Coffee Party - Desert Fathers - Biases

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3-28-10 PM - Consulting OTHERS to challenge myself - Please comment to contribute:

3-28-10 AM - Asking questions to reveal my biases:
(Click on numbers to see my answers at the bottom)

1 Where do you seek solitude and reflection?
2 Do you think wild and natural places are important for humans?

3-27-10- Bracketing my assumptions and beliefs "What I wanted to articulate at our coffee meeting today was that as a high school science teacher I understand that there are nested hierarchies within systems and that over time, living systems become increasingly complex. The myriad of goals, ideas, objections, problems, solutions and concerns expressed at our table all have a place in this dialogue. By stating that the Coffee Party is not issues based and that we need to use systems thinking I believe that it is important to acknowledge that everything can be considered a system.  Any topic that we bring up that might be categorized as an issue, is also a system that fits within the nested hierarchy of an increasingly complex system in our society. Just like there are multiple systems working inside my body there are multiple systems of larger and smaller scale that we addressed over in our 2 hour dialogue today. Whether big or small they are all important.

I have been doing a lot of work in my professional, personal, and academic life that deals with inquiry around how people think and act and what causes them to make decisions. Two things that have been really useful to me in this inquiry are:

· That human beings (even adults) as individuals and as a species are on a continuous path of development, going through a linear progression of stages, and progressing at a rate that I can’t control. I accept and understand that each individual and collectively should not be judged as to how far along that progression they are. In the same way that we accept childhood stages of development I find it important to recognize, name and accept adult stages of development.

· All of the topics in dialogue have a place in what I believe will bring about a significant shift in our societies. I find it important to honor every intervention or innovation that people brought up in terms of systems change and place them in equally important groupings. All of the groupings are, and need to be occurring for this shift in society. The names of those groupings are not as important as the idea that they all serve the mission to “realize our collective will”(from the Coffee Party Vision Statement) and they serve us in different ways – we need actions in all categories but as individuals or groups we don’t have to do them all, all the time.

o Holding Actions – Things that address the current system as is i.e. the Evalutation matrix that Jim talked about that took incumbents out of power)

o Alternative Institutions (Structural Change) – Things that experiment with alternative system designs i.e. Campaign Finance Reform.

o Progress in development stages (Shift in Consciousness)- Components that help us with interior human in relation to ourselves and our relationships with our own and other species i.e. individual mindfulness/awareness practice (I said accepting and letting my wild man out to run) as well as interfaith collaboration.



When Carol asked about a “laser point” I want to articulate with Maryland Congressman Van Hollen, I mentioned asking about systems or legislation that support multiple perspectives in politics (a re-framing of the word bi-partisanship). Closer to my heart is the following.

An example of what I want to dedicate my time and energy in the Coffee Party to and what I’d like to 'make our voice heard' about is the following problem statement and question from my journal last month"



…The larger issue that comes to mind for me in my professional practice is that the interior experience for people is not talked about, guided, facilitated, nurtured or honored in any school settings outside of some exceptional k-5 classrooms and the radical 6-12 classrooms


Problem: - Society and our education system has become atomized or departmentalized which eliminates critical understanding and development of our human interior condition.


o How can schools maintain specialization and academically rigorous content knowledge while integrating subjective or interior human development which requires interdisciplinary or “trans-disciplinary study”? – Ex: An article titled “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place” (David A. Gruenewald dgruenewald@wsu.edu)- attempts to unify teaching to liberate oppressed groups through a rigorous understanding of ecosystems. How can I co-create a school or entire education community based on that type of pedagogy?



Answers to my own questions- What biases do they reveal?

1

I find it through wildness inside myself and within wild places seemingly distant from human impact. TOP

2

I believe that when we experience wildness as a dialogue between humans and nature as well as between myself and what I perceive as the "other" I make progess in stages of my human development. I also believe that by valuing wildness as an important relationship my orientation to wilderness protection shifts. TOP


In literal as well as metaphorical solitude I am trying to identify and examine my own biases  about the value of wilderness for urban adults and youth.  I have recently encountered the writing of Thomas Merton, commentary by others and his reflections around the Desert Fathers.  They all seem to believe that that living in "solitude" (either literal or metaphorical) will help us understand ourselves and live by Grace.  I translate this into progressing through stages of human development as described by several authors, psychologists, conservationists and educators (Cook Greuter 2007; Esbjorn-Hargens 2007; Gruber 2010; Zimmerman 2006).

OTHERS

What biases do you see in my assumptions and beliefs?

Another author, C.A. Bowers writes this:
Given the growing environmental awareness, educators - especially in science and environmental education - need to avoid embracing a 'critical pedagogy of place'. Why conflating critical pedagogy with place-based education is an oxymoron, and why it perpetuates the thinking and silences that undermine both the diversity of the world's cultures and ecosystems are the main foci of this essay. The main theorists of a critical pedagogy of place - Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and David Gruenewald - draw on a tradition of thinking that emphasizes decolonization and reinhabitation. While these words create the illusion of a culturally and ecologically sound approach to place-based education, these theorists are unable to recognize the nature and ecological importance of the cultural commons that exist in every community - and that represent alternatives to a consumer-dependent existence. In effect, their commitment to universalizing the process of decolonization without a deep knowledge of the diverse cultural practices that have a smaller ecological impact meets the definition of an oxymoron where two contradictory positions are assumed to be compatible. A culturally informed knowledge of place takes account of different approaches to dwelling on the land, as well as the ability to listen to the keepers of community memory of past environmentally destructive practices and of sustainable traditions of community self-sufficiency. It is not driven by a Western ideology that takes for granted the progressive nature of change, or assumes that Western theorists possess the answers that the other cultures should live by. (Retrieved from http://www.informaworld.com on 3-28-10)

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