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Mark Edmundson

The Blue of Education

Our world is now so complex, our technology and science so powerful, and our problems so global and interconnected that we have come to the limits of individual human intelligence and individual expertise.”
James Paul Gee

With brief pockets of cynicism and frequent moments of humor, James Paul Gee describes the anti-intellectual spirit of our times in his 2013 book, The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning.

It’s a dark, scary, space with truth, goodness, and beauty nowhere to be found.

So how did we get here?

The rhetorical theorist, Kenneth Burke suggests the factory model of compulsory education is to blame.
The contemporary author, Nicholas Carr blames the internet for making us stupid or at the very least, changing the way we think.
The English professor, Mark Edmundson calls the prevalence of the consumer attitude among students the culprit.

Gee points his finger at everything from weak metaphors to faulty memories as he searches for narratives to contextualize the trauma of contemporary education. He looks to the collective “we” and to the systems we’ve constructed, but unlike Nicholas Carr, he doesn’t blame our tools.

Hidden beneath the surface of his message is the same sentiment that Jesper Juuls echoes in The Art of Failure: if we want to change our contemporary cultural moment then we must change our perspective.

In light of that, I suspect our best course of action is to reorient our ship.

Instead of seeing the current state of education as a problem to be solved, we might want to consider how this longing for something more might spur us on to create something new and potentially beautiful.

Perhaps our desire for change and our longing to be surrounded by visionaries is something to treasure.

The American writer, Rebecca Solnit, intuits this exact thing in her eloquent work, A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.
I wonder sometimes whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance?
If you can look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue that can never be possessed?
For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond.
Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are more beautiful than comedies and why we take a huge pleasure in the sadness of certain songs and stories.
Something is always far away.

James Paul Gee echoes this sentiment:

Art is about perspectives, how things can be viewed in order to open up new possibilities, cause emotions, or get people committed to new lines of action or ways of living their lives. So, too, is language as we use it in our everyday lives.”

James Paul Gee elaborates,

We paint on the canvas of people’s minds using language as the paint. Like Monet we play with perspective, with “light” and “shadows” (foregrounding some things, and backgrounding others), in order to get others to see things differently, sometimes anew.”

Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.

To educate, to lead out, is to embrace the blue of distance that so beautifully brings texture to our lives.

Education is not a problem to be solved.

It’s a passion to be pursued.

We can expand our options by expanding our language and our thinking.

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Redeeming Education One Class at a Time

Jessica S. Manuel

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.”
~Maria Montessori

By Jessica S. Manuel

In the recently published book, Why Teach? In Defense of Real Education, Mark Edmundson defends education on behalf of all teachers. Real education is the life-changing, mind-altering, value-questioning pursuit that was lost somewhere along the way. The beast has changed in the past 40 years and he describes poignant moments in the evolution and posits explanations throughout this collection of essays.

Some ideas are consistent with his earlier publication, Why Read?, and there is plenty of new material to appreciate. I appreciate the balanced approach he takes since he challenges the student, the institution, and the professor to examine their role in the demise of education. Each element shares equal responsibility. While teachers must do what they can to help shrink the monster, but he addresses both teachers and students in hopes to reignite real education.

The most compelling chapter was his satire on the typical student in contemporary education, “A Word to the New Humanities Professor.” New or not, professors will appreciate how relevant these moments are in their classroom. Edmundson’s criticism of various new trends in higher education, especially the push toward group work, is particularly interesting. He argues that it is deeply problematic that instructors are relinquishing their role as educator, or those meant to inspire change among our students, to the students themselves. Group work does allow students the space to marinate in what they have learned from the professor, however, it would be ideal for collaboration to take place outside of class to allow sufficient time for instruction.

There is a great deal to appreciate about this book. It is simultaneously encouraging and depressing. It’s a very casual read, but if a teacher finds himself in a despairing moment, this might be a momentary cure. Individuals are reminded of why they began their journey as an educator, or educatee, in the first place: to befriend texts and transform students through acting as a kind of attorney in the classroom.

And finally, Edmundson reminds the English major that they made the best decision of their life, despite how society might be trying to convince them otherwise, when they chose to surround themselves with books:

The English major is, first of all, a reader. She’s got a book pup-tented in front of her nose many hours a day; her Kindle glows softly late into the night. But there are readers and there are readers. There are people who read to anesthetize themselves–they read to induce a vivid, continuous, and risk-free daydream. They read for the same reason that people grab a glass of chardonnay–to put a light buzz on. The English major reads because as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough. He reads not to see the world through the eyes of other people but effectively to become other people. What is it like to be John Milton, to be Jane Austen, to be Chinua Achebe? What is it like to be them at their best, at the top of their games? The English major wants the joy of seeing the world through the eyes of people who–let us admit it–are more sensitive, more articulate, shrewder, sharper, more alive than themselves are. The experience of changing minds and hearts with Proust or James or Austen is one that is incomparably enriching. It makes you see that there is more to the world than you had ever imagined was possible. You see that life is bigger, sweeter, more tragic and intense–more alive with meaning than you had thought.”