Saturday, September 21, 2013

School v. Learning

Say what you will about NPR, but whether or not I always agree with them editorially, over the years I have learned a lot from public radio. Today alone is an excellent example. Within 20 minutes this morning, I understood the concept that art is something that puts off more energy than went into making it, and I was also introduced to the narrative structure of Leonard Bernstein's second symphony, Age of Anxiety. Whoa.

As a (okay, sometimes jaded) person of letters, I found these insights into those other arts, visual and music, very instructive, but it was only a few hours later that I was thoroughly schooled in the themes and writing of Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel I thought I was pretty familiar with.

Educators today are fond of saying that we want our students to become life-long learners, but like so many things in public policy, what we mean by that lofty phrase is not always clear. Earlier this week I wrote about the joy of vicariously experiencing my students' ah-ha moments.

Today I had a few of my own.

That's what we're talking about.

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