Getting There: Geography Lesson D(r)ipping Beneath Use1
I am no closer to a map than I have ever been.
John Dewey uses the metaphor of the map to distinguish between the logical and psychological aspects of the educational process. The logical aspect is the “subject matter in itself,�that is, it is subject matter without regard to the experience and development of the student. His essay “The Child and the Curriculum,�attempts to balance this logical aspect with the psychological aspect of education about which Dewey writes, “A psychological statement of experience follows its actual growth; it is historic; it notes steps actually taken, the uncertain and tortuous, as well as the efficient and successful�(282). This psychological aspect can be equated with the Child and the logical aspect with the curriculum. Dewey sees that there needs to be a balance between these two aspects. For if the curriculum is taken as primary and essential in education the organic connection between youth and maturity is lost. But if the child’s experience is regarded as what is primary and essential in education then the idea of learning and of becoming educated is eroded to the point of meaninglessness. Dewey’s map metaphor is an apt way to draw out these themes. At issue in Dewey’s metaphor are the questions: Who can draw a map? and Who can read a map? These questions can be mapped (if imperfectly) onto the questions: Who can teach (or speak)? and Who can learn (or listen)? These perennially unanswerable questions are at the heart of any theory of education. Engaging in these inquiries through the metaphor of the map helps one to address them and present possible answers that might lead to productive educational experiences.
This
particular resource
body dot
labeling system
treasure
belly island
strung
together sentience
virtual
serial, but now island
bridge me
together Bind
raindrops
with Every width
needs the
mass of sight
still of
gold, sill boundary
veil always
in eye
weddings of
sight and object
where shall
we go fo
our
honeymoon? The land
begs, a
particular discourse
formulates
itself on the shores
of that
tiny island;
the
ligament tears,
the eye
from radiance breaks
now we all
are left
leaving the
apple half brown
sinister
gold neon
universal
is
my question
trove.
The question of when someone is ready for an educational moment is fraught with difficulties. Rousseau believes that at various developmental moments people ask the questions that take their understanding to the next level, that is, they ask questions that enable them to read more of their educational maps. He believes this to be an entirely natural process. But it is unclear how people can come to these questions without having exposure to the difficulties implicit in their answers. One of the ways in which students can have these moments of clarity is through the same methods that make experience educationally viable. That is, through the use of one on one teaching and through the mutual dependency of experience and curriculum.
In between
the letter that you might send
and the one
that has already entered the official blue box,
lies what
you wanted to say, what you always wanted to say
but
couldn’t, but now can because
you’re in
between, enjoying this mediated gray.
Word
mistress.
Word joy.
Your new
word betrays you.
Your old
word comes back to comfort...
�FONT FACE="Georgia">and
so I started writing letters
and
dropping them, two or three at a time,
on
the ground, wherever I went,
but
that was,
you
have to understand,
before
the war.
The
artistic license
didn’t
come back to the words
until
much later,
after
the guns ceased firing,
after
we learned
that
the concept of freedom
was
degraded by any country
claiming
ownership of it.
Now, on the other side of the metaphor is the finished map, some might say, the book. Dewey writes that the notes that the explorer makes while bumbling through a country and the finished map are mutually dependant. “Without the more or less accidental and devious paths traced by the explorer there would be no facts which could be utilized in the making of the complete and related chart�(283). Dewey is saying that the finished map is dependent upon the notes that the explorer makes, or more abstractly, that there can be no curriculum without experience and possibly that there can be no experience without some sort of curriculum.
Don’t
walk around the table with a common knife
you might
fall and poke your words right out
of the side
of your mouth and with them might fall
your ideas
and everything that has married
over the
years inside and by the way
have you
seen the way Professor Oliver
has begun
to walk slurred
over the
years
I really
think he’s grown
out of his
style
out perhaps
out of his pants
out also
and of course
out of his
way of dressing
but I would
really lik
to get back
to what he told
me about
using words
between
growing out of men
how they’re
generate
not
naturally
but
conventionally
but I’d
also like to keep talking to you
about
knives
about the
one’s that cut
our lives
apart
and about
the one
that
connect us
through
crime.
Dewey goes on to write: “[N]o one would get the benefit of the explorer’s trip if it was not compared and checked up with similar wanderings undertaken by others�(283). This is both an ethical and a pedagogical claim stating that one way we learn “the landscape�is to compare our experience with other people, but if this is true one might want to make the claim that withholding the notes from your journey is unethical for it prevents someone else from learning. So, what Dewey is saying here might amount to: Share. This sort of claim might lead teachers to emphasize an Each One Teach One approach which places the students in the position of being teachers in a controlled manner.
Outside of
town :enecs
scene: town
of outside
for
“thinking outside of the box�BR>the box
is needed
:box
enclosed with birth:
a speech (species) : a long time in composing
cicadas divide the discourse.
Coming to understand the map is akin to coming to understand the educational process itself and to the idea of working with others to attain knowledge. The content of the notes that the explorer writes are analogous to the content of the educational lesson. The understanding of the map and the notes�contribution to it is analogous to the student understanding the educational process itself. And while it is possible to come to learn the lesson without understanding the map there is a question as to whether that student would be ready for the next lesson without understanding the educational map up to the current level. Dewey’s use of the metaphor of the map aids educators and theorists attempting to understand the balance between the student’s experience and the curriculum and places this discussion in the context of the useful vocabulary of cartography.
And in the
war torn zones
and in the
savage lands
letters are
sent
messages
are conveyed
but they
are conveyed through war
through gun
shot and rubble
through the
dialectic between voice and noise.
Their
voices
pouring
with the rain
mixing into
the noise.
In between
the war
serves both
sides
serves both
ideas of society
serves both
eyes
the words
stick out jumbled emotional
they are
received
only after
the war has run its course
only after
there are not two sides
but still
we say
the word
serves both sides
the letters
connect
angles of
light
connect
separated mothers and children
connect
estranged siblings
the letters
were written before the war began
the letters
were written after we knew there would be a war
the letters
were written for after the war.
1 Bibliographic Reference: Cahn, Steven M, ed. Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education. McGraw-Hill, 1997.