Just Do It (if you want to)

Let's talk about sex. Good. Now I have your attention. I mean that quite seriously, though. Today I'm going to ponder some about the topic of young people, sex, and freedom.

My understanding of history suggests that a person's freedom is based at least in part on his or her (and particularly her) control of "the means of production," or in this case, reproduction. Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality is one place to understand this dynamic, and how it has evolved in the West. One could also certainly look at gender and sexuality-based rights movements for insights. If you are at all interested in this topic, I encourage you to do so. For now, my treatment of the issue will be considerably less erudite, and perhaps at times, crude. So sue me.

Here's more or less the gist of my argument. In the United States there is remarkably little attention to providing a robust understanding of sex for young people. In the public sphere, the tendency seems to have been to more or less try to pretend that puritanical prudishness is sufficient to "protect" kids from the evils of sex. So, we have the Federal government pushing abstinence-only programs as if the are (a) effective and (b) enough. That, I think, is bullshit. I will not belabor the point here, but I do encourage you to read up on abstinence-only programs and reach your own conclusions.

I think that this tendency to treat every public controversy as if it were a crisis, and to produce, of course, favored solutions as the only course of action, has reduced public thinking on this and other topics to all new lows. In fact, particularly when talking about children and adolescents, this tendency is especially pronounced. I encourage you to look at this book and this one to hear some interesting arguments about kids get used as pawns when advancing an agenda of social control. More or less, these hot button issues tend to be framed in such a way that children are seen as a public problem, a menace to society, or possibly as willing or unwilling dupes of unsavory individuals and organizations. Notice, please, that the prevailing discourse on youth does not seriously entertain the notion that young people can or should make substantive life decisions over, for example drug use or sex. "Just say no." That's not a particularly useful or realistic way to approach these issues.

Now, back to the sex issue in particular. We have one very prominent public debate on young people's sexuality, and a whole slew of issues that never get much play, if any, because they tend to make "responsible adults" uncomfortable (to put it very lightly). So they get ignored. Here, I'm talking about the weird and "fucked up" kids: The various freaks, queers, experimentalists, and others with "abnormal" sexual urges and tendencies. Perhaps all those "Girls Gone Wild" videos will encourage parents to at least admit the possibility that their precious little girls (and boys?) get their respective freaks on, sometimes with their best friends... I wouldn't hold my breath. I wonder, sometimes, how many of those ladies' fathers have bought their own daughters' work. Wouldn't that be rich to witness? Pseudo-puritanical dad of sorority girl sees her (and her roommate!!!), getting down and dirty in public. How do you broach that during the family dinner? But I digress.

The "queer" kids, however they are understood as "queer" (e.g., gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered, androgynously gendered, in some way kinked, or whatever) are more or less ignored in the public discourse, if not actively demonized by the nation's moral scolds like James Dobson, Bill Bennett, and Jerry Falwell. Public discourse about queer youth, even when it occurs, tends to come from the mouths of "experts" and other adults. Rarely are children called upon to give voice to their thoughts and positions. When they are, generally it tends to be in the context of yet another study of the particular "crisis" adults are concerned about, or to give testimony about what fucked up individuals they are. This is particularly harmful given the rising numbers of religiously-based, private behavioral modification programs for these kids. Given that they are religiously-based, they tend to lack adequate supervision from the relevant child welfare authorities, lack a robust understanding of the bases of sexuality, and more or less attempt to control things that may not be controllable, resulting in incalculable damage to young people.

I won't even grace these people with serious attention. They don't understand, they don't want to. They make me angry, and I need to keep that at a distance for now.

Anyway, back on topic. To deny sexuality, sexual difference, and so forth, does kids a disservice. Adolescence is a fucked up time anyway. It's bad enough without people attempting to control your sexual thoughts and behaviors. More importantly, I think, this denial of a primary fact of life leads to a bunch of bad consequences: bad feelings, bad information, and bad sexual technique. Kids either must learn to suppress their sexual feelings or they must feel that something is wrong with them. Even straight kids who have sex don't escape the framing of adolescent sex as deviant, rather than natural, behavior. The denial also tends to control kids access to sexual information, including facts, options, info on birthcontrol, techniques, practices, etc. Some this is stuff that would be classified as "porn" by some people. Nonetheless, I tend to believe that endlessly deferring people's adult status is in itself a source of learned helplessness. After all, not long ago it was not uncommon for 14 and 15 year olds to get married and start families. When did we become so stupid that we couldn't, with good info, know what to do w/ our sexual feelings and equipment? The taboo against adolescent sex extends like a fetid blanket to cover all kinds of information, behaviors, and feelings. Finally, people who hate sex and deny it and hide it from their kids do them a further disservice. What harm is there in doing it right? How can a person become appropriately sexual, even at the "right time," or in the marriage bed, if they don't know how to use their (and their partner's) equipment pleasurably, safely, and effectively? I wonder how many fundamentalists are closet sex-fiends, frustrated by their own limitations.

In the end, the topic of sex should not be taken out of public discourse. Normalizing sexuality, of all kinds, does not harm, but helps. It helps kids. It helps parents. It helps society. Treating sexuality the way we do guarantees the marginalization of queer and kinked youth. It fetishizes a kind of blandness and sameness of human sexuality. It demonizes anything that departs from "normal" sexual tendencies. It attempts to make "natural" what repressed Christians do as a matter of course. As a result, we end up with fucked up, sad, lonely, self-hating kids. For no good reason. We also, by denying them control of their own bodies and identities, deny them the possibility of real political power. The cannot vote. They have little influence, even over their parents. Their lives are tightly controlled, defined, and commodified by people not themselves, by people who have "plans" for them: business plans, career plans, marital plans, etc. Quoth the Bard: Now that's fucked up.

We deprive kids of deeply personal and political decision-making, and try to lock them into a state of perpetual childhood. Unless they deviate. Unless they kill someone. Unless they fuck someone. Unless they take drugs. Then they are punished as quasi-adults, or they are institutionalized, marginalized, or denied. They have literally no political representation on their own behalf. It is always through the proxy of a parent, no matter what a kid may want, no matter how fucked up the parent. I'm not talking here about letting eight year olds do "whatever." I'm talking about kids between say 13 and 17, people who are supposed to begin acting like adults some day. Adults of some sort, anyway. How is that supposed to happen? We will control virtually every aspect of their lives, including their sexuality, and suddenly at 18 they'll just be adults? Really? Can't get behind that idea. Sounds like bullshit to me.

Being an adult is not about the calendar on the wall, but about the ones in your hearts and minds.

Go now, and think about sex. Do it if you'd like, by yourself or with a partner (or more). Have a good time. Give and receive freely. Most of all, embrace this part of your being. Understand and accept it, and you will probably be happier. Understand that sex is political and it can help you find personal power. But don't get hung up on it. It's not everything, just one thing. Learn it, live it, and love it.

Sela

On Being a Mentor

I'm back again after a short break.

You see, sometimes I need a little time to let ideas percolate a bit. I work by intuition at times, and sometimes force won't get the job done. It comes out "forced," awkward, mechanical, and tends to lack a significant authorial voice. In any case, I think I have something worked out, so here it goes.

I was having a discussion for a couple of hours yesterday with the lovely Io. At some point we began to talk about a class she had taken from me this semester. She was curious as to how I would evaluate it. Truly, as I told her, it was superior class, and one in which I felt I did some of my best work and my students had met and even surpassed my expectations. Then she said something funny, something that kind of took me aback. I can't remember her exact words but the meaning seemed to be something like this. When I felt that my students were doing well, she said she could tell, because I seemed like I was proud, even self-satisfied. I don't think she necessarily meant it in a negative way, but it gave me pause. In my mind, I sort of stopped to consider what she meant. Like a proud poppa? Like a manager taking credit for his employees' work under her/his "leadership"? I wasn't particularly impressed with what she had revealed to me about myself. In fact, I said, "I did not know that about myself." It really was kind of embarrassing to me, probably because I could see the truth in it. Now, mind you, those weren't the only facets of the conversation we had. In fact there were a few more flattering remarks, but kind of irrelevant to the discussion right now. I won't go into them here, unless I see a connection as I write.

What I take from this is a kind of clarity, the kind that emerges from passing from a state of self-delusion to a state of self-awareness. Sure, I always think about my "performance" (in the acting sense) as a teacher, but I don't actually get to see it. Come to think of it, I'd probably think I was kind of a wanker sometimes. Nonetheless, it's quite humbling when you realize that what you try to do is watched and evaluated(!) by others. Part of it is that I understand that teaching, getting up in front of an audience, requires that one should play a role of sorts. Please understand, I don't mean that I try to fake it. However, there is a certain level of self-consciousness inherent in the performance. I like to think that this self-consciousness is part and parcel of an effort toward improvement of performance. I have been reminded, though, that part of the performances we render for our viewing audiences is also something we do to satisfy ourselves. We like to be clever. We like to be appreciated. We like to be liked. We like to be seen as wise. We want the audience to confirm our self-conceptions, or even to confirm that we are better than we had hoped we were. We want to be... worthy. Often in my life, I have not been seen as such. I didn't really know I craved it so much, still, again, in perpetuity perhaps. At what point is the abandonment of ego possible, so that I can just get on with life?

I guess, for me, the clarity I've found has taken me to a place where I see a certain level of futility. It reminds me that I'm still trying, after all these years, not to be the biggest fucking dork in the world. And I am not always succeeding at it. Why should that matter, I'm not sure... but it kind of does. I like to think of myself differently: doing my work for others, presenting an example to be followed, being just a medium, so to speak, for the information I'm passing along. A whole bunch of important-sounding things like that. The geek that I am sort of militates against that. It's sort of pathetic. I guess that one is never really what he or she wishes to be; rather, one is just what one is. Yes, Popeye the Sailor philosophy boys and girls. I am what I am, and that's all what I am. Right? Well, maybe not. That just assumes that one is a product, like a box of cereal, with known and relatively unchanging properties and characteristics. That's true, but only partly. We also, beneath the unchanging elements that allow us to see ourselves as coherent and continuous beings, are chaotic, emergent, constantly in a state of flux, of action and reaction to the world. Sometimes, that world, that perverse, obdurate world, surprises us. It surprises us into recognizing something new, or reevaluating something old, and so forth. We don't just get to "be ourselves," because "ourself" is revealed to be temporary, partial, provisional, emergent, and so forth. The work that it takes to be a person becomes more apparent, and the fact that we have been faking it becomes all too clear.

You know, maybe I'm just being way too self-reflexive here. Maybe there are people out there who don't really match this description. The simply are so much themselves, that the world and other people are never able to make an impression. I hate those fuckers. I mean really, how can anyone be that certain of themselves? What unbridled arrogance! Or maybe I'm just jealous, because I don't think I'll ever be that way.

Wow. This has gotten to a place I didn't expect to go. I wanted to talk about something relevant to education, but instead I'm just navel-gazing, kind of doing the psychological equivalent of holding my nuts after being kicked square in my ego. Forgive me. I do see a reason, though, to talk about it, and I'll get there soon.

Teachers, particularly in college, tend to understand themselves as doing more than simply doing a job and going home. The whole edifice of my profession rests on the idea that what I do matters in larger ways than simply coming to class, lecturing, evaluating, and going away. What I do is supposed to matter to students. The way I do my work as a teacher (or an advisor, etc.) is supposed to have some sort of impact. I'm supposed to imagine myself as a role model, as someone who can show people, not just how to think, but what to be and how to live. Let's call that the messianic dimension of teaching. I'm supposed to be the secular equivalent of a priest of some sort, representing a discipline that functions like a denominational label, like "Lutheran" or "Baptist," for example. The problem is, though the congregation, as such, files in regularly, they are not always there for the reasons you think they are. They do not see or understand things exactly the way you expect them to. Most importantly, they do not see you in the same way that you see yourself. That's reasonable, and probably should be expected by someone who is supposedly an expert regarding rhetoric. Ahh... but then self-delusion creeps in, and allows you to project upon your own self-awareness an illusion of mastery. You think you have been what you sought to be, and done what you sought to do. Maybe you have. You probably also have done a bunch of other things of which you are unaware, or even actively in denial. That's where I find myself now.

I am, I have been, humbled. The task of making that kind of connection with my students is so immense as to be unachievable. There is never going to be a time when I and my students will find ourselves revealed, in truth and glory, to each other. We will never truly be consubstantial with each other in any real way. This reminds me of something that John Durham Peters (1999) said about communication in his book, Speaking Into the Air:

The authentic representation of the self or world not only is impossible, it is also never enough. Needed instead is a stoic willingness to go through the motions that will evoke the truth for others. The problem of communication is not language'’s slipperiness, it is the unfixable difference between the self and the other. The challenge of communication is not to be true to our own interiority but to have mercy on others for never seeing ourselves as we do. (266-267)

It's sort of funny to realize, in very tragically funny sort of way, that what I hope to achieve--perfect communion, total consubstantiality--is more or less delusional. Yet, that's what I feel compelled to seek in my work. I hope that I can go to a place, and meet my students there, and that we recognize each other in some very real sense. That in this moment of recognition, that we will reveal all that is important to know, and that we will accept, and even forgive, what is there in the other person, and in ourselves. Is this constant urge I have just the desire for forgiveness (for what?), for love (don't I have that already?), for worthiness (to whom, then, if not to myself?)?

For me, this really fucks with my idea of being a mentor or some kind of role model for my students. How can a person be so ignorant of the basic facts regarding himself and his desires, and how they interrelate with others, and still expect to be a model of perfection? Sort of an arrogant assumption, isn't it? I guess the important thing that I take away from this lesson is that I should not worry about what it says about me. I need to do my job, do it well, and do it with passion, but I should be careful about my expectations as to what I will get in return. To project an obligation upon my students to preserve my carefully wrought self-image is not good. Perhaps it is not particularly ethical either. I guess when you love, you want to be loved in return; however, I don't think love should be so much an investment as it is a gift freely given. Let it flow. Don't worry about what follows. Don't expect. Be in the moment. Most importantly, don't make yourself the most important thing in picture you see in your mind.

Sometimes, the students are the teachers. If teachers listen, perhaps they will recognize this to be true far more often than they suspect.

Sela. Reflect on this.

Music, and Other Reasons for Living

Well, boys and girls, I've returned. I hope you got the note from my mom. My computer really was very sick. SpyAxe had taken over my computer. If you ever get it on your computer, I pity you. However, with some help from the guys at Tech Guy Support Forums or at least me reading one of their help sessions w/ somebody else, a few freeware applications they linked to, and a little investigative process on my end (lasting, oh six or eight hours over two days!), I was able to kill it. The best part was using this little app called KillBox. With help from KillBox I got the extreme pleasure of ripping out its very guts, a little file located in my Windows directory. With normal spyware removal procedures, this file got ignored. It would then reinstall the problem. Well, thanks to the forum listed above, I got some good advice, and I could almost hear the little bugger scream its last as I told KillBox to delete it. It was a very good feeling. The rest, as they say, was a matter of time. Fuck you, Spy Axe. You were a tough opponent, but fuck you anyway. We met and you died.

Well, can you tell how much I enjoyed that whole ordeal? Off to other issues then.

Today, I wanted to talk about music a little bit. Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I like to listen to music. I like it a lot. I also like to listen to new music all the time, though I also go through periods when I go back to the stuff I already have, get re-addicted, and do it to death for a while. I was on a kick for a while where I listened to Bad Religion, Bad Religion, and more Bad Religion, mixed with a healthy dose of NOFX. Which is why this is about education. It happened when Yours Truly was still in graduate school, working on the dissertation.

In a way, I think I could honestly say that I might have had a harder time with graduate school if I hadn't been a punker from way back. It wasn't too hard to see that my work was political. It also gave me an excuse to have sufficient intestinal fortitude to say what I needed to in order to get done. I had a lot of friends who just never finished, and I sometimes wondered if I was going to. In those time, music really helped me a lot. The dissertation even has pieces of two Bad Religion songs in it, and in the bibliography. It really was that important to me at the time, and spoke to me in a way my professors and friends and wife could not. When I listened to The New America (not BR's best album, but it's got some good tunes), it helped me a lot. The best way to say it, I suppose, is that it helped me to reach, mentally, a sort of messianic place. I was ready to stand up and testify to the congregation. I was ready to bear witness in the streets. I was ready to rip the educational establishment a new asshole. I remember something similar from when I was growing up. Some songs just got me going so much that I felt unstoppable.

Of course, I know, I was (and am) not really unstoppable, but I was filled with the spirit, so to speak. I can understand jihad. I know what's it's like to give yourself over to fate's whims. I sort of think of it as something akin to deindividuation or entrainment, as discussed in some of the literature on crowd behavior, cults, riots, flow, and so forth. One more or less is using the music as a level of oneself, performing the music as an element of your life in the world, at least in part. Another way to think about that is to think about music as a soundtrack for your life. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pretty prone to getting songs stuck in my head. I once had the Brian Boytano (sp.?) from the Southpark movie stuck in my head for five straight days, from the time I got up until the time I went to sleep. It got so bad that I more or less was coming up with my own lyrics for every verse, even actually applying them to my experiences of the day. Very weird. But I digress. I'm talking more about how sometimes I'll just be driving or walking around, or doing some work--basically living my life--and in my mind there's like a soundtrack, something like that. Not necessarily whole songs, mind you. More like fragments of songs that seem appropriate to the situation. Maybe I have a weird sense of congruence between my symbolic and my lived worlds. Maybe I'm also really attuned to the irony in a lot of situations that music helps me both to self-represent and to appreciate on some aesthetic level. Maybe I'm just fucking batshit insane.

Another idea here.

Can we think of schools and other organizations dealing with the public as having their own particular sorts of "music." That is, different organizations create an environment, a "vibe" that people are or are not hip to. Here's an example. My family is really laissez-faire with Christmas. We show up, we hang out, we eat, we drink, we open presents, and so forth. There's a plan, but not really The Plan. It's the vibe I'm used to. My wife's family, on the other hand, seem committed to scheduling, tight organization, general participation in every little thing, and so forth. It puts me on edge when I visit. On the one hand, yeah, I'm kind of being a dick for not dancing to their music. But on the other hand, their music sucks, and I can't dance to it. I ain't doin' the fucking Macarena, dammit! So, more or less, when we think about how a student in school might be moved by their music (in a broad sense encompassing both their self expression and their self representations of themselves and of the world to themselves), we must think also about how the music of the vibe of the school works with and against and parallel to and so on, with respect to the students' own various vibes. If they don't match particularly well, I can see the potential of a lot of ironic situations (in some student's view) or for the mental equivalent of students covering their ears, rolling their eyes, and saying, "God! This music totally sucks!"

Now I know this is a weird post, and relies pretty heavily upon the music metaphor to make a point. That metaphor is figurative, and it comes along with some baggage. It may ignore elements of human psychology and sociality. However, it is a useful tool for thinking about this with. In fact, that reminds me of something. Kenneth Burke said somewhere that literature is, "equipment for living." That is, since we cannot have experience directly sometimes, we turn representations of experience, in literature for example. It helps us to understand ourselves, the people around us, how the world works, and so forth. Starting in the fifties, but particularly since then, music and other mass and micro-mediated and marketed genres of popular culture have tended to supplant the forms of Burke's day. I think what he said still rings true, whether you're talking about literature, music, comic books, or whatever. These are the tools that we use to think with, to live with. I find it fascinating the extent to which this is so, and also the extent to which our understandings of human subjectivity tend to underrepresent these elements in the construction, maintenance, and dynamism of a person's interactions with the world around him or her.

Sela. Go now and reflect upon this.

Absent for a bit

Dear Mr. Smith:

Sorry, but Doc will not be in class today. His computer has been attacked by vicious malware (SpyAxe), and he has only just managed to fix it. He will be sure to bring a note from his internet security freeware providers when he returns to class tomorrow.

Doc's Mom

Grading is a Tool of the Man

Short post today boys and girls. I have a ton to do today, including end-of-semester grading. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but I really, really, really, really (this could go on for a while....) HATE grading. I don't mind evaluating work. I don't mind giving constructive feedback. I don't even mind being a hardass sometimes in order to get people's attention, so that they might demonstrate some self-respect, some respect for me, and some respect for the process of learning. Grading, though, is not as useful. Let's take a quick look at why that might be.

Herb Childress, writing in 1998, found himself wondering why students who couldn't care less about what they do in classrooms, all of a sudden became hard-working outside of the classroom context. He looked at (American) football for his answers. According to Childress:

In the school that I observed, I saw striking -- and strikingly consistent -- differences between the perfunctory classroom sessions and lively extracurricular activities. The same students who were emotionally absent from their classes came alive after school. We say, "If only she'd spend as much time doing her algebra as she does on cheerleading . . ." with the implication that students blow off algebra because they're immature. We don't usually think to turn the question around and ask what it is about the activities they love that is worthy of their best effort. We don't usually ask what it is about school that tends to make it unworthy of that kind of devotion. But if we're interested in looking at places of joy, places where students lose track of how hard they're working because they're so involved in what they're doing, places where teenagers voluntarily learn a difficult skill, places that might hold some important lessons for schools, football is a good choice.



In his analysis of football, he found seventeen (that's right, seventeen) reasons why. Here's what he found:

1. In football, teenagers are considered important contributors rather than passive recipients.

2. In football, teenagers are encouraged to excel.

3. In football, teenagers are honored.

4. In football, a player can let the team down.

5. In football, repetition is honorable.

6. In football, the unexpected happens all the time.

7. In football, practices generally run a lot longer than 50 minutes.

8. In football, the homework is of a different type from what's done at practice.

9. In football, emotions and human contact are expected parts of the work.

10. In football, players get to choose their own roles.

11. In football, the better players teach the less-skilled players.

12. In football, there is a lot of individual instruction and encouragement from adults.

13. In football, the adults who participate are genuinely interested.

14. In football, volunteers from the community are sought after.

15. In football, ability isn't age-linked.

16. Football is more than the sum of its parts.

17. In football, a public performance is expected.

Now, mind you, I personally didn't like playing football that much. The games were kind of fun, but I hated practice with a passion. I hated losing games. Winning games was great. But Childress gets something here. Ving Tsun kung fu (VTKF) was a lot more fun for me, because we don't evaluate or grade or win or lose. More or less, people have some things they're working on, they show up for class, and they work on them. There is no right or wrong, in the sense that "grading" as such would suggest. Rather, everyone is seen to need to improve and perfect whatever they're working on. So we get together in order to see more examples, and to have partners to share the work with and to do things we would be unable to do alone (e.g., two-person training activities).

Okay, I got some of this written already, so I'll just include it. The post will be long today, after all:

Let us say, for example, that what we want to assess is the total quantity of kung fu a student has. Assuming that this is a physical skill, we assign it to assessment of its physical manifestation. We put the student to the test. Instead of simply matching him or her against an ideal opponent, the embodiment of "the true kung fu" (a benchmark or standard), we must put him or her up against a real person, as such an ideal practitioner does not exist. Then we create a testing situation, say a sparring session. We set up a system of rules for the test, and a set of indicators to take as data from it. However, both the rules and the indicators measured must be limited to ensure that they can be assessed in the first place and that they can be taken as determinant measures of what we predefine as "kung fu." Further, if we do not want the people tested to be gravely injured, or worse, we must limit the testing situation. Suppose that we create a set of guidelines to determine legal and illegal tactics in the game defined by the test. Automatically, we limit the full range of skills the student can bring to bear in the testing situation. It may be that the skills we proscribe might mean the difference between success and failure. Even more so, the test is but a singular instance of the manifestation of the standard to be tested. Things might have gone better or worse, had the conditions of the test been different, or if different people had been involved. What might have happened in an ideal situation is, then, only a construct, one that assumes far too little possibility for error in measurement.

VTKF does not engage in such assessment. I think part of the assumption behind this is that the "testing situation" is not a real situation. One cannot assume that what is manifested at a particular time is the sum of what has been learned. Instead, VTKF substitutes a more student-driven conception of assessment. Here I will consider three aspects of it: no mistakes, constant assessment without accountability systems, and multiple bases for self-assessment.
No Mistakes

“No mistakes” is a primary principle of VTKF pedagogy. It means, more or less, that substandard performance is not really a problem. Instead, mistakes or uncertainty of knowledge indicate areas for individual improvement. They are not, however, occasions to comment on the state of the “guilty” party. The mistake happened somehow, and probably for some reason, but what is it? What is different, here, is that the standard is personalized. There is no ideal performance outside of persistence of application: even then, one must have freedom to relax, to take breaks, and not to force the learning to happen. One does what one does, and that is enough. You did it that way for some reason, and hopefully you got something out of it. Jana suggested that part of the reason for this attitude relates to the naturalness of one’s personal experience:

In a kung fu school, nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. Right now, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Always. And then there’s time to work on details, you know. It’s not that it’s wrong, or that it’s been wrong. It’s just time to do this. And that’s great. It’s very freeing. Nothing is wasted. Even if you’ve been doing it one way, and now it’s time to do it this way, did you get anything from doing it that one way? Yeah. You did. So, that’s very different from standard education.

The student, it is supposed, must constantly engage his or her own practice at a meta-level, looking at what is done and how it is done, and working out ways to make it better. Energy spent on constructing crisis situations out of what is very normal and natural situation is energy wasted. This system of assessment assumes the fact of error, contrary to assessment in SBR, and naturalizes and “decriminalizes” it through the “no mistakes” frame. By doing so, it is possible, according to Bill, to make students much more comfortable with improving practice as a result of assessment, and does not discourage them from practicing:

No one ever makes you feel like you're doing anything wrong. … Telling someone they're doing it wrong isn't really going to correct the error a whole lot. They might think about it a bit more, which is good, but it's really hard to do something right being just told without actually practicing it a lot. And if you're constantly being told you're doing it wrong, you're not going to practice. If you don’t practice, you’re not going to learn.

Finally, in addition to being natural to the context of VTKF, mistakes are seen as resources for developing a more comprehensive understanding. Simply, pursuing a mistake, and what makes it a mistake, provides not just the binary distinction between “right” and “wrong,” it also provides a mechanism for self-correction, and a way to determine, by degrees and applications, what is “right” or “wrong.” Given that, self-assessment and self-correction become the basis for quite a lot of learning:

Mistakes are almost encouraged. If you’re not trying to do it, you’re not making mistakes, but you’ll never learn. So, people are really encouraged to explore off to the side and actually see why they do it. You don’t see that in regular schools. It’s set in concrete: You do it this way. They should encourage it when a kid raises his hand and goes, “I don’t see why they do it that way,” instead of just telling them to shut up. Actually letting the kid figure out why they did it that way [would be better]. (Ernie)

It is not so much that there is not the idea of making mistakes in the first place, in VTKF pedagogy. People do, in fact, make mistakes constantly. What is different from SBR is that there is no formal accountability system to dictate particular varieties and levels of performance from students. This is not to say that they are not evaluated, by themselves and by others; rather, they are not at the same time subject to value statements about the adequacy of their performance, or punished for deficient performance, at least by anyone but themselves. There is broad recognition in VTKF circles, I think, that every time one corrects a student, one alters what is both natural and desirable: the student’s own understanding of and approach to the material, which forms the basis of his or her understanding of its relevance and value, and of his or her own.
Constant Assessment without Accountability Systems

For that reason, it is important that students develop, first, a sense of the value of their own efforts. VTKF instructors try not to jump immediately on the mistakes they see, leaving experience to teach the students the “right” way to do whatever it might be, and only occasionally leading them away from the sorts of things that might cause them trouble. Jana, my sihing, spoke to me about her experiences in opening up her own VTKF club when she moved away from the home school:

I will tell my students things that are appropriate. Like you don’t just want to sit there and just stare at somebody playing a form. You want to play a form? If they ask you to watch them it’s fine. It’ll never happen, but it’s fine. But you don’t just want to stand there and watch. I’ll let them know. I wouldn’t do it if they were doing that. I would let them do it, and then I would let them know later. I’ve seen people lounge on the johng. It’s real hard not to go over and move them. You don’t want to do it while they’re doing it, because then they’ll get the sense that they’ve done something wrong. You tell them later, and in an offhand way, so they know. They’re probably just curious and want to be near it because it’s this cool-looking thing.

Some practitioners are better at laying off their juniors than others, but a laissez-faire ethos pervades the larger practice of the collective. Some people even begin to question other ways in which they have been evaluated, and the very concept of grading itself. Bill, my sidai, said in an interview:

Bill: I think that the grades only hinder performance and learning. I understand their necessity, because people need a way to see that they're learning. The students are learning and that they're getting something out of it, and to be able to, you know, say who's better or whatever. … It's just like that: People will cheat to get good grades; and people work hard and get good grades, and if you work hard you learn it, and if you cheat you don't. But then what's the grade worth, if you didn't learn anything. You have these grades. What's the point?

EDJ: Why would someone cheat then?

Bill: Because that's what we base it on. We base everything on grades. You get into college based on your GPA, so if you have good grades you get in. They don't test you really. I mean they give you the ACT or whatever, but I don't know. It just seems like the grading scale is what it's all about, and not what you learn really.

When assessment is divorced from what actually is learned, and when grades are raised to the status of fetish, then we have a problem. SBR is replete with instances of this problem, whether in terms of equating test scores with learning, or in terms of differential treatment of students based on those scores, especially the “failures.” I believe that VTKF provides a model for how a better situation might be achieved.
Multiple Bases for Self-Assessment

What underlies the individual effort of each student is his or her participation in training collectively with other members of the school. One aspect of this collective dimension comes from one of Sifu's frequent admonitions that each student should "touch a lot of hands" (work with a lot of other students during training time). That is, individual insights are derived from collective practice, during which a student brings his or her own kung fu into play with others' own versions of the kung fu. This provides students with multiple bases for comparison rather than a single "correct" basis for comparison (i.e., a “standard” or “benchmark”), whether that is simply his or her own kung fu or some other ideal of what the kung fu should be, feel, or look like.

At the same time, however, the same system of constructs (e.g., drills, forms, etc.), grounds the practitioners’ collective practice in the details of the style. Each student is free in what he or she does with what he or she already knows, but that knowledge is derived from a discrete system of possible knowledge: the VTKF system. However, this body of knowledge just seems to get deeper and more complex as time goes on; it does not get any easier.

The most important things to come out of this sense of assessment are that: (1) there is no “perfect” rendition of the thing evaluated; (2) all performances can provide the possibility for enhanced knowledge; and (3) having more collective knowledge at one’s disposal, and more bases for evaluation, means that one can learn more. I believe that one result of this is to deflect student attention, once again, in one more way, away from comparative valuation against one’s peers, and back toward the material itself.

More or less, grades can serve a useful purpose, but the way they are used in most educational situations is more about valuation of students than it is about evaluation of their work so that they feel self-motivated to improve it. If I could just have a student in my classroom for the right amount of time (which would vary), I think I could get nearly everyone to about the same level. However, I only get sixteen weeks. Then I have to value them, grade them like so many potatoes.

Oh, well... back to grading.

Thinking About the Gifted (and not the Xmas kind)

I was pondering today about something that happened when I was but a wee lad of seven years. I was thinking about it, because someone had created a thread over on The School Survival Forums about dissing a teacher you hated. I immediately thought of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Hull. She was this mean, middle-aged lady. I hated her class. And she seemed to hate me.

What you should probably understand about the situation before I continue this story is that my folks got divorced when I was about five. I'd gone to a bunch of different schools, but was a bit... let's call it "undersocialized." Okay, I guess I should tell the truth. I was kind of a social retard with other kids. I didn't really talk to a lot of people, and I kind of had a hard time doing things like staying on task, following directions, and generally all the stuff that students are supposed to do. I wasn't disruptive or anything, but I was kind of paying attention to stuff besides what I was supposed to. I had a pretty vivid imagination, and I loved cartoons, so sometimes I'd just draw. I wasn't very good at it, but I had a lot of fun doing it. Mentally, I'm not really sure where I was at that point. I think I was a pretty smart kid. I had an active social life in my neighborhood for the most part, but my focus was fairly narrow, and kind of limited. I just didn't pay much attention to things that didn't seem relevant to me in my own little kid way.

So, here's what happened. There used to be this cartoon on Saturday mornings called, "Jabberjaw," which was about a great white shark by that name, who more or less acted and talked like Rodney Dangerfield. I guess I liked it, because one day during English I started drawing pictures of sharks on my paper. I was supposed to be doing something like diagramming sentences or writing them out longhand or something equally (to me) tedious and boring. So, instead, I was cartooning. Well, I was into about my third shark and down swoops Mrs. Hull. She saw what I was doing, snatched away my paper, and wrote a nasty note home to my mother. It said something like, "This is what I caught your son doing today. Instead of doing his lessons all he does it piddle." I guess that's how mean old ladies say "fuck around." So, I was in trouble. Note to mommy.

Funny thing happened though. I brought the note to my mom and more or less explained what had happened. She looked at the note, then at my drawing, and said, "well I think it's pretty good." No freakout, no scolding, nothing like that. Mom, I think, had some experience with bitchy teachers from Catholic school. Her mom was no treat, either, for that matter. And that pretty much was the end of it. School went on, but I don't remember getting in that much trouble again. I actually didn't attend school there the next year, moving on to another school, where I ended up getting busted for weed (at age nine). That's a story for another time, if ever. Before that happened, though, we took some tests. Standardized tests. I think it was the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS). I think a lot of kids took that in the second grade back then. Come third grade, the results of that test would come back in an unexpected way.

So, summer came and went and I started the new school year at Inman, in Atlanta. Let's just say it served predominantly lower class students. It was a rough place, and many of the teachers and students weren't exactly the cream of the crop. I arrived there, and shortly after was put in their gifted program, which wasn't really much to speak of, but it allowed students quite a bit of freedom to learn and explore different areas of knowledge in a small-class format. It was only one period a day, not a completely self-contained school within a school kind of thing. I don't know as I really worked much harder, but I had more fun. The only thing that had changed was a stupid test had shown them that I wasn't some kind of moron. In fact, I was "gifted." But was I? I'm not so sure. I was a different sort of learner to be sure, but even at my new school I had similar problems in my larger class sessions as I had in my old school. I had a hell of a time learning long division, for example. I just wasn't paying attention when the material was introduced, and I didn't ask questions, so I got lost. I went home and told my stepdad, who was working on a degree in math. He sat down with me, and drew out a set of instructions, showing exactly what to do and why, and put them in a little folder for me. I probably had to use them about two or three times to work through some problems, but not after that. Oddly enough, I was considered to be pretty good at math after that, at least until high school, when I quit working at it so hard.

One more thing happened while I was at Inman that deserves attention. During lunch one day I decided to go into the library. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe we'd been shown it before and I was curious to find out more. I can't remember. Anyway, I went in and started looking around. I must have looked kind of lost, because a librarian came over and asked what I was looking for. I, of course, had no clue. She must have asked, though I'm not certain of this, what I was interested in. Maybe she just saw a little boy, and asked herself, "Now what do little boys like?" In any case, this saintly woman, unlike that bitch Mrs. Hull, introduced me to something valuable. Instead of, for example, teaching me grammar (language as tedium) she found me some cool books. I remember one was called Trumpet of the Swanand was about a swan who moved to New York to play jazz, lived in the Ritz-Carlton, and some odd stuff. You know, language as something fun and cool and just plain nice. I have no idea who that lady was, but she changed my life in just five minutes of her precious time; just like my stepdad did in about ten. I started reading constantly. I even began to try to write sometimes. Books have been something I've loved ever since.

Okay, Doc, nice stories. So what?

Well, I'm glad you asked. The moral of these here stories is simple: Different children may need different things to learn well. They all need time. They all need space. Some may need a little guidance, and some may need a lot. Some may work best if left to their own devices, and some may require more input and coaxing. Some may learn by rote quite easily, and some may need to approach things in more creative and complex ways. All children need to learn, and there are a lot of ways for them to do it. Why would we convince ourselves that these differences are good or bad? Did it matter than I never learned how to diagram sentences in Mrs. Hull's class? Probably not. Hell, I've already read more books in my life than she probably did in the entirety of hers. I suppose it may have mattered if I hadn't had someone to help me learn to do long division. I was lucky in that regard, just as I was lucky to meet that librarian that fateful day. But through it all, I was the same little kid. I was still needing some help with some things, but then I was more or less able to cope on my own. I did less well with large classes, and better with smaller ones. I didn't learn well in anonymous situations, but did quite well in personal ones.

I wonder how many kids out there have been found "gifted" or "in need of remediation" simply because of a set of coincidences like the ones I've described above? Could it be that, with the correct mix of instruction, resources, and freedom, that any "normal," "remedial," or otherwise fucked up kid could be "gifted"? I wonder sometimes when I think about my own history as a student. I know I learn differently than many "normal" people, but I get to and beyond some of the places they get to by their own processes. I've been extremely fortunate in that I've been in situations, when it counted, where I was able to exercise some freedom, to have some space to experiment, some time to meander, and more or less to do things my way. I cases where that was not the case, I wasn't as successful. Marine Corps tech school is a good example of that. I found it very difficult to achieve at a high level due to the mechanical nature of instruction and evaluation. I did pretty well anyway, but not as well as I could have.

I also wonder what might have happened if Mrs. Hull had known about, oh, maybe Ritalin. Would I have been "fixed," only to remain broken in ways no one could ever have imagined?

Sela (pause and reflect)

A Funny Story, or: When you know you've got it right

I had a funny thing happen to me the other day. My friend, Brandon, makes films. Silly, silly films. His latest is the third installment in his "Random" series of prank films, Random Thrizzle. On Monday night, I became his latest victim/enabler. That where the funny part begins.

It was my evening speech class, which goes from 8:30 to 9:45. Last day of persuasive speeches, and only two to go. We had just finished with the first one, and the second person to go walked to the front of the room. As the arrived, a figure in a blue robe burst into the room. He was dressed as pro wrestler Ric Flair (or at least that's what he was supposed to look like). And then there came Brandon with his new HD video camera (his baby), filming the whole thing. Adam (Ric) then proceeded with some wrestling style shit-talking, calling out yours truly, to come and try to take his championship belt. He then in invited the ladies, with a swivel of said belt and pelvis, to come "take a ride on space mountain." I, of course, was unable to wrestle him for the belt. In fact, I was unable to do a whole lot more than laugh my ass off. I'd been warned, some months before that something like this was to happen. Later, when I called Brandon, he informed me that he had been working on it for seven months, and that it was, in fact, the most expensive and time-consuming shot in the three prank films.

In the end, another student, dressed as a referee, burst in, and eventually, with the help of yet another merry prankster, dragged to belligerent Flair-wannabe from my classroom.

In the aftermath, the student whose turn it was to speak said, simply, "Well, how do I follow that?"

I laughed, and observed to the audience, "See how exciting it is to be a professor?"

So, okay, a prank. Funny story, but what the hell else is there to say about it. Just this: The greatest opportunities for teaching emerge from the development of personal relationships with ones students. If a teacher is able to have some sort of relationship with a student, one more or less unencumbered by the apparatus of discipline, grading, and the other barriers imposed by the student-teacher relationship, then maybe something good can occur. There is opportunity, and there is danger.

There is opportunity, in that a teacher can take the time necessary to do some quality teaching, though not so much as a series of lectures, assignments, and so forth. More like you get a chance to share the lessons of life, combined with your theoretical, methodological and other approaches to the world. The result, is a healthier teaching encounter on a lot of levels, because you are able to encounter each other as people, not as your classroom roles. The teaching can go both ways. I, for example, learn a lot about music and video production from my ongoing relationship with Brandon. I even sometimes make Yoda jokes, referring to him as "my young apprentice" or "padawan learner." Occasionally we exchange rough words, banter, letting each other know who is the biggest "beyotch" or whose momma the ugliest or lewdest. It is possible that, over time, we both will learn a lot about each other, and what each of us knows. There are, also, dangers to this kind of relationship.

First of all, there are ethical dilemmas to be navigated. When teachers and students spend time together, the teacher must ultimately understand that he or she is in the power position. If you spend time with students, particularly those who are currently your students, you must be very careful not to let what goes on outside the classroom influence what goes on inside the classroom. Also, when dealing with students, particularly those of the opposite sex, one must avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Everyone has probably heard stories about students and teachers getting too close in one way or another. It can lead to problems with the students themselves, with one's colleagues, with one's institution, and so forth.

Clearly, there are dangers, but I think that most of them can be dealt with pretty easily. You just have to keep in mind that your students are family. They are like sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. As such, there are things that you simply must take for granted in dealing with them. The idea here is the development of a loving relationship, but one based on sharing and trust. Nothing should ever be forced. Nothing should be required. There should not be quid pro quo that crosses contexts in ways that create unreasonable obligations for either party. For example, in my own classroom, I keep a strict separation, conceptually and practically, between the relationships I have with students. It's okay to be familiar, but in the professional context, one must always maintain some professionality. I don't grade my student "friends" any differently than any other student. I don't give them any extra attention or time I wouldn't grant any other student, and so forth.

The payoff is a longterm one, but it must, in my humble opinion, ultimately be for the betterment of one's students rather than oneself. If there is ever a conflict, it should be settled in a way that is ultimately beneficial to the student. A teacher must be willing to give, and to love. There must be, though, a kind of purity to the relationship, a goodness to be maintained and defended selflessly as much as possible. That is not to say that a person can't abandon or withdraw from the relationship if things get weird or if the relationship starts to be destructive for the parties involved. I just mean that it should, in general, based on the principle of giving over receiving.

And now for something completely different

My apologies for my long absence. It can be hard to crank out a post a day, I'm finding. Whatever. I hope my audience of 2.5 can deal with it. I'll try to be a better blogger, every day, and in every way.

Today I want to talk a little bit about the different ways in which writing (and possibly gaming, and other technologies of the imagination) can allow people to model subjectivities, play roles, sublimate emotions, and other things. I more or less want to pose this as a series of observations leading to reflection and to elicit some responses from me readers.

Here's my take on writing, self-knowledge, and how I got to thinking about it in this way. More than anything, I have always wanted to be a writer. I love books. I collect them. I read them. I fetishize them. I am concerned with how others treat them. I love them. Funny story to illustrate my position: Back in the day, I sold a math text book to one of my roommates, Kyle. Kyle, for whatever reason, decided to stand on it (at that point his book). This made me very uncomfortable. "Get off it," I said."
"Why?" he asked me, not moving an inch.
"Because," I replied.
"I'm not hurting it," he observed, lauging a bit, sort of starting to play with me.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "It's disrespectful."

I love books. They are my sacred objects. Some people have their cars, or their stereos, or whatever. I have my books.

And I have always wanted to write one, myself. I especially have wanted to write fiction. I finally started doing this as an undergrad, but stopped when I got to graduate school. Too much other stuff to do, I guess. Trying to become a scholar, to write academic prose, and so forth began to fill my time.

When I moved back to Georgia, I found myself at the computer one day, looking through archives of my old fiction. "Damn," I thought. "Some of this shit is actually pretty good." I began to think that maybe I was ready to take another shot at writing, so I came up with what I think is an interesting concept for a book. I won't go into that right (write?) now, because it would be a digression. Let me cut to what I think is important here.

Writing, for me, is a way to indulge in a different kind of fantasy. In this case, I'm trying to imagine various characters, their worldviews, their motivations, the ways in which they would interact, typically, and so forth. As I began to develop the background for this work, working to create characters who seem more real than not (a sin of some fantasy/sci-fi), I discovered that I was forced to rely a lot on what I know or suspect about myself. There are little parts of me in the characters, and parts of my observations about other people as well. Further, as I began to write, I discovered that my strongest authorial voice was yet another version of me. This is the me that loves to have an audience, to perform for others. It's a contrived voice, but a real one nonetheless. It borrows from my own dialect, as well as from those authors, styles, and genres I want to use to capture the mood and manner of the craft bring my imagined world to the page.

I think my greatest role model in this regard has been Stephen King, who is the best damned writer in America, IMHO. No other author has been as prolific and consistently honest in his writing. He, more than anyone I've ever read, knows how to show his characters to others in a way that is at the same time personal and genuine. I'm sort of butchering my description here, but I'm just trying to say that he "gets" his characters, and how they really might handle themselves in the situations in which they find themselves. He does an excellent job tracking their various internal states and trains of thought. It's not just plot and dialogue, but psyche and inner dialogue. Oh, well, I think he's great anyway. He gets what I'm talking about, even if MY readers are a bit lost by now.

This sort of gets at what I'm saying here. We can use technologies like writing to help us to imagine new ways of being, to understand current ways, or even to work through our historical ways. We can use is as a way to overcome our pasts, to make our presents work for us, and to imagine and create futures for ourselves. A key element of successful writing, in this regard, is complete honesty. Really good writing cannot be based on fakery. The result of trying to fake it may be fine, in terms of its readability, but it may also lack the soul that comes from honestly pouring oneself into the process. My worst writing tends to come from situations in which I'm trying to sound like or be something that I'm not. My best comes from putting myself in a position to tell a story that is true, heartfelt, and which does not avoid full disclosure. I know I'm really feeling it when my work makes me laugh or cry, when the words just seem to be there, and I'm just a vessel to convey them to the page. The experience is that of the oracle: The gods themselves seem to be speaking through me. There is no real me. Just the words.

Now, psychologically, this is easily explained in terms of optimal experience. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi developed this idea in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. More or less, you are completely in control, completely in touch with what you are doing, connected entirely such that where you leave off and what you are doing begins tends to get blurred. It is a matter of feeling as much as of intellect. My observations about writing are, I think, similar, but also tend to take note of the ways in which your "self" as such can get subsumed in the processes of acting.

Now, what's the point of talking about this? This is an education policy blog, right? Yes, it is. However, where in current educational policy, where in the contemporary classroom, is there an opportunity to viscerally feel one's learing in this way? I contend that there is little if any place allowed for this use of technologies like writing to help people work at becoming themselves. That's right. Work. Becoming someone is hard work. If you really want to be someone at least. Now there are plenty of people who want to tell you who you are, and who will give you the tools to get that way: Parents, teachers, advertisers, television, music, etc. These can be legitimate sources of knowledge, but sometimes are lacking in their ability to foster and develop knowledge of self. Where is the space for students to be honest in our schools? Where are they permitted to experience the contemplation who they are, how they got that way, and who they would like to be? Some might say that this is personal, spiritual, something that has little or nothing to do with learning.

Bullshit. If you don't know yourself, you are blind in your minds eye. If you can't help yourself, then no one can help you. If you don't feel the learning in your heart, then you won't put your heart into learning.

Does that make sense? Do you feel that too? What can we do to create a world in which education is not just about learning facts, procedures, getting socialized to be a good little capitalist, consumer-citizen, and so forth?

Sela (pause and reflect)

********
Q: What the hell does "Sela" mean?
A: From Ask the Rabbi

Lars-Toralf Storstrand wrote:

There is a word in our "westernized" copies of the Tanach that seems to baffle a lot of people to the degree that they say: "We don't know what it means!" Now I am asking you: What does "Sela" (in the Psalms) mean. I've heard several theories, but I want to get this clear.

Shalom.

Dear Lars-Toralf Storstrand,

The word "Sela" appears not only in our "westernized" translations of Tanach, but in the original Hebrew as well.

Some commentaries maintain that the word "Sela" has no translation; rather it is a word used to control the meter and allow the preceding words to flow correctly. The proof for this is that the word appears only in the "poetic" Book of Psalms and one "Psalm-like" chapter in Chavakuk.

The Ibn Ezra translates "Sela" as "truth" or "so it is."

The Talmud teaches us the meaning of the word in a similar fashion: "Every time the word "Sela" is used, it refers to something that goes on and on without end." Hence the translation of the Targum - "L'almin" - meaning "forever."

Sources:

* Psalms 3:3, Targum, Ibn Ezra.
* Talmud, Tractate Eruvin 54a.

The More We Think We Know, The Less We See

I was over on Misled Youth a while ago, and replied to a post on the self-portrait thread from Kisston. Kisston talked a little about how she (I think) got a call from her ex after ranting about him on the forum. I replied with a story about how I found, as if by magic, a source that had been eluding me in my research. My friend, Brandon, a film-maker with whom I am currently working on a project (more about that much later), went to a haunted house this Halloween and saw/heard some things he can't explain. What I guess I'm trying to get to here is that despite the advances of science, we are still sort of looked between the world we know and the world(s) we suspect. I'm not talking about religion here. I'm pretty convinced that much of what passes for religion is bullshit. Others are free to dispute that point. That's between them and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In any case, I think the brain is a much more potent instrument than most people think. I encounter another aspect of this when training kung fu. When you incorporate engagement of the mind and of the body new possibilities open themselves to you. What's really interesting is when you are able to "see" things but not describe them. In this case, I'm talking about training in
Chi Sao. What your hands "see" is difficult to describe, constantly changing and mutating. Intuition is critical. Openness to sensation is too. I wonder to what extent we help people to learn these things with the emphasis on things like "standards"? Not all knowledge is that easy to reduce. Academic knowledge is inseparable from personal knowledge is inseperable from the world and all its manifestations. As one of my kung fu brothers once said, in an interview I conducted during my dissertation research:


The seed of Ving Tsun, the various things that Ving Tsun trains in you, in your person, your personality, who you are and how you think, and your evolution as a human being. All these things are being trained, all evolving, not separate from your technical abilities in kung fu, but it's kind of a different issue, and it's not dependent on your technical abilities. You'd think the technical abilities probably would evolve at a similar pace with the other aspects of your person that is evolving through Ving Tsun. It's natural it would just make sense that way. So, I really feel the seed having been growing in me all this time. I really feel that. And you know, Ving Tsun is a part of that, even when I was away and not an active Ving Tsun student. Because that saying, you know, your kung fu is your whole life and Ving Tsun is your life, and so it's all… I can think in terms of my personal evolution, and Ving Tsun is doing the same thing. And I've certainly evolved a lot over that time where I was gone [1994-1997]. And the ideas that are essential to Ving Tsun have been a part of that evolution. They have been central in many cases to my evolution. And I don't think necessarily that I got all those ideas from Ving Tsun, but Ving Tsun is connected to some… fund of some really true principles, you know? And somehow it's all intertwined. Ving Tsun is connected to those things and it's helped bring out the things in me that are the direction I want to go in. It's a part of it definitely. It couldn't be separated.


I don't claim to understand why what he's saying is true, but I think it is. Maybe there's a good way to foster knowledge that allows for knowledge of self and development of intution. If so, I think it must contain a bodily, and even a magical, aspect. My favorite philosopher said this same thing somewhat differently, but I think well:

Our approach to any deep psychological problem is always a positive one. That is, we want to get at it, we want to control or resolve the problem, so we analyze it, or we pursue a particular system in order to understand it. But you can't understand something which you don't know by means of what you already know; you can't dictate what it should or should not be. You must approach it with empty hands; and to have empty hands, or an empty mind, is one of the most difficult things to do. Our minds are so full of the things that we have known; we are burdened with our memories, and every thought is a response to those memories. With positive thought we approach that which is not positive, the hidden, the unconscious. (J. Krishnamurti, "Reflections on the Self," 1997, p. 87)


This goes back to what I wrote yesterday with regard to the unconscious, and gives another way of understanding it. Indeed, is the goddess alive, and magick afoot, as our pagan friends suggest? Not sure about that, but the world is a mighty strange place nonetheless.