Opening The Door To the Space In-Between
There are questions we don’t ask because…? Maybe we never thought about the possibilities and couldn’t form the question. Or, maybe we thought about the possibilities and decided that what we imagined couldn’t happen – even if the changes wrought would make a significant contribution.
This is a true story, my story as a young educator who explored that space between Thinking About The Possibilities, and pushing ahead against the place where, It Can Never Happen. The in-between place is where a searcher can go and create something with the potential to wake petrified systems.
I knew the danger of opening the door to the space in-between. I knew how the system that would bear the brunt of my research and reject it, worked. I knew that what I imagined was not acceptable to a whole mindset, a whole self-perpetuating system that would have to change and evolve in ways that created chaos within accepted dogmas. But I could not ignore what I had discovered as I opened my mind to new ways of looking at the things I did as an educator.
Actually, I discovered two bombs that would threaten the way things were done across the nation and increasingly across the planet. The first was not a new discovery. It served as an example of how systems reject information that does not perpetuate what seems to be working. John Dewey described necessary changes to the way we educate. Essentially, he clarified experience and education; how learning units must have a real and practical application. He showed us that lessons at every level had to end with a contribution to oneself and to society. Everyone who is a learner agrees with Dewey. But, his teachings do not penetrate to the base levels of our schools. His message stops where it conflicts with the way we organize and run our institutions. There are Opening The Door To the Space In-Between:
