thoughts from art and lies

We had a very interesting talk in class on Wednesday regarding the concept of self. Who are we, really? What defines us? This reminded me a lot of talks we would have in one of my edl courses. It seems like most people now are defined by societal expectations. In fact, I believe we all judge people before we ever really get to know them just based on our expectations of what we think they should be. I think that this concept of cultural expectations is very much related to the concept of "success" in our modern world. Another big topic in this edl class was the questioning and eventual dismissal of the "bootstrap" theory - that with hard work and perseverance, anyone can be successful in what ever they want to do. This is a whole separate conversation...that some of us are born with luxuries and resources that others are not, and because of this, it is nearly impossible for some to succeed in the traditional sense. I went to a talk on Thursday by Peter Block, who discussed extensively the concept of self. Who are we really? What defines us? Since the talk was mainly for people involved with education, he suggested we work as transformative leaders to change the whole concept of education. He said that we need to stop worrying about who we are in the eyes of others, and focus more on being what we actually want to be. He suggests that success has nothing to do with financial status, social status, or material accomplishments, but that to be successful is to be true to yourself and do what you want to do, completely disregarding any expectations of others. He suggested that the current state of the educational system mirrors that of society: paternalism. Everything is about being in charge: power is desirable. School reinforces this concept: someone is in charge, and what they say is the good word, not to be questioned or contradicted. He viewed "teaching" and "education" as separate entities: teaching is the stereotypical teacher lecturing to a class, representing the unquestionable truth, the way things are. Peter believed that this system promoted no learning, and simply further ingrained in students head the construct of the “system” in society. Someone is in charge, you will obey. You want to be in charge. He wanted us, as educators, to move more towards “education”: cooperative learning taking place through input of many, and attention to actual cares and interests of students. In real education, one should question everything: find out why things are the way there are, and if you don’t like it, do something about it. He discussed the teacher as a new, transformative leader: not one who wants recognition or traditional successes of money, fame, power, etc, but one who pushes for the better good. He believes this requires a transformation of self: you need to reflect on what really makes you who you are, not what society defines you as. Finally, he suggested that the best way to facilitate actual education was through small groups. In the small group setting, no one is safe. You are forced to show your hand, forced to be opinionated. I think that this could work well for our class if we were a bit more comfortable with each other. The problem for me is that I feel fairly incompetent in analyzing literature at a high level compared to others in the class. This especially applied to me during times when we did poetry analysis - I needed to go word by word looking up things in context to even have an idea of what was going on, let alone knowing the deeper meaning.