Wow, thank you so much for sharing your personal story. It really shows the power of exploration in a life of learning. I particularly appreciate your comments about the necessity of integrating all disciplines in a meaningful way. These are some things I can put on my list of goals for any class that I teach: creative, exploratory, integrated, and open to many ways of being and thinking. I hope I can be someone who inspires students in a way that I am sure you inspire your students. Thank you so much for your sharing your experiences and ideas!!

I love Cordon Bleu, sadly I have mac and cheese more often. That is just reality of my life right now. However, thinking about this and the quote you pulled about institutions reminds me that even when it is difficult to make a difference, it is always worth it. Thanks!

What a great post!! I love the connect the dots analogy. At the beginning of the semester, that is exactly how I felt when I thought about teaching, a bunch of random unconnected dots. As I am revising my syllabus and teaching philosophy, I will certainly keep the image of the center dot in mind. Thank you for sharing and being part of this experience.

One of the greatest lessons I learned through my now 5 years of working on the PhD is about work life balance. I totally understand your lament about reading and clearly you enjoy reading for fun; I would encourage you to make that a priority. For me, a slow reader who is easily exhausted by reading course materials, I have found the joy of audio books. It’s an opportunity to get lost in that sea of words without feeling like I am still working. Setting some time aside every week to listen to something fun has really helped me with my productivity and enjoyment of the the time I have as a graduate student. If you need a good, fun, linguistically interesting book to consider trying Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie on audible.com or in book form, as well as the equally entertaining predecessor Haroun and the Sea of Stories (not available on audio).

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I agree with Gary, technology itself is not going to create the “epistemological curiosity” for which Freire argues. Rather it is how we use technology to foster curiosity and knowledge creation. This has theme has played over in my head as I have been revising my syllabus and thinking about ways I can use technology not to dump information on the floor of the classroom but to encourage students and myself to create knowledge through deliberate explorations. Each time I add to the syllabus, I ask myself: Is this something that will generate curiosity or could I put it on a thumb drive and have the students regurgitate the information at a later date? If the the former, then it stays; if the later, it goes in the pile of things to look at if you can’t fall asleep at night.

I am pretty sure Freire was a Pink Floyd fan and vice versa. I can imagine a conversation between the artist and the philosopher (you can debate which is which or if they are both) would include ending the imprisonment of “epistemological curiosity” in our institutions and society more broadly. That is where I think Pink Floyd’s message is often misconstrued to mean formal education is meaningless instead of what you point out in the meaning behind the lyrics which is more about the way in which we learning and create learning environments.

I think in that conversation Freire would also not advocate throwing out the conventional “dominant” ideas, but rather building and understanding these dominant ideas as a point of difference. I had a great English teacher (who was also a Catholic nun) my sophomore-year in high school, when asked why we needed to learn grammar and rules of poetry she simply said: “You must learn the rules so you know how to break them and then you can choose whether to break them on purpose.” I had no idea how true that was for grammar and life.

I am a HUGE supporter of technology because I view it as a tool that aides our exploration of the world and generates the energy need to create knowledge. That said, I am also a strong advocate for learning without technology, be that lived experiences, written or oral histories, or any other ways. My interest in this somewhat “old fashioned” way of learning is spawned from my research interests in disasters. There is a very real chance that in our life time some event such as extreme space weather events or more likely the weaponization of electromagnetic pulses will cause widespread loss of all technology generated by electricity. Surviving an event such as this will not be about “duck and cover” or even the stockpiling of rations. Rather, how do we survive on the land and use the natural resources around us without the aid of google.

Thanks to everyone here for the honest comments, I think this is a great example of the notion of controversy with civility that Arao & Clemens were promoting. I have to say, I was very uncomfortable with your position that you don’t care about people’s feelings in “an intellectual debate.” As someone in the social sciences, I see connections between people’s lived experiences and nearly any debate as important. So, I agree with Erin that even in engineering solutions for “technical” problems becomes about engineering solutions for people problems. I also feel very strongly that any one of us that intends to create a learning environment (or if you prefer teach), we must include the human aspects of how our subject matter relates to the world around us. In doing so, consideration must be given to a diverse set of lived experiences and to the lived experiences of the people we encounter in that space.

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I think you notion of safeguarding your investment is an interesting perspective on why one might act differently in order to reduce the impacts of societal biases. It makes me wonder, when I am teaching a class what behaviors are students intentionally demonstrating to protect themselves from different biases. This seems critically important to really getting to know your students for who they actually are and giving them the space to be themselves. Thanks!

I find the concept of a recitation session fascinating. I had to go back and re-look what subject area you are in. I wonder, what is the intent of a recitation session in fluid mechanics? I also wonder if the name of such a session lends itself to a one way transfer of information or performance.