PrESS Network paper for the Rouge Forum
We can begin constructing our paper for the Rouge Forum here.
posted by adam at 1:22 PM
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Links
- All Native Alliance--Teaching Voices
- Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed
- Harvard Family Research Project
- Rouge Forum
- Tolerance.org
- Rethinking Schools
- American Educational Studies Association (AESA)
- Teaching Economics as if People Mattered (UFE)
- The ONE Campaign
Previous Posts
- All Native Alliance--Teaching Voices "Ask an India...
- Rules for Radicals: Prologue and Chapter 1
- A winter reflection redux: Seeking a (truer) "coll...
- Educational Apartheid
- My brother is love
- Plans for the future
- revisiting the mission
- the revolution
- A search for the superintendent
- An Open Letter to Citizens
2 Comments:
Dr. Milton Brown wrapped up our 2005 paper/presentation of The PrESS Network and was asked to look forward in his conclusion. Now,over two years later, we are revisiting milton's statements as a jumping off place for our upcoming presentation and are asking ourselves:
1.) How much progress have we made?
2.) Where do we go from here?
Please join us in this conversation.
Milton Brown
AESA Symposium Paper 2005-
It is my task to take us beyond where we have come. I have been asked to address the question “What’s Next?” Perhaps the daunting task of giving vision to this struggle beyond that to which we have been exposed so far has been given to me because Adam revels in his arrogantly youthful belief that I am older than all others combined—and that at least suggests that I should possess some kind of advanced perspective or wisdom. Yet, I am as awed by and grateful to this group of conscious activist educators as I assume you to be. If my immediate challenge is to navigate us more consciously toward that distant shore, then I do so with reluctance and humility. For I am in the company of greatness—the greatness of committed struggle against a duality of tyranny: the hegemonic oppression by a minority and the dispiriting indolence of the majority; a struggle which reflects the courage to be visible and to have a voice by those Cornel West refers to admiringly as “unadvertised servants.”
That this journey began in the “safe harbor” of a classroom is appropriately prophetic. It is emblematic of what Adam suggested when he spoke of “Moving from the theoretical to the more practical … to engage with the wider community on transformative projects ultimately aimed at facilitating system-wide change. To the unindoctrinated, this must seem to be more than humanly possible. To those who have begun to experience themselves in struggle, it is the epitome of hope and possibility. That is, to know that “Real courage is when you know you’re licked from the beginning, but you begin anyway.” (To Kill A Mockingbird)
A world whose hopefulness lies in its unfinishedness, its unrealized possibilities, and its openness to improvisation and participation is a world in which conscious activist educators must have the courage to take up the struggle. It is here where Solnit proclaims that, "if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded.” If your activism is already democratic, peaceful, and as such, Gandhi-like “be the change you hope to see in the world” activism, then, it is not only a toolbox to change things, but a place and a process in which to take up residence--a place in which process becomes product. In A Theology of Black Liberation, James Cone suggests a similar notion of locating the ultimate place of spiritual teachings and critical thought on the human condition and social justice within the body-politic of social experience. So, our real work is “fixing” us. We are, after all, the word and the world.
Jon spoke of this group as an “empowering partnership” seeking systemic change through “respect for social difference, humanistic teaching, service to others, transformative dialog, and an ever-evolving journey toward connectedness.” He affirms the role of progressive language which reveals the “spin” that “keeps us from a true understanding of the well-being and social welfare of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors.” Molefi Kete Asante wrote in his groundbreaking book, Afrocentricity, that “Language is never neutral and learning is never free.” Asante suggests that language is active and that the journey has costs, but that it also has the potential to transgress and transform. “Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.” (Feire, 1970) The language of the PrESS Network, then, must act on us and the world if it is to be more than rhetorical noise.
Drew makes conscious language actionable when he tells us that “Our stories and our conversation are the medium for transformation and liberation for ourselves and for the children we intend to help in our work. We can’t rely on the system that is failing our children to help us discover solutions as teachers.” This is the idea that you can’t change the system using the same language that created it. The language of body, mind, and spirit within the PrESS Network must transcend our respective realities if we are to “be” Jon’s “empowering partnership” and to “do” the work of Freire, hooks, Carlson, and Solnit of educating toward liberation.
To whom must we speak these true words if we are to transform the world? I would argue that it is to each other, to our students, to our students’ parents, to our colleagues at school both teachers and administrators, to the public, to others who engage the struggle in different political arenas and geographical regions, to all who will listen and to all with whom we come in contact. We must conceptualize ourselves beyond the narrow boundaries of education as traditionally defined. We must conceptualize education as a universal commons to which all are entitled. Our lesson plans in the classroom must be transportable to the world. That is, each one must be more than a engagement of a discrete body of knowledge. Each must have at its core a revolutionary idealism, a transgressive practice, and a transformational objective. Its ultimate purpose must be to place each student at the center of her/his own communal circle.
Rachel brings our “empowering partnership” directly into the classroom when she quotes hooks "There is not much passionate teaching or learning taking place in higher education today. Even when students are desperately yearning to be touched by knowledge…” [hooks] lobbies [here] for a place in the classroom that allows students to be active participants in the teaching and learning process, venerating Thich Nhat Hanh’s promotion of knowledge as a product of mutual labor. All are stakeholders. All have a voice.
From our classroom to their classrooms is a progressive process of transformation that seeks “to examine the very fabric of our society” (Freire, ) and a process of transgression of a systemic status quo of human devolvement and cultural stagnation. These are the processes in and through which Solnit’s “hope in the dark” inexorably moves us away from Carlson’s “safe harbors” and toward the light. For Angela, our storytelling becomes that light. She reveals to us through Turner that “True storytelling is the opening, the breath, the conectedness of the soul, its link with others. The presence of the soul is health, its loss is disease and death. The human being with its soul can reach another, and this is part of the connectedness that runs through the universe.” (Turner, 2003) Connectedness beyond our borders and time illuminates an ancient proverb that said the same thing only differently. “If you have a disease, do not try to cure. Find your center and you will be healed.”
In traditional China, Health was more than the absence of illness. It was a spiritual state of wellness, a wholeness of being. It necessitated an epistemology of “being healthy” that honored and valued their particular worldview. The word and the world sought manifestation in transformative harmony between mind and body. Marshall Arts as healing practices located competition within the inddividual’s soul as that place of guidance toward centeredness or health. Perfecting the process of achieving harmony of mind and body, that which represented health, was winning. The “opponent” acted as partner, each sharing a mutual quest to be one with themselves and the universe, each challenging the other to be better. It is the same struggle the PrESS Network has chosen to undertake only we do so against the cultural grain, against a pervasive and pernicious socialization that steers us away from transcendant love and caring.
Angela argues that “Through story-telling we have determined that we are not, in fact, stressed by these factors. In reality we are simply disgusted, fed-up and downright angry at the hegemonic system that perpetuates excessive workload (often irrelevant of children’s best interests) and corners students and parents into abusive behavior in order for their voices to be heard. We do not need a “mental health day” or a vacation. We need a revolution. Our stories are not a coping strategy to help us deal with classroom stress. Coping strategies do not lead to change. We choose storytelling to light pathways to reform an education system in crisis.”
We are reminded in Angela’s exhortation that we can be “in the struggle” and not “of the struggle” unless we recognize that we are always “in the system” and therefore subject to its conditioning. Each place we discover ourselves must be that place from which we struggle to depart. Although there is no “there,” we must continue to remake the world as if it is possible to ultimately do so. The true value of hope lies in the fromative process of hoping. One can hope for social justice without ever believing that it is possible to achieve. And, one can believe in social justice without even a modicum of hope.
Our personal revolutions are the universe’s revolutions, since we are the universe in microcosm. If each of us makes up the whole, then without one of us the world can never be remade rightly. So, perhaps we go next to the “Global South” and seek oneness with our extended family. We travel to the “Global South” metaphorically through alliance with those who impelled the Group of 21 led by Brazil to shut down the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun; those who halted the negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Miami; those who organized and participated in the “largest peace demonstration in human history” on February 15, 2003, for which millions of voices world-wide gathered to protest the impending, pre-emptive war with Iraq. Or next maybe we stay in the “Global North” and confront corporate globalization that touches and largely shapes schooling and education. The new world order of expanded corporate restructuring of social, economic and political engagement has reverberating implications for classrooms focused on intellectual development, service orientation, ecological sustainability and democratic practice. In the globalists’ attempt to essentialize or naturalize corporate globalization—the cult of unfettered international capitalism and privatization of goods and services—they attempt to render resistance unnatural, irresponsible, and ultimately ineffective. To those of us who teach, or otherwise provide service in the interest of greater consciousness, community, and courage, corporate globalization represents a reconceptualization and a restructuring of traditional systemic patterns of hegemonic domination. As such, corporate globalization represents the new pedagogical challenge before us if we are to envision a more democratic world and a world’s people free to exercise their will in ways that empower them and reserves the planet for all to occupy and enjoy.
Or should we join with those who reunited in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago to reaffirm their commitment to Black male redemptive empowerment; or with “Project Women” and other strategic designs to enable and enoble womyn in struggle; or the Children’s Defense Fund that seeks social, economic, and human rights justice for the most deserving of us. The choices confronting us both boggles the mind and serves as a testament to the dire social and spiritual condition in which we find the world.
At another time and place, Gina spoke the words we all know so well about the personal and collaborative struggle before us when she said “I often feel it would be so much easier if I remained ignorant to all the injustice that exists, but my heart will not let me ignore it.” Well, that’s why they call it struggle. We struggle with and against ourselves, with and against the “system,” with and against a universal cosmology that is intuitively knowing and consciously unknowable. Bob’s confessional retort to Gina sums things up best, “It takes a lot of energy to teach! Yes, it is tiring. However, I have had no regrets (well... briefly) and find that the opportunities for a progressive teacher are unlimited.” But Beth’s gentle rejoinder that “just as the water sculpts stone… We can never walk away” brings us back to reality.
If we have no choice but to struggle, then what’s next?! What do we do with all of this? Where do we go next in the PrESS Network? It appears to me that what must come next is a collective recognition that we must once again leave our “safe harbor.” This second presentation at the AESA Annual Conference is but another PrESS Network flag temporarily planted in the ground to announce this place where we find ourselves. We know that we are not “there”, because the darkness that surrounds us is so full of hope. We can continue to expand our Network and see that as hope fulfilled or we can seek to connect ourselves with other networks whose focus is not specifically education, but generally about social justice.
Whatever we do must come from the oneness in us. So, perhaps what is best for us to do next is to pause and reflect. What might be best is to read the word in our own world.
Milton's words--his encapsulation of what other's said and his impassioned call to move forward--do provide a nice jumping off point, considering what we have done (or not done) over the last couple of years. I think we can speak to the real struggle of turning our beautiful rhetoric into some more democratic, just, and beautiful reality. I believe that we can speak to our individual work, and how it has probably driven us toward these aims, but we could simultaneously talk about how difficult it is to coordinate these efforts across our schools, across our disciplines, across our lives--that we have served better, but perhaps changed little (structurally).
That said, I think we have made significant inroads into the area of curriculum. Sonya, Rachel, and Kathy have had wonderful success talking about critical literacy across the state. Drew has been able to coordinate many of us in order to launch his outdoor classroom. These strike me as apt moments of creation for which a genesis has begun. What will we do with these to extend the moments?
As well, we have dropped into some more reading, reading that should truly spur us into action, but we know this has drawbacks. It may, for instance, cut down on attendance if people don't read. But if we don't engage the 'words', how will we more critically engage our 'world'?
There aren't, of course, quick or easy answers. This is the struggle. We're making steps, do we have the courage to continue off this path of least resistance away from our safe harbors? Are we convicted enough to do something different? Are we convinced that our work matters? Do we believe that we must coordinate our efforts (particularly with those whom we wish to be of service) to commit social change?
While I can appreciate some notion of what we are doing is less like work and more like a spiritual calling, I would hesitate to connote it as a 'ministry'. I think there may be too much baggage tied up with that term that makes it seem more evangelistic than democratic, more dogmatic than discursive and dialogical. Like many of you I live my work. I am my work. (And, i have been known to preach a bit, quiet Milton) Of course, I would rather our rhetoric tend more toward the Marxist than the religious. I would be interested in what others think, though.
Post a Comment
<< Home