Communication fourOne7

 

Contact Philosophy of Education Vitae/Resume
Micro-Bio    
     

 NAME: Chris R. Kasch, Ph.D.
OFFICE: Global Communication Center- Office 318
OFFICE HOURS:    M and W (always before and after class in GCC 212

ckasch@kaschassociates.com

Cell and Text   309-824-3389

My Emerging Philosophy Of Education

Bits And Pieces

"Picture a freshman introductory psychology class, about 350 students who are still trying to find their seats when the professor starts talking. "Today," she says" we will continue our discussion of (blah, blah, blah). She might as well be addressing a crowd at the airport. Like commuters marking time until their next departure, students alternatively read the newspaper, chat with friends, or prop their feet on the chair ahead of them, staring into space. Only when the professor defines a term that she says "might appear on the exam" do they look up and start writing notes" --Michelle Robinson

Mochelle Robinson was an undergraduate in a course I taught. I asked student to comment on their college education and this passage was part of her response. Increasingly, school at all levels is seen as a chore, a rite of passage to be endured, rather than an exciting place to grow and learn.

"In this class we use the Socratic method. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it. Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you'll teach yourselves. Through this method of questions and answers, questioning and answering we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitutes the relationships of members within a given society. Questions and answers. At times you may feel you have found the correct answer, I can assure you this is a complete delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute, and final answer. In this class there is always another question to follow your answer, yes your on a treadmill, my little questions spin the tumblers of your mind, your on an operating table, my little questions are the fingers probing your brain. We do brain surgery here, you teach yourself the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a mind full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer."

"I began teaching as an assistant professor of architecture at the University of North Carolina in Raleigh. I realized immediately that there was a binary choice. I could teach about what I already knew or teach about what I would like to learn. I was more motivated by what I didn't know and was comfortable with admitting my ignorance, so I chose the latter. As a teacher, I directed by subjects of inquiry to that which I wanted to know and ran my mind parallel to the mind of a student rather than acting as a director of traffic. My expertise has always been my ignorance and admission and acceptance of not knowing. My work comes from questions, not from answers."

"There is no such thing as "dumb questions" only "dumb people" and "dumb people often tend to remain dumb unless they learn to ask intelligent questions. To ask an intelligent question one needs to at least recognize what one needs to know, and given one's current state of knowledge, what one does not know. For the person who is willing to ask questions, the world is always new. Questions are the building blocks of student-teacher conversation and relationships."

"The SATs say nothing about responsibility, creativity, leadership, social competence, morality, motivation, or self-confidence."

"I can tell you from my own experience that ruthlessness has its functions. Modern pedagogy has produced hundred of new techniques for improving students' writing. None works better than the technique I learned 40 years ago in grammar school from the Sisters of Mercy: Give them a D or an F on the first paper and you'll see a miraculous improvement on the second."

"Students should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? "

"We can improve the quality of teaching and learning overnight by getting ride of all textbooks. Most textbooks are badly written. and therefore, give the impression that the subject is boring. Most textbooks are impersonally written. They have no"voice," reveal no human personality. I have found the recipes on the backs of cereal boxes to be written with more style and conviction that most textbook descriptions of the causes of the Civil War. Of the language of grammar texts, I will not even speak. To borrow from Shakespeare, it is unfit for a Christian ear to endure. But worse than this, textbooks are concerned with presenting the facts of the case (whatever they may be) as if there can be no disputing them, as if they are fixed and immutable.... Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth. Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning. They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the minds of students is a blight and a curse."

Arrival at the age of 16 is usually all that is required for achieving half
of this important attribute of creativity.  It is unusual to find a
"contented" young person, discontent goes with that time of life.  To the young, everything needs improvement.... As we age our discontent wanes, we learn from our society that" fault-finders" disturb the status quo of the normal average "others." Squelch tactics are introduced. It becomes "good" not to "make waves" or" rock the boat" and to "let sleeping dogs lie". and "be seen but not heard". It is "good" to be invisible and enjoy your "autonomy". It is "bad" to be a problem-maker. And so everything is upside-down for creativity and its development. Thus, constructive attitudes are necessary for a dynamic condition; discontent is a prerequisite to problem-solving.  Combined, they define a primary quality of the creative problem-solver, a constantly developing Constructive Discontent"

From Don Kobery and Jim Bagnall, The universal traveler. A soft-systems guide to: Creativity, Problem-solving, and the Process of Design.

"We simply cannot enter the twenty-first center at each other's throats....We are at a crucial crossroads in the history of this nation-- and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately."