Adam Russell

Learning Revealed

According to Walker Percy, the classroom is a filter that takes the real experience away from the student.  Students benefit when they “avoid the educator’s direct presentation of the object as a lesson to be learned [. . .] and reassert the sovereignty of knower over known” (9).  It’s true that teachers create a filter of academia around the essence of a discourse and take the students away from the actuality of discovering something on their own terms.  In many ways, it’s not just that students learn things within the enclosed environment of the educational system, but they are forced to learn these things because their ultimate grade is dependent on their assessment of learning.  Of course we can never recreate a situation like John the Savage from Brave New World discovering Shakespeare from an old chest in a Kiva, but as instructors, we must make the learning process as organic as possible, but the methods to do so vary from pedagogy to pedagogy.      

Percy’s analogy of visiting the Grand Canyon was especially apt because it illustrated the disparity between the initial discoveries by the first Western explorer versus the comodified experience of the Johnson family trip.  His analogy reminded me of the time my wife and I went to Maui for a summer vacation.  We wanted to experience the island from a more local perspective to find the “it” of the island.  To do this, we borrowed a copy of Maui Revealed which gave us all of the “ins and outs” of the island, knowledge which regular tourists may have lacked.  We found some very exciting places because of the book and had a great time, but we didn’t fully realize how unpopular the book was to the locals until we talked to the bartender at our hotel.  Not only would he like to punch out the author for giving away all of Maui’s well guarded secrets, but he also lamented that there are no more shells on some of the more secluded beaches.  Apparently, now that the tourists know about these beaches, they pick up the shells as soon as they see them.  When we talked to the bartender, we realized that we might have found something as close to the “it” as possible, but we felt somewhat guilty for devaluing the charm these places had to the locals by being a consumer in its comodification.  However, when we go back to Maui, we will bring the book and find more cool places.

When I teach my class, I cannot escape from the mechanisms of the educational system.  Students work to earn grades, and I’d be lying to myself if I said that the majority of students’ motivation was intrinsic (this applies to all academic levels).  Thus, it’s my responsibility to bring the creature back to the classroom.  For English teachers who teach reading and composition, an effective teacher must balance the rigors of forced academia with real world application.  Yes, it is the equivalent of using the Maui Revealed book to mirror actual autonomous discovery, but we cannot fully take our students out of the educational environment.  However, like the bartender who felt that the book was ruining the island, I feel a sense of regret when students are motivated more for a grade than actual learning.  By engaging students with the material and helping establish a sense of self-awareness through the material, then we are narrowing the margin between knower and known and bringing the shells back to the beach.