Grad 5114 / GEDI Fall 17
I hiked McAfee's Knob for the first time this weekend. I had lots of time to think and reflect while climbing up and walking down the mountain and one of the things I thought about was what being mindful looked like. Earlier in the week I read the article titled Mindful Learning by Ellen Langer. … Continue reading Being Mindful on McAfee Knob
“A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer— capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically.” This is a description of robot in Wikipedia. The way that a robot is working is very similar like mindlessness process. Instead of thinking by themselves, robots always follow the designed produces to solve problems. What makes human beings different from the robot is the mindfulness learning process.
As defined in Ellen J. Langer’s paper, “Mindfulness is a flexible state of mind in which we are actively engaged in the present, noticing new things and sensitive to context”, I think “mindfulness learning” is a great word to describe the initiative learning process. On the other hand, I would take mindlessness learning similar like a spoon-feeding classroom in which teachers simply give information and answers. Students will accept whatever the teachers give and pay less attention to other related questions. Some people would prefer mindlessness learning since it’s easy and energy-saving. Others would prefer mindfulness learning due to the participation and creativity. Which one is the smarter choice?
I would like to share my opinion about this question based on my experience. My major is environmental engineering. For undergraduate education, I took classes like environmental chemistry, microbiology, hydromechanics, electrotechnology, water pollution control engineering, etc. All these subjects are related to wastewater treatment and I have obtained abundant information about wastewater treatment technological process. Then I took a project design class which required the students to design a wastewater treatment plant, which including the parameter setting, construction, instrument selection, workman assign, etc. The design is totally different from just taking classes because it need comprehensive understanding of the project and involved extensive problems regarding various aspects. Different from memorizing reaction equations and formulas, I would say this process is consist of a lot of mindfulness learning. However, I do not think I can make the design if I have not taken the previous less mindfulness courses. So my choice of the way to learning depends
Even though I always consider initiative learning more efficient and impressive than passive learning. I would admit that it is easier to get some fundamental background information by mindlessness learning first. Then save some energy to do a great job in the following progress.
I think we’re each a product of the culture we were raised within. This isn’t really a stretch. Of course, it’s true. But how many of us have really taken time to think about what that really means, in terms of how we ‘fit’ into the world we inhabit? How many of us realize how much we were influenced by the way the adults around us responded to the world (or didn’t), how our community’s sense of place, privacy, responsibility, influence shaped how we saw ‘others’ and responded in stressful situations. How many of us consider the history, perspectives and values of people we meet for the first time and how that shapes how they interact, what they say and how they hear what we say?
I grew up in the 1970’s and ’80’s – those were my sentient, formative years. The years when I was paying attention to what was going on around me and when I was trying to ‘fit in’. I wasn’t aware of any of that stuff outlined above. I didn’t even realize that the benign neglect my parents demonstrated was detrimental much more than there wasn’t dinner on the table every night and they weren’t in the stands (or even knew) when I was running a cross country meet or playing soccer. I don’t think either of my parents ever came to a sports event I was involved with. My dad liked coming to football games on Friday nights, but not so much because I was in the marching band: he was much more interested in being raunchy and obnoxious with the low brass boys, and watching football. That’s ok because I wasn’t terribly interested in hanging out with my dad at football games on Friday nights and I ditched him as fast as I could most weeks. (I should mention, my parents divorced when I was seven, so I only saw my dad once a week at most) For the most part, I was a ‘free range kid’ in the sense that no one worried about me unless I didn’t show up by dark or I called because I had fallen off my bike (and we didn’t have cell phones at the time either). I roamed in about a five-mile radius from home and rarely did my parents know the full story of where I was, who I was with or what we were doing.
That sense of freedom grew as I did through my teens and into my early twenties. I rarely had to answer to anyone about choices I made, the friends I chose to hang out with, the places I worked. I felt like I had conquered the world by the time I got to college. I had always felt like a round peg in a square hole in many respects: most of my friends in high school (in NoVA) were from intact families and were at least second generation college-goers. (although I’ve found out since that most grew up with the same sort of feeling of benign neglect that I did, or worse) We weren’t poor, but I always felt like we weren’t as well off as others around us (that was more a function of my parents’ frugality – they had both grown up at the end of the depression in working-class families). I prowled the local mall, found a group of wildlings like myself and got into some ‘interesting’ situations – often referred to as ‘poor personal choices’ today. Most of my 20’s were spent doing what I wanted to, working toward that elusive thing called ‘adulthood’ that I would know when I saw it, or at least that’s what I was told.
The only other thing that is important about this story of my youth is that I was born into two families that knew how to fight for what they wanted or needed. My parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had survived their own travails as children and adults, and it was ingrained in our DNA that if necessary, we were able to survive. Just as an example, my high school guidance teacher called me to her office during my junior year to tell me that my grades and course choices were not ‘college material’ and I should consider a vocational option past high school. She was ‘doing her job’ and was woefully underinformed about who I was or what I intended to do with my life, but I recall saying that not going to school was not an option for me. My parents expected me to go to college – that was certain. And I did know that it was my ‘ticket’ to the future. I didn’t have any intention of not going just because this woman, who didn’t even know me beyond my ‘file’, had decided I wasn’t capable of handling it.
I fought a lot for what I wanted – back then we called it a ‘struggle’, but in hindsight, it was a fight. I learned how to get around people that stood in my way, how to face others who thought they could exploit or manipulate me (or friends), and I began to develop a sense of being a force to be reckoned with. My first job was as a compliance officer for a company that hired retired military men as insurance and securities salesmen. That was a fight most days (and could fill a book). I had to constantly resist my father’s insistence that I get a government job for the security and guaranteed pension. I had to learn how to resist the sexism, classism and mean-girl attitudes that pervaded the 1980’s, and I learned how to fight for political and community values that seemed to be eroding before my very eyes. I figured out that adults didn’t know half of what they professed to, and that rules were made for people who needed them. There’s more, but I think I’ve made my point.
All of this as a response to the tone and messages of our readings/viewings this week related to Mindfulness. I’ve capitalized it on purpose. It is a philosophy that I had to be introduced to. It did not ‘fit’ into my early life paradigm of scrapping through difficulty, ignoring barriers, pushing past people who tried to stand in my way, and making space for myself and what I wanted from life. I was not selfish in my wants – I was more of a champion for the underdog, a role I knew well.
It didn’t happen until I was in my mid-30’s and struggling with the fight on a minute-by-minute basis. It’s worthy of more than a mention, but I was exhausted from the fight and literally couldn’t fight through any more. I had two wonderful, beautiful children, a nice house in the suburbs, a husband who was happy, engaged and supportive, a large extended family. There were a series of deaths in my family that had left me feeling very vulnerable to the forces of the universe, but that was only the visceral catalyst for the dissatisfaction with the world I was feeling. I was deeply unhappy as a public school educator: exhausted by having to endure the stresses and pressures that responsibility for other people’s children can heap upon one; of dealing with colleagues who thought that they didn’t have to demonstrate civility and compassion toward each other, the children (and families) that they engaged with, and a system that knew – absolutely knew – it wasn’t serving every child’s best interest but it was doing a ‘good enough’ job. I fell into a very deep depression. The can-do spirit and the scrappy attitude I had cultivated throughout my life was a fleeting memory.
For six months I struggled to make sense of what was happening. For the first nine weeks I functioned in a fog. The next three months I tried to make sense of how I felt, how everything could have crashed down around me like it did – what had happened and what could I do to ‘get back to normal’. I got back to what appeared to be ‘normal’ (worthy of another tale), but I am not the same as I was before. I was lucky, once again, and found a way toward Mindfulness philosophy through Buddhism, yoga and meditation. At the time, it was much more of a personal journey, but now (eight years later) I see it as an evolution into a sphere of understanding that helps me make sense of the world, to support others in their journeys through life, and to be my authentic self, even if I don’t always ‘fit’.
Ellen Langer’s Mindful Learning work is rich with the learning and lessons that came to me only after I had crashed and burned. The being aware of one’s surroundings enough to understand them and how you function within is such a valuable lesson to know and understand while in college and into one’s 20’s. I wish I had. The notion that we are all capable of learning beyond what is being taught is liberating, isn’t it? And, the ability to think deeply, question assumptions and expectations, to be aware of the constraints that culture, family and community (including less mindful professors, advisors and mentors) can place upon you is so very important to being able to function freely – to be a free range learner – in both times of ease and strife, that is the real value of a liberal education. None of us are perfect. We may think we are, or we may strive to be, but I’m convinced it is not possible, or even desirable to be so. I am fairly convinced though that if we are mindful in our attitude, and authentic in our actions, kind to others and seek to do good in this world then we will have achieved ‘greatness’ for ourselves.
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A brief note about some of the other Mindful sources from this week (I couldn’t work them into this post in a more artistic way):
This quote from A New Culture of Learning (Thomas and Brown 2011) is so very powerful:
Change motivates and challenges. It makes clear when things are obsolete or have outlived their usefulness. But most of all, change forces us to learn differently. If the twentieth century
was about creating a sense of stability to buttress against change and then trying to adapt to it, then the twenty-first century is about embracing change, not fighting it.
I could not agree more. And I think this is kind of what I was getting at above, although in a very veiled way. There is a liberation that happens when one can embrace and welcome change, a sense of renewed hope for what is possible that doesn’t always exist in a stable environment. It is not comfortable, but the discomfort often pales in comparison to the freedom that results. (thinking about Plato’s Cave allegory here). And if the twentieth century was really about creating a sense of stability, which I buy (two world wars, a worldwide depression, countless other regional wars, environmental, political and social instability)
Ken Robinson – How to Escape Education’s Death Valley
Sir Ken Robinson has been a champion of looking critically at the dysfunction of education systems. He has informed my beliefs and values for what is a ‘free and appropriate’ education for children and his perspective has lifted me out of feeling hopelessly frustrated more than once. His anectdotes and analogies are touching and reach into people’s thinking through humor. But he, like others, are ‘faces’ for the hard work going on in classrooms and communities each day. There are real people who are working themselves to death to keep children in school, to teach them all that they can and to shape them into humans worth knowing. While Robinson’s words and thoughts are uplifting, be mindful – and actively engaged – with the educators who are fighting the good fight each day. And be engaged parents, if you choose to take on that challenge: support wide learning opportunities, resist ‘group think’ and standardization of learning that serves only the institution and not the individual.
Why PEAS Are the Key to a Successful Education | Dr. Michael Hynes
I can’t recall how this made it into the mix, its obviously not part of the reading list..
This is one of those tireless educators I mentioned above. Dr. Hynes has scrapped through his own issues in life, and likely had some sort of mid-life revelation, about what is real and important in the world. I am grateful that he is able to stand up and tell his story because it does inform the rest of the world in a way that is positive, challening and possible. And PEAS should be the goal for us all – both as individuals and as educators.
It is lofty in approach, and the bookThe Educational Conversation: Closing the Gap and Parker Palmer’s work has deeply informed my values as an educator.
Garrison, J. W., & Rud, A. G. (Eds.). (1995). The educational conversation: closing the gap. SUNY Press. Dr. Garrison is a Professor here at Virginia Tech
Dr. Garrison is a Professor here at Virginia Tech and typically teaches an ed. philosophy course in the spring related to this book. Last year it was titled Gaps in the Educational Conversation. He is a world-reknown Dewey Scholar and a professor of mindful teaching himself.
The world’s most famous chef approaches you in an empty room. You are sitting on a chair and there is only a table in the room. Opposite you is another chair. The chef sits down and says, “Today is your lucky day! I will make your favorite dessert and for free! It doesn’t matter if you are allergic to any ingredients, I will work around your dietary restrictions, if there are any, and make you a dessert worthy of any five star restaurant! There are a few conditions though. One, I spoke to your best friend so I already know what to make. In fact, I have already made your favorite dessert and it is ready for your consumption. (The chef places the dessert on the table in front of you) If you can wait one hour, I will go ahead and make you two more. However, if you feel that you can’t wait, go ahead and eat the dessert in front of you. Remember, if you eat the dessert before the hour is up, that is all you get. I will be back in one hour, and yes, there is a camera in this room.
Given the information above, what do you think you would do? Feel free to let me know in the comments section, and of course, be honest. Before reading the remainder of this post, please decide, mentally of course, what you would do if you were to find yourself in the situation above.
Thank you for playing along. I will be honest in saying that the incident above is by no means original nor a future dissertation topic. The motivation behind the narrative comes from the Stanford Marshmallow test, and there have been many articles written about it. The study explored delayed gratification and I immediately thought of it as I read Mindful Learning by Ellen Langer. This isn’t the first time human beings have expressed a desire to understand decision making, mindfulness and delayed gratification. I did find it interesting to read about the experiment and to make the connections between those topics. What was also interesting to notice is not whether an individual will wait or eat the dessert, but what garners my attention is the rationale. I am interested in how we develop a rationale for the choices we make and how it relates to our overall decision making and mindfulness. Being mindful is about being aware of not only what you, but why you do it.
Given what I know now about making decisions and reading the article on mindfulness, I feel capable in knowing that I would be able to last the whole hour and maybe more. The question then is, am I more mindful because I can last that whole hour or more? The answer is no. I think the first mistake we make on our path to mindfulness is assuming that we are mindful. A truly mindful person will never acknowledge that they are mindful. Other people, friends and family may describe them as mindful but that should not serve as a confirmation. To be mindful is to operate under the assumption that you can never be mindful. This allows you to consistently find new ways of learning how to be mindful and developing your knowledge and practice of mindfulness.
I am aware that this appears to be a somewhat philosophical post. That truly was never my intention, but it is the perspective I have now. Being mindful is about a journey, not about the destination. Similar to education and learning, it never stops, and so should our quest to be mindful individuals. Being mindful should be seen as an act that is forever changing similar to education and technology. There are going to be new ways of exercising mindfulness and in order to take advantage of them, we as individuals should recognize the many possibilities that may exist. OK, I have talked enough about mindfulness, dessert anyone?
[course assignment]
One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands has this lyric as a refrain:
“Change is the thing that is what we do, change is the change that’s changing you…”
It’s surreal, not really logical, but that’s why I like it — it emphasizes the disorienting quality of change. Theorizing the causes and nature of change has been a big project for contemporary philosophers, and there’s no reason why educators shouldn’t incorporate some deep reflection on change as part of their teaching. I approached the Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown reading from this perspective.
Okay, some of their musings on contemporary change struck me as glib, and my first reaction was to fall back on the same basic critique I’ve had with many of our readings: in their embrace of the new, they fail to acknowledge the unique character of older teaching methods that can’t simply be updated and made more accessible through the, uhhhh, magic of technology. (Although I hated it at the time, I’m actually glad my sophomore year Medieval Literature professor made me memorize the opening to Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English). But the project of rendering change visible can not only equip students to deal with the world beyond the classroom (which is, for better or worse, in a state of constantly-accelerating flux), it can offer a good philosophical message about the status of knowledge: facts are constructed. That doesn’t mean they can’t be true, but they are the result of methods and inquiry which are themselves a product of human innovation. Bodies of knowledge change, presumptions are overhauled — and if you’ve read Thomas Kuhn, you know that sometimes entire scientific paradigms shift so dramatically that we can speak of qualitative breaks in our shared understanding of the world.
Focusing learning programs on this notion of change and inherent instability could (and maybe they should) represent a break in pedagogy where students come to a deep awareness of their own agency in producing knowledge. Wikipedia is a great example of transparent knowledge production, and using Wikipedia edit records as a way to emphasize the constantly-changing, actively-generated nature of knowledge is an interesting idea. This awareness shouldn’t be limited to philosophy students with a focus on epistemology, the study of knowledge itself. The tenuous status of knowledge and informational authority is too present in the real world right now, and I suspect that ambiguity is only on the rise. (Unfortunately… I’m thinking of fake news…)
Meanwhile, I have no problems at all with Ellen J. Langer’s article — except that, maybe, its emphasis on presence and focus seems to challenge the technology-happy work we’ve done so far! I insist that my students put away their internet-connected devices at the beginning of class, not because I inherently dislike smartphones and laptops (that’s another issue), but because I want to create the conditions for mindfulness. Her observations on mindfulness and adaptability to change really hit home for me. Doing coursework in an interdisciplinary PhD program means constantly adapting to not only new content, but new ways of thinking about things. I didn’t major in any of the departments that I take ASPECT courses in, so I often find myself sitting in history, political science or cultural studies classes, attempting to grasp the methodological / epistemological assumptions of historians, political scientists, and so on. (Stuff that some people picked up as undergrads and master’s students, to be sure). The only way I’ve accomplished this while maintaining a sense of clarity and consistency is by paying very close attention to context. I adopt the idea that I’m coming into new disciplines not just to learn the explicit content, but to grok the assumptions that professors and long-term students of a discipline take for granted. This has been completely necessary whenever I’ve encountered quantitative methods… I’ve learned that those who see themselves as math and numbers people somehow appear to intuitively grasp contextual frameworks in ways that I don’t. That’s a bit unfair, but math becomes much easier for me when I try to explain those frameworks to myself before learning a new equation or concept. (It means I spend less time thinking about “why” we use a certain equation, who came up with these methods anyway, and how, and so on…). Hopefully that makes sense. The project of becoming aware of context is so, so important when trying to make sense of content in environments subject to rapid change. Mindfulness is a key component of this.
By the way, all this thinking about change and mindfulness reminds me of a dumb joke about a Buddhist monk and a hot dog vendor. It starts with a cheesy one-liner and then gets even worse.
A Buddhist goes up to a hot dog vendor and says “make me one with everything.”
When he asks for change, the vendor replies: “change comes from within.”
And I’ll end this post here!
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For anyone reading this not in GEDI class, here is the first article I’m responding to: http://www.newcultureoflearning.com/newcultureoflearning.pdf , pp. 39-49. The second is only available through the Virginia Tech network.
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I met Tim Aye-Hardy while living in Yangon, Myanmar in 2015. He is a native Burmese man who fled the country after his participation in the student protests in 1988 led to military persecution, and proceeded to spend the next two decades studying and working in America. Upon returning to his homeland he started Myanmar Mobile Education Project (MyME), a social enterprise that educates young tea-shop employees on the back of retrofitted, antique Hino buses (see below). In Myanmar, many children from the countryside are sent by their parents to work at these tea-shops and collect a little extra money for their families. They are essentially swept up into a type of modern indentured servitude- sold to tea-shop owners as cheap labor and stripped of any fundamental access to education.
It is amazing that a country so intensely mindful in its religious practice of Buddhism can be so mindless when it comes to primary education and stripping this basic right for millions of their youth. Not only that, tea-shops literally represent the cultural center of communities in Myanmar. They are the setting for eating and drinking at breakfast lunch and dinner, studying, conversing, debating, catching up, having discussions, watching news, viewing sports, etc. – the essential pulse of social life in Yangon. Yet the kids who run them are being dreadfully denied access to the learning they will need to keep the country vibrantly progressing out of poverty for generations to come.
Of course this is not the only controversy surrounding Myanmar at the moment. Their beloved leader Aung San Suu Kyi has neglected to intervene with the atrocious military treatment of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group in the northeastern part of the country. Recently the burning of villages have sent thousands of additional refugees flooding over the border into Bangladesh. Though many speculate that Suu Kyi is in a very precarious political situation and is essentially powerless in controlling the military’s actions in the region, the strong current of seemingly radical Buddhism seems to uphold peace and justice if and only if you are also Buddhist. The majority in Myanmar tends to blame all Muslims for the terrorism of the select few that radicalize toward violence. They don’t understand that the word Islam in Arabic actually derives from the root Salaam meaning peace. Muslims literally greet one another with this same peaceful salutation. Yet the violence and the racism and the misunderstandings persist. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaux plans to bring the Rohingya crisis up as his main point on Tuesday’s UN council meeting in New York City.
Learning anything in the context of this social, economic, and political turmoil is an enormous challenge. Tea-shop kids have the same situational stress plus 10-14 hours of work a day. So for Tim Aye-Hardy and MyME to succeed they knew they must go a step further and get very creative with their approach. They have already incorporated many of the gamification principles that we discussed last week into their courses. But there might be more to learn from their country’s strong Theravada Buddhist tradition when it comes to integrating principles of mindful learning into their mobile classrooms.
In his teachings, Buddha often talked about mindfulness and single pointed focus. Recognizing distractions and coming back to the subject at hand is something that could be invaluable to many students and modern day professionals alike. Just replace the focus on the breath in meditation with focus on the next task on your long list of to-do’s. Buddha also insists on complete personal detachment from the subject- an objective, non-biased perspective that many scientists strive toward for their entire career. Of course the end goal of these teachings in the Buddhist context is not a diploma or a career path with socio-economic security, it is a spiritual path toward Nirvana or enlightenment. If only some of these tenets of the religious culture in Myanmar could be applied to their education system. It could quickly become a baseline for deeply mindful education worldwide.
I learned a lot about mindfulness and Vippassana meditation while I was in Myanmar. I sat face to face with many monks struggling to understand the practice and learning what I could through hand gestures and broken Burmese. I taught my first ever yoga class at Yangon Yoga House and went on to start a collective called Transp0se while I was living in Washington D.C. We integrated lessons from Nada Yoga (the yoga of music) and Yoga Nidra (yogic sleep) with technology and mixed media as a way to make mindfulness more approachable for the masses. Our programs were also geared towards teaching mindfulness techniques rather than general education but we identified many amazing overlaps. Yoga Nidra, for example, is especially interesting in its ability to enable subjects to subconsciously absorb and retain information. Imagine being able to learn a language or study for an exam in your sleep! In his famous book on the subject Swami Satyananda Saraswati echos warnings from both Buddha and Ellen Langer alike- “Be mindful (especially) of mindlessness”. We need to be aware of not just what we learn but how we learn as well.
I met Luke Namer at The Fresh Air Collective gathering in upstate New York this past summer. We went to undergrad together at Cornell but never met in Ithaca. Transp0se was hosting a meditation session there and Luke organized the event. A couple of days ago I got an email from Luke and his friend/collaborator Daniel who started a social-impact educational tourism platform called Edventurists. They were hosting screenings of a couple new short films from Luke’s production company Redefined. One of the films was called Steep Education, a 20 minute documentary on Tim Aye-Hardy and the Myanmar Mobile Education Project. They asked if I could help organize a screening on September 27th, without the faintest clue that I had met Tim in 2015 and was currently studying this exact topic in Contemporary Pedagogy.
If anyone would be interested in trying to screen the film during our class please comment! I plan to pitch the idea to Dr. Nelson immediately after submitting this post. A sudden change in the curriculum might be just what we need to drive home this idea of mindful learning and teaching right here at home.
After graduating from college, I worked at a learning & development consulting company called Mind Gym. The goal of Mind Gym is to promote lifelong learning in the workplace, and to teach people to think differently. One of Mind Gym’s beliefs suggests that people choose how they think – and with a little exercise of the mind, we can choose to think up some pretty awesome, positive things. Consequently, our life at work and at home can change drastically, allowing us to be more productive in all aspects. But for the most part, people think in rigid, repetitive ways. Go to work, go home, eat, go to sleep, do it all again. For a lot of people, maybe the actual work they do is repetitive, and they see no point to changing how they think. Mind Gym, and this week’s readings, would totally disagree – and so do I!
While the readings for this week focus mainly on education in the form of schooling, so much of it can be applied to work settings. My belief, and Mind Gym’s, is that learning should not end when “formal” education ends. We can’t just graduate from college and stop learning. You got a job that suits you perfectly? Great. Does that mean you’ve peaked? I hope not! And for those who don’t want or don’t have the opportunity to graduate from any formalized educational system, how are we making sure they’re still learning? At Mind Gym, most of the learning centers around people. The learning Mind Gym promotes isn’t math or writing or languages (though it certainly helps to stay on top of those things). Instead, the focus is on how we interact with people at work and how we reflect on ourselves. Are we kind, inclusive, and understanding of others? And are we thinking about our own needs and developmental goals? Without this mindset, we’re more likely to fall back in to routine ways of thinking, back to that “go to work, go home, eat, go to sleep, do it all again” mindset.
I could go on and on about my thoughts on mindful learning, lifelong learning, out-of-classroom learning, etc. . But my biggest take away from working at Mind Gym is simple and concise, and something that Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown mention in “A New Culture of Learning”. It’s also something I try to remember as I work towards a degree in higher education. Learning isn’t the new idea you came up with, or the formula you’ve memorized, or the paper you got an A+ on. Learning is a type of citizenship. It’s how you engage with other people and how you strive for personal development that allows you to contribute something to society, no matter how small. “A New Culture of Learning” tells the story of a young boy named Sam who is a talented programmer. To Sam, the most important part of being a programmer isn’t creating new games, it’s being kind to others in his programming community, and providing them with helpful feedback. If we think about formal education in a similar way, as well as learning beyond a formal education, I think people will be more passionate about topics, more likely to remember and utilize things they’ve learned, and they’ll be happier.
So take a minute to exercise your mind – why are you learning the things you’re currently learning? Because you want that A+, or that promotion, or because you know it will benefit you in a meaningful way?
If by any chance you are confused about this post’s title, be confident that probably you are not alone. Before reading the next lines, I would be confused too, maybe except for the fact that I chose the title. If you read Langer’s “The Power of Mindful Learning”1 and “Mindful Learning”2, you might be thinking: it seems insane to even ask the question after going through them. If you are in fact thinking this, then respectfully I say to you that perhaps you were mindless while reading about the power of mindfulness. So, why am I asking: “Should Humans be MINDFUL?” The answer is quite simple. No, not to my question, but to why am I asking it: I tried to be mindful while reading.
I truly hope that my introductory paragraph was good enough to encourage you to keep reading. Well, seems the previous sentence was written under the influence of mindlessness. Now that I reflect about it, if you managed to read it, then it means I was successful to engage you, and therefore that sentence is meaningless. On the contrary, had you not read it, then probably I would have failed to gain your attention, or maybe not? But since I kept you interested, which may or may not be measured by you leaving a comment to this post, then travel with me, while I attempt to share with you my answer to the perhaps confusing title of this post.
So, was I mindful while writing the previous two paragraphs? Where you mindful while reading them? Like Langer mentioned, many times we think of being mindful when actually we are not. For instance, an answer to the first question could be that I just wanted to play with your mind, engage you in this reading and then confuse you as much as possible, with the purpose of making you agree with me that I am being mindful about my writing. After all, there is also power in confusing people. But, it is possible that you have another suitable answer to conclude that I was not mindful. And that response, will likely be correct too. Mainly, and this is a fact, because I have no idea of what you think being mindful is, and your definition might be different to mine. Remember, we don’t have the power of reading minds.
Professors must be alert to distinguish if the students are engage and following the topic being discussed, and be open to consider a different approach if needed. Students, will likely maximize their learning experience when their minds are open to process, not just receive, new information. An alert student, will likely be better prepared to apply learned skills under different scenarios, as long as the professor left the door open for such alternate context, in comparison to the student that sits and repeatedly copies what is being told. The previous thoughts that remained with me from Langer’s reflections, probably to some degree, a mere paraphrasing of what being in a mindful state could mean. To continue in the same line of thought, just imagine the infinite possibilities that collaboration between a mindful student and a mindful teacher could potentially bring. A classroom environment where all players are being creative, discovering together, discussing and giving alternatives, rather than, as Langer puts it: taking the facts as the only truth in the absence of context. Certainly, one cannot just 100% agree with the content of Langer’s writing. Otherwise, like I previously expressed, that would mean that we read under a state of mindlessness.
If you have read my previous posts under GEDI F17, I hope you are wondering: where is the personal story? Well, I don’t want to leave you with that uncertainty. Although leaving in uncertainty might be actually better. The post you just read is my personal story about how hard being MINDFUL can be. Writing this post I tried to carefully choose which words to use and what message I wanted to pass. I wanted to try another writing style. I tried to give you options, I tried to transmit a message with confidence, but still leaving you open doors for other possibilities, rather than presenting my thoughts about being MINDFUL as absolute certainties. I tried to explain to you what being MINDFUL is to me, and why humans should be MINDFUL, without directly telling you why. At the end, what I can tell you, as a fact, is that it was not an easy task, but it was an enjoyable one.
Let’s keep learning. Let’s keep educating. Let’s keep moving forward. Let’s keep asking WHY. Let’s start to be more MINDFUL and less mindlessness about who we are, and alternatives to improve our education system.
Carlos F. Mantilla P.
Third grade… multiplication tables… timer goes off… and once again, I’m still not done the worksheet. Being an overachiever, (go figure someone willingly pursuing a PhD is a overachiever) the worst part of it all is the chart in the back of the room. Every student who completed the worksheet got a sticker next to their name. Next to my name appallingly fewer stickers than the rest of the class. Endless repetition to teach basic math, endless and fruitless torture for me as a student with a number of learning disabilities.
It wasn’t until much later, senior year of college, working through some system of equations to solve some kind of fluids problem that I realized, I had just gotten through a page of work without grabbing for my calculator. FINALLY! I felt like I could do math like a 3rd grade student… I guess I stand as proof positive that the basics don’t have to be learned to the point of second nature. Basic math still requires active thought and I will still grab for the calculator more often than not just to be sure. Yet I would say I have been successful in my ventures so far.
Similar to the children observed absorbing Harry Potter through some unknown process, some topics just clicked for me. Ask me about how to reconfigure the suspension on a car to suit a style of driving and I can do it no problem. Ask me to calculate the forces in the suspension during a turn and the calculator is going to come back out, but I learned the equations for that.
I wish I could identify the means which I learned these things. I think, some level of interest and engagement factors into the learning with mindful practices. Based on my experiences, if there is no way to foster the engagement and enjoyment for learning no amount of mindful practices will aid in the process. But if you can foster the learning experience to cultivate that engagement, mindful learning has the opportunity to organically develop and follow.
Before I get started, I just want to say – this post is personal. The central character is my beautiful, talented, creative granddaughter, who has actually played a prominent role in all my posts so far. But this post is different. It is one grandmother’s wish for her granddaughter.
Secondly, the post is about Korea, but it isn’t.
Okay, the groundwork is laid.
My granddaughter learns much everyday, but much of her daily learning has nothing to do with high school subjects. What she learns about most days has to do with what she is curious about. I asked her to make a collage of things she is curious about. This is her montage.
My Granddaughter’s Collage
As you can see (or perhaps not see), much of her interests lies in Korea, in K-pop bands,(the picture in the middle is of a k-pop band entitled BTS), in creative arts, (YG entertainment group in top left), in dance (IM is a dance studio in Korea), in food (especially Korean food), and in the Korean language (the text on the top right) and in the connections she has with people all around the world that share her same interests. Extending out from this, East Asian culture and history interests her as does Italian ballet, hip hop moves, living as second generation Asian American, photography and a myriad of other curiosities that come up through her connectedness. She loves learning about these things in a way that is very digital and connected. She pursues her curiosities and she is very good at it.
What gets in the way of her learning on a daily basis, however, is her schoolwork. She must take certain subjects – subjects that tick off boxes and, in the process, put her in a box and leave her bored and less than impressed with school – kind of like this cat….which I think is just a great depiction of “less-than-impressed” and “I’m bored.”
I believe my granddaughter’s boredom with much of her schoolwork stems from the many subjects she takes that do not line up with her curiosities. She’s interested in learning Korean, but can’t. It doesn’t tick off the right box – another language does that was chosen for her and she must complete the requisite number of years in. Literary analysis must be done on certain books chosen for her. “Physical Education” consists of having to read an inordinately thick and boring book on human nutrition. Something she must do although she is a tremendous dancer – but dancing, although very athletic, doesn’t tick off the PE requirement. (And just a head scratcher here, reading a big, thick boring book and taking multiple-choice quizzes on it does?)
Okay enough of that. On to what we have been studying for this week – there really is a connection. And the connection is curiosity. As we listened to Dr. Ken’s TED talk Wednesday night, it struck me that curiosity drove my granddaughter’s learning outside of school – a revelation I should have put together much sooner. She is very curious and satisfies that curiosity through her intimate connection with information on the web, you-tube, social media and her connections.
Now to my wish as her grandmother – I wish her schooling tapped into her curiosities. Why not learn Korean? Sure it’s a relatively obscure language but a language that is deemed “critical” by the US State Department. Why not world history instead of American History? Even East Asian history? How about cultural studies? How about literary analysis of contemporary lyrics? And how about incorporating dance into algebra?
Algebra and Dance
And, in desiring something different for my granddaughter, where does this leave me as an educator tasked with teaching students only one to two years older than my granddaughter? Just as I have little control of the boxes that must be ticked off for my granddaughter, I have no control over the boxes that must be ticked off for the students I teach early world history. Some may be curious – others may need to just tick of a particular box. So, in this environment how can I bring learning into my classroom? How can I incorporate the ideas that students are curious about? How can I know what they are curious about? Also, how can I balance graduate school, department expectations for my performance, the desire to step out and try things outside of my comfort zone? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
In bringing this post to a close, there is actually an idea in the Langer reading that I found intriguing and “doable” I guess you might say. Something I could incorporate in my classroom – if I indeed decided to be mindful. This idea is the idea of the “value of doubt.” Langer wrote in connection with the value of doubt, “The key to this new way of teaching is based on an appreciation of both the conditional, or context-dependent, nature of the world and the value of uncertainty.” This “value of doubt” does not particularly need any new technology. I think, and I may be wrong here, that it takes a mindset on my part as a teacher. It involves introducing doubt, asking questions, challenging narratives, asking for students to analyze and where possible, to invite my students to work on the ideas/events/time periods they find most intriguing – giving up certainty for uncertainty.
In my granddaughter’s world of school, certainty abounds. Boxes are ticked off and those in charge feel safe in giving her a diploma that says “You Now Are Educated With a High School Education.” Colleges feel “safe” in admitting her and the world of education remains aligned to some paradigm created by the administrators and my heart as her grandmother is haunted by what might have been.
PS. My granddaughter just read this post and said, “I approve of this post!” 
