Chapter 10: A Proper Education

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Chapter 10A Proper Education

• A sample presentation
• by Dr. Veronika Bohac Clarke and Dr. Dianne
  Yee
• based on the writings of
• Charles Handy

The Hungry Spirit, 1997, London Hutchinson
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Goals

• The following presentation has two purposes
• To discuss the content of the Charles Handy
  chapter
• To demonstrate some of the strategies at your
  disposal for creating your own online
  presentations

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A Proper Education

• How we learn then becomes as important as what
  we learn
• Charles Handy

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Reminder

• In order to contextualize Handys chapter on
  Proper Education we need to keep in mind a couple
  of concepts from Chapter 5 of the same book -
  Proper Selfishness and the White Stone.

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Proper Selfishness

• What I term a 'proper selfishness' builds on
  this fact that we are inevitably intertwined with
  others, even if sometimes we wish that we
  weren't, but accepts that it's proper to be
  concerned with ourselves and a search for who we
  really are, because that search should lead us to
  realize that self-respect, in the end, only comes
  from responsibility, responsibility for other
  people and other things. Proper selfishness is
  not escapism.
• Paradoxically, as I have suggested, we only
  really find ourselves when we lose ourselves in
  something beyond ourselves, be it our love for
  someone, our pursuit of a cause or a vocation, or
  our commitment to a group or an institution.
  Forced to be selfish by the changes in the world
  around us, we have the choice to make it proper.
  If more of us so choose, we can make the systems
  work for us rather than the other way around.

Charles Handy, page 87, The Proper Selfishness
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The White Stone
I keep a small white stone on my desk to remind
me of the same point. It refers to a mysterious
verse in the Book of Revelations in the Bible, a
verse which goes like this To the one who
prevails, the Spirit says, I will give a white
stoneon which is written a name which shall be
known only to the one who receives it. I am no
biblical scholar, but I know what I think it
means. It means that if I prevail, I will,
eventually find out who I truly ought to me, the
other hidden self. Life is a search for the
white stone. It will be a different one for each
of us. Of course, it depends on what is meant by
prevail. It means, I suspect passing lifes
little tests, until you are free to be fully
yourself, which is when you get your white stone.

• Charles Handy, page 90, The Proper Selfishness

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A Proper Education

• I had been trained to deal with closed problems
  - in real life I have to deal with open ended
  ones.
• I was on my own in the learning game, in my
  work, nothing happened unless other people
  cooperated.

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Premise 1

• The discovery of oneself is more important than
  the discovery of the world.

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Parker Palmer

• The text of Parker Palmers The Heart of a
  Teacher Identity and Integrity in Teaching may
  be located at
• http//www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/events/afc99/art
  icles/heartof.html

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Premise 2

• Everyone is good at something.

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Everyone is good at something

• It should be the first duty of a school for life
  to help the young person build up an
  intelligence profile

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Premise 3

• Life is a marathon, not a horse race.

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Life is a marathon

• The current system of departmental examinations
  is immoral in a democratic society, because it
  deprives late developers of the chance of a
  proper selfishness. A model based on music
  examinations is preferable.

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Premise 4

• Knowing what is not as important as knowing
  where, how and why.

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Knowing where, how and why

• Know where to find it, how to access it, and
  what to do with it when you have it.
• Discernment be cautious about isness and
  allness
• An article on Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton
  Wilson may be located at
• http//www.rawilson.com/quantum.html

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Charles Handy

• An interview with Charles Handy may be located
  at -
• http//www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/l2l/summer97/hand
  y.html

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Premise 5

• School should be like work, and vice versa.

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Schools should be like work

• How many people work here?
• Are children real workers in an enlightened
  factory of creativity.
• What about core tasks and specialists?

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Premise 6

• Life is a journey, which starts at home.

The journey of life is as relevant to the
institutions of education as it is to their
participants.
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The journey starts at home

• We have to operate within constraints, but move
  beyond them. The challenge for the school is to
  make up its mind where it wants to go when the
  constraints have been met.

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Premise 7

• Learning is experience understood in
  tranquility.

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Tranquility

• We need to build as much experience of reality
  as we can into schools, but we must also provide
  more opportunities for reflective learning.
• Children need mentors.

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Conclusions and So What?
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Proper Selfishness

• we are inevitably intertwined with othersits
  proper to be concerned with ourselves and a
  search for who we really are, because that search
  should lead us to realize that self respect, in
  the end, only comes from responsibility for other
  people and other things.

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The White Stone

• It means that if I prevail, I will,
  eventually, find out who I truly ought to be, the
  other hidden self. Life is a search for the
  white stonepassing lifes little tests, until
  you are free to be fully yourself, which is when
  you get your white stone.

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Discussion

• Handy has touched on a number of issues
• personal reality tunnels
• self knowledge
• personal responsibility
• relationship of individual to community
• shaping school community and culture
• reflective learning
• mentorship

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Discussion (continued)

• These issues have some relevance to school
  goals and school based management
• The following questions will open our
  discussion about the relevance of these issues

If it is true, as some hypothesize, that we only
discover 25 of our potential talents by the time
we die -- a hypothesis that must remain a
conjecture because who would ever know the truth
-- then the sooner we start experimenting with
ourselves the better. Charles Handy, page 91,
The Proper Selfishness
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Questions to Consider

• Does the school have some responsibility for
  providing opportunities for individuals who work
  there to search for their white stone?
• How would these opportunities happen for
  students? Teachers? Parents? (Is this a strange
  group to add?)

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Questions to Consider

• How is this component related to school goals and
  to school evaluation?
• If the search for the white stone through
  proper selfishness and mentorship is a worthy
  goal for a school, how would this goal influence
  the administrative structures and decision-making
  processes in the school?

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Discussion Forum Posting

• Please submit one posting to the Reaction to
  Professor Presentation_Handy Discussion Forum
  addressing one or more of these questions or
  giving your reaction/assessment of Handys ideas
  in this chapter.