Thanks for these posts. They really remind us to, as adults, create spaces that allow children to have agency. This is very counter to the notion of the “empty vessel” type of education that we often see (it always puzzles me that as much as we know about the nature of learning that we still see this type of teaching/schooling), I still think schooling is approached with this need to “control” students, especially students of color, rather than allow them spaces to be free expressions of themselves (not Free School style though :). As adults it should be our role to facilitate or provide some sort of structure and create a safe space for them to do so.
In the wake of Maxine Greene’s passing and with my interest in art/science and imagination, I have been revisiting her readings and a couple of them resonate with this thread of conversation:
“For me, the child is a veritable image of becoming, of possibility, poised to reach towards what is not yet, towards a growing that cannot be predetermined or prescribed. I see her and I fill the space with others like her, risking, straining, wanting to find out, to ask their own questions, to experience a world that is shared.” Maxine Greene, 1987 Commencement address, Bank Street College.
This one, for me, really resonates with the Santos readings:
“We also have our social imagination: the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, on our schools. As I write of social imagination, I am reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “it is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and our suffering and that we decide that these are unbearable” (1956, pp. 434-435) (p. 5).”
As educators we have this extraordinary opportunity to imagine and facilitate the creation of alternate futures. Makes me wonder what teacher education would look like if we took this charge seriously?
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Hi David-
Thanks for these posts. They really remind us to, as adults, create spaces that allow children to have agency. This is very counter to the notion of the “empty vessel” type of education that we often see (it always puzzles me that as much as we know about the nature of learning that we still see this type of teaching/schooling), I still think schooling is approached with this need to “control” students, especially students of color, rather than allow them spaces to be free expressions of themselves (not Free School style though :). As adults it should be our role to facilitate or provide some sort of structure and create a safe space for them to do so.
In the wake of Maxine Greene’s passing and with my interest in art/science and imagination, I have been revisiting her readings and a couple of them resonate with this thread of conversation:
“For me, the child is a veritable image of becoming, of possibility, poised to reach towards what is not yet, towards a growing that cannot be predetermined or prescribed. I see her and I fill the space with others like her, risking, straining, wanting to find out, to ask their own questions, to experience a world that is shared.” Maxine Greene, 1987 Commencement address, Bank Street College.
This one, for me, really resonates with the Santos readings:
“We also have our social imagination: the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, on our schools. As I write of social imagination, I am reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “it is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and our suffering and that we decide that these are unbearable” (1956, pp. 434-435) (p. 5).”
As educators we have this extraordinary opportunity to imagine and facilitate the creation of alternate futures. Makes me wonder what teacher education would look like if we took this charge seriously?