b5media is a new blog network that recently launched. One blog in the bunch that I’m interested in – Literally Blogging – a pleasant alternative to the edublogs that I mostly read. I enjoy the variety of topics that Jacob Murphy and Erin Harvey, the editors are bringing forward.
A post called The Inefficacy of Language caught my attention today. The post was about the locus of meaning in texts, and whether meaning is in the words or in the mind of the reader. Jacob Murphy’s little demonstration of the variability of possible interpretations of a simple statement demonstrated the problems we have in making assumptions about whether, or how, our students are comprehending anything. I wonder if the education corollary to the literary assertion “the Author is dead” might read, “the Teacher is dead?”
How is meaning made in our classrooms? The answer to this question is fundamental to every instructional decision a teacher makes. When I was a kid my job in school was to learn or do whatever my teacher told me. No questions. But times have changed. We’ve entered an era in which there is a necessary process of negotiation for constructing meaning. Teaching critical thinking and fostering the prerequisite intellectual autonomy are promoted as best practices. That happens through dialog, not assessment.
This trend runs completely counter to the methods of No Child Left Behind in which meaning is narrowly defined and tested by experts who are distant and faceless. This is probably the most confusing and disheartening problem facing educators in the modern era. Our professional practice has been simultaneously colonized by researchers and politicians with ideological axes to grind, and whose voices are competing and sometimes blending, trying to dominate the discourse that will define our role in the process. My awareness of this noise is acute. Because of the way power is distributed in all of this, we don’t get to acutally say anything that people outside of the professional community are going to listen to. And if we have opinions that diverge from the dominant discourse, we can either function as subversives or burn out and leave.
The I Ching has a hexagram, Treading that addresses this condition:
THE JUDGMENT
TREADING. Treading upon the tail of the tiger.
It does not bite the man. Success.The situation is really difficult…In terms of a human situation, one is handling wild, intractable people. In such a case one’s purpose will be achieved if one behaves with decorum. Pleasant manners succeed even with irritable people.
I like the Judgment.
2 Comments
Thanks for checking out my material. The post was actually titled the Inefficacy of Language, denoting that language cannot actually communicate abstracts.
You reffered to the “death of the Teacher”. Oh dear I hope there is still hope for instruction and transferal of wisdom and instruction. But I agree with your point, that it is the biggest problem facing teachers today.
The very meaning of words and ideas have been brought into question. As Yeats said, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
So how do you convey an idea if there is no certainty of common ground?
Holistically I suppose. Bounce it around. Debate, argue, fight, disagree, and agree. And hopefully come out on the other side with an increased capacity for critical thinking. I think that is the key.
We have been trained in facts and figures when what we need is the skill to think critically about those figures.
I am not a teacher (yet) so I haven’t faced today’s post-post-modern mind and tried to reach into it. Anyone out there been through that?
Jacob, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’ve corrected my spelling for title of your post. My lament is not so much about communication difficulties because I find that part of the job to be the most engaging and thought-provoking. By “death of the Teacher” I mean that our construct of a teacher – what a teacher is and does – has to change.
You point out that the meaning of words has been brought into question. Yes! I wish that policy makers could understand that.
The search for common ground is the starting point for meaningful dialog. Ernst von Glasersfeld developed an epistemology he calls Radical Constructivism in which he asserts that meaning construction is more a matter of viability than any ‘correct’ interpretation of reality. From this point of view, agreement is attained when our meanings seem compatible, as opposed to everyday standards of truth that imply sameness of interpretation. From his book, Radical Constructivism (p. 182):
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