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...