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ON-LINE
ISSUES
V.3
N.1, October 1995
In
Dialogue and Interaction with Grumet: Erasing the Line
by
Lynn Fels
Department
of Language Education
University of British Columbia
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"Once I saw the moon
Drift into sky like a bright
Pregnancy pared
From a goddess doomed
To keep slender to be beautiful-
Cut loose, and drifting up there
To happen by itself-
And waning, lost labor"[1]
- Head
bent over an article, highlighter working feverishly across the pages,
it was only by accident, glancing distractedly out the library window,
that I caught the rising of the moon. She hung heavy in the sky, and
for a lost moment, I remembered skiing across an unmarked field of
snow, breaking trail, moonlight spilling into the tracks of my passing.
- Where
I come from the winters are long, to be traversed by cross-country
skiing along the river or across wood- locked fields. Every day, chasing
the hour between dusk and darkness, I would escape the cold grip of
winter and return home breathless, triumphant, the moon riding on
my shoulder. And always, I would bring with me from the woods, in
my mittened hand, a fragment of a story or an idea to be considered,
to be reshaped, to be troubled over. Each wintry excursion seemed
to bring with it discovery, born in the space between the rhythm of
skis against the snow and the sound of the wind entering the firs.
- I
had intended when I first embarked on this paper journey, to consider
the role of drama education as a tool for democratizing the classroom.
Drama education is, I had planned to argue, an ideal vehicle in which
to explore the concepts of equality, individual responsibility and
rights, collective action and opportunity. I would slip into my backpack
Brian Watkin's (1983) statement that "drama serves as a truly democratic
model, for it is above all else consensual" (p.41). Maxine Greene
(1988), would have been invited along as a traveling companion, her
definition of freedom -- the opportunity to choose action and the
freedom of interaction -- giving strength to our stride. How better
to encourage democracy in the classroom than to implement child-centered
drama education? It would be, I thought, a safe, if somewhat predictable
journey, with plenty of trail signs to direct my route.
- But,
somehow, in my readings, I strayed off the path onto less sure footings.
And so, I find myself, floundering thigh-deep in snow, in the unexpected
company of Grumet (1988), Varela and Maturana (1987) and others,
wandering into unmapped territory, "laying down a pathto understanding.[2]
The questions that quicken my pace are: Can I move towards a definition
of curriculum and drama education, within the concept of Grumet's
theory of education as reproduction? Where is the placing of drama
education in the curriculum? And what is curriculum?
- Ordinarily,
I would oblige the reader by providing a roadmap, so that he or she
might anticipate the route along which we will travel together. However,
since I myself, am unsure of the compass readings, having only the
questions of curriculum and drama education as markers in the snow-covered
landscape, I can only invite the reader to strap on his or her cross-country
skis and let the moon shoulder-ride with us.
Reproduction:
Moving Beyond the Handmaid's Tale[3]
- The
night I caught the moon reading over my shoulder, I went for a walk
in our neighbourhood, creating a snowpath of uncertain footsteps in
the surprise of an early November snowfall, and reconsidered my reading
of Madeleine Grumet (1988). On first introduction, I was thrilled
to discover an academic who wrote with a capital I, who had babies,
and made supper and spoke of birthing and conception with a familiarity
I recognized. Yes, this is what had been absent: The voice of a woman,
speaking about the moon harboured in her belly.
- Grumet
(1988) proposes that "what is most fundamental to our lives as men
and women sharing a moment on this planet is the process and experience
of reproducing ourselves" (p. 4). This "process and experience" of
reproduction is both a remembering of our past and a vision of our
future, a mutual act of creation and re-creation. Reproduction is
the governance of the moon, moving through its cyclical phases of
celestial death and rebirth.
- Grumet
(1988) invites us to consider education as an act of reproduction:
biological, ideological and critical (p. 8). She explores this concept
through a recounting of the experiences of female teachers and their
role in delivering the curriculum. Compliant midwives of the system,
women teachers, Grumet laments, have been denied their rightful place
at the birthing table, too long in habit and in ignorance following
the orders of the doctor (i.e. the state). It is time, Grumet argues,
for teachers to "take the stance of an artist" (p. 81), and bring
meaning-making into the realm of what she calls "the aesthetic practice"
(p. 91).
- Grumet
(1988) presents a feminist reading of schooling and the capitulation
of teachers (male and female) to the agenda of the dominant culture.
Grumet writes of our collective guilt in reproducing the state in
the classroom, of "systematically delivering the children over to
the language, rules, and relations of the patriarchy" (p. 56). Reproduction,
in this sense, is not to question the biological nor ideological,
but to accept and to repeat again and again a graven image of ourselves
that is ourselves but not ourselves, an expression of the state as
it wills us to be, and, in that reproduction, to deny recognition
or responsibility for what we are or a vision of who we might become.
Those few who recognize this reproductive enslavement attempt subversive
action behind closed doors, their vision contained, confined within
a "bunker" (p. 92), their voices, a solitary cry against mediocrity
and failure of imagination.
- Returning
to the poem fragment which opens this piece, consider, if you would,
the moon as a child, and grieve for the lost potential and being of
that unborn child "cut loose, and drifting up there to happen by itself."
To undertake reproduction on behalf of the state, to be managed by
our own limited and limiting adherence to "what is expected and what
must be done," is to set the moon adrift, abandoned. If we are governed
by limited visions imposed by our reproductive histories, we will,
in our acceptance of our role as the "goddess doomed to keep slender
be beautifulfail realizeour work lost laborthat is the child.[4]
- The
unmentioned and unmentionable absence in the poem who dictates that
a goddess must destroy her pregnant self in order to maintain her
beauty in His Eye is a terrible God. A teacher who willingly or unthinkingly
abandons her students in their individual journeys to come into being
so that she can replicate the expectations and definitions that come
from without and within is practicing educational reproduction without
the critical to guide her delivering hand. The child is stillborn;
released into the human graveyard of unrealized potential.
Critical
Reproduction: Taking the Stance of the Artist
- Grumet
(1988) warns that until "teachers and mothers (and fathers) acknowledge
the ways in which schools perpetuate the asymmetry in class privilege
and gender that is present in both the home and the workplace, they
will not interrupt the patterns of their own complicity" (p. 56).
As Grumet explains, "the intentions, assumptions, emotions, and achievements
of educational practice and theory are infused with motives that come
from our own reproductive histories and commitments" (pp. 6-7). Education,
in terms of reproduction in this sense, biological and ideological,
is an incestuous family affair.
- The
prognosis seems grim. But, to our relief and release, Grumet brings
with her an antidote, a witch's offering that will bind the goddess
to her pregnant self, and lead her to reject the powers that reward
a censorious eye on the bathroom scale.
- Reproduction,
as envisioned by Grumet, can and must include the critical: not a
blind acceptance of the status quo; but an awareness of the ideological
wrappings of the biological presentation of the curriculum. Our responsibility,
as it is defined by critical reproduction, is to know from where we
have come and to whom we acknowledge authority and self-identification.
A critical reading of curriculum invites teacher (and student) to
argue against the "waning - the lost labor," to suggest an alternative.
- To
recognize, to question, to accept or to reject the given, to identify
and pursue the absence is to create a space for understanding and
exploration. Reproduction as critical opens up the possibilities and
opportunities that a "pregnancy pared" can neither realize nor anticipate.
- Grumet
suggests that to be critical is a necessary first step towards an
aesthetic practice of teaching. Critical reproduction is to take,
as Grumet describes, the stance of the artist, to challenge "the taken-for-granted
values and culture that one shares with others" (p. 81), to question
and to critique what is assumed and to note the absence of what is
not permitted. To be critical, then, in education is to invite renewal
in new forms, new approaches, new expressions. To be an artist. To
be creative. As Grumet claims, "It is the deviation of our own reproductive
histories, mine and yours, from these theoretical formulations that
opens the gap for new theory (and practice) to fill" (p. xvii).
- As
a drama educator, my pulse immediately quickens when I see printed
on the page the juxtaposition of teaching and aesthetic practice.
I have come to understand drama education as a poignant expression
of and opportunity for individual creativity and collective imagining.
But I stumble over these words:
Curriculum, is after all, artifice, deliberately designed to direct
attention, provoke response, and express value; it reorders experience
so as to make it accessible to perception and reflection." (Grumet,
1988: p. 79, my italics)
- Curriculum
as artifice? A warning bell sounds. I flip back a page and find:
"The
things of art stand away from the world that surround them. The
text is, literally, bound; the painting framed. The play ends to
applause. The dance ceases...somewhere in space and time the line
is drawn." (p. 78)
and
these words:
"The
point is that to be an artist is perpetually to negotiate the boundary
that separates aesthetic from mundane experience." (p. 79)
- I
have encountered unexpected territory. Grumet's argument draws a firm
if fluid line between aesthetic experience and mundane. This mapping
of boundaries between mundane and aesthetic experience disturbs me.
There is a gap in understanding, a contradiction that I can't quite
put my finger on. I can only trust in the sudden loss of breath, the
unexpected stomach drop as I neatly stem-christie over a mogul and
discover myself on the edge of an abyss.
- I
am compelled to ask Grumet, can one truly say that "the dance ceases"?
That an aesthetic experience has a beginning and an end? Or that aesthetic
form exists in a separate place? Is the text truly bound and separate
from the world? A book, even one sitting abandoned on a shelf, does
not cease to exist in this world; it does not "stand away from
the world."
- How
to argue against Grumet's assertion that "to be an artist is perpetually
to negotiate the boundary that separates aesthetic from mundane experience"?
I would like to suggest that the aesthetic experience of dance, writing,
painting, theatre, spills across boundaries, defeats boundaries, does
not permit boundaries to exist. To pigeon hole aesthetic experience,
to distinguish between the aesthetic and mundane, is to accept the
"pared pregnancy" of our goddess.
- And
what am I to think about Grumet's view of curriculum as artifice which
"...reorders experience so as to make it accessible to perception
and reflection" (p. 79, my italics)? Or her suggestion that "the function
of art is to reorganize experience" (p. 81, my italics)? I
wonder about her use of the verbs "reorganize" and "reorder" in connection
to experience, "curricular, aesthetic or mundane." We may reflect
on experience or reinterpret our experience, coming to new experience
through previous experience, but to "reorganize" it as if experience
was a concrete object suggests that experience can be replaced or
manipulated or dismissed.
- Experiences
are like individual moments of a dance; moments of action weaving
patterns of love or pain, fear or hate, sorrow or celebration into
life's choreography; each movement or action taken by the artist in
response to the preceding moments and in anticipation (but never in
certainty) of the proceeding moment. A dancer or choreographer may
change the dance, accenting a hand movement, or eliminating an awkward
pirouette but in doing so, the "original" choreography of the dance
remains firmly in the experience (i.e. knowledge) of the artist, present
in its absence. In the experience of doing, the artist does not "reorder"
the experience, but interacts with it in order to create anew. The
dance (noun) evolves into dancing (verb); never static, never solidified,
never finalized.
- Am
I in error to question Grumet's labeling of experiences? Why do I
feel compelled to challenge her definition of aesthetic experience
and forms as separate from the mundane? I am A.A. Milne's (1982) Pooh
Bear tracking down a Hostile Animal in the fresh fallen snow, walking
around and around in a circle:
"Hallo!"
said Piglet, "what are you doing?"
"Hunting," said Pooh.
"Hunting what?"
"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?"
"What do you think you'll answer?"
"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Now look there." He pointed to the ground in front of him.
"What do you see there?"
"Tracks," said Piglet.
"Paw-marks." He gave a little squeak of excitement.
"Oh, Pooh! Do you think it's a-a-a-Woozle?"(p. 37, 38)
- I
feel I am on the edge of discovery but with each circling, I find
yet another pair of tracks, questions leading to questions. Where
do I go from here? If I am unhappy with Grumet's labeling and reorganizing
of experiences, perhaps I should seek farther afield? With an apprehensive
poke of my ski poles against the snow, I head down the treacherous
slope towards understanding.
Beyond
Reproduction? An Enactivist Joins the Conversation
-
How do we learn? As I search for a theory which reflects my experiences
in drama, I am concerned that recognition be given to the creative
expression and interchange of ideas, feeling and action which I believe
are drama education's raison d'être as a vehicle for learning.
It is therefore with enthusiasm and a sudden shock of recognition
that I stumble upon enactivism, a theory of knowledge which sees cognition
as embodied in the knower and in action.[5]
- What
is of fascination for enactivists are the inter-relations and interactions
between individuals and their environment. "Far from merely existing
relatively autonomously in the same location, individual and environment
continually specify one another. Just as I am shaped by my location,
so is my location shaped by my presence" (Davis, Kieren, & Sumara,
forthcoming, p. 4). We do not develop in isolation, but through co-emergence:
that which is created or co-evolves in the interactional space between
an individual, the environment and others.
- Enactivists
define "cognition not as a representation of the world 'out there,'
but rather as an ongoing bringing forth of a world through the process
of living itself" (Maturana & Varela, 1992: 11). Learning
is a process in which "the students and teacher are seen as bringing
forth a world together; the teacher's actions are determined by
his or her own dynamic structure, but are also occasioned by the interactional
dynamics with students as they bring forth (i.e. quite literally,
help to shape) the world" (p 4, my italics)[6].
Knowledge is fluid, changing and personally and situationally interdependent.
"What we do," Varela says, "is what we know, and ours is but one of
many possible worlds. It is not a mirroring of the world, but the
laying down of a world..." (p 62).
- Enactivism
resonates with my own understanding of drama education based on my
experience working with students. Drama, through creative expression
and interaction with others involves-invites creating "new possible
worlds": How often have I brought a script to class, or a lesson plan,
or an idea for a drama activity, only to have the students change
it, rework it, take ownership of it, journey with it far beyond what
I had imagined; students with teacher collectively and individually
"bringing forth a new world," a world of understanding through and
within dramatic action. Drama is the praxis of an enactivist's theory
of knowledge; co-emergence the operative word-world in a drama class.
- Hmmm....this
idea of bringing "forth a worldrings familiar. I return to Grumet
(1988) and thumb through her chapter on bodyreading"[7];
a discussion on the interaction or meaning-making which occurs between
the reader and the text. She ignores me, intent on waxing her skis.
Meaning-making:
Enactment of Possible Worlds
- Grumet
(1988) informs us that "meaning is something we make out of
what we find when we look at texts. It is not in the text"
(p. 143, my italics). "Body-reading" takes the task and authority
of "meaning-making" out of the hands of the literary critic and teacher
and places it into the hands (i.e. experience) of the individual student.
The student does not arrive at meaning by finding it in "between the
lines of the text" but within the interaction of text and reader
through the action of reading.
- As
I interpret Grumet, the space negotiated between the reader and the
text becomes the meaning of the text and conversely that of the reader
who, in conspiracy with the text, is undertaking the action
of meaning- making. The space becomes the "enactment of
possible worlds...performed in a middle space owned by neither
author nor reader" (p.149, my italics). It is the interaction or co-emergence
between reader and text and the resulting "possible worlds" that intrigues.
- Is
Grumet an enactivist? She sounds suspiciously like one when she writes,
"The coherence of the text, like that of the world, is the possible
and actual ground of our action...And action is knowledge" (p. 143,
149). It is in action and through interaction that we come to knowledge.
Knowledge, then, in my reading of Grumet, is organic: A "happening"
between the players (e.g. text and reader) within the context of the
environment -- meaning-making as action and interaction. Or in the
words of our enactists: "Knowing is doing is being." (Davis, et. al.,
forthcoming, p. 3) Knowledge not as a noun but a verb.
- "Knowing
is doing is being" sounds like an ideal mantra for drama education.
I stop mid-stride to pat myself on the back, an awkward maneuver with
ski-poles in hand. But at that very moment, Grumet (1988) cries: "if
we can just wrest meaning from the grip of knowledge and return it
to art..." (p. 148), and I am thrown off balance. Grumet's line between
Art and Knowledge snags my ankle and tugs me face first into a snowbank.
- It
is a momentary upset. I failed- - at first reading-- to understand
that, within the context of her statement, Grumet's definition of
"knowledge" is to be understood as "something out there", a noun,
a concrete object authorized by the State to be hand-delivered by
teachers. Within this context, I find myself nodding in agreement,
vigorously shaking the snow off my mittens. Yes, of course! Let us
take "meaning-making" out of the static hands of Knowledge and place
it within the creative action of Art.
- But
I find myself still seated in the snowbank, puzzled as to how to regain
my feet. One ski-pole has disappeared under a layer of snow. Grumet's
placing of "meaning-making" into one of two camps -- Knowledge or
Art -- leads us to two difficulties. The first invites the interpretation
that art is separate, "away from the world" -- hence Grumet's "drawing
of a line" between mundane and aesthetic experience. Being separate-from
bears with it the inherent dangers of marginalization. The second
is that the term "knowledge" as used in this instance by Grumet as
"something out there," is contrary to the enactivist's use and conception
of the term "knowledge" as "knowing, doing, being." This confusion
of terminology makes dialogue difficult.
I am forced to resort to the tactics of a mathematician.
If:
Knowledge = Meaning-making (grumet) = Knowing = Doing = Being
(enactivists)
and:
Art = Creating = (Knowing = Doing = Being) = Meaning-making
then:
Art = Knowledge
- And
I discover a pool of moonlight - Knowledge is Creating.
Eureka! I have erased the line.
- This
equation allows me to do three things: the first is to recognize that
I can locate drama education within Grumet's concept of education
as reproduction: biological, ideological and critical, if it is understood,
as Grumet argues, that to be critical is to be creative. Drama education,
if it is to be successful, must embrace both the critical and the
creative in the making of "new possible worlds." If one criticizes,
yet fails to introduce creative action, then reproduction as status
quo continues.
- Second,
it brings me to an understanding that enactivism, as a theory and
realization of knowledge, must, if it is to move forward with the
momentum of exploration and excitement that is critical to learning,
embrace a notion of "creating" as an essential component of Davis
et. al.'s definition "Knowing is Doing is Being." Otherwise, knowledge
as organism is of an "incestuous" nature.
- And
third, to accept the concept of "Knowledge is Creating to understand
that be creativeone must also critical[8].
Not to be critical, as Grumet (1988) warns, is to encourage endless
reproduction: biological and ideological, "created" by practiced but
uninspired and "unknowing" so-called artists.
- In
the "bringing forth of possible worlds", the key action word is Creating:
Taking the stance of an artist. To be creative. If we look to child-centered
drama as a means of coming to knowledge through creative action and
interaction, then understanding "Knowledge as Creating" is both necessary
and emancipatory.
- The
Venn diagram illustrates the "creating" that is "the bringing forth
of a new possible world" or co- emergence as described by enactivism.
Imagine that the spheres are multi-dimensional, co-evolving through
time and space. Note that "I" and "Other" are not located solely in
the "known world"; there is much that is "unknown" within the "known".
-
The "known world" is the socially constructed world: the "unknown
world" is that Knowing/Doing/Being that has not yet been realized
(i.e. socially constructed). The intersection between the "I" and
the "Other" is the formation of the "new world" through co-emergence:
the act of creating "a new possible world" through the interactions
between the "I" and "Other" in concert with separate and shared experiences
of the "known world." The choreography of knowledge is realized through
co-emergence: the interactional space between "I and Other" and the
"known world" -- where new possible worlds are enacted. Creating is
making known the absences that are the "unknown world".
- Although
I do not normally link Venn diagrams with birthing, the example I
have offered recalls to mind our goddess from the opening poem fragment.
If we superimpose the enactivist understanding of knowledge onto the
poem, then the moonchild is no longer a "pared pregnancy" but bound
once again to its goddess mother in union with its god father. In
the shared creating, doing, knowing of her conception and pregnancy,
their "found labor" brings forth a new celestial being: the moonchild
known/unknown in this world becomes known, and in becoming known creates
its "own possible world(s)."
Geometry
of Education: Erasing the Line
- And
so it is, that I arrive breathless, my cheeks frost-painted red, at
the bottom of the hill. It is not simply a matter of deciding, as
Grumet suggests, of "where and when to draw the line" (p. 94) but
to challenge the existence of the line. As Davis et. al. explain,
"There are no real boundaries here: each is enfolded in and unfolds
from the other" (p. 10).
- Learning
is "an ongoing structural dance - a complex choreography" (Davis et.
al., forthcoming: 2). It is not "line- drawing" that we want to attempt
but an embracing of creative enaction. Creative enaction is to ask
questions, to look for the Hostile Animal, to create a path of exploration
and discovery in walking (or, in our present situation, skiing). And
so we circle around and around like Piglet and Pooh seeking elusive
Woozles and meeting ourselves in knowledge (albeit sometimes with
a little help from a friend).
- "Silly
old Bear," said Christopher Robin, "what were you doing? First you
went round the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after
you and you went round again together, and then you were just going
round a fourth time----"
- "Wait
a moment," said Winnie-the-Pooh, holding up his paw.
- He
sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then
he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks...and then he scratched his
nose twice, and stood up.
"Yes,"
said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I see now," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of
No Brain at All."
"You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin
soothingly.
"Am I? said Pooh hopefully. And then he brightened up suddenly.
"Anyhow," he said, "it is nearly Luncheon Time."
So he went home for it. (Milne, 1957: 43, 44)
- Enactivism
without critical and creative action is nothing but reproduction without
hope. It is to join Piglet and Pooh in an mindless rather than inquiring
circling, thinking we are going somewhere and going nowhere at all.
It is Pooh's creative response to consider an alternative world (from
the one that he and Piglet had been imagining) that invites him to
place his paw in his pawprint and recognize the path he has created
in walking.
- I
do not think that we are in disagreement, Grumet and I. We share our
belief, trust, and hope in the power and potential of education as
reproduction: biological, ideological, critical and creative. The
difference perhaps is in the "drawing of lines" --
lines to be crossed
between "aesthetic experience" and the mundane
between "aesthetic practice" and other
between Knowledge and
Art.
- My
impulse is to erase lines. My geometry of education is an unmarked
field of snow, my compass the interrelations and interactions between
multi-dimensional circles or spheres of experiences in which new spheres
("knowing, doing, being, creating") unfold. And, for me, this geometry
speaks to the democratic opportunity for learning: No one person holds
the key to knowledge. "There are no real boundaries here....Even the
traditional boundary separating teacher and learner is blurred, for
in the play of knowledge-in curriculum- all are fully implicated"
(Davis et. al., forthcoming: p. 10). We are learners all; the teacher
in a constant co-evolving dance with her students.
- To
come then to an understanding of the "aesthetic experience" that Grumet
desires for education is for each of us, individually and collectively
to create and to be creative. To discover Knowledge in Creating and
to embrace Creating as Knowledge. What is necessary in education is
the courage and creativity of the individual in action and in interaction.
The "taking the stance of the artist" is the bloodline between stillbirth
and the birthing of our moonchild.
Curriculum
as Laying Down a Path in Knowing
- I
stride forward, confident in the path I am laying. But the weight
of Grumet's curriculum as "artifice, deliberately designed...(which)
reorders experiences" (1988: p. 79) digs into my shoulders. I stop
mid-stride to adjust my backpack. Does Grumet see curriculum as separate
from the world? Is there yet another line?
- What
is curriculum? Grumet warns us that curriculum should not be seen
as a fixed entity in existence and separate from students ... "curriculum,
considered apart from its appropriation and transformation by students,
curriculum defined as design, a structure of knowledge, an intended
learning outcome, or a learning environment, is merely a static form"
(1988, p. 172, my italics). States Grumet:
"...curriculum,
like language, is a moving form; conceived as an aspiration, the
object and hope of our intentionality, it comes to form and slips,
at the moment of its actualization, into the ground of our action.
It becomes part of our situation" (op.cit., p. 131).
- Students,
Grumet argues, are integral participants in the actualization of curriculum.
"A curriculum designed for my child is a conversation that leaves
space for her responses, that is transformed by her questions" (1988,
p. 173). Grumet's description of curriculum as "a moving form" is
pushed further by Pinar, Lattery & Taubman (1994):
"Curriculum
ceases to be a thing, and it is more than a process. It becomes
a verb, an action, a social practice, a private meaning, and a public
hope. Curriculum is not just the site of our labor, it becomes the
product of our labor, changing as we are changed by it" (p. 3).
- What
is curriculum? Curriculum is a catalyst for exploration which begins
with a question, a thought, a laugh, a search for the Hostile Animal.
Curriculum is the action-interaction of creating: co-emergence that
takes place in the interactional space between student, teacher, text
and classroom -- the "known" world in search of, in anticipation of,
but never in certainty of the "unknown" world. Curriculum is laying
down a path in understanding.
- Grumet
and Pinar et. al. touch the essence of curriculum -- not a line or
a boundary or a roadmap -- but a transformation, a realizing and coming
to knowledge by children through creative and critical interaction
with each other, their teacher and their environment. The bringing
forth of a new possible world(s).
- Grumet's
statement curriculum as "artifice...(which) reorganizes experiences"
therefore begs the rewrite:
curriculum
embodies and invites experiences.
- Curriculum
not as artifice, separate from the "real world" but part of the world.
There is no line drawn.
"...understand
that curriculum does not and cannot exist apart from the world.
It cannot be thought of as something intended to reflect or reveal
the universe, for it is an inextricable part of the universe. Curriculum
action, like any action, becomes part of the continuous structural
coupling of curriculum actors and their world" (Davis et. al, forthcoming:
p. 8).
- And
it is the currciular catalysts of creative and critical action-interaction
-- the springboards, the questions, the hunt for Woozles -- that invite
and challenge student and teacher, learners both, into new "knowing,
being, doing, creating."
- Which
brings us, under the pale glow of a full moon, to an understanding
and celebration of the potential of drama education. Drama education
which is critical and creative in the interplay of meaning-making
is the drama of reproduction as encouraged by Grumet, and as anticipated
by enactivists. The co-emergence that happens in the interactional
space between students and teacher and their environment through drama
is the creation and realization of knowledge: the birthing of the
moonchild who in the "time that is but the changing of light"[9]
creates new possible worlds -- a "laying down a path" in understanding.
Postscript:
Breaking Trail
I am back in the woods cross-country skiing,
in the company of Pooh and Piglet
hunting for Woozles
laying down tracks on the freshly fallen snow
in an unmarked field of moonlight
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End
Notes
- A
poem fragment from "Freedom, New Hampshire," by Galway Kinnell as
quoted in Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching by Madeleine Grumet
(1988). Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. [back]
- The
phrase "laying down a path" is from an article by F. Varela (1992)
titled Laying down a path in walking. In W. I. Thompson (ed.). Gaia,
A Way Of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology (Hudson,
NY: Lindisfarne Press). Originally from a poem by A Machado in Proverbios
y Cantares, 1930 which Varela translated into English. [back]
- The
Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, a futuristic novel in which women
are stratified by their child-bearing capabilities and obliged to
service men for the purpose of reproduction as determined by the state.
For a theoretical examination of biological reproduction as experienced
by men and women and the resulting impact of the male reproduction
experience on the theory and practice of politics see The Politics
of Reproduction (1981) by Mary O'Brien. See References. [back]
- A
practical realization of this abandonment was enacted at a parent
teacher meeting I attended in which the new format for report cards
were introduced. Several parents protested the return of lettered
grades for the intermediate level, arguing that low grades would have
a negative impact on their children's self- esteem. This concern was
echoed by the two teachers present. However, when one parent proposed
that the school not use grading, the principal interjected, "We have
to. It's been mandated by the Ministry. We have no choice." Handmaidens
of the Ministry of Education of British Columbia, the principal and
teachers comply with state direction no matter how destructive it
may be to some children. [back]
- The
truth of Varela's (1987) "the laying down of a path" to understanding
followed me up the stairs of the Scarfe Education Building as I sought
out a math education professor noted on campus as an expert on enactivism.
What, I asked myself wonderingly, was I, a drama educator, doing in
the math department? And why not?! [back]
- Varela's
(1987) imagery of wind chimes to illustrate the interactions between
objects and medium may be helpful. Wind chimes sound a tune when moved
by the wind. It is not however the wind that determines the sound
made but the structural configurations of the the wind chimes and
resulting actions and reactions which occur. The wind is also changed
by its encounter with the wind chimes, altering direction, being reduced
in strength, richocheting from one chime to another. And so a new
world of sound is created in the co-ermergence of the wind and the
wind chimes in a continuing fluidity of action-response-action. [back]
- Grumet,
M., See Chapter 7 in Bitter Milk, (1988). [back]
- See
Drama as a Site for Critical Pedagogy (1993) by Clar Doyle for an
argument for drama in education as a tool for critical thinking. [back]
- a
line from a Joyce Carol Oates novel (the reference of which I've long
since forgotten) which I memorized many years ago because it freed
me from seeing time as mechanical time. Tick tock. Tick tock. [back]
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References
- Atwood,
M. (1985). The Handmaid's Tale. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
- Burton,
F. (1986). Research currents: a teacher's conception of the action
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- Cole,
A.L. (1989). Researcher and teacher: partners in theory building.
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J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier MacMillan
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M. (1988). The Dialectic of Freedom. New York: Teachers College
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S. (1992). Learning to teach through collaborative conversation: a
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J. L. (1991). Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Inquiry as a
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H. & Varela, F. (1992). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological
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W., Reynolds, W., Lattery, P., & Taubman, P., (1994)Understanding
Curriculum: A Postscript for the Next Generation, A paper presented
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J. J. (1979). Emile: or On Education. (Allan Bloom, Trans.).
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F. (1987). Laying down a path in walking. In W. I. Thompson (ed.),
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F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive
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Watkins, Brian, (1983). Drama as game. in C. Day & J. Norman
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