Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas (original) (raw)

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

Abstract

According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates society so as to provide students with a more balanced outlook on life. This corrective role, Postman argues, needs to be built into a school’s curriculum. In the late sixties and early seventies, he saw this role as a subversive one, and argued that students should be allowed to question authority and to approach learning as an act of self-guided exploration. Ten years later, in response to what he saw as largely a commercial, mass-media driven society he promoted the idea of teaching as a conserving activity, and promoted the skills of critical analysis so that students could be made aware of manipulative self-interests acting within society. In his latest book in this progression, The End of Education (1995), his most radical, he continues his appraisal of education in a society that he feels has lost its identity and sense of moral direction. This time he makes the point that schools should not attempt to serve the public but rather ‘create’ a public; and that teachers need to make this their foremost responsibility. Postman’s own solution for this present predicament is for teachers to start with a vision. A vision of their students entering public life ‘imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance’. And for this vision to become reality, he argues, two things are necessary, ‘the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling’ (Postman, 1995, pp 17–18). In his elaboration of this position he places an emphasis on the word ‘inspired’. In his view, schools now need common ‘gods’ more than common goals. Postman then

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