So what does it take for an identity to have formed? It’s formed if we can observe it? What are the common characteristics? There must be degrees of identity formation and key events that contribute to and shape formation. What does it take for one to be aware of the identity?

So in my dissertation I theorize that participation and imagination both assist the development of an identity. If I imagine myself to belong to a community of writers and imagine that I am a writer via my own multiple definitions (personal or other), then I can be a writer. This “to be a (noun)” act is significant in that labeling legitimizes existence. But it is also the act of writing, the participatory behavior, that legitimizes the label.

So it’s not surprising that I like to begin my writing courses with discussions of what it means to write and to be a writer. I ask, “Are you a writer?” If so, why. If not, then why not?

Part 1, English Freedom

It’s another presentation at a Saturday conference and this time we’re sitting in a circle discussing the negotiation of second language identities. I mention to the participants and fellow presenters that my dissertation will examine perceptions of empowerment and queer identity facilitation via the learning and performance of English (as a semiotic act/space). Heads nod when I suggest that there is something about English and English speakers that reference a sense of freedom for many language learners outside the American context. I follow with the question, “But is it really English that allows for this freedom in alternative identities, or would any second language allow this?” The room offers a unanimous “It’s English.”

Sitting around me from my left to my right are as follows: A Korean female, a Jordanian female, an American male, an Indonesian female, two Chinese females, another Indonesian female, a Thai male, a Kazakh female, and a Japanese female. One of the Chinese women adds, “It’s the structure of English.” I press her, “What do you mean?” A conversation ensues where we at first talk of the nature of the English language and the lack of formal word structure with regards to politeness and interlocutor identity-dependent forms. “It’s freer, English,” offers the Japanese woman, “and I was encouraged by my teachers to speak up, umm, to speak out and tell my feeling. I don’t have to think about my word choices making insult to the listener in the same way that I have to in Japanese.” She goes on to explain that to open one’s mouth (in the Japanese context) is to invite risk of losing face. “Americans,” she continues, “can say their opinion easily, and it is expected.”

The woman from Kazakhstan offers, “I can speak more freely in English.” I again continue, “But is it because English is your second language, or is it something to do with the English language itself?” She reveals that actually English is her 5^th language behind Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and German and so this contradicts my hypothesis that any second language allows such freedoms of expression. I casually mention that this question (of English influencing the behavior of its speakers) reminds me of Sapir-Whorf and pronounce it with a soft “a” sound, like tree sap. The other American male in our group corrects my pronunciation to emphasize the hard “a” as in ape, and clarifies, “You mean that language shapes thought?” It’s the first time a few of the other participants have heard of this, so together we explain.

The real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group (Sapir, 1951, p.160).
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In their research as to the validity of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Kay and Kempton paraphrase the above, “…an intellectual system embodied in each language shapes the thought of its speakers in quite a general way” (1984, p.66). They conclude:

It is possible to give Sapir and Whorf readings that accord with this empirically motivated view of linguistic relativity and determinism. Such a reading is not the one usually given and is certainly not what most anthropology students are taught as “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.” The case seems to be that first, languages differ semantically but not without constraint, and second, that linguistic differences may induce nonlinguistic cognitive differences but not so absolutely that universal cognitive processes cannot be recovered under appropriate contextual conditions. (p.77).<!–[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]–> <!–[endif]–>

I question the group, “Could it be that there is something comparatively as opposed to inherently freer about English when considered and performed by other language speakers?” This then compels me to wonder if it really is the structure of the language as opposed to the social contexts in which English is spoken in that references this sense of freedom and lack of structure.

Part II, “I’m gay in English, but I’m not gay in Japanese”

“…the notion of ‘sex’ in general, and more specifically, how the idea that individuals inhabit or express themselves through distinct ‘sexualities’ is a modern innovation confined largely to those cultures with their roots in northern Europe” (Jñanavira, n.d.).

My dissertation topic now flashes in front of me, a Broadway marquis, a line of stock quotes, ever present in my mind. It all begins with the comment made to me by a man I met 5 years ago on one very strange blind date, “I’m gay in English, but I’m not gay in Japanese”. This astounded me for he seemed to me to be quite obvious, and by obvious I mean effeminate. Shame on me for the stereotype, though I do believe that sexual orientation is as equally evocative of a range of gendered expression as is biological sex. For every fem I’ve met, I’ve also met gay men whom I would never think twice about and whom I would assume to be heterosexual if given no specific reason to think otherwise. “But what’s the easiest way to spot a gay?” I ask myself. “Femininity in voice or behavior is the easiest cue,” I reply.

            But this must be my Western take on sexuality, and McLelland discusses that this approach to sexual identity does not necessarily apply to other cultures, like Japan, where sexual behavior does not necessarily index one’s identity:

Unfortunately, despite the new information that has recently been made available, some researchers still insist on viewing ‘homosexuality’ in Japanese society through western eyes and evaluating the situation facing lesbians and gay men in accordance with western models of what it means to be ‘a lesbian’ or ‘a gay.’ …as recent research has shown, the notion of ‘coming out’ is seen as undesirable by many Japanese gay men and lesbians as it necessarily involves adopting a confrontational stance against mainstream lifestyles and values, which many still wish to endorse. (McLelland, Section 4)

As McLelland hints, the words gay, coming out, and homosexual, for example, do not necessarily reference the same semiotic concepts to Japanese (especially not in past historical contexts) as they do for many Westerners. Even the concepts that Japanese words themselves reference (re: homosexual behavior) differ from those used by Westerners (homosexual identity). McLelland continues:

The novelist Mishima Yukio, writing a novel about homosexual love just after the war, produced a neologism: danshoku-ka [i.e. danshoku-ist] to denote male homosexuals, although he does also refer to the usage of the word ‘gay’ among the occupation forces in a chapter entitled ‘Gay Party.’ However, at this time, ‘gay’ existed as a loan word in Japanese only as part of the term geiboi ['gay boy'] which signified a cross-dressing male hustler. The term geiboi is used in this sense in Matsumoto Toshio’s 1968 film Funeral Parade of Roses [Bara no sooretsu]. This film, starring the famous Japanese transvestite actor Peter, is shot in documentary style and gives an interesting account of Tokyo’s late-60s underground gay scene where ‘normal’ adult men maintained relationships with younger transgendered men who worked in Japan’s mizu shoobai ['water trade' or entertainment business]. Today, homosexuality in Japan is largely conflated with cross-dressing and transgenderism due to the prominence of cross-dressed individuals featured in the media and the entertainment world. Thus, homosexual men are understood to be okama (literally a ‘pot’ but meaning something similar to the English word ‘queen’) and are usually represented as cross-dressed and effeminate. The use of the term okama derives from the slang usage of the term to refer to the buttocks and thereby to anal sex which is considered to be the definitive sexual act engaged in by homosexual men. However, use of this term is extremely loose and it can be used to describe a man who displays any transgender attribute. For instance, an article in the current-affairs magazine AERA (1 March 1999) on men who adopt female names and personae in order to participate in women-only Internet chat lines, describes such men as netto okama [Net okama], although here there is no relation between the adoption of a female name and same-sex attraction. Okama are regularly featured on TV comedy shows in Japan and can also be found in Japan’s mizu shoobai where they serve as entertainers in okama bars serving a straight (and predominantly male) clientele.

The above passage underscores the concept of linguistic relativism – as defined by Meyerhoff, “…the value of one factor is not wholly independent of the value of another factor, but instead is somehow constrained by it” (2006, p. 292) – that although the terms are different in what they actually connote, the denotations of an alternative sexuality are similar.

            Returning to Part 1 of this essay, could it be that English and English-speaking culture itself, with reference to gay-friendly television shows, “out” celebrities, expectations to speak one’s mind, and newsworthy struggles for equal rights among hetero- and homo-sexuals, might be considered more favorably by specific Japanese, namely those who seek to assert queer identities in a culture where queer identity is not necessarily a common expression? More information as to the psychological ramifications and functions of a queer identity is needed to further understand how Japanese gays and lesbians might be either self-perpetuating their own sexual (identity) repression or preserving their anonymity and avoiding public shame, and how and why English language with its questionably “freer” structure is used as a semiotic space/act that facilitates or empowers these same individuals. Perhaps if this is the case, and if the participants from the Saturday conference truly believe their assertions about the freedoms of English inherent in its structure and indices, this phenomena might invite doubters to reconsider their beliefs about the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis.

References

Kay, P. & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? American

Anthropologist, 86(1), 65-79.

Jñanavira, Dharmachari. (n.d.). Homosexuality in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition.

Western Buddhist Review, 3. Retrieved September 27^th, 2007 from

http://www.westernbuddhistreview.com/vol3/homosexuality.html

McLelland, M. (2000). Male Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Modern Japan.

Intersections, 3. Retrieved September 27^th, 2007 from http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue3/mclelland2.html

Meyerhoff, M. (2006). Introducing Sociolinguistics. Great Britain: Routledge.

Sapir, E. (1951). The Status of Linguistics as a Science. Selected Writings (David

Mandelbaum, Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

“You sound like the operator,” I say through a large grin.

“What?”

“Like the operator…the woman in the phone!”

My mother looks at me for a moment and then asks, “Whadduya mean?”

“When you talk on the phone, you sound funny. Like the woman,” I reply.

She considers this and is about to say something when I interrupt, enunciating every syllable my 6 year-old voice utters:

“Hello, this is Anita Harrison, Marlen Harrison’s mother. Marlen will be absent from school today because he is ill.”

I stop for a moment and giggle. My mother begins to smile. I continue with my right-hand pinky at my mouth and my right-hand thumb placed to my ear…

“Please have his teacher send homework home with our neighbor Andrea Burns.” I mimic my mother’s telephone voice in a posh, female tone. I tell her, “You sound different when you talk on the phone.”

“I do?”

“Yeah! You try to sound fancy.”

* * * * *

Both of my parents come from New York. My mother was born in Brooklyn, and my father in Buffalo so I like to think that here’s a little bit of New York in my blood. When I spend time in “The City”, I feel at home, and when I’m not in “The City”, I long for it.

Having grown up in South Florida, the land of “the third exodus” as I like to call it (the first was when the Jews left Egypt, the second was when they arrived in New York, and the third was the final immigration back to the sands – Miami Beach), I was always surrounded by a variety of accents. Sometimes the accents were tinged with Spanish rolled r’s, but more often than not, the “o” in dog was substituted by an “aw” that almost morphed into “or”.

These sounds were sweet and funny, and for a while during my childhood I wondered why everyone didn’t sound this way. Sometimes, however, I had a hard time figuring out just what people were saying and so I had my own take on commonly repeated phrases. For example, my Nana’s typical phone closing was “Give Mary Gods”. I always wondered who Mary was and why we were giving her Gods. No matter who Nana spoke to, she always asked to give Mary Gods. When I finally inquired about this curious phrase, it was explained that Mary Gods was actually “my regards”. At that time, it still didn’t make much sense, why should one thing sound one way, but actually be something totally different? I reasoned it was easy enough to say “my” with the hard “I”, and “regards” with the hard “r”. Afterall, not everything Nana said was always spoken the same way.

As a college student in rural Appalachia, I sometimes told people I was from New York. My family was from New York, my friends’ parents were from New York, my teacher was from “Lawn-guy-lend”, and the rabbi’s wife was from “Joy-z”. I felt more like a New Yorker than a Floridian, especially when many of my friends sounded like their parents even though they were growing up in Florida. So, Florida didn’t really seem like Florida, aside from the flying cockroaches, hurricanes, and ‘possums in the pool pumps. Our bakery was Flakowitz, our deli was Wolfies, and every Italian restaurant featured a typical Italian name followed by “of New York”. When faced with being from boring old Florida and exciting New York, I wanted to choose New York as often as possible. One way I could choose this identity as New Yorker was through the sound of my voice.

I’ve always had a tendency towards the dramatic; surely some of it comes from observing my parents. My father was the type of man who could sound like a native anywhere he went. He would develop a Southern accent with Carolinians, throw in some Spanish with the South Americans, and end his sentences with “guv’na” when in the presence of the Brits who lived next door. I always found this very amusing – my father, the showman. So it was not surprising to me when I first realized I was performing New York for my friends in the Blue Ridge. I could turn it on and off at will, and vacations home to Florida only brought it out more. But with time, I found myself desiring to be part of the community where I was living – Boone, North Carolina – and changing my speech from the dulcet tones of Flatbush to the tender twang of highland folk.

It was probably towards the end of my second year of college when the Southern accent began to take over the Brooklynese. Instead of “you guys” I had drifted towards the ever-popular “ya’all”. This clearly marked my allegiance and understanding of Southern dialect and rather than stand out as unique with a random utterance of “oy vez mir”, I felt great talkin bout the “junebuuuuuhhhhgs buuuuuhhhzzin” round the porch. Not only was it fun, but it kept people guessing where I was from. At a time when I was coming to terms with so many facets of my identity, the pliability of my speech in reaction to where I was and who I was speaking with allowed me to experiment with various personas.

About a year later, I moved to England – bloody fantastic, that…another world of accents to play with. Not only could I choose among a variety of English accents, but I could be a vocal acrobat, twisting my prosody and inflection until I was finally asked in earnest what part of London I was from. Not only could I lend someone a quid and thank salespeople with a cheers, but I was learning just how profoundly I could influence the impressions I make by playing with the sound of my voice.

Throughout my twenties, I would play with a Baltimore “hon”, switch between Osaka and Tokyo dialects with “O ki ni” and “arigato”, lapse back into “plotzing after schlepping around the mall” with my mother in Boca, or turn on the Afro-flame with a strategically placed “You go girl!” The contexts are varied and the sounds diverse, but one thing I know to be true is that they all come from the little actor within, bound to wearing linguistic masks dependent on the audience watching the show – the Marlen show – and I suppose the only question truly left unanswered is “who exactly do I wear the masks for?”; do I give Mary gods in order to put my listener at ease, or do I speak to ya’all in order to make myself more comfortable? Whatever the answer is, the one linguistic mask that I’m most conscious of is the one marked as homosexual, and of all the sounds I’ve uttered, this is the one style I’ve consciously repressed. The sad fact of the matter is that this is the part of me that is closest to my core self and the one that I understand the least. Perhaps all the other sounds, dialects, and accents serve to cover the sound that is the truest me?

“The problem of evidence consists of the tasks of making this fact intelligible” (Garfinkle, p. 103).

    While recently writing an autoethnography examining the semiotics of name in relation to experience, I consistently came across criticism of ethnographic research aimed at highlighting the problem of interpretation of evidence. Coffey (1999) explains that in ethnography the researcher, and his/her interpretive eye, is as much a part of the research as are the subjects being examined. This sentiments is echoed in Garfinkle’s (1976) exploration of the documentary method of sociological research and the problem of what constitutes “reasonable findings”:

A prominent argument on behalf of this emphasis is that the documentary method is a scientifically erroneous procedure; that its use distorts the objective world in a mirror of subjective prejudice; and that where common sense situations of choice exist they do so as historical nuisances. (p. 21)

It is this assertion that any researcher must answer to when reporting and interpreting evidence.

    So how does one carry out objective interpretation of qualitative findings or observations? Norton (2000) writes:

As Wolcott (1994) suggests, a major challenge for qualitative researchers is not how to get data, but how to decided what to do with the data they get. The three ways in which he suggests data can be presented are defined as descriptive, analytical, and interpretive, respectively. (p. 33)

Norton then goes on to describe a study of Canadian ESL students and her attempts to perform empowerment research, a term originally introduced by Cameron et al. (1992) – “It is the centrality of interaction ‘with’ the researched that enables research to be empowering in our sense; though we understand this as a necessary rather than sufficient condition” (in Norton, p. 23).

    As I noted in my previous review of Gallagher and Marcel (1999), it seems that collaborative analysis would allow for a richer interpretation of phenomenon than an individual interpretation, one seemingly always doomed to subjectivity rather than unbiased evaluation. It is precisely this collaborative aspect that Cameron et al advocate and that Norton carries out with her own subjects. However, this collaboration may call on the researcher to wear a number of different masks when in community with his or her subjects. Norton notes the difficulty she had balancing her “diverse positions as friend, teacher, and researcher” (p. 32).

    But even in an empowerment approach that highlights collaborative study, it is still the responsibility, or burden, of the sole researcher or team of researchers to bring their own assumptions about the evidence out into the open and to clearly note what is being imposed upon their findings. I’m not sure I’ve read many research reports that attempt to clarify the researcher’s identity residue as it leaves its mark on conclusions and interpretation.

Works Cited

Coffey, A. (1999). The Ethnographic Self. London: Sage.

Garfinkle, H. (1967). Common sense knowledge of social structures. Studies in Ethnomethodology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and Language Learning. England: Pearson Education Limited.

As usual, I’ll sabotage this question and turn it around a bit to reflect what I thought I knew about reading and to examine some of Smith’s ideas that I found most interesting. As has been my recent mode, while reading Smith I found myself thinking, “Geesh, I knew that, but I guess I never really gave it that much thought.” It’s an interesting commentary considering the subjects and theses of both Rosenblatt’s text and now Smith’s (and I was tickled to see nods to Rosenblatt throughout Chapter 4), both concerning reading, the reader, and understanding.

Sternberg’s approach to understanding the mind and cognition (Metaphors of the Mind) explored a number of metaphors. Smith does the same albeit with a slightly different approach. Chapter 1 begins with a section entitled “Reading the World” and concludes that “reading” itself is a metaphor for looking and understanding, i.e. interpreting facial expressions. Chapter 2 continues with metaphorical examinations by comparing the mind to the computer and introducing concepts for the mind such as script and schema. These concepts form an introduction to the idea that reading is more than mere recognition of letters on a page, phonemes, and representations of sounds; a heck of a lot of thinking and experience are involved in the process of making meaning via reading. One of the most interesting ideas Smith explores is that much of reading is prediction! I suppose it is. I’d go a step further and bring a little bit of my newly learned pragmatics vocabulary into this discussion and couple prediction with implication. As a reader, I must imply certain knowledge based upon my experience with a text and this prediction and implication, and hopefully Rosenblatt would agree, truly transforms the text into something much more than strings of characters, a sentiment further echoed in Smith’s Chapter 3 on language and meaning.

Smith continues in Chapter 4 with a discussion of reading for information and/vs. experience, yet another metaphor for the schooling process. But what I most want to focus on here is his following belief: “How much visual information a reader will require is affected by the reader’s willingness to risk an erroneous decision. Readers who set too high a criterion level for information before making decisions will find comprehension more difficult” (p. 70). That sure is a loaded statement, fraught with metaphorical ramifications for identity and transpersonal psychology! Why would a reader set high criterion levels? Could it be related to issues of identity and security? How would these ideas then connect to theories of limited literacies? I think I could write an entire paper just on the topic of reading habits/performance as metaphor for psychosocial identity development (as I earlier mentioned reading also being a metaphor for understanding)! But let’s continue…as Smith notes, there’s a “mountain” of data on reading that I haven’t touched on yet (p. 93).

Smith’s ideas about reading and learning are further explored in his exploration of the neurocognitive processes involved in reading in Chapter 5: “Instruction should always be adapted to the circumstances in which an individual learns and understands best, but this is not promoted by speculation about hypothetical brain structures” (p. 93). As I’m likewise more concerned with the process of learning and making meaning on a more individual level, and in terms of transpersonal psychological processes, the next few chapters held less interest to me. While Chapters 6-9 address the process of memory, and letter and word identification, Smith continues with his discussion of the “search for sense” in Chapter 10.

One of the most interesting discussions Smith designs is that identification of meaning may also be termed apprehension of meaning (p. 159). This more correctly ties into the concept of prediction and implication than direct cognitive understanding. Now, I want to switch tracks and offer that Smith’s discussion of the above in Chapter 10, specifically with regard to the concept of chunking as referred to on p. 159 as a task that problem readers have difficulty with, could easily lend itself to a discussion of language acquisition. As I read that paragraph it occurred to me that one problem language education has routinely failed to solve (in my humble estimation) is that just as reading individual words slows a reader down and problematizes comprehension, so does listening to each individual word in a sentence of a foreign language. Afterall, we don’t necessarily pay attention to and recognize every note of a measure of music, but rather, we listen for the themes and melodies. So too is listening comprehension in a foreign language similar to reading comprehension in any language. But yet it seems that students need to learn grammar and target structures, just as children need to learn their ABC’s and basic words…the problem being that by the time many of us enter into a language classroom, we’re no longer children examining letters and words, but adults searching for meaning. I know, this is poorly developed, but for the sake of space, I’ll leave it at that and perhaps re-visit these ideas someday.

Next I’ll skip to a brilliant passage farther along in Chapter 10: “Teachers often feel they have to find things to do, to instruct children, rather than arrange situations where the desired learning will take care of itself” (p. 172). Whoa! I must pause for a moment. I have taught reading and found it no greater challenge than speaking, writing, or listening. Yet it seemed to me that I was teaching reading comprehension and strategy than from-the-starting-line, learn-your-letters literacy. So, my experience with beginning readers in any language is limited. But what a statement about education Smith has just made. I’ve always felt a constant struggle between being a “teacher” and having a role and prescribed actions to perform, and being a director, creating an environment and a situation in which learning (often collaborative) can take place. In this chapter, Smith’s ideas about reading and the ongoing argument as to how children should be taught to read serve as metaphors for effective language teaching full stop. In Chapter 12, Smith makes a similar conclusion: “Children learn continuously, through engagement in demonstrations that make sense to them, whenever their natural sensitivity for learning is undamaged. Learning is a social activity. Children learn from what other people do and help them to do” (p. 211).

In conclusion, there is much within Smith’s text that stands out in my own comprehension/apprehension/implication of my experience with the text as metaphors for learning language overall, not merely reading. I love that I can bridge Rosenblatt, Sternberg and Smith in a way that is unique to my own interests as both an educator and a learner. One idea that repeatedly presented itself throughout my reading was the question, “But what about older learners?” Smith focuses on children throughout his text and I’m left thinking about college-age students and adult-learners attempting to read advanced texts, learning foreign languages, etc. Additionally, if we are to think of music, mathematics, and molecular chemistry as languages, how do we “read” them and what are the similarities among literacies?

What is a text and where is it located?

“The reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of a particular reader.”

For at least 20 years or so, I have waited to read such an assertion, having always believed that standardized tests of reading comprehension were, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. How could an individual be assessed based upon his transformation of a piece of literature from a set of printed symbols to a situation with meaning? It always seemed that questions such as “What is the author’s main point?” were rife with the possibility for the reader to impose his own take on the main point. Or perhaps what it all comes down to is that I’m the kind of reader who is apt to taking over a text and imposing himself on it. Fowles, god love him, writes, “A sentences or paragraph in a novel will evoke a different image in each reader. This necessary co-operation between writer and reader, the one to suggest, the other to make concrete, is a privilege of verbal form” (in Rosenblatt, p. 15). Thank you, Mr. Fowles.

I have always lived through reading, a process that – and as I’m sure so many will agree – allows the reader to evoke, create, and/or summon a world that hitherto had not so completely existed. This negotiation between the writer, the word, the reader, and (to go one-step further and bring in Dr. Jung) the collective unconscious and its archetypal imagery can be transformational (therapeutic, cathartic, catalytic…). I have long known this to be true, yet it is only today, in sitting down with Dr. Rosenblatt that I have truly understood the ramifications and validity of this claim. What is a text? The text is the message. Where is it located? It is within the circle of all who take part in the communication of the message.

Letter to Achilles

Hold fast,
breathe deeply,
tend to your armor, o warrior.

Your heart and I
will likely pummel you with waves of emotions,
soak you in stormy moods,
chill you with ice storms of thoughtless words,
and no doubt already have.

Mother Nature will compete with me
as will the hands of fate,
conjuring weather and challenges that will call on you,
call on us,
to march into battle,
though sometimes wholly unprepared.

It is in the fighting,
the defending of the kingdom,
that you shall truly come to know me,
and to know yourself.

I know you’ve fought before,
so why fight again?
It is in your spirit to fight, to love,
and in doing so,
to live.

Enchantment has led you into battle,
but the choice to fight,
how to fight,
who to fight,
is your own.

I’m already on the field,
your Patroclus,
faithful with sword,
but more with heart.

 

What is good teaching?

Good teaching – oh the word “good” just doesn’t mean anything, now does it – effective teaching is….And what about “effective”? How is THAT defined?

George Mitchell challenged me, pushed me, and he did so not-too-gently. He told me I could be a different writer and was relentless in showing me how. But so was I, relentless in my desire to at first please, but then later, just to explore and experiment. His authority was one that I felt safe deferring to. Religion, literature, history, psychology all slowly merged into a two-year journey of both the world and my place in it, with Mr. Mitchell as my guide. At a towering 6 feet so many inches, his balding pate and baritone bravado commanded the classroom. It was a thrill just to be there. Madame Cardoso lit up the room and with her energy also kindled a passion and enthusiasm that made it easy and exciting to explore the French language. Learning was fun and she was a joy to watch – always smiling, laughing with us, never needing to raise a voice, make a threat, or remind us that we were in a classroom. It didn’t feel like learning, but rather a beautiful climb with scenic vistas. It was a thrill just to be there. 

So what is good, what is effective? Looking at these two educators above, a good language or writing teacher (and of all my teachers, the greatest were the ones that taught me how to use words) is a motivator, a challenger, an alchemist, a guide, a performer, a fire-starter, a thrill-inducer. But from these lofty descriptions, what was my role as student in negotiating these challenges, these identities, and interpreting these experiences in education uniquely as I have just tried to do? Were they not first and foremost people who were just doing their jobs?

It sure seems that the most effective teachers in my educational experience were those that reached just a little further, drank just a little more deeply, and most importantly, loved what they were doing to the point where it was no longer a job, but a joy of everyday living. Good teaching is finding something to say and a way to say it that resonates with one’s identity. Good teaching is good living; honesty, passion, fire from the soul.

“The wider intellectual community comes increasingly to ignore our [psychology] journals, which seem to outsiders principally to contain intellectually unsituated little studies, each a response to a handful of like little studies. Inside psychology, there is a worried restlessness about the state of our discipline, and the beginning of a new search for means of reformulating it. In spite of the prevailing ethos of “neat little studies,” and of what Gordon Allport once called methodolatry, the great psychological questions are being raised once again — questions about the nature of mind and its processes, questions about how we construct our meanings and our realities, questions about the shaping of mind by history and culture.” (Acts of Meaning, xi)
According to Bruner, there has been a shift within the field of psychology recently, away from the construction of meaning, to the processing of information, a move that seems to discount both realms of folk and narrative psychology. In other words, the individual has been removed from his culture, and the discussion of the importance of meaning has been hushed. I mention culture here to touch on the systems of constructing meaning, and along with meaning, the construction of identity within a social context. By turning psychology over to a strictly information-processing model, what use does culture and meaning then have? Bruner calls for a return to a “cultural psychology”, a move away from concerns of behavior to concerns about situated action – the what, how and why we do (what we do) set into a context of the world in which we do it in:

What I want to argue in this book is that it is culture and the search for meaning that is the shaping hand, biology that is the constraint, and that, as we have seen, culture even has it in its power to loosen that constraint. (p. 23)

By crafting a cultural psychology, Bruner believes that it will be possible to address “modern life” through a greater understanding of how we “come to know our knowledge” and to be conscious of “the values that lead to our perspectives” (p. 30). Essentially, I see Bruner as stating that even when we get scientific, technological, wrapped up in the “cognitive”, we’re still dealing with “people” and “selves”, and people are never truly separable from their own humanity, their culture, their narratives.

Carl Jung writes:

“Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through out the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.”

Bruno Bettleheim writes:

By dealing with universal human problems, particularly those which preoccupy a child’s mind, these stories speak to his budding ego and encourage its development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures… They speak about these severe inner pressures (over growing up) in a way that the child unconsciously understands and, without belittling the most serious of inner struggles, offer examples of both temporary and permanent solutions.

I thought about what Connie had said, it hadn’t registered at first, my mind a rushing locomotive racing full speed ahead, unable to stop for anything, but – “Your mother really wanted you.” Connie sat on the petite pink sofa, her habitual evening cocktail in hand, Bam-Bam by her side watching me. Her words were only slightly slurred, but I knew she was on her way to that special place. It was autumn, and it was night. A storm was coming, a cold front perhaps. The leaves did not fall to the ground from their branches, they were ripped from them. The lights were on in the kitchen, the television was chatting away. I can see the scene as if I’m sitting in an audience, eyes upon the stage. There’s a pleading look on my face as if to say “See what I mean? You do understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?” But it was Connie who really owned that sentiment, now squeezed into a bullet and shot directly at me in the form of “But you know your mother really wanted you.”

I stopped talking and looked at her, the television the only sound now. Headlights from outside entered the far window of the living room – someone was parking a car, someone had arrived home no doubt eager to enter his home and take refuge from the impending storm outside.

to be continued…