I’ve been spending a lot of time lately re-reading older books on education that have influenced my thinking on education. Mostly, I wanted to know if they still hold up. With a few exceptions, the all hold up well. They all speak to the core of what I think we want to do in schools — and that we often lose sight of in the strained efforts to adapt schooling to the demands of our capitalist system.
The wonderful team at the Independent Curriculum Group introduced me to the writing of Mary Ellen Chase — and this quote on the excitement that should always be present in learning and yet rarely is these days:
“What we are after is an awakened consciousness, differing in each individual, an excitement in thinking, reading, and writing for their own sake, new discoveries, new enthusiasms, the casting off, or the retention with better understanding, of the old. What we want is to stimulate the love of mental adventure and constructive doubt, to create emotional satisfaction in the things of the mind, to reveal through books the variety and the wonder of human experience.
“How we do these things matters not at all. The numberless ways of their accomplishment reside in the numberless personalities of those of us who teach. The one thing that does matter is that we shall be awake and alive, alert and eager, flexible and unperturbed, likable and exciting.”
— Mary Ellen Chase, A Goodly Fellowship (1939)
May we find our way back to this “love of mental adventure” in all schools.