This week I'm reading What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research by Ben Spatz:
This book talks about embodied knowledge through the vehicle of technique as repeated actions which create and communicate knowledge. It's specific instances with when/where/who, Spatz calls practice.
The most interesting idea so far: "what we know becomes who we are" (56).
When I shared this one Facebook a friend fired back "No, what we DO is who we are"
The cool thing about Spatz' assertion is that those are both true. What we do is what we know--we add knowledge to our lives through repeated action, and new actions create new knowledge.
This means that repeated social actions learned growing up through culture and authority figures become knowledge--every behavior has lessons attached to it and the lessons aren't always the ones intended--meaning is multiple. I think about the cultural actions of allowing "boys to be boys" it's a repeated action of allowance for behavior which leads to many understandings of meaning which the affectionate repeated allowance may or may not intend. Boys learn that they can do what they want--even if others don't like it, an allowance will be made. Sometimes this is really awesome, it means that for a lot of young men courage to pursue their dreams is built in because allowances will be made. It also means that for some, harmful behavior can be easily repeated because allowances will be made. There's a whole host of other knowledges that come from repeated social technique--how to interview, how to meet people, how to go on a date, how to show care for people you don't know, how to respect other humans, how to save people, how to walk, how to present as male/female.
I think about cycles of behavior that people go to therapy (or not) to break, deal with, and learn new behaviors that will help them pursue happiness more effectively.
Specifically, I think about myself and technique of practice that hurt a lot. One was the religious activity of thanking God for loving me. The flip side of this was that God loves us in spite of our undeserving nature and actions--the repeated technique was reminding myself that God loved me in spite of all of my terrible failings. I was consistently told by my family growing up that They loved me, that I was brilliant, beautiful, and wonderful--how to square that with the knowledge that if all that was true I couldn't possibly need God's love which meant that I really needed God's love because only truly wicked people think that they're good enough not to need God's love which means I must be really wicked because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God--love more self abase more. It became a practice of making caring more and more for others and less and less for myself, because of course, God would be caring for me. I don't always recall thinking deliberately through each of these progressive thoughts, but the lack of care for my emotions and my well-being in favor of caring for others was pervasive. I remember agonizing about it. I remember emotionally flagellating myself for not caring for someone enough when they felt hurt or upset. I remember while dating, agonizing and emotionally punishing myself because I felt that I looked into a future in which I would leave them, doing all kinds of damage. Just caring about them became a practice of self-harm.
Trying to break or change or challenge this knowledge has been a huge struggle. My knowledge of caring for another person is deeply embedded in techniques of self-denial. To admit and learn/be told that care for others can effectively start with care for yourself is difficult because it flies in the face of my repeated technical knowledge. To take care of me first is selfish and wrong and worthy of emotional punishment... the struggle is really like swimming up river when you've never done it before. Often my emotional muscles fail and a find myself a ways down stream before I can get back to practicing the technique of self-care and valuing my feelings, impulses, thoughts and opinions.
The power of embodied knowledge is so strong. I also think about classrooms and, in re to a previous blog post, that teachers don't teach content they teach methods of learning: they teach you how to be a student. I remember in high school that the secret to good grades really was to discover exactly what they teacher expected and rewarded in order to get the best grade possible. Even when I taught in the writing center, I remember teaching students how to go through an assignment and identify what the teacher created as a measure for success--this is how you can make sure that all of your work is recognized and acknowledged--conform to his/her expectations for excellent work. On the one hand, the experiential knowledge of the call/response student/teacher roles can be extremely helpful in navigating school, work, and relationships. On the other hand, to simply teach this hack does not necessarily foster a desire to learn and pursue material the student finds fascinating.
I'll be teaching a THR 1010 class online in the fall. I'm currently wrestling with how to structure it #1 so that my expectations of engagement are clear for assignments and #2 so that the structure fosters student creativity and learning rather than simply a meeting of criteria for passing said class.
Hmmm...
This book talks about embodied knowledge through the vehicle of technique as repeated actions which create and communicate knowledge. It's specific instances with when/where/who, Spatz calls practice.
The most interesting idea so far: "what we know becomes who we are" (56).
When I shared this one Facebook a friend fired back "No, what we DO is who we are"
The cool thing about Spatz' assertion is that those are both true. What we do is what we know--we add knowledge to our lives through repeated action, and new actions create new knowledge.
This means that repeated social actions learned growing up through culture and authority figures become knowledge--every behavior has lessons attached to it and the lessons aren't always the ones intended--meaning is multiple. I think about the cultural actions of allowing "boys to be boys" it's a repeated action of allowance for behavior which leads to many understandings of meaning which the affectionate repeated allowance may or may not intend. Boys learn that they can do what they want--even if others don't like it, an allowance will be made. Sometimes this is really awesome, it means that for a lot of young men courage to pursue their dreams is built in because allowances will be made. It also means that for some, harmful behavior can be easily repeated because allowances will be made. There's a whole host of other knowledges that come from repeated social technique--how to interview, how to meet people, how to go on a date, how to show care for people you don't know, how to respect other humans, how to save people, how to walk, how to present as male/female.
I think about cycles of behavior that people go to therapy (or not) to break, deal with, and learn new behaviors that will help them pursue happiness more effectively.
Specifically, I think about myself and technique of practice that hurt a lot. One was the religious activity of thanking God for loving me. The flip side of this was that God loves us in spite of our undeserving nature and actions--the repeated technique was reminding myself that God loved me in spite of all of my terrible failings. I was consistently told by my family growing up that They loved me, that I was brilliant, beautiful, and wonderful--how to square that with the knowledge that if all that was true I couldn't possibly need God's love which meant that I really needed God's love because only truly wicked people think that they're good enough not to need God's love which means I must be really wicked because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God--love more self abase more. It became a practice of making caring more and more for others and less and less for myself, because of course, God would be caring for me. I don't always recall thinking deliberately through each of these progressive thoughts, but the lack of care for my emotions and my well-being in favor of caring for others was pervasive. I remember agonizing about it. I remember emotionally flagellating myself for not caring for someone enough when they felt hurt or upset. I remember while dating, agonizing and emotionally punishing myself because I felt that I looked into a future in which I would leave them, doing all kinds of damage. Just caring about them became a practice of self-harm.
Trying to break or change or challenge this knowledge has been a huge struggle. My knowledge of caring for another person is deeply embedded in techniques of self-denial. To admit and learn/be told that care for others can effectively start with care for yourself is difficult because it flies in the face of my repeated technical knowledge. To take care of me first is selfish and wrong and worthy of emotional punishment... the struggle is really like swimming up river when you've never done it before. Often my emotional muscles fail and a find myself a ways down stream before I can get back to practicing the technique of self-care and valuing my feelings, impulses, thoughts and opinions.
The power of embodied knowledge is so strong. I also think about classrooms and, in re to a previous blog post, that teachers don't teach content they teach methods of learning: they teach you how to be a student. I remember in high school that the secret to good grades really was to discover exactly what they teacher expected and rewarded in order to get the best grade possible. Even when I taught in the writing center, I remember teaching students how to go through an assignment and identify what the teacher created as a measure for success--this is how you can make sure that all of your work is recognized and acknowledged--conform to his/her expectations for excellent work. On the one hand, the experiential knowledge of the call/response student/teacher roles can be extremely helpful in navigating school, work, and relationships. On the other hand, to simply teach this hack does not necessarily foster a desire to learn and pursue material the student finds fascinating.
I'll be teaching a THR 1010 class online in the fall. I'm currently wrestling with how to structure it #1 so that my expectations of engagement are clear for assignments and #2 so that the structure fosters student creativity and learning rather than simply a meeting of criteria for passing said class.
Hmmm...
Nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
ReplyDeleteMeaning being multiple it can be interpreted in any number of ways by any number of participants.
That is why calling on someone else is the least effective way for cementing an argument; they already have an opinion, calling on them to shore up yours is not lending weight, it simply adds another opinion.
Schooling is a unique and weird problem.
We foster education because it is the best learning environment.
It puts young, pliable minds in conversation with one another.
But, it does not reward those individual minds for creating and finding their own avenues of success.
If education is meant to prepare us for life outside should it emulate the world as it is or teach us how to engage with it?