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In her response to the Presidential Address at PES 2014, Dr Shuffelton engagingly shares:
- Like thousands of other Chicago children, my two daughters took the admissions exams for Chicago’s public gifted and talented schools when they were four years old. After my elder daughter, a precocious reader, took the test, I asked her “how was it?” and she recalled words she’d read correctly and logical puzzles she’d solved. When she got home, she threw up. Six weeks later, we were informed that she had a spot in a gifted program. When it was time to enroll my younger daughter in kindergarten, she also took the exam, though at age four she was more interested in playing with her toy animals than in learning how to read. “So,” I asked her in the car afterwards, “how did it go?” “THAT was stupid,” she said
- Unlike her sister, she did not qualify for a place in the gifted and talented schools. But I have to ask: who is smarter?…
- (“How Dear the Gift of Laughter”)
Perhaps, as per the multiply challenged whole-child education project (if I am reading the author’s implications correctly), one should also unpack “smarter” as — ultimately — HAPPIER, BETTER OFF with peers and non-peers… 🙂 🙂 🙂
More on PES coming up…
update March 22, 2014: Well, I see that sound is back, and isn’t it a gift to be able to enjoy the frequencies that speak to you in such an uplifting way 🙂
Well, the Youtube link in my last post does not seem to be working. I reposted the post, tested the URL in another browser, tested it on another blog. You can hear the music elsewhere, but not through ES, not even after you go to Youtube from the Youtube link on ES (button, at bottom right on the interface image).
So presenting the experience as a curiousity of human-technology interfacing. Somehow, an interference code must have been generated, comprehensive enough to achieve the sound-gagging.
LOL!, as they say…
Antonio Vivaldi’s “Spring”
Youtube credit: uploaded by SimonSAlba April 9, 2010
Update March 21, 2014: Which reminds me of the Vernal Pool project
Well, this is a quote I just got today, and am presenting it as food for thought — because the Profound Relatedness/Ecological Attunement I am working on (my Ecosonance thesis) is precisely about recalling the joy, beauty, and ontological connection with All Existence that is a robust implication of what I just re-iterated as a 3MT (Indigenous knowledges meeting “Western” rebellions for a deeper connectedness within and to the world).
Hats off to those who have the sensorial-mental endowment for that 🙂
Since I’ve been working on economical thesis expression, here’s one more genre, 3MT. Apparently, the practice was launched by the University of Queensland, and this is the second year UT is holding a 3MT competition. Watch 3MTs from around the world.
The single PowerPoint slide allowed:
update March 24
Some References
Atleo, E. Richard [a.k.a. Umeek] (2011) Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis. Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press.
Bateson, Gregory & Margaret Mead (1942/1962) Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences. Reprint 1962.
Bateson, Gregory (1987) Steps to an Ecology of Mind Collected Essays in Anthropology,Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology Northvale, NJ & London: Jason Aronson Inc. (Originally published by Chandler Pub. Co., San Franciso, 1972.)
An Ecology of Mind A documentary movie by Nora Bateson containing interviews with Gregory Bateson (2010).
Bingham, Charles & Alexander M. Sidorkin (2004/2010) No Education without Relation. With a foreword by Nel Noddings, pp. vii-viii. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Blenkinsop, Sean et al. (2012) Maple Ridge Environmental School Project – Interim Report. Ecolearning Research Group, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.
Code, Lorraine (2006) Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location. Oxford, UK: OUP.
Dewey, John ([1916] 2009) Democracy and Education. Merchant Books.
Dei, George Sefa J. (2011) Indigenous Philosophies and Critical Education: A Reader. New York, NY & Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
Low, Alaine & Soraya Tremayne, eds. (2001) Sacred Custodians of the Earth: Women, Spirituality, and the Environment. Berghahn Books.
Pratt, Scott L. (2002) Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Radford Ruether, Rosemary, ed. (1996) Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Turok, N (2012) The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.
Vokey, Daniel (2001) Moral Discourse in a Pluralistic World. University of Notre Dame Press.
Update: March 18, 2014
The pivot of my thesis is profound relatedness – to Self, Other, All Existence. Bringing together cultures and paradigms I argue for parallel “un-colonizing”: to decolonize Indigenous belief systems world-wide and to de-dichotomize Euro-American mainstream philosophy releasing invidious hierarchies. In Western thought, founder of educational philosophy Dewey, feminist philosopher of science Haraway, heurmeneuticist Gadamer among many others have argued against opposing human to nature, mind to matter, truth and science to experience, and so forth. Instead of these persistent Western binaries, so-called Third-world or Aboriginal or Indigenous knowledges — as a rule, rely on social-ecological relatedness.
I’d insist that colonization colonizes both colonizer and colonized. Therefore, the loss of relational Indigenous knowledges is Canada’s loss. Conversely, inviting Indigenous knowledges – as Daniel Vokey, a.o. does with Buddhism, Scott Pratt with Native Philosophies, for example – can help emancipate our human species from colonizing and self-colonizing effects. This would re-energize the Love-of-Wisdom image of Philosophy, now, wouldn’t it?
Our globalized world does need a consciousness shift, and the probability is high where millennial relatedness wisdom meets the quantum physics view of cosmic interdependence.
I propose “Eco-sonance” — Ecological attunement Ecosonance is a psycho-physical phenomenon, a philosophy, and practice, i.e. Being Thinking and Doing — all about ubiquitous interrelatedness and how to do our human best within it and for it. How to make the world a home for each other. Using Einstein’s formula E=mc^2 as a metaphor
- E for Ecosonance, eternal, but changing form, like Energy, within and between cosmic cycles in the spirit of Steinhart&Turok’s cyclic uni hypothesis
- equals M, the set of members of an ecosystem
- animated by C, the Constant of Change (per Gregory Bateson), squared for emphasis, you could say
Now, that was the cosmo-philosophy, how about practice? Consider a loaded notion like “Social Justice”.
By ecosonic lights, social justice is peace and happiness. Profound relatedness compels us to strive to relax invidiousdichotomies and hierarchies, not reverse them. In theory or practice. To grow by Deweyan democracy-as-a-way-of-life and, in turn, by education-for-&-as-democracy. So, my bottom line hypothesis: Ecosonance can change the world through Wisdom’s Love.
To prove it:
Imagine – along with The Beatles – that Lovingkindness Is All We Need …
… and practice
YouTube credit: uploaded by JohnLennonMusic Oct 1, 2008
YouTube credit: uploaded by TheBeatlesVEVOHQ Oct 30, 2011
YouTube credit: uploaded by laurent puechguirbal August 2013
on the streets of downtown Toronto…
Ecosonance 