25 August, 2011
Dewey: Education and Ecology are one art.
That a man may grow in efficiency as a burglar, as a gangster, or as a corrupt politician, cannot be doubted. But from the standpoint of growth as education and education as growth the question is whether growth in this direction promotes or retards growth in general. Does this form of growth create conditions for further growth, or does it set up conditions that shut off the person who has grown in this particular direction from the occasions, stimuli, and opportunities for continuing growth in new directions? What is the effect of growth in a special direction upon the attitudes and habits which alone open up avenues for development in other lines? (Ex & Ed 20)
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But what man knows where growth leads? What tremendous growth will, after millions of years, be seen as catastrophic overshoot--and after a few million more, a setting of the stage for even greater things? What decay will be seen as rest before resurgence?
ReplyDeleteWho would question the wisdom of a forest who becomes a desert?
What matters a million year? The meaning of an explosion of growth will never be settled, but eventually forgotten.
ReplyDeleteDisregard our lack of godsight to see what shall be. What does the educator do? How to we revive Dewey's metaphor? Even the black days of dogmatic though are a part of the circle. Do the fires of revolution always burn down to those black ashes, those dark ages? Doesn't that *terra preta* make the best soil for growth? And growth the best kindling for the sparks of deconstruction/decomposition. The black soil only needs waters and air to become growth again.
ReplyDeleteDo you know how to get to Yggdrasil? You find it by losing yourself.
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