Untitled Document<\/title> \n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=iso-8859-1\"> \n<\/meta><\/head><\/p>\n<body><\/p>\nOur book club read Avatars of the Word<\/em> by James O’Donnell, a classicist\/techie\/vice-provost, \n who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. <\/p>\nNear the end of Avatars<\/em>, O’Donnell made some points about the future of \n higher education. Although I’ve found myself nodding in agreement through much \n of the book, I took a little issue with some of his ideas about how we should \n reform our teaching-learning practices. In particular, he mentions the need \n for learning experiences in colleges to be relevant to or modeled on the kind \n of experiences students will have as adults in the world: "the traditional \n classroom is among other things a place for rehearsing behaviors of use in later \n life" (185). <\/p>\n\n  \n I do agree with this notion, but my encounter of it here has led me to a somewhat \n tendentious quarrel with it, along these lines: Might we, through \n such thinking, be overly fitting the purposes of college to the (superficial) \n purposes of society? Might not one argue that, rather than provide \n direct preparation, or “training,” for adult life, college should instead provide a \n countering<\/em> or corrective<\/em> influence to adult life?\n<\/p>\nI’m thinking of an individual who has, in fact, made such an argument. That \n person (no surprise here to those who know me) is Kenneth Burke, who in his \n 1955 essay, "Linguistic Approach to Problems in Education," describes \n the purpose of education as a kind of "preparatory withdrawal" from<\/em> \n life in order to equip us for<\/em> life. Burke’s notion stands as a kind \n of counter-statement to O’Donnell’s view: Education should function, Burke implies, \n as a thing unlike<\/em> life (thus the withdrawal) that helps gird you for \n the struggles of life (thus the "preparation"). We go to college to \n experience something different<\/em> than the kinds of things and ideas we \n will experience as adults. In this view, college provides not only a "broader \n context" to adult experiences but also functions as an antidote<\/em> to them–a \n "counter-statement" to the assertions, or pressures of life. College \n might equip us for life by stimulating our imaginations to think in grooves \n very different from those that are etched by the pragmatic purposes of career \n and social involvement. This value of college, Burke suggests, might be connected \n with experiences of mortification, humility, appreciation–I think he even calls \n it the "fear of God," though in a very secular sense. So what of it? \n What do we think of this notion of college as a place set aside to scare us, \n make us tentative, slow us down in our assertiveness?\n<\/p>\nMore than anything, Burke seems to be promoting a cult of "interfence," \n as a type of protection against the efficiency of easy certainties. This is \n an ironic approach to education–education as a kind of systematic complication \n of our knowledge rather than mere confirmation, expansion, or application of \n it. There is another Burkean context that come to mind–his essay on Thomas \n Mann and Andre Gide in Counter-Statement<\/em>. There Burke is talking about \n the writer’s "art," but the points apply readily to concepts of "education."\n<\/p>\nBurke’s celebration of the perverse conscientiousness of Mann’s heroes and \n the decadent irony of Gide’s anti-heroes points to a curricular ideal in a would-be \n school of "preparatory withdrawal." Gide’s approach to irony, for \n instance, helps us to break the spell of the "adult world" and its \n ready-made reality. Burke quotes Gide, whose autobiography speculates on the \n creation of "a whole civilization gratuitously different from our own" \n (103): <\/p>\n<blockquote>\nI thought of writing the imaginary history of a people, \n a nation, with wars, revolutions, changes of administration, typical happenings…. \n I wanted to invent heroes, sovereigns, statesmen, artists, an artistic tradition, \n an apocryphal literature, explaining and criticizing movements, recounting \n the evolution of forms, quoting fragments of masterpieces…. And all to what \n purpose? To prove that the history of man could have been different—our \n habits, morals, customs, tastes, judgments, standards of beauty could have \n all been different—and yet the humanity of mankind would remain the \n same. (103)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nFrom Mann’s conscientious attitude of "containment," we get a "sympathy \n with the abyss," an orientation quite inefficient for "rehearsing \n behaviors of use in later life." Or to put it more positively, what of \n the notion of college as a type of a "magic mountain" experience? \n One goes to the magic mountain to experience routines and purposes of a very \n different pace, style, and quality than those afforded by the hustle-bustle, \n work-a-day world.\n<\/p>\nCollege as a "magic mountain" may be a traditional idea, and one \n might even cite conventional notions of higher education’s role to promote independent, \n critical thinking. But Burke’s notions of "preparatory withdrawal," \n inefficiency, and irony imply a goal of discomfort<\/em> for education more \n than anything else. In summing up his analysis of Mann and Gide, Burke asks \n a question that for me functions as a first principle for an educational program: \n "Irony, novelty, experimentalism, vacillation, the cult of conflict—are \n not these men trying to make us at home in indecision, are they not trying to \n humanize the state of doubt?"\n<\/p>\nAnyway, what of this notion of college as a "magic mountain"–a place \n to which we withdraw, so that we might gain the (often ironic<\/em>) resources \n to encounter (or simply counter<\/em>) the shaping forces of the world? O’Donnell’s \n statement (that I have pulled out of context for my own purposes) made me think \n of all this–most of all, the quote below from the conclusion of the Thomas \n Mann and Andre Gide chapter. Just change the word "art" with "education":<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n …society might well be benefited by the corrective \n of a disintegrating art [EDUCATION], which converts each simplicity into a \n complexity, which ruins the possibility of ready hierarchies, which concerns \n itself with the problematical, the experimental, and thus by implication works \n corrosively upon those expansionistic certainties preparing the way for our \n social cataclysms. An art [EDUCATION] may be of value purely through preventing \n a society from becoming too assertively, too hopelessly, itself. (105)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body> \n<\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untitled Document Our book club read Avatars of the Word by James O’Donnell, a classicist\/techie\/vice-provost, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Near the end of Avatars, O’Donnell made some points about the future of higher education. Although I’ve found myself nodding in agreement through much of the book, I took a little issue with … <a href=\"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/40\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading Avatars of the Word<\/em> and Disintegrating Educations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reform-in-education","category-technology-talk","category-thoughts-on-teaching-and-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":40,"date":"2005-03-31T13:02:15","date_gmt":"2005-03-31T18:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/english.sxu.edu\/bonadonna\/blog1\/?p=40"},"modified":"2005-03-31T13:02:15","modified_gmt":"2005-03-31T18:02:15","slug":"avatars-of-the-word-and-disintegrating-educations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/40","title":{"rendered":"Avatars of the Word<\/em> and Disintegrating Educations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n
\nUntitled Document<\/title> \n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=iso-8859-1\"> \n<\/meta><\/head><\/p>\n<body><\/p>\nOur book club read Avatars of the Word<\/em> by James O’Donnell, a classicist\/techie\/vice-provost, \n who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. <\/p>\nNear the end of Avatars<\/em>, O’Donnell made some points about the future of \n higher education. Although I’ve found myself nodding in agreement through much \n of the book, I took a little issue with some of his ideas about how we should \n reform our teaching-learning practices. In particular, he mentions the need \n for learning experiences in colleges to be relevant to or modeled on the kind \n of experiences students will have as adults in the world: "the traditional \n classroom is among other things a place for rehearsing behaviors of use in later \n life" (185). <\/p>\n\n  \n I do agree with this notion, but my encounter of it here has led me to a somewhat \n tendentious quarrel with it, along these lines: Might we, through \n such thinking, be overly fitting the purposes of college to the (superficial) \n purposes of society? Might not one argue that, rather than provide \n direct preparation, or “training,” for adult life, college should instead provide a \n countering<\/em> or corrective<\/em> influence to adult life?\n<\/p>\nI’m thinking of an individual who has, in fact, made such an argument. That \n person (no surprise here to those who know me) is Kenneth Burke, who in his \n 1955 essay, "Linguistic Approach to Problems in Education," describes \n the purpose of education as a kind of "preparatory withdrawal" from<\/em> \n life in order to equip us for<\/em> life. Burke’s notion stands as a kind \n of counter-statement to O’Donnell’s view: Education should function, Burke implies, \n as a thing unlike<\/em> life (thus the withdrawal) that helps gird you for \n the struggles of life (thus the "preparation"). We go to college to \n experience something different<\/em> than the kinds of things and ideas we \n will experience as adults. In this view, college provides not only a "broader \n context" to adult experiences but also functions as an antidote<\/em> to them–a \n "counter-statement" to the assertions, or pressures of life. College \n might equip us for life by stimulating our imaginations to think in grooves \n very different from those that are etched by the pragmatic purposes of career \n and social involvement. This value of college, Burke suggests, might be connected \n with experiences of mortification, humility, appreciation–I think he even calls \n it the "fear of God," though in a very secular sense. So what of it? \n What do we think of this notion of college as a place set aside to scare us, \n make us tentative, slow us down in our assertiveness?\n<\/p>\nMore than anything, Burke seems to be promoting a cult of "interfence," \n as a type of protection against the efficiency of easy certainties. This is \n an ironic approach to education–education as a kind of systematic complication \n of our knowledge rather than mere confirmation, expansion, or application of \n it. There is another Burkean context that come to mind–his essay on Thomas \n Mann and Andre Gide in Counter-Statement<\/em>. There Burke is talking about \n the writer’s "art," but the points apply readily to concepts of "education."\n<\/p>\nBurke’s celebration of the perverse conscientiousness of Mann’s heroes and \n the decadent irony of Gide’s anti-heroes points to a curricular ideal in a would-be \n school of "preparatory withdrawal." Gide’s approach to irony, for \n instance, helps us to break the spell of the "adult world" and its \n ready-made reality. Burke quotes Gide, whose autobiography speculates on the \n creation of "a whole civilization gratuitously different from our own" \n (103): <\/p>\n<blockquote>\nI thought of writing the imaginary history of a people, \n a nation, with wars, revolutions, changes of administration, typical happenings…. \n I wanted to invent heroes, sovereigns, statesmen, artists, an artistic tradition, \n an apocryphal literature, explaining and criticizing movements, recounting \n the evolution of forms, quoting fragments of masterpieces…. And all to what \n purpose? To prove that the history of man could have been different—our \n habits, morals, customs, tastes, judgments, standards of beauty could have \n all been different—and yet the humanity of mankind would remain the \n same. (103)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nFrom Mann’s conscientious attitude of "containment," we get a "sympathy \n with the abyss," an orientation quite inefficient for "rehearsing \n behaviors of use in later life." Or to put it more positively, what of \n the notion of college as a type of a "magic mountain" experience? \n One goes to the magic mountain to experience routines and purposes of a very \n different pace, style, and quality than those afforded by the hustle-bustle, \n work-a-day world.\n<\/p>\nCollege as a "magic mountain" may be a traditional idea, and one \n might even cite conventional notions of higher education’s role to promote independent, \n critical thinking. But Burke’s notions of "preparatory withdrawal," \n inefficiency, and irony imply a goal of discomfort<\/em> for education more \n than anything else. In summing up his analysis of Mann and Gide, Burke asks \n a question that for me functions as a first principle for an educational program: \n "Irony, novelty, experimentalism, vacillation, the cult of conflict—are \n not these men trying to make us at home in indecision, are they not trying to \n humanize the state of doubt?"\n<\/p>\nAnyway, what of this notion of college as a "magic mountain"–a place \n to which we withdraw, so that we might gain the (often ironic<\/em>) resources \n to encounter (or simply counter<\/em>) the shaping forces of the world? O’Donnell’s \n statement (that I have pulled out of context for my own purposes) made me think \n of all this–most of all, the quote below from the conclusion of the Thomas \n Mann and Andre Gide chapter. Just change the word "art" with "education":<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n …society might well be benefited by the corrective \n of a disintegrating art [EDUCATION], which converts each simplicity into a \n complexity, which ruins the possibility of ready hierarchies, which concerns \n itself with the problematical, the experimental, and thus by implication works \n corrosively upon those expansionistic certainties preparing the way for our \n social cataclysms. An art [EDUCATION] may be of value purely through preventing \n a society from becoming too assertively, too hopelessly, itself. (105)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/body> \n<\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untitled Document Our book club read Avatars of the Word by James O’Donnell, a classicist\/techie\/vice-provost, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Near the end of Avatars, O’Donnell made some points about the future of higher education. Although I’ve found myself nodding in agreement through much of the book, I took a little issue with … <a href=\"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/40\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading Avatars of the Word<\/em> and Disintegrating Educations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reform-in-education","category-technology-talk","category-thoughts-on-teaching-and-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}