Chapter 3 - Culture of Disconnection

I believe that much of what is wrong in our culture is due to being disconnected (from ourselves, our food, each other, the land, resources......)  Parker Palmer makes a strong argument that this culture of disconnection is due to both fear and the fact that we think in polarities.  In my opinion, we have compartmentalized, labeled, names, identified, reduced, and separated so much of the world.  Much of this is in service of understanding what surrounds us.  Or is it? I think it is time to not just think the world together but feel it together.  Reflect on his statement, "We think the world apart."

Paradox is everywhere and as teachers we must learn to embrace both/and thinking which joins opposites and results in profound and authentic teaching and learning environments.  Do you agree with/practice Palmer’s six paradoxes?  What other principles would you consider in order to design a “space” that embraces the tension of paradox?

Comments

[Diana Hooley]

Chapter 3 was very interesting for me personally because I spent many years as a debate coach, being competitive and encouraging the us-them, binary mentality that Palmer disparages. Actually I'm so well trained in this kind of logical analysis and who's up-who's down thinking, it's hardly surprising that at midlife I've found myself just where Palmer says this thinking leads: disconnected.
I've been praying about it. Sometimes I feel so numb to my experiences in life. As a doctoral student I've taken several classes in the education department and have become frustrated with my inability to connect with my professors there. I've tried to "end the suffering" as Palmer says, by problem-solving. At some level I realize my logical, argumentative approach to subjects probably is one of my turn-offs for these professors who try to teach me. At another level I recognize the paradox, that I need to accept who I am more, love who I am more. Like Palmer, not everyone will want to "dance" with me. So rather than become dependent on other's approval, learning to dance alone at times is important.
I told my husband about a sticker I saw on a man's computer in the Ed building. It said, "Losing faith in humanity one person at a time." I understood this sticker integrally. Yet understanding it did not make me feel any better. What does make me feel better is the words to an old song: "Let me be a little kinder, let me be a little blinder, to the faults of those around me . . .."
Palmer seems to encourage us to rest with our paradoxes and allow them to be. I think his ideas for the classroom are right on the money. It is both a public and private sphere and you can't or shouldn't divorce one from the other to be a completely successful teacher. Palmer commented about a good teacher being like a good parent. Probably the best compliment I ever got from a fellow educator was something Tom Hacker at Mountain Home Junior High told me years ago. Tom is dead now and Mountain Home Junior High has become Hacker Middle School in his memory. He said I taught like a mother, firm but kind. Sometimes I think of his saying that when I feel bad about myself or the shame monsters or the disconnect vampires make the suffering too hard.

[Laurie Roberts]

Chapter three of Courage to Teach was uncomfortably familiar for me. As I read Palmer's anecdotes about two classes, taught at the same institution during the same semester, I nearly felt that I was reading a description of two of my classes from this semester. One class readily engages in every activity and discussion I attempt. I am tempted to pat myself on the back occasionally, as things seem to go so well. But I quickly come back to reality nearly every day as the following class is mostly disengaged--some students openly expressing disdain for the class, its content, and their classmates. Unlike Palmer, I have not become angry with this group, but I don't see that as a particular victory. I read a book a few years ago in which a woman talked about how in moments of stress, most of us revert to our favorite emotion. Mine is definitely not anger. I'm not sure what it is, but suffice it to say, I usually stay calm, but I resort to talking and talking and talking, and trying to get the people around me to give me the response I seem to need in the moment.

I don't think I have a bottom line. But I'll end with this. I know that I have limited control over my efficacy in the classroom. There are so many variables outside my control. But this knowledge should not demoralize me to the point that I don't try. I can, daily, look for ways to engage each unique group.

[Jeff Wilhelm]

Thanks to all for your comments.

This is my first post - and let me say that I love this book.

I am guessing that some of us are reading the original version, whereas I am reading the revised 10th anniversary edition. In my book, Chapter 2 is The Culture of Fear and the Disconnected Life.

This chapter was point on for me as I consider the work I will be doing this Spring with BSWP fellows as part of a virtual PDS/new teacher mentoring program.

BSWP itself and the student teacher/new teacher mentorship program are all about forging real connections, a network of people who can assist and support each other in professional growth. It is a culture where we can engage in "experiments with truth" and support each other in getting outside our habitual ways of knowin g and doing things. Maybe these ways work but we can articulate why so we can adapt and use them more powerfully. But we should always be asking Eleanor Duckworth's question: What if it were otherwise?

I love the description of how fear keeps us from growing, learning, loving, respecting and so much more. I was very moved by the story of the principal and shop teacher who admitted their fear to each other - the first step to facing that fear and growing beyond it.

On p. 42 in my edition: "Our assumption that students are brain dead leads to pedagogies that deaden the brain."

I challenge myself, and you, to consider how we might sell students short and therefore fail to teach them for their best possible selves.

on p. 46: young people are told they have no experience worth having, no voice worth speaking, no future of note, no significant role to play"

How can we foreground student experience and interest in our teaching so this is not the case?

ON p. 47, Palmer exhorts us to "hear people into speech"?

How can we set up our classrooms to do just this?

What a great chapter. Let's face our fears and work through them together!

[Becky Morgan]

I can't find the chapter four posting anywhere...hmmm. Thanks Cameron. Here it is again. I'll add chapter five quickly.

Chapter 4: Knowing in Community

“The real issue…is teaching ourselves to listen. The inner life of every great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own. I cannot know in another being what I do not know in myself.” Annie Dillard How important is it to know ourselves as great things? How important is it to help our students realize this about themselves? Is this encouraged and prioritized in your classroom, school, curriculum?

On pages 112-113 of this book, Palmer writes about negative responses to new ideas. Discuss how you might practice “soft eyes” when a student reacts fearfully or dismissively to a class or presentation, and write down the ways in which you might encourage them to practice “soft eyes.” Recount a few times when you have not responded to new ideas with “soft eyes.”