On her book “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College
Cover Interview of September 04, 2017
Lastly
This book—the inception, research, writing, conversations,
reception—has completely changed the way I think about my profession. I had
become disillusioned and cynical, mostly about students. Now I’m more
disillusioned with the entire conventional model of higher education (and other
levels as well). But I’m hopeful too; there are great ideas about how to work
with the inherent curiosity and need for meaningful engagement that just about
everybody has. I’m not focused on merit, or sorting, or intelligence. I focus
on, fixate on, obsess about meeting each student where they are. That is my
responsibility. Just as in traditional societies everybody has to learn to
weave or cook, so in ours everybody has a right to expect to be aided in their
learning.
If I could have a wish, it would be that students, parents,
the public, administrators, and faculty would focus on how to get students to
plunge into meaningful learning when it matters to them, and to work with them
to define their goals and then help them realize them.
If you want the full picture of what I envision, read the appendix
where I compare education to permaculture, the approach to working with the
environment to minimize waste, to produce in accord with natural tendencies,
and to create a livable planet with livable lives, where we maximize harmony
and efficiency without trying to overcome nature. Humans are by nature
learners; surely, we can work with that in our schools if only we try.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
Lastly
This book—the inception, research, writing, conversations, reception—has completely changed the way I think about my profession. I had become disillusioned and cynical, mostly about students. Now I’m more disillusioned with the entire conventional model of higher education (and other levels as well). But I’m hopeful too; there are great ideas about how to work with the inherent curiosity and need for meaningful engagement that just about everybody has. I’m not focused on merit, or sorting, or intelligence. I focus on, fixate on, obsess about meeting each student where they are. That is my responsibility. Just as in traditional societies everybody has to learn to weave or cook, so in ours everybody has a right to expect to be aided in their learning.
If I could have a wish, it would be that students, parents, the public, administrators, and faculty would focus on how to get students to plunge into meaningful learning when it matters to them, and to work with them to define their goals and then help them realize them.
If you want the full picture of what I envision, read the appendix where I compare education to permaculture, the approach to working with the environment to minimize waste, to produce in accord with natural tendencies, and to create a livable planet with livable lives, where we maximize harmony and efficiency without trying to overcome nature. Humans are by nature learners; surely, we can work with that in our schools if only we try.