Terence Malick.
The Thin Red Line.
The forces laid out on the floor were aligned in battle order.
The infantrymen were placed in front of the artillery with the cavalry waiting in the wings.
With one glorious charge the cavalry shattered the enemy lines, men fell like ninepins.
Victory was sweet.
I had it all planned out in my mind.
"I will join the marines. I want to be a commando."
The storyline changed over the years.
I was watching a conference of Dave Cormier.
At first I thought nothing of it.
I watched it again.
I thought nothing of it.
Then I read a comment stream.
I don't know why.
Boredom perhaps.
There was a conversation going on between Viplav Baxi and Dave Cormier.
There was one comment of Dave Cormier which sparked my thinking:
"I'm in favour of shaping the main instrument of education towards complexity."
"How can education not be an illustration of complexity?" I thought to myself.
Then I read:
"But sometimes I just want to 'learn' how to use my coffee roaster. Tell me what to do. I'll do it."
I thought of ritual, of habitual, of process, of story.
I remembered a comment of my grandmother, aged 80.
"When I look at myself in the mirror, I just don't recognise myself."
I remembered a comment of my mother, aged 75.
"When I look at myself in the mirror, I just don't recognise myself."
They were unhappy with a plot-line which had escaped them.
I remembered a slogan on a t-shirt.
This is not the life we ordered...
I thought of climate change.
I thought of the people gathered together in some hangar, just North of Paris, hugging each other at their part played in some historic agreement.
Heroic.
"What difference do you think you can make - one single man in all this madness?"
Terence Malick. The Thin Red Line.
I was watching a trailer for a documentary entitled 'The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.'
In the documentary, a man faces up to his imminent demise:
"The idea that death is imminent makes you realise what a wonderful thing it is to be alive."
Wilko Johnson.
He becomes hyperaware of the joy of his existence.
"Everything lifted off of me. The present, future, past, it was all concentrated down into the moment...I'm alive."
Wilko Johnson.
"How does one 'shape education' towards complexity?" I thought to myself.
What is life if not complex?
What is education if not story?
Is complexity compatible with story?
"Everything lifted off of me. The present, future, past, it was all concentrated down into the moment...I'm alive."
Wilko Johnson.
What are these stories?
I thought of Terence Malick.
I don't know why.
"What difference do you think you can make - one single man in all this madness?"
Terence Malick. The Thin Red Line.
I don't know why but the comment interchange you cited at Dave's Talk reminded me of this book I am reading, by Randall Monroe: Thing Explainer
ReplyDeletehttps://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/
Kevin
PS -- yes, we make a difference, each one of us. Sometimes, for the good of the world (sometimes, not)
Snowden says create attractors with semi-permeable boundaries. Begs the question: what do those look like? I think that the answer is that they resemble many things. Create safe-to-fail spaces, see what happens, re-evaluate. Or as my mentor Myles Horton said, "Get a simple place, move in and you are there. The situation is there. You start with this and let it grow. You know your goal. It will build its own structure and take its own form. You can go to school all you life, you'll never figure it out becasue you are trying to get an answer that can only come from the people in the life situation."
ReplyDeleteThe way to get started is to start. Yeah, no is going to pay a consultant for that kind of advice, but there it is.
I think your mentor sums it up pretty well.
ReplyDelete