"Experiments with Truth"

"Education is before, is during, and is after. It's a process, a permanent process. It has to do with the human experience and curiosity" (Horton and Freire 159).

The battle to define education and how it is carried out has always been a weighty and heated one. Many theories have been developed and implemented. Yet, many fall prey to the basic human instinct: "Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities" (Dewey 17). The theories fail to work together, to find a balance, in order to help students learn. Furthermore, many fall prey to the idea that students are empty vessels waiting to be filled, and the teacher will fill that emptiness with knowledge. We cannot forget that students are creative, curious human beings who desire to learn. The fault lies in a system that has perpetuated the myth that students need to be told what they should know and none of their experiences make valuable sites of knowledge-making.

Students also must begin to see that they have a part to play in this process of learning. I am not asking for the students to be writing the curriculum (although why not allow them some say). Students and teachers need to remember that it is in the struggle where learning takes place. In grappling with issues and attempting to make meaning or working out some sort of meaning is where we begin to find answers; sometimes acknowledging that answers are not going to be clear-cut or final but works in process. The student must be the one who is responsible for his or her own education. The student must see that he or she is in control of his or her education. A teacher must work to inspire the student to willingly take on the struggle that is his or her education.

The classroom must become a balancing act. Instead of denigrating philosophies of education, teachers must study them and take from them the elements that are true and work best and fuse them together in order to find the balance in order to inspire students to learn. The relationship of the teacher to the student must be that of mentor, not giver of knowledge. Students should be taken to places they normally would not go, but teachers must also learn to incorporate the students' experiences into the learning. As bell hooks writes, "...who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin" (13).

This blog is dedicated to personal journey of understanding education and what it means to be a teacher within a system that is struggling. A system that sees students (and teachers) as numbers, facts, and figures. I realize I am not the only one out there trying to make some changes for the betterment of our students and our society. Education is personal. As Paulo Freire writes, "Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love" (89). Some may read this and say "What? Love? That is not scientific, formal, or professional. We must have facts, numbers, and statistics that can be quantified." Yet, the more I read and listen to the world around me, the  more I realize that this love, this humanizing force, this vulnerable act is where education happens. Education is personal.

I could write pages, in fact I have, on this topic, but I want to leave with one final statement to close this first post on my journey. For those who want change, hopefully my own journey and reflections, my "experiments with truth" will help feed your own desire to promote change within a system desperate for it. "For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (Freire 72).

Kristi Manduka

                                                                             Works Cited

Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone, 1997. Print.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993. Print.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge,
     1994. Print.
Horton, Myles and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and  
     Social Change. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1990. Print.