WHOLENESS EDUCATION

       Boy, I just got cussed out yesterday off list from a professor at a western university for being a “Glenn Beck type” because my last short Random Thought was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Her message was not what you would call collegial. I mean it was smoking. Knowing she sure doesn’t know me, I just replied, hoping my calm came through, telling her that I am confused. I asked her to enlighten me about what is so “destructive of academe” about advocating beyond mere window dressing and lip service that classroom teaching is as important as research and publication? That is so “dangerous” when I take the stand to testify why an education should be more than mere professional credentialing? Where is my “conservative wing” politics in saying that an education should be more than white collar vocational training? How am I among the “narrow minded” when I assert that an education should be more than merely a job engine, that helping someone learn how to live is as important as helping her or him learn how to make a living? How am I “pushing an ideology” when I firmly believe that part of an education should help develop a therapeutic civility that would act as a vaccine against toxic incivility? Where is the “religious right” in my educational philosophy that part of an education must also help promote a genuine, sincere, and habitual inner dignity and moral strength that displays itself in kindness, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, caring, and just plain decency?

       Am I objective? No. But, then, who honestly is?

     Do I have an agenda? Yes. But, then, who honestly doesn’t?

     I am not a one-dimensional, either-or guy. I call myself– I pride myself in being–a helping, multi-dimensional “wholeness teacher.” I am concerned with touching a student’s heart as well as her or his mind, of inspiring her or his spirit as well as sharpening her or his intellect, of helping her or him acquire people skills as well as the information and skills in her or his discipline, of helping her or him acquire critical feeling skills as well as critical thinking skills, of helping her or him see how noble, sacred, valuable, worthy, and important she or he and all others are, of helping her or him become an honorable person rather than merely a test-taking, grade-getting, accumulating high GPA honors student.

       I am an ardent advocate of conscious, purposeful, and pervasive character education. I don’t think when it comes to the classroom we can be what I call “character atheists.” And, when we interact with students, there is no such thing as practicing what I call “value neutrality.” It’s pretty simple. There isn’t a so-called “objective” bone in anyone’s body. No one is an untouched island. Everything we do or say, everything we feel and think, sends out messages that reveal those beliefs and values that underpin, shape, color, and drive our attitudes, emotions, thoughts, and actions. At the same time, those beliefs and values act as a filter on what we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. One way or another, by hook or by crook, we shape our values, we have impact on others, and so we shape lives no less than others influenced and continue to influence the course and shape of our lives. What we don’t advocate, we inadvertently–or overtly–dismiss and put down. When we don’t’ promote positive values beyond merely a paragraph on plagiarism in our syllabi because we take an “it’s not my job” or “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “what will they think” or “I’m not a priest or parent or counselor” stand, when we don’t consciously feel we have a responsibility to actively help influence ethical perspectives and shape the behavior that stems from them, we are in danger of graduating–as we have recently seen all around us–destructive moral dropouts. If that be Glenn Beck-ish, so be it.

Louis

SHELF LIFE

     I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing my computer. But, it’s proving to be formidable and unnerving. Everywhere I go and everything I read and everyone to whom I talk indicate that all the files I’ve got backed up using Windows XP will not be read on Windows 7 or Mac, and all the programs I’m running on XP will not run on 7 or Mac even with some convoluted tweaking, that the new won’t speak or easily speak to the old. They just aren’t all that compatible. It almost sounds like I’d be trying to listen to my old LPs on a DVD player. Whether my fears are well founded or not, on this soggy morning that, some stuff that happened–or did not happen–in class yesterday, and some journals entries I’ve read this past week all have gotten me to thinking and wondering.

      What, then, is the shelf life of all this information we transmit, verse in, train for, test, and grade?   What’s the shelf life of such attitudes and habits and values as trustworthiness, curiosity, commitment, perseverance, endurance, imagination, compassion, service, self-discipline, creativity, dedication, humility, respect, empathy, kindness, courage, authenticity, honesty, responsibility, fairness, and caring that we should be advocating, promoting, instilling, and modeling?

     Which will prove to be timely and which timeless in the shaping of lives: information or character?

 

Louis

CARDIO-CENTRIC

I just came in from a meditative walk thinking about a bunch of journal entries I’ve been reading since I came back from the Lilly-North conference. Aside from the ravages of H1N1, aside from Homecoming Week, aside from the coming of that silly Fall Break next week, and aside from all the “abnormal” slings and arrows of “normal” student life, lots of highly personal and deeply distracting, debilitating, paralyzing, heart breaking “stuff” is going on inside students and outside the classroom at the moment that’s darkening the climate of the classroom: an unwanted pregnancy, a frightening lump and prospective biopsy, an accidental death of a father, a brother fighting in Afghanistan, a sister overdosing, a sudden divorce proceeding of parents, an unexpected hospitalization of a grandfather, a close aunt diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, a brother in a serious car crash, a saddening funeral of a close friend, a tearful placement of an Alzheimer afflicted grandmother in a nursing home, a broken engagement, a mother discovering she has breast cancer, a chronic auto-immune disease, and on and on it goes. It’s sapping their strength. It’s grinding down their spirit. It’s obviously having an impact of their ability to focus. It’s undermining their performances. How do I know? I’m reading their daily journal entries in which they choose to talk to me about what’s preying on their minds, hearts, and souls.

If we are interested in student accomplishment, how can we not struggle to be empathetic, how can we not care, how can we ignore all this “outside/inside stuff” that effects the student, how can we say that none of this is of our concern, how can we not get involved, how can we not deal with it? Most of us are not that uncaring, cold, and distant. Yet, in the intellectual climate of ivied academia, too many academics believe that a classroom education is solely about transmitting information and developing analytical skills, and that the other “stuff” too many of them denigrate as “touchy feely” either has no place in academia’s hallowed halls or should be left to others.

Eighteen years ago, as part of my epiphany, I slowly began to realize that we academics have to be cardio-centric, for at the heart of an education is the education of the heart. Think about it. Thoughts are useful; information is important; analytical skills powerful; but, they’re not the whole of either education or life. And, their power is nothing compared to feelings. Feel about it. Whether we go ahead and take action depends on whether we feel like it or not. It is how we feel that pulls us and pulls on us, creates our reasons, generates our attitudes, and powers our action. It’s not what we know. Whatever we avoid, whatever we engage, we avoid or engage because we don’t want to or want to experience the feelings that we assume it will bring. Have a desire to feel frustrated, annoyed, upset, discouraged and angry? Then you will find plenty of excuses for feeling joyless and blaming others for having dealt you a bad hand. Want to feel alive, empowered, enthusiastic, passionate and joyful? Then you will find plenty of reasons coming at you from every direction. What I mean is that if you want to reach out and touch a student, if you want to make a difference in a student’s life, if want to help a student perform, if you want a student to transform, you must realize information and reason does not appeal to or move either us or a student. Emotion does all that. It’s the engine. It’s the pusher. It’s the resonator. It’s the adrenalin getter-upper. Emotion stirs people; emotion drives attitudes; emotion spurs moods; emotion guides actions; emotion powers movement. We are primarily feeling people who think and act. It’s that “appeal to a person’s emotions” thing.

I once heard John Madden say that a lot of people think the game of football is played on the field. They’re wrong, he said, it’s not just about ability, talent, and technique. There’s more to it than the X’s and O’s of a play. Most of the game, he asserted, is played in the hearts of the players. And, when a player isn’t playing with his heart, he’s not into the game. So, too, in the classroom, at the end of the day the heart is where most of the academic game is played.

Louis

THE POWER OF A SMILE

        As I struggled to catch up with student journals, A statement made by Lou Foltz at the Lilly conference kept ringing in my head: we are feeling people who think, not thinking people who feel. Then, I read Madeline’s journal entry last night and his words resounded as loudly as if I was next to the bells of Big Ben. She had written this entry while I was in Traverse City at the Lilly-North conference, “I miss your constant smile. I look forward to it. It brightens me up. It warms me up and melts the chill of my low self-esteem and weak self-confidence. Your smile tells ugly me that I’m attractive. Every time I’m in class with you when you smile at me, I feel noticed and valuable, and I believe that inside what a lot of people say is this worm you’re helping me to see the beautiful cocooned butterfly that you see. It’s so hard, but every time you offer me one of your ‘I care’ smiles I get a shot of ‘I can do this stuff’ that’s a temporary vaccination against my fears and insecurities and disbeliefs….”

        As I read her words over and over and over again, I started thinking about a sequence of feelings and attitudes: impact a student’s heart, and you alter her or his story; change her or his story, and you affected her or his perceptions; affect his or her perceptions, and you’ve touched that student; touch that student, and you’ve altered the future and changed the world.

       Madeline reminded me again of the smallest, most useful, most powerful tool each of us have at our disposal in the classroom to make a difference. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with us. It has nothing to do with giant leaps or dramatic U-turns. It’s proof that every little thing you feel and do leaves a consequence in its wake, that supposed little things can make huge differences, and that those small things quickly add up to big differences. I want you to think about this: every stirring in our heart stirs and matters. So many of us think we only speak with our mouths. But, I tell you, researchers tell us, we speak so loud with our bodies, with our hands, with our faces, and with our eyes that our words are drowned out. So, both inside and outside the classroom, both inside and outside us, something so simple as a sincere smile not only turns on the lights of the likes of a Madeline, but it magically turns walls into doors. Sneers blind; faith opens eyes; scowls deafen; hope perks up the ears; frowns chill; love warms up; grimaces numb; empathy sensitizes; sneers paralyze; compassion moves. A simple, genuine smile improves all of us. When we sincerely smile, we are more confident, enthusiastic, upbeat, and convincing. We even look better when we smile. A simple, genuine smile from our heart is an aura of our own positive outlook on life that we extend to envelope others. When we sincerely smile, we immediately add value to our encounters with others. When we sincerely smile we see, listen to, and empathize with others who are otherwise not there when we are dour and scowled. And, that makes that simple, small, useful, powerful act of just sincerely smiling, anything but small and meaningless. It’s actually so powerful that it can lift the heaviest of hearts.

Louis