Grateful Note: Gratitude for a Motorcycle-Fixing Philosopher Who Helps Us Repair Some Knowledge and Reality Problems

This evening, I'm grateful for the insights of Matthew Crawford. His influence has helped me integrate the hands-on and classroom teaching parts of my life, while also helping me see the shortcomings of knowledge work and and philosophical abstractions that often leave us untethered from reality and responsible relationships. 

“My design has never extended beyond trying to reform my own opinion to build on a foundation which is entirely my own.” --Rene Descartes in Discourse on Method

“External objects provide an attachment point for the mind; they can pull us out of ourselves. But only if they are treated as external objects, with a reality of their own.” --Matthew Crawford in The World Beyond Our Head

Many folks have heard Rene Descartes’ famous saying, “I think, therefore I am” (“Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin). Mainly, Descartes establishes consciousness and doubt as the foundation of his philosophical approach to knowing. However, it's easy to overlook how Descartes represents a significant, but often unhelpful shift in how people think about knowing and reality. As a 17th century thinker, Descartes is generally considered the father of modern philosophy. 

At the risk of oversimplifying the issues, it seems that Descartes shifted the focus of philosophy from what humans can know in light of reality (epistemology submitting to metaphysics) to more narrowly focusing on what “I” can know via my consciousness (epistemology getting unhooked from metaphysics). Descartes represents a “subjective turn” or emphasis in modern philosophy with many philosophers who follow him, including Hume and Kant.

When you hear someone saying, “Your perception is your reality,” you’re encountering the sort of subjective turn or even egocentric tendency I’m thinking about here. Note that the example is not “Your perception determines your experience of reality,” which is a whole different and more sensible claim.
 

Unhelpfully Separating Knowers from Reality

Descartes’ approach is at the headwaters of an egocentric focus in modern philosophy that creates dualistic fractures in our approaches to knowledge and seeking knowledge. In contrast to philosophers from Aristotle to Aquinas, Descartes and his many philosophical descendants shift the focus away from considering persons and reality holistically to a more fragmented focus on consciousness. In many ways, since Descartes, western civilization seems to have lost its ability to understand the value and nature of philosophical common sense. 

Educators tend to miss such problematic issues with philosophies due to a few factors: philosophically shallow teacher training programs, insufficient knowledge backgrounds, and a perennially recurring caricature. That caricature portrays all education as either hopelessly stuck in tradition or progressively enriched by John Dewey-esque emphases on “learning by doing.” Indeed, we can learn by doing, but we need to more fully rethink how we think about paying attention and how we know things. 

 

Repairing Our Focus Problems  

As a motorcycle repairman, philosopher, author, scholar, and tinkerer, Matthew Crawford can help us do some much-needed rethinking of our philosophies of knowledge, ethics, attention, and learning in light of reality. In The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford explores many ways in which our society promotes a restlessly distracted sense of self leaves us out of touch with reality–literally and figuratively. Crawford gently addresses the problem as “narcissism,” which seems increasingly prevalent in our modern personalities. 

When I first read The World Beyond Your Head, I thought Crawford and his publishers were merely sharing another version of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, but Crawford is actually continuing with applications of his philosophically rich intellectual and ethical insights found in Shop Class as Soulcraft.
In The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford continues to explore how learning craftsmanship through hands-on work in the real world stimulates our intellectual and ethical growth. Delightfully, the author explores the art and craft of building pipe organs as an alternative to the chaotic sense of distraction found in our digital consumer culture.

During the pandemic, I revisited Crawford’s philosophy of hands-on work in light of so much of my own distanced-based knowledge work, especially in the form of remote teaching and learning. I don’t think I’ve ever had six months of so much online teaching and learning in light of COVID-19 conditions. That summer, I signed up for several courses and frequently caught myself in a state of screen-time burnout, even though the work was more substantial than mere browsing, drifting, and doing social media interactions. 

The Crawford-esque experiences that helped me most in those months include numerous hands-on repair projects, which became welcome disruptions because they got me away from the computer screen and back into direct conversation with reality. My list includes the following items, and I’m sure I left a few things out: 

• replaced and installed a dishwasher; 
• replaced a garbage disposal motor; 
• put up shelves in garage; 
• purchased and installed a 5 cubic foot freezer; 
• fixed my refrigerator’s freezer so it wouldn’t ice up and drip water; 
• helped a technician install a radon mitigation system in my crawl space; 
• installed a replacement horn in my pickup truck; 
• installed laminate flooring and tiling in our living room; 
• learned to use new tools for the flooring install;  
• built storage boxes for the new tools; 
• replaced a broken storm door handle;  
• fixed a hydraulic arm and handle for a storm door;
• replaced washers and fitting on a kitchen faucet; replaced a dining room chandelier; 
• put in a tile backdrop behind our stove; 
• and repaired the damage on our RAV4’s right fender well from hitting a racoon. 

Despite the occasional frustrations encountered in such tasks, my work on these items helped me restore my sense of reality (and personal agency) after so much time on Google Classrooms, Google Meets, miscellaneous other learning platforms, and Zoom meetings. 

Rethinking Ancient and Modern Abstracted Work

It may be that Crawford helps us repair an ancient fracture in our theory of knowledge, ethics, and metaphysics. For me, Aristotle most represents such a fracture in thinking about hands-on work and intellectual knowing. His view seems to represent a wide-spread Greek philosophical view of hands-on work that held that such work can “disfigure one’s soul.” Although I haven’t found anywhere where Crawford addresses that ancient bias, he makes a good case for many forms of hands-on work actually enhancing one’s soul. 

In school, we often separate hands-on work from serious academic work, mistakenly thinking that the hands-on work is for laborers who merely do things while thinking that the academic work is for the up-and-coming knowledge workers who need to think more intellectually. 

Matthew Crawford’s earlier work Shop Class as Soulcraft debunks such views with striking counter-examples from his own professional knowledge-worker experiences with situations that helped him understand the appeal of satires such as The Office (and I’d add Dilbert cartoons, even if Scott Adams has been exiled from mainstream publication). Conversely, Crawford makes a good case for intellectually challenging work that can be found in the hands-on work of repairing vintage motorcycles and other forms of craftsmanship.

Matthew Crawford models a powerfully thoughtful and authentic philosophy for living well and pursuing flourishing through our labors–whether those are hands-on labors or the work of knowledge-rich explanations of everyday philosophies and habits. Crawford might be one of America’s best philosophers, especially when it comes to repairing the many fractures between abstract knowledge and concrete experiences.

For the most part, I wrote this blog several years ago during the pandemic. This past summer, I taught a technical writing course for automotive students, and many insights from Matthew Crawford helped me more effectively shape content, themes, and learning activities for my students. Also of immense help were Robert Pirsig's reflections in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and pretty much everything that Mike Rowe has shared over the last five yearsabout the value of hands-on trade work. 

For Further Consideration:

“Manual Competence,” TEDTalk by Matthew Crawford

“The Case for Working With Your Hands,” NY Times Opinion piece by Matthew Crawford 

“The Cost of Paying Attention,” NY Times Opinion piece by Matthew Crawford 

“Attention as a Cultural Problem and the Possibility of Education,” recorded talk by Matthew Crawford

 

So much good work to do and to be grateful for...  

 

Grateful Note: Rest Is a Much Needed Idea to Practice

This evening, I am grateful for the idea of rest. It sounds so simple to rest, yet it can be so difficult. I find myself sometimes bristling a little bit when my loved one suggests that I take some time to relax. 

Both common sense and spiritual wisdom from many traditions admonish us to rest, for our good and the good of those around us. We actually get more done by taking more time to rest, in intervals during the day, at night through sleep, and through some sort of weekly version of a rest day. 

How strange to think that part of our restlessness may be caused by sloth, technically called "acedia" in an older tradition. The Catholic scholar Josephy Pieper explains that in the Middle ages, "it was held that sloth and restlessness, 'leisurelessness', the incapacity to enjoy leisure, were all closely connected; sloth was held to be the source of restlessness, and the ultimate cause of 'work for work’s sake'" (Leisure: The Basis of Culture 43). In this sense, restlessness is largely caused by a lazy reluctance to decide on and pursue the discipline of regular rest and the restraint of unhindered ambition. 

I remember when I first came across Pieper's claim: I thought it strange and contradictory compared to what I had come to assume as a sort of inherited, unbalanced continuation of the Protestant work ethic in recent centuries. It's likely that any heritage of restlessness has little to do with the legacy of Puritan traditions or practices and much more to do with pursuing what Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey refer to as "immanent contentment": See Why We Are Restless for their exploration of this idea. 

Storey and Storey provide a compelling argument that we've inherited a self-defeating tendency in our uncritical adoption of striving for immanent contentment, reaching back to Michele de Montaigne in the sixteenth century. This notion of immanent contentment is an ideal conception of having the just-right blend of engaging pursuits, relationships, attitudes, and self-development strategies. The harder we seek this just-right experience, the more it seems to elude us. It's a sort of psychological utopia that can be found nowhere. 

Storey and Storey's argument is compelling because I frequently catch myself striving for this sort of perfect experience of rest. Paradoxically, this ideal of striving to have immanent contentment sets off ripple effects of restlessness, individually, societally, and historically. No doubt there are some other contributors to trends in restlessness, but the impossible search for immanent contentment deserves honest consideration as a root-cause candidate. 

Another way to consider this is that rest is a good idea but a horrible ideal, at least for our mortal lives in the days that we have. Idea vs ideal is not a trivial difference in spelling but a big difference in ambitions and expectations. Modestly practicing the idea of rest, but letting go of the immediate pursuit of ideal rest is a tricky discipline. Immanent contentment seems to drive folks into lives of quiet (and not-so-quiet) desperation. 

What's a better approach? For starters, the best wisdom is to, "Give it a rest," whether it's through the practice of regular sabbaths or some other variety of activity reduction. Once a week, the best sources recommend that we pause as many things as possible. This will lead to facing potential stretches of boredom, but learning to embrace and welcome that boredom can help us let go of the incessant, immediate happiness-hunts. 

When I'm trying to relax, it sometimes helps me to remember the advice of a wise guest ranch owner I know. I remember something he liked to tell his guests upon arrival: "The secret to a great vacation is to lower your expectations." 

Something else I'm discovering is that simple exercises of practicing gratitude on a regular basis can do much to ward off the insatiable hunger for immanent contentment. I'm also finding myself more often just enjoying sitting still, silently or doing some simple task without overthinking it.

Thinking back to a previous post in which I asked, "Why write if nobody will read it?", I find that writing, even if nobody reads it, is an effective way to practice expressing gratitude, a sort of spiritual discipline. We talk a lot about a "growth mindset,"but there's also much to be gained from developing a "gratitude mindset." So, writing can help, even if nobody reads it.  

On that note, I thought I'd draft and post this on Saturday evening and "give it a rest" tomorrow.  

So many ideas and people to be thankful for...  

Grateful Note: The Grace of Great Things with Rilke and Palmer

This morning I'm grateful for the grace of great things. I've reworked this post from a previous pandemic-era posting years ago from my now defunct blog site.

"'And thou wilt have the grace of the great things.' For it was just that which Rodin was seeking: the grace of the great things." --from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Auguste Rodin"

As educators and thoughtful human beings, we often should be subject-centered and thereby more relationally-minded in our teaching, living, and pursuit of long-term flourishing. Being subject-centered sounds counterintuitive, but it's true and helpful. Under the influence of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Parker Palmer explains in The Courage to Teach that subject-centered teaching is the best way to approach teaching and learning. Rilke and Palmer are just a few of the many thoughtful writers who compel me to assert that good subject-centered knowledge rightly guides better relationships.

In The Courage to Teach, Palmer finds wisdom in Rilke's celebration of "the grace of great things." Many years after reading Palmer and first appreciating this theme, I chased down the reference to "the grace of great things" in Rilke's written reflections in"Auguste Rodin." Rilke suggests his own sustained subject-focused view of art, poetry, and the art of living as he considers Rodin's work. Palmer and Rilke both invite us into subject-centered lifestyles that can enhance our work, relationships, and lives. 

Palmer's most important distinction is that subject-centered learning is not the same as teacher-centered learning. In subject-centered learning, the teacher and students gather around the great things of the study: great art, great science, great literature, great history, great math, etc. In such subject-centeredness, the classroom becomes a community of truth (for truth seeking and truth seeking, as Cornell West and Robert F. George assert in Truth Matters). It also can also become a community of goodness and beauty. 

Unfortunately, many educators conceive of subject-centered teaching as teacher-centered. This is a misunderstanding. The top-down, factory-model of such teacher-centered models is far from the healthy community found in true subject-centered teaching. That is not what Palmer advocates: The teacher-centered model tends to reduce learning to information bits and skills to isolated behaviors. (This teacher-centered approach reflects an overly objectivist way of knowing.) 

Reflecting back now on what I wrote here a few years ago, I'm reminded of my more recent readings of neuroscientist Ian McGilchrist, who argues that our left-hemisphere approach to learning and science tends to default toward starting with the smallest bits of reality and working up to larger chunks of understanding. Although McGilchrist acknowledges the value of that at times, he warns that we lose a lot of meaning, value, and ethical insight by not balancing that approach with more holistic and intuitive approaches to learning and knowing. That sort of approach comes from a right-hemisphere approach and orientation.

Trying to avoid the traps of objectivism, educators often mistakenly try to ground their work in the subjective assumptions and tendencies of student-centered learning. Years ago, as I worked through some of my series of posts on "Who's Afraid of Epistemology?", I increasingly realized how difficult it is to find common ground with many educators about the importance of subject-centered knowledge in education. Student-centered (basically self-centered) visions of education have crowded out the rich potential of the better vision. We're confusing schools with shopping malls and online retail services. (This student-centered approach reflects an overly subjective way of knowing.) 

Without subject-centered guidance, student-centered teaching and learning become gasoline on the fire of consumeristic and narcissistic trends that detract from the mature growth, community-mindedness, and long-term flourishing of our students.

Our attraction to student-centeredness also seems to be part of a larger historical and cultural pattern. We seem to have a postmodern eclectic (or neo-Epicurean) approach to individualism and relationships that automatically dismisses the importance and possibility of common knowledge to gather around and grow with. The lack of such a common ground fractures our relationships. The fracturing of any common focus disrupts good efforts at education, and I'm sure it's a contributing factor to our political discourse's chaotic nature. 

To some extent, I got into learning and got into teaching because of "the grace of great things" that can be found in true subject-centered approaches to learning. Such grace is often instrumental for overcoming discouragement as a teacher and a learner. The COVID crisis and our political chaos have ramped up my awareness of how much we need better ways to develop community: More subject-centeredness can help. We need ways to get our minds off of ourselves. There are diverse sources of great writers and great things for us to be graced by. Reading, discussing, and writing about great writers has helped keep desiring to teach and learn.

Reflecting back now on my earlier version of this posting from the pandemic-era, I realize that Ian McGilchrist has helped me understand that much of my interest and (sporadic) success with teaching and learning has come from learning to embrace right-hemisphere visions for life, learning, and flourishing, while also learning to engage all sorts of left-hemisphere approaches to managing the business of teaching and learning, including dealing with time management and effective resource allocation. Perhaps, along these lines for a future posting, I could ponder some ways our minds might benefit from working more from a right- to left-hemisphere approach for teaching and learning (something like, from metaphysics to molecules, and back again?). Oliver Keen's recent book on Thomas Aquinas fits well with such a right-hemisphere approach with it's focus on thinking as an ongoing conversation with reality (See Why Aquinas Matters Now).

Also, as a disclaimer, I'm starting my fourth year working here with all sorts of thoughtful, effective educators at the community college level. Learner-centered pedagogy often comes up in discussions as with these effective teachers who have stuck with college-level work for quite a while. Although that learner-centered approach can slide into some student-centered dysfunctions, for the most part, learner-centered pedagogy tracks well with subject-centered learning in Palmer's sense. Much of learner-centered pedagogy could also be called learning-centered pedagogy, which makes good, practical sense.  

So much teaching and learning about teaching and learning to be grateful for...
 

Grateful Note: Labor Day and Various Thinkers on Work

This evening, I'm grateful for the varieties of work that keep human life going in all it's dimensions. With Walt Whitman, we can still "Hear America Singing" our various songs while we work. Some of the songs may have become edgy and cynical, but guys like Mike Rowe do much to remind us of the goodness of hands-on work and how it is more important than ever. 

Despite the absurd satire around The Office concerning so-called knowledge work, there's still a lot to be gained from working on all kinds of work. 

This morning, I scanned my bookshelves for books that have something significant, directly or indirectly, to say about work, and different kinds of work. I was surprised to find how books I have, old and new, related to work in some way, and I thought I'd play with a few AI tools to help take inventory of some of the books and ideas I've worked through over the years. I'm fascinated by ways that AI tools may or may not be helpful for work. At times, we lean too much on the emerging tools, and the hype does get exhausting, but sometimes AI tools are actually helpful. Just don't expect too much of them or assume too much about their accuracy!

In this case, I used a free AI voice transcriber to capture the authors and titles of  the books I had slightly pulled out of my shelf. Later, I ran that list through ChatGPT to edit, clean it up, and group it into categories. The results aren't terrible, as a friend of mine would say. I did a lot of shuffling and adjusting categories, and it still seems incomplete. Each of these books could get a post from me about gratitude for their insights and opinions. 

Work, Vocation, and the Meaning of Labor

Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life by Bahnsen
Redeeming Capitalism by Barnes
What Are People For? by Berry
The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus 
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Crawford

Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart by Chris Hall
Every Good Endeavor by Keller
Essentialism by McKeown
The Sacredness of Secular Work by Raynor
Small is Beautiful by Schumacher

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Terkel

Making Things Right: The Simple Philosophy of Working Life by Thorstensen
"On Principle" by Thoreau

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Weber 

In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden by Williams and Breen  

 

The Work of Teaching, Learning, and Human Formation

How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren
The Well-Educated Mind by Bauer 
What the Best College Teachers Do by Bain
Engaging Ideas by Bean
The English Coach’s Instructional Playbook by Berry and Degen
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey 
Designing Your New Work Life by Burnett and Evans
Why Read? by Edmundson 

Truth Matters by George and West 

The Art of Teaching by Highet 

The Coddling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Haidt  
The Vocation of a Teacher by Morris 

The Courage to Teach by Palmer

The DOSE Effect by Power
Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys by Smith and Wilhelm
These Six Things by Stuart 
Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian by The Great Books Foundation
Tinkering Towards Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform by Tyack and Cuban
Education for Human Flourishing by Spears and Loomis
Effective Grading by Walvoord and Anderson

Renovation of the Heart by Willard 

The Work of Rhetoric, Writing, and the Craft of Communication

Zen and the Art of Writing by Bradbury
The Rhetoric of Rhetoric by Booth
The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb, and Williams
Writing and the Sense of Self by Brooke
Teaching Arguments by Fletcher
Writing Rhetorically by Fletcher
Can Poetry Matter? by Gioia
Rewriting by Harris
Bird by Bird by Lamott
Revising Prose by Lanham
A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers by Lindemann
How to Think Like Shakespeare by Newstok
The Language of Life by Moyers
The Writer’s Workshop by Roper

The Work of Thinking, Philosophy, and Human Understanding

Politics by Aristotle
How to Know a Person by Brooks
The Good Life Method by Sullivan and Blaschko
How to Think by Jacobs
Learning to Disagree by Inazu
Socratic Logic by Kreeft 

Looking at Philosophy by Palmer 
Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas by Pegis 

The Constitution of Knowledge by Rauch 

Working with Technology, the Future, and Society

Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury 
2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity by Lennox
Being Digital by Negroponte
1984 by Orwell  

Technopoly by Postman 
Future Shock by Toffler

More than Words by Warner  

Ancient, Classic, and Literary Reflections on Work and Life

The Enuma Elish by unknown  
Genesis by Moses
Ecclesiastes by Qoheleth
The Divine Comedy by Dante
"A&P" by Updike
Death of a Salesman by Miller
The Milagro Beanfield War by Nichols
The Winter of Our Discontent by Steinbeck

Working on Relationships, Conflict, and Cooperation 

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Gottman
How to Have Impossible Conversations by Boghossian and Lindsay
The Peacemaker by Sande
Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton, and Heen
Reclaiming Conversation by Turkle

Working on Productivity, Creativity, Society, and Culture

Making It All Work by Allen   

The Advancement of Learning by Bacon 

The Mythmakers by Hendrix

Steal Like an Artist by Kleon
Capital by Marx
The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels
The Master and His Emissary by McGilchrist
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Rose 

The Wealth of Nations by Smith  

The Mind of the Maker by Sayers 

So much work and so many workers to be grateful for... 

Grateful Note: The Poetry of Hopkins for Our Spring and Fall

This morning, I'm grateful for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins with his sounds and sights of splendid splotches of imagination and visualization in poems such as "Pied Beauty": 

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

My first encounter with Hopkins was in a college course with Dr. Gilbert Findlay at CSU, a professor who I am also grateful for, for so many reasons. Dr. Findlay's frequent go-to approach to poetry was to "stick the poem in your ear," reading it dramatically with his animated Scottish accent, and to further challenge us to "take this poem and look at it," and to often look at it again, and again. The rhythms of close reading, reader-response discussions, and more independent close reading challenges did much to coach my attention span and appreciation of poetry, poetic craft, and various and sundry poets. 

Reading the start of The ABCs of Reading, published in 1934, one might recognize the influence on Findlay by the poet Ezra Pound. By analogy, Pound promotes a similar method of reading via his account of biologist Louis Agassiz's approach to teaching students to closely examine biology specimens, in this case a sunfish. In the account, a student comes to Agassiz to learn how to master biology. The student expects much more direct coaching and guidance; however, each day, for several days, Agassiz simply directs him to look closely at the fish, leaving him for over an hour to do so and record what he notices. From that process of training his attention and his metacognition (reflectively thinking about his noticing and thinking over time), the student learns much more than the teacher could have directly conveyed. Perhaps we all need to take time to practice this method in our distracted age. At the risk of being a little reductionistic, there's also a good case to be made, with the help of neuroscience, about how this sort of attention training can develop some high-quality, healthy dopamine experiences. 

Under Findlay's tutelage, I eventually caught myself hearing and savoring the poetry and sounds of poets like John Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Incidentally, several experts on reading assert that we don't actually need many strategies or techniques to learn to read well, we mostly need lots of experience reading a lot of things over time. 

Late this summer, I pulled out my copy of Hopkins' poetry and took some time to stick his poems in my ears, experiencing the ricocheting rhythms and tongue-twisting tactics of the poet as I worked at reading his poems aloud--actually, a lot more like play than work. I then discovered that The Rabbit Room just started a "Rhyme & Reason" podcast series with Hopkins' poetry as the first theme for the series on poets this year. In many of the podcasts, the presenter shares the poem ("sticks it in our ears"), provides some brief biographical and conceptual contexts for the poem, shares a thoughtful and accessible mix of explication (unfolding), and then another speaker shares another well-presented reading of the poem. 

As a side note on musical sounds, the brilliant neuroscientist and neurophilosopher Ian McGilchrist speculates that our earliest development of language as a species was likely first in the form of musical sounds. (See his excellent book The Master and His Emissary.) That seems to fit well with much of the sonic beauty and compactness of Hopkins' poetry. 

I'm fascinated by the world of stress sounds in language in general and poetry in particular. Hopkins' innovative tinkering and tossing about of sounds was too much for most of his contemporaries, and it took several decades after his death for other artists and readers to embrace his work. Along those lines, I'm grateful for the long-suffering efforts of his friend Robert Bridges to promote Hopkins' poetry. 

There are many other goodies to be found in Hopkins' poetry, including his poetic theory of "inscape" and "instress", as well as an embedded sense of spiritual exercises that fit well with contemporary concerns about mental health and well-being. I'm reluctant to focus too much on the psychology of this latter part, lest Hopkins' poetry gets hijacked by therapeutic concerns and other hang-ups about its potential usefulness. For me, at least, Hopkins if far more about the surprising wonder we can discover and rediscover about everyday things and places. In one of many instances, I find a moment of this call in his conclusion to "Penmaen Pool": 

Then come who pine for peace or pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school,
Spend here your measure of time and treasure
And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool. 

So many persons, things, and sounds to be grateful for in a world that is crammed with inscaped pleasures available for those with eyes to see and ears to hear...

Grateful Note: Bill Moyers Was (and Is) a Great Guide to Better Conversations, Relationships, and Ideas

This morning, I'm grateful for the life and work of Bill Moyers. Back in June of this year, Moyers moved on to join the Undiscovered Conversation after his earthly life ended, thereby wrapping up his life's calling of being a charitable, thoughtful, conversant journalist and all-around decent human being. 

My first encounter with Moyers was via my senior English class back in the mid 80s when our teacher showed video recordings of Moyers interviewing philosopher Mortimer Adler about Six Great Ideas (truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, and justice). I was intrigued by Adler's rough and tumble approach to conversation and philosophy; I probably soaked up a little too much of that approach and attitude over the years of watching, listening to, and reading Adler. The much better influence was actually Bill Moyers, who artfully asked questions about ideas, relationships, flourishing, society, and self-development, inviting all sorts of people into conversations, questions, and relationships. Those weren't the sort of conversations I was used to at home, at school, or elsewhere in public. Although they're both good to emulate as stewards and curators of ideas, I often find myself needing to be a lot more like Moyers and a little less like Adler in terms of engaging others and ideas. (My lovely wife's cue for this has been variations on, "You might want to soften that...")

Moyers had a legendary series of interviews with mythologist Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth, still available online and in book form. Campbell's analysis of "The Hero's Journey" (a.k.a. "The Monomyth") reveals some of the most common patterns of storytelling that various creatives throughout history and across cultures work with--or against--to produce intriguing tales, characters, and conflicts. It didn't take too much reading and study to find the limitations of some of Campbell's anthropology and Jungian assumptions, but Moyers and Campbell both helped me (and, I suspect, many others) think more imaginatively about the purpose(s) of life and the potential paths to long-term flourishing. 

I'm also grateful this morning for used bookstores, a few of which helped me reclaim copies of three of my favorite Moyers books this summer: Bill Moyers' World of Ideas, World of Ideas II, and The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. Each of these books are packed with people, ideas, and conversations to be grateful for. 

There's also something special about books like these because they aren't available in PDF or ebook formats, something more human and down to earth, something more like Bill Moyers. At the risk of being a little nostalgic, we could use more charitable, conversant, conversational journalists these days. Perhaps, they're coming of age as part of their heroic journeys. 

So many persons, things, and ideas to be grateful for...  

Grateful Note: Many Students Really Do Want to Learn, Even in an AI Age

This morning, I'm grateful for how my three sections of English composition at our community college this semester are packed with students who want to learn. 

Despite the hysteria I sometimes hear from columnists, news commentaries, and some educators, most of my students seem interested in learning how to use AI tools responsibly for learning and writing, as well as how to work and learn well without the tools. 

Some of my students assert that "AI is evil" or that "AI has no soul." That's not a terrible way to start the semester, and I find that students who start that way typically end up being some of the wisest users of AI tools. 

I'm also grateful for discussions with many colleagues who care about teaching and learning beyond the hype and hysteria. Some are much like my suspicious students and have a strong AI-resistance stance, others are enthusiastic about teaching students to wisely use AI tools, and many are somewhere in between. 

Two books I'm grateful for are Robert Alter's The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age and Alan Jacob's The Pleasures of Reading in a Distracted Age. Following suit, I imagine another book entitled The Pleasures of Teaching and Learning in an AI Age. 

So many persons and things to be grateful for...  

 

Three Long-term Flourishing Takeaways from Death of a Salesman

This is slightly reworked from a backup copy of one of my blog post a few years back, during the pandemic. The original blog site is now defunct. 

"...I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." -- Willy to his sons Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman

Why must everybody like you? ….Now listen, Willy, I know you don't like me, and nobody can say I'm in love with you…" --Charlie in Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman stirs my thinking about education and long-term flourishing in fresh ways. The play has been a close companion from my first reading in college and through much of my teaching career. I enjoy the challenges of teaching English Composition at the introductory college level these days, but I do miss discussing Death of a Salesman with students. Although it's a tragedy, it makes us keep thinking about the problems that can get in the way of pursuing the grace of everyday experiences and relationships. So, here are three takeaways from several rounds of reading the play with high school students. 

1. Learning is way more important than liking. As my introductory quotations suggest, Willy Loman is way too concerned about being liked and way too avoidant of learning. Charlie and his son Bernard know the difference. The narcissistic self-image focus and anti-intellectual impulses of Willy and young Biff in the flashbacks to Biff's senior year in high school show how a commitment to learning needs to balance one's focus on sports. In the flashbacks, audiences and readers of the play see that the learning of ethics and virtue needed coached into Biff's life as much as the skills of sports. In contrast, being liked and liking the comfort of having one's way serve as the central teaching for Biff's high school years. Willy realizes too late that he neglected truly essential lessons for his son and for himself.

2. Significant commitment is way more important than success. That's common advice for folks who reach midlife, but it's important for school-age children and all stages of life. We need older and younger generations to wrestle with those big essential questions about ethics and the meaning(s) of life. The failure to do so leaves us hollow, exhausted from frenetic activity, and without moral compasses, which is how the 60-something Willy Loman starts the play. Our current schools can easily be seduced into training students for success with high-paying jobs while neglecting the pursuit of the essential questions that are part of significant living and long-term flourishing. 

3. A few good close relationships are way more important than popularity with many people. Each fall, I share with my students that it's probably good that Willy Loman didn't have our social media. Ironically, a few people like Charlie do show love to Willy in practical ways, ranging from long-suffering tolerance for his strange outbursts to lending him money so that he can pretend to have a job that barely sustains him. 

Although Willy Loman berates him, Charlie is the best friend Willy can have. Tragically, Willy is so distracted by being liked (being popular) that he can't see the love of those closest to him. The potential for Willy to have great relationships is a major part of what makes the story qualify as a classic tragedy. In the last part of the play, Willy Loman takes his own life because he thinks this will make him popular with his son, provide him with life insurance money, and help him regain his own lost popularity from his high school years. What Biff most wants is his father's love, honesty, and openness.

Bonus Takeaway: You can't help but worship. In Death of a Salesman, Willy thanks God for his sons, but he's actually worshiping his son Biff as a god--both as a teenager and as a 30-something adult. Willy was looking at Biff as a source of inspiration and hope, so Willy tried to live vicariously through him in Biff's high school years. Biff couldn't sustain that sort of pressure, and by the end of the play, he seems to learn that such worship is too fragile to sustain life. Audiences and readers learn in one of the last flashbacks that Willy also damaged his relationship with his son when the teenage Biff discovered Willy's infidelity, thereby feeling a betrayal of all that his dad's values and ways of valuing. For over seventeen years, their relationship is dramatically fractured by this betrayal.

Some stronger source for worship, relationships, and forgiveness is desperately needed. For starters, Biff and Willy needed to hear and think through a graduation speech along the lines of the late David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water," in which he explores the impulse to worship that characterizes every person. (Foster's own life ended in tragedy too.) The real issue entails what one shall worship, how one will love and relate to others, and what source can focus and sustain a flourishing life—something to think about for graduations and many other transitions throughout our lives.  

Notes from a Reluctant Blogger: Why Write It If Nobody Will Read It?

This morning, a local pastor was sharing a reference to Clive James' Substack titled "Diary of a Failed Comedian." Part of the pastor's application was about how hungry we all are for various versions of "likes," via social media or other venues. 

That got me thinking of the previous pandemic-era blog that I maintained for about two years with over 100 posts. To borrow a line from a famous western, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I think some posts were good and some where duds, and I might have helped or encouraged a few people in the process. In a reckless moment of resignation as the cha-cha of my high school teaching routine returned to "normal" levels of busyness, I deleted the blog and didn't save all of my posts. Did that action make me a failed blogger? With the everpresent deluge of Substack posts and blogs, I've become a reluctant blogger. 

In my current semi-retirement stage of life, I wonder about endeavors to write and to teach writing. I entertain related questions everyday, and I've kept plenty of related notes, drafts, and half-formed essays for myself. I've often drafted something to post related to topics I've been discussing, reading about, musing over, and/or teaching. It seems that not a day goes by without some sort of AI discussion emerging, ranging from utopian promises to dystopian threats. 

As part of a growing collection with connections between AI and education, I was just reading Pierce Taylor Hibbs' Substack article on "Why AI Can Never Fully Replace Human Writers." I especially appreciate Hibbs' assertion that AI can never fully replace human writers because writing requires choice, responsibility, and trust. Indeed! 

There's something about this struggle over bothering to write that plays an important part of truly being human, whether thinking about posting something on a blog or deciding what to put on tomorrow's to-do list. With Hibbs and others in mind, I suppose I'm exercising my humanity right now in several ways, doing what AI can't actually do.

So, here are some thoughts (from me and others) about the related question: Why write if nobody will read it? 

• To find out what I think: How do I know what I think until I see what I have to say?
• Because if it is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly!
• To reframe my thinking.
• To pretend you're actually out there reading this. 
• To construct and reconstruct my self or my sense of self. 
• As a strange mix of professional and amateur practice. 
• As a sort of note in a bottle to others who may be drifting in the sea of whatever we might call our culture after postmodernism. 
  
• Problem exploration.
• As part of a chain reactions to other writers and conversations.
• Building inventory for a mind palace. 
  
• To imitate Marcus Aurelius. 
• Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
  
• To write while wondering if there is always a divine being who reads everything.
  
• Because I feel like it, and AI doesn't feel like anything.

***

To be, or not to be, continued? 

Developing Rigor AND Mental Health Support in the College Classroom

An essential and ongoing discussion about post-pandemic education with first-year college students... 

In February and March (2024), I'll be leading an interactive book review with local community college instructors and professors in different disciplines. The topic is rigorous learning and mental health in the college classroom. The book is Improving Learning and Mental Health in The College Classroom by Robert Eaton, Steven V. Hunsaker, and Bonnie Moon. I've been reading, rereading, side-researching, and discussing the book with others since I stumbled across it in our local library last fall. The book is a timely, humble, and helpful contribution to discussing an elephant in the room: How do we maintain expectations for what rightly should be college-level learning while recognizing and realistically responding to the mental health challenges of our first-year students?

I especially appreciate how the authors have collected, curated, and tried out many of the most important theories, research-based insights, and practices related to bringing these two areas of concern together. Likewise, I appreciate their humility as well as their helpfulness because they frequently remind readers that they have not perfected the best practices or found any silver-bullet solutions, and they help readers realize that much of the relevant, existing research has many instances of correlation that are not necessarily clear in revealing important causal relationships. (In other words, when researchers observe two or more significant things happening together, one thing doesn't necessarily cause the other.) 

As I'm working through my final round of my analytical notes and starting to develop essential and guiding questions for our upcoming book talk, I've landed on three of my own essential questions that help me reflectively process the book and my relevant experiences in both high school and (now) college settings. 

Here are my essential questions about rigorous learning and mental health support in the classroom:

1. What is rightly difficult for students about learning in your courses? (Why is that difficulty right and important?)

2. What is unnecessarily difficult about learning in your courses?

3. What unnecessarily difficult parts of learning might you be able to change or somewhat influence for the better?
   

No doubt, there is more to come. Time and resources permitting, I might share more here in the near future. July 2024 Update: It did go well. Additionally, those three questions have related well to discussions about AI in our courses and what sort of appropriate "friction" (a.k.a. difficulty or struggle) students should encounter when learning at the college level in order to flourish academically, socially, and personally. All sorts of discussions have connected to this book and issues of growth, challenge, grit, motivation, purpose, and more.

Better Thinking as Thanking

 Happy Thanksgiving! 

I never realized how controversial that greeting could be until I entered the world of contentious grownups. Details aside about those controversies and contentions,  I'm thinking of my own bent toward grumbling, quarreling, discontentment, and occasionally all-out-despair. I'm thankful for writers from previous generations who return us to being thankful for just existing. G.K. Chesterton comes to mind for lifting up my thoughts and affections: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." 

May you enjoy that highest form of thought in the days and months and years to come!

Life after High School English Teaching: Phasing through Semi-retirement

For high school teachers who are "midway in our life's journey" or nearing the end of your teaching career, I encourage you to watch Riley Moynes' TEDTalk on "How to squeeze all the juice out of retirement." This talk can prepare you for some retirement transitions that aren't always so pleasant yet hold much potential for growth and flourishing. Even if so-called retirement seems far away, there are some good things to start thinking about in terms of how you can flourish in these later years.

Moynes sets up the following (not-always-sequential) four phases of retirement:

1. Vacation

2. Grief & loss

3. Trial & error 

4. Renewal 

 

I experienced about two months of vacation (Phase one) last summer after retiring from full-time high school English teaching. Early in the summer, I was signing up to teach and try out a few sections of English at the local community college in the fall (Phase three). I'd taught college-level English courses before, but throughout the year I discovered important shifts in my planning as I noticed a mix of college-ready and not-quite-ready-for-college students in my courses. My part-time work was often full-time planning. 

Moynes' rightly characterizes Phase three as "a time of trial and error. In phase three, we ask ourselves, 'How can I make my life meaningful again? How can I contribute?'"

At times this summer, I slipped into grief & loss over my working relationships (Phase two). Having retired rather young, I've sometimes anxiously been considering whether I want to start a new career. To help me lessen my anxiety, a wise mentor suggested that I think in terms of how I might do life differently during this span of time. That did help. 

 

Looking back, I see how aptly Rick Moynes categorizes the "big five" losses of Phase two:

"We lose that routine. We lose a sense of identity. We lose many of the relationships that we had established at work. We lose a sense of purpose, and for some people, there's a loss of power. Now we don't see these things coming. We didn’t see these losses coming, and because they happen all at once, it’s like, poof, gone."

 

On a different note for me, almost a week away from starting to teach my college composition classes, I'm enjoying some more trial & error thinking (Phase three), and I get little whispers of renewal in terms of purpose, function, enjoyment, and flourishing (Phase four). Perhaps returning to blogging is part of that renewal. 

 

I somewhat blogged my way through the pandemic and produced a little over 100 entries before discontinuing early last year. I think Moynes' four phases relate well to grief and loss that many of us experienced in relation to the pandemic. 

 

Speaking of renewal, I've enjoyed revisiting Park Palmer's The Courage to Teach. He's also inspired a more recent publication about The Courage to Learn. More on those books in future posts. Palmer helped found The Center for Courage & Renewal, which is a good place for educators to visit, especially if retirement is still a long way off.

 

 

 

Is Rhetoric Helpful?

Is rhetoric helpful? Well, that depends on what kind of rhetoric and what kind of approach to rhetoric we take. Everything that I have read from the late Wayne Booth's works leads me to say that rhetoric can not only helpful but essential to long-term flourishing in our relationships. Likewise, good rhetoric can benefit our communities and society at large. Booth is especially helpful for understanding rhetoric because he can clearly distinguish between good and bad versions of rhetoric. 

In The Rhetoric of RHETORIC, Wayne Booth provides some real-life samples of rhetoric's bad reputation as expressed in several comments, and though these examples are pre-2005, they still sound too familiar: 

• "Impoverished students deserve solutions, not rhetoric." Letter to Chicago Tribune. 

• "All that other stuff is rhetoric and bull. I don't think about it." Athletic coach. 

• "[What I've just said] is not rhetoric or metaphor. It's only truth." Columnist attacking race prejudice. 

• "President Bush's speech was long on rhetoric and short on substance." New York Times Editorial.

--Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 39-41). Kindle Edition. 

 

In light of such a bad reputation, one might ask, "Is rhetoric helpful despite its misuses and abuses?" Short answer: Yes, perhaps even more so in light of those misuses and abuses. 

Our problem with rhetoric is more so a problem with the dark side of human nature. An honest study of rhetoric reveals such flair-ups in humans throughout the ages and across cultures. Such practices, especially in our modern world, can give rhetoric a bad name. In such cases we have the pejorative sense of rhetoric, in which we are "expressing contempt or disapproval."

In addition to the pejorative use of the word rhetoric's use, the study of rhetoric can sometimes come across as too formal and esoteric, merely the work of some ivory tower academics. However, teachers and writers like Wayne Booth insightfully reveal how relevant and accessible rhetoric can be for everyone. In fact, I'm thinking that Booth's approach is even an essential discipline for all citizens and community members to practice throughout their lives. If rhetoric is basically the study of and use of various means of persuasion, then rhetoric can be used for great good as well as great evil. 

I was recently musing that we have so much focus in public schools and colleges on speech communication, yet we have so little focus on learning to listen well. We aren't required to take courses in listening. Perhaps one might have been forced to learn to listen in the traditional use of lecture, but lecture has become a bad word while engagement has become the gold standard for teaching and learning. Unfortunately, much of our educational rhetoric does not have a vision as to what larger purpose all of our engagement should have.

In contrast to merely being engaged, Wayne Booth offers a mix of ethical and rhetorical purpose for our engagement growth in the classroom, in the community, and in the culture at large. He coins the terms "Listening-Rhetoric" for this practice and purpose. I long for this sort of practice and purpose to become a normal part of our society and organizations so that we would constructively "Dare to Disagree" while also agreeing to be deeply civil in our disagreements. 

Booth characterizes such "Listening-Rhetoric" as this:

"[Listening-Rhetoric is] an even deeper probing for common ground. Here both sides join in a trusting dispute, determined to listen to the opponent's arguments, while persuading the opponent to listen in exchange. Each side attempts to think about the arguments presented by the other side. Neither side surrenders merely to be tactful or friendly. 'If I finally embrace your cause, having been convinced that mine is wrong, it is only because your arguments, including your implied character and emotional demonstrations, have convinced me.' Both sides are pursuing not just victory but a new reality, a new agreement about what is real." --Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 576-580). Kindle Edition.

Such an understanding and practice of good rhetoric is the foundation for a deliberative representative democracy. 

In our clamorous and conflicted culture of non-listening rhetoric, Booth's vision for better rhetoric sounds increasingly good and helpful.  

Developing a Rhetoric of Rhetorics

"Rhetoric is employed at every moment when one human being intends to produce, through the use of signs or symbols, some effect on another - by words, or facial expressions, or gestures, or any symbolic skill of any kind. Are you not seeking rhetorical effect when you either smile or scowl or shout back at someone who has just insulted you?" --Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 54-56). Kindle Edition. 

Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of RHETORIC continues to serve me well by challenging me to become a more thoughtful communicator, teacher, learner, and human being. We all need that challenge. Likewise, we need to consider thoughtfulness as more than mere intellectual activity but also as the well-intentioned consideration of others. Booth was not only a rhetorician who focused on ways to communicate well but also an ethicist who sought ways to treat others well, especially through thoughtful listening as well as speaking and writing. Basically, Booth wanted his students, readers, colleagues, and conversational partners to feel valued as human beings. With such an aim, he invites us all to seek better understandings of rhetoric.

As I've started teaching English composition in a community college this year, I'm further considering the ongoing need for "a rhetoric of rhetorics." (I'm retired from high school English teaching after 28 years.) By "a rhetoric of rhetorics," I mean a survey of the different ways that people conceive of the elements, strategies, devices, and other facets of rhetoric. By rhetoric, I lean on Booth's notion of anytime "one human being intends to produce, through the use of signs or symbols, some effect on another," which is pretty much everyone all the time to some extent. I also conceive of rhetoric as the ongoing study of such practices and trends. 

Such a survey of rhetoric(s) can help me navigate and guide students through the different ways that teachers and rhetoricians (a fancy name for people who are really into rhetoric) study, analyze, do, and teach rhetoric. I especially sense that need for a rhetoric of rhetorics when I glimpse another teacher's notes with a conception of the rhetorical triangle that differs from my course's or when I survey Open Educational Resources (OERs) and other resources for English Composition. So many folks have so many different ways of looking at rhetoric. Much of the material is very good, but taken together, it can be confusing due to differences in terminology, structure, approach, and assumptions.

For this latest endeavor to blog about learning, teaching, and living, I'm hoping to use this space for developing notes, reflections, and attempts related to "a" rhetoric of rhetoric. Please notice how the indefinite article "a" suggests that I do not have the more definite understanding found in Booth's "The..."