This phrase casually meandered out of my English Professor's tangent last Tuesday. I thought it was genius, so I copied it in the margin of my English packet and outlined it with one of those spiky, inside-out cloud circles.
I have to apologize. I just spent a couple hours finishing the final draft of a 13-line imagistic poem after the manner of Brewster Ghiselen's "Rattlesnake", so I think I'm still in poetry mode. I'm spending way too much time thinking about words; I've used a thesaurus like 5 times already for this post and I'm only in the seventh line. I just need a little free-write here for a minute. Please excuse me.
Purple children dancing in the hail and harvesting hay for the horses who eat only grass like the cows who are burgers for birthday children to chomp before cake and ice-cream from the freezer where things gather ice like flowers in Rapunzel's hair.
Okay. I think I've thrown out most of the extra scraps of poetry in my system. That feels a little nicer.
So anyway, liking or disliking. As I've let this roll around in my mind these past few days, I've determined that a student's liking or disliking could apply to the material, the assignments, or the teacher, all of which are often placed at the top of the line between drooling and learning. This statement encourages students to bring focus away from dislike toward some aspect of education and back toward the learning itself. No matter what a student may not like on their educational journey, something still can and should be learned from it. So many opportunities could be lost, not to mention dollars and time, if you let a five-page paper or a lecturing teacher get in the way of your education.
Now back to the poetic metaphors which are, despite my efforts, still orbiting the circumference of my skull. College/Highschool/Education-in-general isn't a steaming, three-course meal laid out on the table with three forks, a knife, two spoons, and a forest green, cloth napkin, but a recipe book full of millions of foods and desserts from which you have the freedom to cook.
And as Ratatouille's Gusteau says, "Anyone can cook."
Bon appetite!
Ooh, I like this a lot! Definitely something I've been thinking about lately. Thinking like that is rather selfish, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteGreat thoughts! I love this idea of separating likes and dislikes from learning. The learning experience in college, for example, includes a lot of things that don't have much to do with the actual learning process. Like the distance one has to walk between classes, or the smell of one's textbook. Or the price of bagels in the cafeteria, or the stale-ness of said bagels.
ReplyDeleteIn my own experience, going to classes and listening to lectures and completing assignments was enjoyable for many reasons. There were also some things I didn't like about college, but the overall learning experience that I had was stellar, and worth my while.
Also, I picture dinner napkins as a forest green color, too! What??
I love this too! I think that maybe part of our problem is that education IS this recipe book or infinite buffet of options for learning, and for the past century we as a society have been force-feeding people instead of allowing them to choose to come to the buffet. I love Golden Corral, but if I was forced to eat there, it wouldn't matter how "free" it was, I would get sick of it. Compulsory education has soured and clouded our vision for the incredible possibilities of actual learning.
ReplyDeleteI hear so many students say, "I just don't like that kind of book" or "I hate to write" and then use that as an excuse to give up completely on the potential opportunities I am giving them for learning.
I currently have the pleasure of studying ancient civilizations by reading the actual texts. Is this what I would choose to read for fun? No, but no matter how much I laugh at Robert Farrell Smith's books, I cannot learn as deeply or profoundly from them as I can from Epic of Gilgamesh (at least that's what I'm hoping).
Rousseau's theory of child-rearing included having them wear scanty clothing and sleep on the hard ground so that they would be tough and able to approach most of life without complaining. Maybe he wasn't as crazy as my Educational Philosophy class thought after all.
Like we used to always say, "Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education."
p.s. This post feels a little disjointed and as an English teacher, I worry it needs to be edited into 5 paragraphs with a thesis statement before I hit "Publish" below. But I really wanted to join the conversation. :)