I'm in a strange place today with a lot of thoughts swirling inside me about capturing what I call the "soul of education."  So, I want to talk about spotlights and houselights.  Weird, huh?  I'm here because I been thinking about something a couple of things I came across on the internet.  One was Derek Walcott's poem, "Love After Love.  The other "  "the time will come when with elation you'll greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome and say, Sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to yourself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life."	

	For a long time, we've all had discussions around a bunch of cliched centering, a supposed inclusive centering that really has an air of exclusive centering.  In the last decades, as everyone has examined educational goals, objectives, and strategies, the proverbial spotlight has swung from one extreme of illuminating the podium to the other extreme of beaming on the classroom seat, throwing the professor into an anxious shadowy state.  By that I mean, in "learning centered" what happens to "teaching centered?"  In "student centered" what happens to "teacher centered."  In focusing on the intellect or cognitive, what happens to emotion or affective?"  In focusing on emotion or affective center what happens to the intellect or cognitive?"  So, often there seems to be more than an implied and applied either/or.  It's as if when one is the center of the classroom universe, nothing or no one else is.  It is as if we're closing ourselves off to both our life and that of others.  There should be no spotlight; it should be turned off and the house lights turned up so the entire classroom is revealed.  After all, we're all participants in education.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

	This centering creates a contentious struggle that weakens or strips away meaning, commitment, and sense of service; it numbs, wounds, and diminishes us; it strengthens cynicism and fatigue in us; it shifts priorities for us to look outside the classroom for excitement and purpose.  So, the classroom so often doesn't seem to be worth it.  It is  like we--teacher, student, administrator, Joe citizen--see another human being in the room or on campus with us and have this need to label her or him, and in so doing label ourselves.  At the same time, we're labeling what it is we're doing or supposed to be doing?  At the instant we do that, we're not seeing another human being, we're in our thoughts about him or her, and ourselves; we're in our thoughts about what is we are doing.  And whatever it is, we're getting away from the heart of the matter.  Judgments creep in that balkanize our views; that isolate, separate, diminish, elevate, inflate, deflate, devalue, value, and so on.  We accommodate; we stop listening generously; we stop reflecting; we stop looking and seeing; we stop hearing and listening; we stop being surprised at the sight of another human being; we stop treating another human being as a work of art; we become content sitting in our office or carrel in the library or at the lab table.   We become content with playing with numbers, pie charts, and graph lines.  We dig a chasm without mutual admiration and inspiration rather than weaving a web of respect by which we are aware of all we have in common:  we all are human beings; we all have brains; we all have hearts; we all have an individuality; we all have unique potentials; we're all frail, imperfect, and fraught with foibles; we all have hopes, dreams, fears; we all have stories, experiences, and memories that act as backbeats to what we believe, feel, and do.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

	But, if you want learning to be the center of the classroom, good, so is teaching.  If you want the student to be the center of the classroom, all well and good, so is the teacher.  If information is the core business of academia, so are people.  If transmitting information and developing skills is your central purpose, that's fine, so is preparing people to use that information and those skills to do good, as well as to live the good life.  If our job is to deal with the issues in the classroom, I'm fine with that, so it is our job to help students stand up to the yet unseen stresses and challenges after graduation. If the cognitive is the center of academics, okay, so is the affective.  Whatever or whoever is the center, so is everything else and everyone else.  So is everything else and everyone else!  So is everything else and everyone else!!  So, that means in a sense there is no center.  There is no center and there is no periphery; there is no field of play and there are no sidelines.  There is no center stage and there are no wings.  There's no either; there's no or; there isn't even a both; there's only an organic all.  And, that generates what Rabbi Abraham Herschel called a "radical amazement," a banishment of indifference to some that makes a difference for all.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.
	 
	I think one of the great tragedies is that we love to carve things up and separate in all walks of personal and professional life, and, thereby, lose the organic nature of things.  We're creating distance.  We're losing a mindful connection.  We're losing meaning.  We're losing a sense of service.  Maybe it's an occupational hazard of labeling, role playing, stereotyping, and generalizing:  student, professor, administrator, teaching, learning, intellect, emotion.  Each comes with limits, perspectives, expectations.  The whole of academia is outside and something or someone is at the center.  Maybe we should stop with all this "centering" and familiarize ourselves with the full perspective, the full interfacing, the full dimensionality of what education really means and what it takes to educate and become educated.  We cannot have academic institutions based on just sound economics or expertise; we also need an academic institution resting on the integrity of our commitment to fight for a sense of meaning in human relationships.

	It was Proust who said, "The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas, but in having new eyes." Maybe in our thoughts, feelings, actions, and emotions we need an audacious interfacing, and ought to break down barriers we have created, build bridges, forge communities, and nourish togetherness.  No spotlights.  Just house lights.

Make it a good day

-Louis-


Louis Schmier                         		http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org       
203 E. Brookwood Pl                         http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602 
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