On her book “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College
Cover Interview of September 03, 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.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
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.