Over Valentines Day weekend in 2008, I met up with my future husband (though we hardly knew it then) at the AWP Conference in Chicago (held at the same Hilton that Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones have their great shoot-up scenes in The Fugitive). I was a creative writer back then, but I was apparently already losing touch with the professional side of my inner poet because I skipped all but two of the panels and spent most of my time in the Chicago Art Museum across the street. I say I lost touch with the professional side of my inner poet, because all the authenticity of the fleshy parts of my inner poetness were drinking in more inspiration from the Chagall stained glass than had I ended up in panels from 9:00–5:00.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of my favorite John Hughes films. I always feel like Hughes should have been a professor because his criticism of pedagogy is brilliant. Hughes seems to be an advocate for collaboration, voice, and finding the authentic audience. Ferris Bueller's high school is a hyperbolic example of everything inauthentic and dry in traditional education. There is no inquiry in the classroom, no real questions, no real discovery, and no real audience. Ferris and friends apply more critical thinking and reflection during their day off than they ever could have managed sitting in the stuffy classroom where even history seems like something that never could have happened outside of the midterm test. I like to think that my similar days off from an important conference were comparably inspirational (I did, after all, have enough wits about me to recognize good things in the man I stared at Hopper's "Nighthawks" with, enough to end up marrying him six months later to the day).
What I mean by all this is that when Bueller and the gang go to the Chicago Art Institute, with Dream Academy's cover of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" playing through the montage, I am always struck by the profundity of their experience. "Please let me get what I want," indeed. This is a film about finding real experiences in a world of hypocritical, routine delusions of school, work, jobs, money, responsibility.
When Cameron stares at Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon" until the pointillism blurs into abstraction and he realizes the child staring out at him through the painting actually has no face, but rather a fleshy blank combination of pink and beige dots--well, it's a gorgeous scene, a scene he wouldn't have seen at his high school.
So what is it that made the Chicago Art Institute trip authentic? Why are the conversations between Bueller, Cameron, and Sloane mixed parts shallow and brave? Why are they authentic to each other, despite their great differences? I'm reminded me of another Hughes classic, The Breakfast Club, and the great discourse community created by the most stereotyped and iconic members of high school characters in a situation that never should have happened in their routine, regular worlds outside of Saturday morning detention.
Perhaps what I'm going for is a sense of spontaneity and chaos. Unfortunately, this is exactly the type of learning that you can't plan in advance. I have to think about this some more before I'll know what to say about it. But I think there must be a way to run a classroom that allows for a sense of chaos. I know there are essays in our composition text for 5060 that talks about this. If only I could have my own day off to read it right.
I completely agree! My best moments of learning (in high school anyway) were the ones in which my teachers were moderately insane, doing things that didn't seem related to education in any way whatsoever. My college experience has shown me that most teachers aren't so willing to do that. I am curious about where the balance exists between structure chaos.
ReplyDeleteThese are some really neat observations. I have to agree that spontaneity can lead to the best learning experiences, but this is really difficult to plan. I think the best way to go about it is to plan the course as desired, be open to the possibility that it may go in a different direction, and not be afraid to embrace the chaos when it does occur. I think that more often then not chaos won't occur, but as you've shown, when it does it can be more beneficial than anything that could have been planned.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting and creative approach to community, discovery learning, and the critique of traditional modes of education. I understand what you mean when you say much learning happens outside the classroom rather than it. I was blessed to have friend since high school who now studies literature at Wash U (St. Louis). Much of our learning has occurred upon reflection and conversation (a sort of synthetic outcome of our iron sharpening), yet what strikes me is the quality of our interest. We were interested in talking (outside the classroom) about things we were learning (inside the classroom). What ARE our students interested in? How are they conversing about it? Do they even care about what they are majoring in? I hope they are (surely they are), but sometimes we don't draw out their passions when we encounter them in the classroom. Thanks for helping me think this concept through just now.
ReplyDeleteAwesome pics. Really. Awesome. They make me smile. :)
ReplyDeleteGood pics--and, they make sense with the readings.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I very much agree with you. Something Justin is working on in his syllabus is building in gaps. The gaps, of course, will be filled by further discussion on readings or directions students take the course in. The best courses, for me as a teacher, have been when I truly let students take the reins. They make, then, real connections to the ideas in the course in ways I hadn't imagined. And, perhaps they're not as developed as I wanted to see from the get-go, but they're memorable. They're what students remember and use after the class ends. That's what is significant, isn't it? The lessons that are personally applied? If not, what we do is meaningless.
So, building in chaos, or room for growth, or flexibility...whatever one calls it. Discovery learning? Can you plan the perfect impromptu?