Teaching, Living, and Learning

Sunday, May 11, 2008

RESTRICTED OR INFINITE

May 11, 2008

The only question worth considering today is whether life is restricted or infinite. In one sense, that seems like a silly question to me, because I have built my entire life on the belief in its narrowness and limitations. Almost every moment of every day, I have thought of myself as a small, vulnerable person in a universe filled with constraints, restraints, curbs, and checks. Life, for me, has been like being in a small closet with countless threatening entities waiting just outside the door. There is another viewpoint, however – and it seems clear to me that it’s the correct one (even though it’s almost impossible for me to keep it in mind). This view sees life as utterly unlimited, like being part of a sky that has no beginning and no end. According to this view, there are no restrictions whatsoever because there are no material “things” to be restricted or do the restricting. There is only unlimited thought in an unlimited universe of Mind. This view says life should be like a constant and completely worry-free celebration.

Today would be a great day to begin actually believing this – and living accordingly.

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett