That is the secret discipline.
It is the refusal to let our creative act
be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience
and is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints,
the courage to die for the future they envisage.
They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hopes.
Yesterday, I read a haiku written by someone who appeared to not enjoy writing haiku. Despite this, the person wrote an interesting, amusing, and thought-provoking poem.
I am not sure this is verbatim but it goes somewhat like this:
Here are five syllables
And here I write seven more!
Are you happy now?
The person who presented this poem indicated that despite having written haiku they were unsure why teachers wanted them written. I think there are good reasons, but I could be wrong.
1. Poetry calls for the best possible word choices. Most poetry is simultaneously spare and spacious. The spareness is in the number of words; the fewer the better. The space allows the reader room for interpretation. What did the poet mean? What senses are invoked through the word choice.
Words chosen
Describe my moment.
No two experiences identical
A jungle of meaning revealed.
Each sense sameness different
Worlds bridged.
2. Students learn about figures of speech and their importance in expressing what we want to say. We can compare unlike things and make sense of a complex world.
3. I tell students who struggle with reading and writing poetry is an alternative way of expressing themselves. I use ee cummings as a model so they overcome their worries about grammar, spelling, and capitalization.
i dig ee cummings
no punctuation
no capitols
won’t worry about spellin either
no sweat
aint no problem
i write poetry
4. I enjoy poetry. I always have. I remember a poem, The Elevator, I memorized in Grade 4. I think it Walter de la Mare wrote it. My friend memorized a poem called Douglas Fir, because his name was Douglas. What my enjoyment means, is I bring enthusiasm to the process.
I believe we need to tell students what they are learning and the reasons they are important. But, then it might just be me.
I mentioned this book in Culture of Peace and Angry Young Poet. It was worth a read. I start with a haiku which emerged from the book.
Who stretches the teacher?
Journey into their essence
Reveal the learner.
I read Tuned In and Fired Up bySam Intrator for two reasons: as a teacher and as a graduate student preparing for the dissertation process. Sam contributes to the work of the Centre for Courage and Renewal which based on Parker Palmer’s writings and thinking.
The book is enjoyable, informative, and motivating. Teachers need to take time and pause, reflect upon, and recall the reasons they were called to teaching. There are alchemical moments of discovery we artfully use and define teacher, students, and subject. It is surreal and its magic can never be underestimated as the three blends into a single whole and respects individual integrity.
Part of the magic in this book is Mr. Quinn, the teacher. He took risks and students tuned in and fired up to his genuine presence. Parker Palmer, in The Courage to Teach, suggested “teaching is always done at the most dangerous intersection of personal and private life” (p. 18). Mr. Quinn’s teaching was learning and realized he could wrong. The magical aspect takes a teacher onto the boundary and, then, into uncharted waters. Good teachers take that risk and students sense it.
Towards the end Sam cited William Ayers: “Since teaching is always a search for better teaching, I am still in a fundamental sense becoming a teacher. I am stretching, searching, and reaching toward teaching” (p. 134). This is a virtuous cycle of learning-teaching-learning to infinity.
Sam leaves the reader with an incredible list of those things teachers can reflect upon and use according to their setting. Many are well-known: cultivate rapport with students, compete tenaciously for their attention, and spark their desire to create. Others were ones I felt were lesser known: embrace your role as a performer, tap into their senses, and acknowledge boring. That last one is challenging. At the adolescent level, treat them like they are becoming adults.
Questions: A concern expressed by Sam was a need for genuine collaboration. What practices do you use in your workplace or learning that foster collaboration between adults? If you teach, what ways do you include students?
Recommendation: I loved the book and let me leave you with just two ways. It was easy to read without losing meaning. Sam used simplexity and achieved his aims. Second, he left a thorough recipe without the quantities. I need to figure those out with students and subject.
Intrator, S. M. (2003). Tune in and fired up: How teaching can inspire real learning in the classroom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Each year, I spend time on poetry with the students. Two years ago, a student asked if I wrote poetry in junior high school and I was able to say, “Yes!”. He asked me to share with them. I found them in a small lock box I keep at home and shared several with the class.
I mentioned in Culture of Peace Sam Intrator. He suggested teachers expose adolescent students complex, existential questions of life as they move through those formative years. I wrote my poems in about 1969. It was a time when identity was increasingly rooted in the global nature of the world, not just immediate community and family. War, even in Canada, entered our homes via television. I found voice in poetry and expressed an abhorrence to institutional and government approved murder. What set me apart from my peers, was I took no sides. Each was equally wrong in my mind. Mr. McKenzie, an innovative English teacher, encouraged that in us-find our voices.
I shared the following poem with my students. I concede it is not exactly the original, as it was pretty angry. I hope the original message is still there. Students asked for more poems and I complied. These past few months I rediscovered my poet’s voice. It is a gentler voice, I hope.
Teacher as Transformer 