Education

I believe education is a spiritual pursuit. As a nod to all the blog reading I do, here's a good quote from William Ayers, the controversial ex-Weatherman you've been hearing about related to Barack Obama. I think the guy is smart:


"The drama of education is always a narrative of transformation. Act I is life as we find it—the given, the known or the received, the settled and the status quo. Act II is the fireworks, the moment of upheaval and dissonance, the experience of discovery and surprise, the energy of remodeling and refashioning.

Act III is the achievement of an altered angle of regard, new ways of knowing and behaving, a new way of seeing and being.

Act III, of course, will necessarily be recast in some future educational encounter as a new Act I.

This is the fundamental message of the teacher: You can change your life. Wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, the teacher invites you to build on all that you are, and to begin again. There is always something more to do, more to learn and know, more to experience and accomplish. You must change your life, and if you will, you can change your world.

This sense of opportunity and renewal—for individuals, for whole communities and societies—is at the heart of all teaching; it constitutes the ineffable magic drawing us back to the classroom and into the school again and again. Education, no matter where or when it takes place, enables people to become more powerfully and self-consciously alive; it embraces as principle and overarching purpose the aspiration of people to become more fully human; it impels us toward further knowledge, enlightenment, and human community, toward liberation. Education, at its best, is an enterprise that helps human beings reach the full measure of their humanity".

William Ayers website, April 2008