A posting from Pete - 23 July 2005.
I hope that the following gives you a flavour of 'where I am coming from'. It is the
result of a perusal of my postings to the e-seminar and correspondences to date, a
review of a video recording of a conversation on the symposium with Jack yesterday,
a walk with the dog and the consumption of a bottle of 'Bishop's Finger' beer! Having
constructed my base, I hope that my movement from it will give us something more to
talk about.
In the context of identifying living forms of standards of judgement, I am writing about
expression, communication and understanding. My thoughts are focused on my
recent reading of a modern translation of the Iliad; its preface included the
observation that the story was originally recited rather than read; its form was fluid
and developmental rather than fixed. The recitations were led by peripetetic 'cantors'
who drew each audience into the action until all joined in so that the whole
performance became a sort of communal chant-cum-song of self-affirmation. In the
light of this, I would now propose that the Iliad, with its mythic characters and action,
was the means by which the people of that age explained their own psychology to
themselves; it helped them to come to their own understanding of what it was to be
human. Following this line of thought, I would like to suggest that the Iliad in its
earliest form of expression, was a sort of living educational theory; I further suggest
that, held within a dialectic of performance that involved expression and reflection by
extended groups of people, each stage of the growth of this living theory (i.e. the
process of evolution of the Iliad to the form that we now have) depended implicitly on
the development and application of agreed standards of judgement. Growth of the
Iliad as a grand narrative theory arose from a sort of 'dialectical resonance' held by
the participants engaged in its living expression and living affirmation. I see a link
here with Collingwood's: "....and those parts of the work of art which he could not in
some sort have invented for himself will pass him by unseen. 'How much, as one
grows older, one finds in so-and-so,' people say, 'that one never saw before!' .... For
one never sees in anybody's work but what one brings to it.' ..." Again, here is the
growth over time of understanding through the dialectical logic of question and
answer.
Centuries after the Iliad first took form and 2,500 years ago, Plato spoke about the "...
propriety and impropriety of writing". Offered to a king by its inventor as "... a remedy
both for the memory and for wisdom", the king replied that writing in fact possesses a
power opposite to the one claimed by its inventor: "... this discovery of yours will
create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise
their memories, but, trusting in external, foreign marks, they will not bring things to
remembrance from within themselves. You have discovered a remedy not for
memory, but for reminding. You offer your students the appearance of wisdom, not
true wisdom." Today, the Iliad is read and is studied forensically, with much
contention about the identity of 'Homer'. So often (witness parts of the e-seminar
archive) we express our ideas to each other in the form of written blast and
counter-blast and usually do not seem to 'walk the talk' that enables true
communication leading to new understanding. Our speech has a written cast to it
and our culture leads to living standards of judgement remaining elusive as we seek
in vain for them in the ostensive form that is our only medium of 'academic'
exchange; it also perhaps contributes to your feeling that you have reached the
extent of your "competence/incompetence and have a creative sense of failing to
explicate the processes of pedagogising living educational theories."
However, Plato offered us an alternative in the form of "... another kind of word or
speech which shows itself to be the legitimate brother of this bastard one", that is to
say "... an intelligent word written in the soul of the learner, which ... knows when to
speak and when to be silent ... the living word of knowledge ... of which the written
word is properly no more than an image." The living word of knowledge is, of course
"... the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help
of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and
him who planted them."
2,500 years later, we have now reached the stage where we at last understand the
pitfalls of engaging in Wittgensteinian word games and the seductive non-sense that
can ensue. We have also seen the generation of artforms such as the plays of
Shakespeare that illuminate and explain the roots of our own humanity and
motivations and in which actors mediate the written words of the original author. The
earliest forms of Greek theatre included a chorus which introduced the action and
commented on it - possibly a formalisation of the original 'cantors' - that maintained
theatre as a dialectical experience. Shakespeare did not arise from an oral tradition,
but he did live in pre-Enlightenment times. Now, as a contributor to this
e-symposium, I am concerned with living educational theories and living standards
of judgement 'which help us to understand the nature of educational theories and
what counts as evidence of educational influences in learning'. Living standards of
judgement cannot be revealed by descriptions and explanations based on an
objective written commentary: if "the spirit liveth but the letter killeth", then how can I
identify the form of living standards of judgement or demonstrate their process at
work?
We cannot today return to a strictly oral tradition that intrinsically creates and
validates its own living educational theory. Reviewing the tape of yesterday's
conversation with Jack, I suspect there is a process-based link between now and
then - an affirmation that takes the form of 'I now know that you understand what I
mean' and which is congruent to the process that attended the growth of the Iliad
and which is still to be experienced in encounters at opportune moments with
exceptional artforms or during aesthetically engaged and appreciative responses
with almost anything else - as described by the commentary on the life of John
Wisdom: "... His book Paradox and Discovery (1965) ... continues his work of
showing that philosophy can advance and deepen our understanding, not in the
ways with which we are familiar in logic and the sciences, but in a way that good
literature does." This phrase 'I now know that you understand what I mean' is implicit
- not explicit - as a sub-text or flavour to some of our verbal exchanges (each
considered in its entirety). It is also implicit in the appearance of some of the sections
of video; it does not depend on a formal logic - rather on the form of unreason
spoken of by Marion Milner, by which: "... the poet and the artist in us, by their
unreason, by their seeing as a unity of things which in objective reality are not the
same, by their basic capacity for seeing the world in terms of metaphor, do in fact
create the world for the scientist in us to be curious about and seek to understand. ..."
Having said (actually written) all this, I finally turn to Erich Fromm and his assertion
that: "... living itself is an art ... Its object is not this or that specialised performance,
but the performance of living ... In the art of living, man is both the artist and the
object of this art; he is the sculptor and the marble; the physician and the patient .... It
is interesting at this point to ask why our time has lost the concept of life as an art."
Can we singly and collectively regain use of the processes implicit in being "the
artist and the object of the art of living"? - and, through doing so, can we reveal the
educational standards of judgement that enable us to be and to become? In other
words I am interested in the educational influence that induces becoming.
Having read and responded to Kathryn Yeaman's 'Creating Educative Dialogue in
an Infant Classroom - My Educational Journey'
(http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/module/kathy.htm) I turned to Moira's response at:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0507&L=bera-practitioner-resear
cher&T=0&F=&S=&X=0BC7D80ADA8E33093B&Y=edsajw%40bath.ac.uk&P=6032
The form and content (i.e. process) of Moira's engagement with Kathryn's account
led me to say the words of affirmation 'I understand what Moira means'? I believe
that this shared understanding emerged because we approached our reading of
Kathryn's account with a similar commitment to making an aesthetically engaged
and appreciative response. I believe that this commitment engenders a similar state
of dialectical awareness. If I can encourage people to maintain this state of
dialectical awareness then I think it would help members of the various strands
towards an understanding of how they can review their own contributions and
respond to the original intention of the seminar.
I have asked Jack to leave open the possibility of further contributions to the seminar
so that those of us who wish can move on through points 5 and 6 of my action
enquiry plan of 5 July
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0507&L=bera-practitioner-resear
cher&T=0&F=&S=&X=50222F23161111B979&Y=edsajw%40bath.ac.uk&P=5427
… and can we thereby achieve some form of resolution for this e-seminar, in which
each strand is re-visited by its contributors and living affirmations spread throughout
the whole enterprise?
Pete.
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