Freire, Fromm, and other education beginnings Part 1

I began my teaching career with this vague idea that I wanted to explain things to people. I enjoyed saying things in different ways so that they could understand them. I started to tutor. To me, this was a fascinating experience. Here were people who had failed College Algebra seven times -- people who had little faith in themselves or their ability to comprehend the material. In ways, I think, god prepared me for this.

I once had a friend...a very close friend...who had no faith in herself. If she scored less than a 95 on an assignment, she was convinced it was because of her idiocy. I cannot count the number of times I had heard "it's because I'm stupid".

I violently disagreed with this, but what can you say "You're not!". There is only so many times you can say that with affect. They start to distrust your honesty, especially if you say it over and over again. They may still care for you, but you are cut out of their circle because you are only crippling them with your positivity. So I thought and thought and thought. My head wanted to explode just by the sheer virtue of intensity. I needed an answer.

And one day, while I was working at drug emporium that answer hit me...literally. I was helping a woman with cerebral palsy find something and I tripped and fell upon her (apologizing profusely) and she said to me "Thanks. It's not often people take enough notice of me to apologize for things like that.". Damn near broke my heart. But it gave me an epiphany...one which I treasure to this day.

Truly stupid people do not have the ability to appelate themselves so. You can't call yourself stupid for then the true stupidity has passed. People who are too prideful to admit their mistakes or too fearful to confront them dare not give them audible life. Even the mentally retarded are incapable of comprehending the light of their own particular disability. This was my way in...this was a beginning. I had people come to me who believed that God had made them wrong! I was shocked to learn such a thing. We all learn things at different speeds. It is folly for you to punish yourself for learning something slower.

I realized how horrible it could feel to exist in such a state, so I went back to my mentor and asked him what I could do to become a better teacher. He gave me books and proposed a covenant: We would each read a book a week the entire summer and meet each friday to have lunch and discuss what we had read -- thus keeping both ourselves on track and having fruitful dialogue at the same time.

I started with Vygotsky. Vygotsky is the King of educational psychologists. He wrote in the thirties died of tubercolosis in his twenties and was a genius. It was the hardest book I ever read. I learned concepts such as the ontological genetic development of higher thinking-order caused by the proper oscillation between the internalization of inner speech and proper social conduct. It's hard to penetrate, oh, but when you do, my friends, is it's forbidden fruit quite sweet. Vygotsky, imo, wrote the best ending of any single book in history. So, you slog your way through 243 pages of hardcore linguistic, psychological terminology getting at some of the most abstract ideas (religion aside) I have ever come across and what does Vygotsky do?

He asks: So, what does all this bullshit mean in relationship to being happy and finding peace? He tosses out some Anna Karenina (sorry if I mispelled that) and goes to her death scene where her word's meaning transcends language. Vygotsky states that all the theory and practice is worthless if you can't tell your dying wife you love her. First time I ever cried reading a theoretical book (my synopsis is about 1 thousandth of its true awesomeness).

So, what did I learn from old Lev Vygotsky? ZPD. Wah? The Zone of Proximal Development. It's basically learning a song in your car: at first you just listen, next you start humming with the song, and finally you can bust out into song and dance on your own. That's modern educational psychology write there -- just dress it with all kinds of semantic philandery and you gots educational theory. They call it scaffolding: when you work with a student they can do more than when they work by themselves, but gradually they reach that level on their own. Vygotsky was great at devising experiments to get at the inside of concepts; to understand how understanding is made and how to engage that understanding into the essence of language. He showed me how deeply you can connect language to everyday life and existence in general; how it touches the very lifeblood of destiny's vitals -- if we allow it to.

Slowly, my heart began to wonder what was possible with this new knowledge. Could an education exist that was not created of multiple choice questions and meaningless assignments that only talk about theories? Could I create a learning environment that perhaps, just perhaps, one day might evolve beyond grades? I wanted my students to learn the nobility of a reasoned and thoughtful life. I wanted them to understand that they need look no further than their own hearts to give each and every action they possess meaning. Ah, meaning, now that is a precious lesson.

to be continued...

peace be with you,

Edward Smith