i have been reading and thinking a lot about sustainability recently.  Mostly, it seems to be a term, like “green,” that points us in a direction but lets us off the hook in dealing with profound changes taking place in our world.  Our whole way of life is based on the idea of growth, we define anything else as stagnation or decline.  We are so caught in our mythology we can’t, or won’t, think about the implications of running out of resources that sustain life on this planet.  ”Going green” and offering MBA programs in sustainability help us feel better.  Quick fix du jour.

But i really want to say something about awareness, prompted by c.s. and b.e.’s comments on my previous post.  Perhaps instead of thinking about sustainable toilet paper, we should think in terms of how we sustain things like awareness.

Given just how sophisticated corporate media is at controlling information, it is quite easy to open most people’s eyes.   Reading and watching documentaries can create awareness, but can that awareness be sustained beyond one semester?

For many people, i don’t think so.  Once you leave the classroom, the seduction of our culture is too powerful, too all-encompassing.  The challenge of living in modern times with awareness is just too difficult for young people trying to find a job, pay off student loans, and develop a whole set of new relationships.

There is a point, however, of no return, where you cannot go back to sleep, where you cannot pretend that things are ok or will be again, very soon, where awareness is sustained without effort.  You keep reading, keep learning, keep looking for ways to act on your discomforts.  Throughout my life, i have never seen a person who, once they got to that point, was able to go back to sleep, to be, in the words of Jackson Browne, “. . .a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender.”

Keep reading outside the mainstream, keep thinking, keep acting, keep stretching yourselves beyond your limits.  i guarantee it will completely destroy your life. . .as a happy idiot.

Since the age of 10, when i first began to think there was something wrong with what was going on in my sunday school and in my classroom (intolerance of anything “not like us”), i have spent my life in resistance.  i looked everywhere to discover what the root of intolerance, then injustice, was.  The journey has taken me many places.  There are many roots.  i came to understand that a taproot was in organization:  how different we, the human species, organize in contrast to the way things are organized naturally, in nature.

The boundary between order and chaos consumes me.  At the recent Global Studies retreat we were all asked the thing about which we are most passionate.  My reply:  “i am always passionate about disorder.”  Most chuckled, just thought it was me being me.  A few understood.  Dis-order is resistance to human control.

For years i looked primarily at what humans did to other humans.  There certainly was enough intolerance, injustice, and violence there to keep me busy.  And then, because of things i was reading and creatures–both two-legged and four-legged–who came into my life, i began looking more closely at nature, at what we all are doing to the systems that sustain our lives on this planet.

There are days now when, in the midst of thinking about next semester’s class or hearing about the latest ways to fix our economy and get things moving again or contemplating what research project i want to do next, i confront the absurdity of pretending that life will continue as it always has.

Resistance, for me, has been channeled into the ways that i “teach,” something i refer to as unlearning or awakening.  It’s not enough that i am awake, it’s very tough to live with sleepers.  But this is a slow process, just a few every year open their eyes (thank you, kmorisi, for your very important feedback).

We are running out of time.  My resistance continues to evolve; i feel no need to stop teaching, but there must be more.  It’s tough because so many actions are quick fixes, geared to reduce suffering but have no effect on what’s at the root.

For now, take 10 minutes and watch the following.  Please think carefully about the questions it raises.  If you have any ideas about what we all can do to resist, let me know.

what did you learn in the classroom this year, rt?

At the beginning of this year, i asked some hard questions.  One of those was a reflection on whether i preferred global studies majors over management majors.  Just saying it makes me cringe, but the cringe is the significant part, it’s what tipped me off that something was amiss.  Yes, at the beginning of this year that was it.  i was fully aware that, to a large extent, the self-selection of students into majors as well as the structure of each program were primary factors.  But i couldn’t let myself off the hook so easily, i did have that preference.  i suspected it then, and i know it now.

That was then.  And then there was this year.

i have never had a year where so many management majors let OT get inside them, who stepped up and made a difference to so many people outside the classroom, outside the college, who brought down barriers, challenged me, struggled and yet learned to see me in a different way.  Who cared about each other, and about themselves.

So thank you to my teachers this year:  Rachel, Matt, Kate, Nick, Logan, Joe S., Kenny D., Sabrina, Krista, Steph O., Rick H., Stef L., Ryan D., Carl, Brian T., and Molly.  You forced me to confront my prejudice, acknowledge how i created my own limitations.  You taught me so much, and left me wanting so much more.

You made this one of the most significant years i have had in the classroom.  i will not forget.

In a casual conversation, a student asked me if i thought the college was becoming too “oppressive.”  Ironically, the same day i posted a message to our Faculty Senate distribution list.  We engage in discussions about matters of interest to faculty and students, and too often we take our frustrations with being left out of shared governance out on each other.  i told the student i would post my message here:

Gentlefolk -

Time and time again, issue after issue, the same pattern plays out on this list and in the Senate.  Although some find it maddening, for an organizational theorist it is fascinating.  Please allow me the following observation, i don’t presume that it will help temper the frustration and defensiveness, but it might put things in a larger context allowing for greater understanding among faculty.

For several years now, we–as an institution–have been moving from an almost singular focus on teaching to one where there is more balance between teaching and research.  Nearly everyone–administration and faculty alike–believes this is a good thing overall, but some of the changes this brings are very unsettling.

An enlightened administration would recognize the deep-seated anxiety these changes would likely bring.  They would sense that the anxiety would create resistance among faculty and would adopt behaviors to reduce resistance so that we could focus on the changes.  Note that this isn’t resistance to change. . .one thing the Senate list and meetings have clearly demonstrated is how open to change we are as a faculty.  It is resistance to authoritarian rule and a command and control management style.

Lessons from organizational change might help our administration understand the importance of openness and transparency in their deliberations, plans, and decisions.  Most important, they would see how essential it is to make sure that all parties directly affected by these changes MUST be at the table, must be given co-ownership of the process itself.  Without this sense of ownership, large scale buy-in is simply not possible.  All that can result is compliance and college faculty, as a rule, are not a very compliant bunch.

Unfortunately, we do not have an enlightened administration when it comes to institutional change.  Lack of openness, transparency, and shared governance has created an atmosphere where the Senate must, at best, play “guess what we are thinking” or, at worst, “just do our bidding.”  Because we–those in the Senate and others on the list–are open and transparent, we are left to squabble amongst ourselves.  We engage each other in discussion and argument because communication from the administration is top down only.

The difference between organizations who invite all stakeholders to the table, fully realizing that each plays a critical role in overall success, and organizations that are still locked into command and control, is more striking today than ever before.  But we must move forward to the extent we can.  What is happening today in so many American companies shows just how long it takes for the top levels to “get it.”

Again, communication is not two-way on this campus, if they are even listening to what i am saying it will be easily dismissed. But among faculty i hope this provides a bit of perspective and helps us understand the importance of listening carefully to the divergent voices among us, and how critical our mutual struggle really is at this time.

b.e. asked me a question and it’s too good to bury in a comment:

I have a question: And maybe I should have asked this a long while ago, but why don’t any students actually comment on this blog, so they consider it off limits?

It’s a great question, i hope they respond (i know many of them read this). From my view, dialogue WITH a professor is not something within the experience of most students here. Time and time again i hear students talk about the professors they think are great and, invariably, those professors are the ones that make them see things differently, even think, but through the prof’s presentation (lecture), not through dialogue. Students are too willing to believe that their profs are smart and too unwilling to believe that about themselves. Frankly, it is debilitating to their development. If you don’t think you are smart, there is no way you are going to engage in dialogue.

As it says in the Tao,

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.  – Tao Te Ching, Mitchell (trans.), 3

Sat through a very long meeting, most of it was about how we currently can measure our effectiveness by mechanizing our teaching and giving students an exam to ensure we are effective.  Circular reasoning.  i didn’t have the strength to ask if this was what we all thought effectiveness is.  We are in a process of being accredited so that question makes no sense.  Doesn’t make any difference what we, our students, or their parents think.  i will tell you this:  It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the kind of humans they become or how successful they will be in life.

So while waiting for finals to come in i have gone back to reading, reading to counterbalance the life that is being sucked out of me by those who turn art into mechanics.

Forgive me for a personal digression here:  i do not understand women, i never have.  Their strength fascinates me, i have long considered females (of every species) to be far superior to my own gender.  i do not understand them but i no longer care to do so, to be fascinated is more than enough.

i am reading a book that comes as close to anything i have ever read about the strength, the complexity, and the intelligence of women.  It does not help me understand them but it helps me know just why they are so fascinating, so strong.

It’s by a Chilean author; if you can, read it in Spanish.  If not, English will do.  But do yourself a favor and read it.

Remember the new final exam?  Well, one of the OT students read it here and proposed it to the class!  A senior, who would have to return in the Fall to carry out her own plan.

This is the second senior to do something like this.  Last semester one of the members of the team that organized the fall fashion show for a local breast cancer resource foundation was asked to return and be the lead coordinator for next year’s much bigger event.  She’s going to be in law school in New York.  Not really possible.

Except she said yes, and has spent this semester building the foundation necessary for her to do it.

Although this semester most of the class was not open to risking their grade to commit to future students in my class in this new final, this senior–and perhaps one other–is and still plans to return and work with the Fall sections.  Three students did add more work for themselves, committing to develop that plan this semester and making it part of their assessment.  Why?  She said that this was what the class was about, that applying what they learned in the class does not stop just because the semester does.

Honestly, as much as i would love to work with them, i hope they can’t.  i hope they are completely and passionately absorbed in amazing careers.  Actually, they could probably do both.

Again, something i really need my colleagues to understand:  It says very little about my classes, these students are just taking full advantage of opportunities i offer, opportunities to care, to get involved, to make a difference, to help others learn from the awareness they’ve developed.  To understand that learning changes lives and gives us the ability to keep on changing others’.

It says everything about these students and, goodness, the things it says!

Was in a very brief conversation today with a colleague who was giving me the details on how successful s/he is in getting students to do what s/he asks.  S/he believes that is our responsibility, otherwise how can they learn?

That is force.  No one learns anything when being forced, and my students are the product of so many years of being forced.

As i have said many times i create an opportunity, then let students choose what to learn, if anything.  One might think that is liberating and, for a few, it is.  But others have been so beaten into the ground, they assume that what i am doing is just a different–and a sneaky–type of force.  They can’t accept partnership because they simply don’t know what that means in a classroom.  So they are suspicious of everything i do because that is all they can see.  It never ceases to amaze me, but it is their right to be suspicious.  i do not try to convince them otherwise.

All i can do is hope that someday they can see what has been done to them.

So you work very hard getting them to see things anew, connect with each other in ways that promote mutual respect and trust.  You see some of them working very hard to help others, develop relationships with their community partners, begin to care about something other than themselves.  You observe as some of them begin to understand how life after college is nothing like life in college.

And then, in the last week of classes, it all comes crashing down because of one simple word.  The bell rings, they salivate.  The stimulus begets the response and it is automatic.  Thinking gives way to knee-jerk reaction.  They revert back to the only role that has become as natural for them as learning was when they were three years old.  Push the button and everything stops.  You don’t even have to say it, they just have to think it.

You know what it is.

Not all was lost, a few of them were shocked that it fell apart so easily.  Even better, they don’t want to give up on the group.  They see things differently now and they can’t go back.

What have i done to these few, the poor creatures?

Tough day. . .a few great conversations with management seniors, then another inspiring meeting with global studies seniors, listening to them talk passionately about their research.

It hit me for the first time this year that, within three weeks, they’ll be gone.  Selfish, i know.

i freakin’ hate this job.

So a week before the class ends they continue to come together as a group of people.  Their walls have come down with each other, they are starting to come down with me, they are finally beginning to see the relevance of what this class is about, and they are accomplishing good things for their community partners.  i wait the entire semester for this.  And now i have them for about 12 more days.

Torture.

i think i need an innovative final exam:  OK, your final involves you figuring out how to get next semester’s classes to where you are now, but after the 4th week.  i give you incompletes this semester, then you come back in the Fall and invoke your plan.  If you’re successful, you all get As on the final and i change your grades.

Now if i could just figure out what to do about the graduating seniors. . .

i had the saddest conversation today with a student, a senior who is graduating in three weeks.  He has no job, although he’s been on interviews.  He’s in the majority.

The sad part wasn’t that he has no job, he expects that will take awhile.  What he came to tell me is that my class helped him understand just how many opportunities he has missed in his four years in college.  He got a glimpse of how he could have applied himself and gotten so much more out of his education, how he could have made it his own simply by rejecting his passivity.  He’s actually learned some of that while going through the interview process.  He has repeatedly been asked to talk about the times he has gone above and beyond just taking classes.   He’s upset because he always thought that doing well, getting good grades, was enough.

He said that he hated my class at first because i kept telling them how much potential they have, he didn’t understand, he thought i was putting them down..  Now he sees it and it hurts.

Although we talked awhile, ultimately the only thing i could offer him was an African proverb:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.

If i saw them as students, i would treat them as students.  They wouldn’t like it.  i would think that they weren’t capable of much more than being good students, i’d give them textbooks because that would make my life easier.  i’d give them exams and papers with EXACTLY 1″ margins on each side.  i’d talk to them the entire class because that would be better than listening to students who are playing a game.

i have never been able to see them as students.  i see them as adults who are, ready or not, going to live in the world as adults.

The problem is, they can’t see me as anything but a teacher and the class as anything but a very strange kind of class.

Sometimes it is hell for things to be so out of balance.  It is times like these that the pain is so bad that all i want is to see them as students.  Maybe this year. . .

OrgTheory is based on the idea that there is no way to apply this stuff, no way to accomplish the objectives, unless the students work together.  Although to this day they are struggling with some things, they are clearly struggling together.  One person today challenged the whole idea of peer assessment, that it has become irrelevant since there is no one in the class who is not pulling their weight in the team projects.  No one disagreed.  Although they don’t have a strong connection to me, i feel very connected to them as a class because of their connection to each other.  It sounds strange, but it happens every time a class comes together in this way.

Another class of mine is the opposite; because they are doing individual theses, students have worked on their own.  It’s a year-long capstone class.  Last semester we did work collectively, but that changed as they developed their own research projects.  Where i once felt connected to this group, things have changed dramatically.  i no longer even think of them as a class and, while i do feel connected to the few who continue to work with me closely, it is not the same kind of connection i feel to OrgTheory.

i guess this helps me better understand things like teaching to the middle or when profs rave on about their “top” students.  They see their students as individuals.  The most tragic thing about that to me is what they don’t see in the students that aren’t at the “top.”  When students connect to each other i am always in awe of the transformation of every student in the class.

Students bring the best out in each other and it works for each and every one.  It is one of the most powerful things i have ever experienced.

For the lucky classes, the time comes when they give up making me the focus of their efforts, when they turn to each other and realize they must do it together.  My inability to hold their hands, to show them the way, has frustrated them enough.  It doesn’t happen to every class, some just give up as individuals and refuse to reach out to their peers.  But this class has come to that point and they are doing it together.

One of them said in the weekly writing:

Our motivation is coming from our peers and not the teacher, a very odd concept.

It IS odd to them, but think about how devastating that is as a critique of education.

This class still has a long way to go in a very short time.  But now they have a fighting chance, the only chance they really ever had.  And now i can help them in ways i couldn’t before.  As a group, they are now taking the lead and i can follow, helping them from behind.

The words from the Tao arise yet again:

All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are. . .

If you want to [teach] the people,
you must place yourself below them.
If you want to [teach] the people,
you must learn how to follow them.  (Tao Te Ching, 66, S. Mitchell, trans.)

i was told by an advisee today that his passion is being a college student so he is going to join the world series of poker tour after graduation so that he can continue this lifestyle.  i said, “but without the classes.”  He said that was the best part.

What is there about April Fool’s Day for OrgTheory?  Last year, there was this.  This past Monday, one of the students suggested we move the class to the student center.  i chided them for being boring (which they ALWAYS are when they play the student role and NEVER are when they stop) and suggested a different venue.  They chose one of the basketball courts in the rec center.  A great choice as it turned out.

Unlike last year, this section didn’t have one person step up and challenge everyone else, rather every one of them got involved and it was a completely different class.  i asked them to bring applications and create role plays out of them. . .everyone did and all were involved.  They had a lot of fun (especially the role plays that made fun of the prof) and we managed to have a good discussion about them.  Inside the classroom that would have fallen flat.  It truly is remarkable how quickly things can change.  They’ve been building up to this but they shoved themselves to the edge of chaos today.  i think they now have a much better understanding of what that means.

This class, like most others, has a tendency to engage in self-congratulation once they do something well.  They retreat far too quickly back into their comfort zones.  The class last year certainly did after that week.  These folks are aware of this, there is a good chance they understand what they have put in motion and that they will not stop.

Sigh.  Maybe it just does take 9-10 weeks.

Did you know that, according to the Robinson book, Alfred Binet developed the IQ test for the opposite reason for which we use it?  It was designed for determining the proper form of schooling for children with special needs!

The type of schooling we most often provide has to be great for humans with special needs:  standardization, blind obedience to authority, and strict adherence to rules.  But the toll it takes on the creativity and potential of most people is devastating.

My students admit they are afraid of failure and continually work to ensure that the classroom asks little of them so that they can remain as comfortable as possible.  Intellectually they understand that this behavior will have horrendous effects once they enter the workplace, but when put in a classroom they simply cannot help themselves.  Eight weeks of this and they are still struggling.

We have taken incredibly bright, aware, and high achieving young people and turned most of them into people with special needs.

They have one chance and at least a few of them are beginning to see it.  They can help each other to break out of their role as inmate and remember how exhilarating it is to just be themselves.  Even in a classroom.

For those of you who watched the Robinson video and like what he said, i heartily recommend his new book, The Element (quite amazing to me that someone can send me the video in the AM, an hour later i download the book to the Kindle and have now read about half of it).

He states that the basic formula for finding one’s element is:

I get it; I love it; I want it; Where is it?

Another wonderful reminder of how simple the important things in life really are. . .and how hard we work to believe they aren’t.

Teach to the middle.

i just heard this idea for the first time. . .it’s that you gear the difficulty level of your class, not to the lowest level, nor to those who are ready for anything you throw at them, but to the “middle.”

Here is the thing:  if we look at students as individuals, i guess that strategy makes sense.  But why look at them as individuals?

Here is an alternative:  gear the difficulty level of the class a bit beyond what the top students (whatever that means) can handle.  Then, encourage them to work together, assisting each other, to get there.  i have done this enough to know that, in those classes where everyone accepts the challenge, everyone exceeds what they thought they could accomplish.  It is such a powerful experience, you will never be able to teach to the middle again.

So in doing focus groups of our majors we are finding out that they feel they are still in high school and they aren’t being challenged enough.  Forgive me, please, for the following cynical  comment:  Challenging you would make things much more difficult for your profs.

Here is another:  Students get the professors they deserve, challenging is not a one-way process.

i need sleep.

Here is what “education” has done to my students:  From their perspective, if you come up with a good insight, you are done.  You will be rewarded for that insight (with a high grade).

Once my students get past the fear of not having the right answer, they are capable of coming up with good, sometimes great insights and ideas from their reading.  But then i ask them to apply those ideas to the fundraisers they are organizing for their community partners.  They are struggling with what that even means.  Year after tedious year, they have been taught to see no practical use for what they are learning.  Eight weeks into the semester, we have had to take a break from the material and spend an entire week learning what it means to apply theories and ideas.  These are BUSINESS MAJORS.

If any of you are reading this, PLEASE understand that i am not making fun of you or criticizing you in any way.  You have learned what you have been taught and learned it well.  i am raging against the machine, against the institutionalization of bright, young people.  It is weighing very heavy on me at the moment.

Knowledge, the stuff that changes us as we integrate it into our lives, requires application.  It requires doing and practice.  It’s knowledge that we have taken from you simply because we are obsessed with standardization and measuring things that have no relation to your development.

Saw What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire again, this time with some of the Capstone students. Watching it takes courage. There is a line in it somewhere: “We’ve been institutionalized for so long, we no longer can see the bars of the cage.”

There’s simply no better explanation for life in the 21st Century.  Suck it up, watch the film.  Then try to see everything the same way again.

PLEASE learn to reject the notion that meeting the expectations of your professors defines the limit of your potential.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, in most cases to ask more of you makes their jobs SO much harder. i am neither excusing nor judging them; like you they have many demands on their time and most of them try to strike a good balance between the effort they put into their classes and their other commitments. i know very few faculty members on my campus that do not care about undergraduate teaching. Having said that, many are as stuck in their ways as you and, also like you, they do not like to be stretched outside of their comfort zones. All this makes for classes that do not cause anyone much anxiety, but it also means that–with respect to performance–mediocrity is about as good as it gets.

i wish you knew how important it is to reject others’ standards for you and learn how to push yourselves beyond what you think you can accomplish. Knowing one’s limits is important, but if you never push yourself beyond them, this is something you can’t possibly know.

What prompted this rant, in addition to talking about related issues in class today, is watching stories on the news about how young people are coming up with ideas–then acting upon them–on how to help those who are most affected by the current economic crisis. And working with you all these years i know that there is only one thing that distinguishes you from them: they know they can make a difference in the lives of others.

We are running focus groups in the skool o’bidness. We are in the process of completely rethinking, then reconfiguring, what we do in our classrooms. As one of the first steps we want to understand whether or not our students feel prepared for life after college and if not, why not.

The students we asked to help us develop these groups, senior business majors, asked us if we wanted our majors to be honest with us, that if we do, we should not have an “adult” in the room. Taking their advice, they will be conducting the focus groups.

i have no doubt we will learn much from these groups. However, we don’t need to wait for their feedback to understand just how badly we are doing our jobs. The fact that we have created an environment where students–especially graduating seniors who no longer have to take our classes–are afraid to speak their minds to us is about as devastating an indictment as we will discover.

It remains to be seen how many of my colleagues will think this is a problem and will be interested in doing something about it.

i’m on spring break, playing catch up, doing some reading. Even teaching.

i don’t want the following to stay buried in a comment. Schan1, radicalteacher and frequent contributor on this blog, just posted the following story, a testament to the impact of radicalteaching and what students can accomplish when they care:

I want to share a wonderful story of student activism. As I mentioned in another post I was passed over (in part I believe because of my unconventional teaching methods) for an interview for a tenure track post at a public university that says it privileges teaching over research and service though I have been teaching over 9 years, here over a year with some of the highest teaching evaluations in our department. So, when the students found out about they, they have formed a petition group using face group – a group of 22 students, representing a large proportion of those classes with whom I work this semester and last teaching about policy issues and in which I focus a great deal of time on the importance of political activism. They did that on their own with no prompting by me! They sent an e-mail to the Dean of the college who bumped it back to the program chair who offered to meet with the students. My sense was that it was a way to minimize their effort since I fully expected few would choose to go further with the effort. But, to my surprise one whole class of this year’s students have decided to meet and to incorporate the issues of student voice in hiring decisions more generally as their focus (something with which I fully concur). It has brought tears to my eyes – the greatest pleasure I get out of teaching is seeing students take up their own cause for improving their own education.

i fried my harddrive. A Mac. i think this is the first recorded case.

So i’m sans computer for a few days and it’s ugly. Already. After two hours. It’s just me and the iPhone.

Oh yeah, I had classes today.

. . .at least if you’re in Canada.

Even after all these years i can’t help but be amazed by how upside-down and backwards institutional education is.  The constant pressure to succeed is stifling to learning.  Success is not an opportunity, it is the culmination of many failures, one built upon another.  No one succeeds at anything the first time, and yet failure is not tolerated.

It is so very hard for students to practice failure.  They are terrified of being wrong, of being blamed for failing.  All we do is stunt their growth, year after year after year.

As usual, the Tao Te Ching says it best:

79

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame. . .