#10

Languaging as Learning

                One of the things that I find most perplexing about the current state of knowledge in our culture is the way so little of it ‘travels’ from one part of the culture to another part of the culture.  We keep making significant breakthroughs in field after field, but we just elected a president who thinks we should mine and burn coal.  How is that possible? 

                For me, the answer has something to do with who gets to make the knowledge.  I think every group of people has to make their own knowledge.  That is, knowledge can’t simply be imported from another cultural site.  The problem with the specialized knowledges that we create is that they are made behind the curtain of professional practice.  We’ve taken great care to keep the uncertified out of the conversation.  There are good reasons for this, but the result is that the people who were excluded not only don’t understand the knowledge, they reject it.  Instead, they make their own versions of ‘common sense’ knowledge that they cling to preserve their participatory function in making their own world.  I don’t think it’s possible to simply inhabit someone else’s already constructed world.  As study after study has shown, we tend to seek out people and narratives that confirm what we already think instead of using new narratives to change what we think.

                A lot of people don’t trust science and don’t like math because they have never felt like they were really players in the game.  They’ve had science classes that emphasized memorizing ‘facts’ and took math courses that only valued ‘right’ answers.  Even if they did well – and most of them didn’t- they never really learned how to think using mathematical and scientific processes.  So, when some talking head scientist says that climate change is real they aren’t just skeptical, they’re belligerent.  They will make their own narrative of the world.  They will read one article on essential oils on the internet and tell their board- certified physician to take a hike.   DuBois once argued that if you could educate a vanguard of 10%, the rest would follow.  That might work in a fairly stagnant and extremely hierarchical society – maybe – but it won’t work now. 

                One of the main culprits is an educational system that sees knowledge as inert.  It just is.  We don’t really engage people in making knowledge outside of their specialized or professional domains.  Stiegler in States of Shock argues that ‘education’ must change this dynamic.  The only way to ‘make knowledge’ that is culturally broad and significant is to make it together.  Scientists talk to scientists and humanities scholars talk to other humanities scholars – that’s fine, but when do we talk to everybody?  Education cannot simply be a static transmission of information.  Education has to be a collaborative and contested intermingling of people and standpoints.  Sometimes we need facts or data to do that, but facts and data will not influence people unless they become enmeshed in their narrative of the world.

                An education – an epistemology – of sustainability will require languaging that is based in patience and humility.  It must recognize paradox and blindness.  It must be welcoming and nonjudgmental.  Instead of the stratification of evaluation, it will focus on the equality of knowledge.  Its enemies will be religion and ideology.  I try to talk to people I know I don’t agree with.  It forces me to suspend my judgement – at least as much as I can – and listen for something that will allow me to connect.  It forces me to move slowly and not try for conversion or persuasion.  My goal is to be invited back.  I’m not Buddha – I usually fail.  But it does me no good to ‘know’ something if I can’t use it help make the world better. 

                The hardest obstacle is religion.  People who ‘believe’ leave very little space for another point of view.  I think the only way around that is to engage them outside of that belief system.  I’m not going to change anyone’s beliefs.  But I can chip away at the edges of the other things they think about.  I can be someone they disagree with – maybe even pray for – but don’t summarily reject.  These are small battles and even smaller victories.  I don’t know of any other way to move forward.  This is counter-intuitive for me.  I’m a debater- I was born to argue.  I’m trying to learn how not to try and win.