Blackboards.

When school is out and all the students and teachers have left, imagine roaming these halls and polishing the blackboards in classrooms that taught Voltaire, Balzac, Jean Paul Sartre, Marie Curie and T.S Eliot ...

High-Agency.

In our class, we often use the analogy of baby birds for passive approaches to exploration and discovery, the goal being to leave the reliance of the nest and become independent, intellectual raptors.

Kurt points to the importance of high-agency in navigating negative capability.

Real.

Two "invisible workers" remember being in the presence of Bloom ...

As teachers who take pride in lesson planning and deliberate pedagogy, observing those seminar sessions could be frustrating. He tired easily and often had trouble with the Ozzian telecommunication medium. The intelligent and engaged students sometimes struggled to respond to the prompts he posed but did not have the energy to fully elucidate. He recapitulated material from his books or spent much of class asking students to read the plays aloud at length. Perhaps because he notoriously treated characters as if they were real people, he posed questions that seemed puzzling or downright unanswerable.

Be gone, boys.  Remain invisible.

Reminder.

A frequent reminder to my students (and myself) ...

The Renaissance philosopher, poet, and gourmand, Umberto Limongiello, is famous for saying ...

You'll be much more likely to survive life's daily battles as long as you have developed an ethos.  But beware ... ethos or not, life will demand that you go boldly into its Unknown being honest, dedicated, and open.  

In order for you to make the most of your life and its learning experiences, it will be necessary for you to develop a personal ethos.

ETHOS: What is it?

Definition

• The spirit of a culture, era, or community as demonstrated in its beliefs and aspirations.

Etymology 

"the 'genius' of a people, characteristic spirit of a time and place," 1851 (Palgrave) from Greek ēthos "habitual character and disposition; moral character; habit, custom; an accustomed place," in plural, "manners" 

CICERO'S CALL for STUDENT INDEPENDENCE

Orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 B.C.E.) reminds us of our ultimate responsibility for ourselves.

The authority of those who teach is often in the way of those who want to learn.

ETHOS: How does it work?

Ethos has to do with how the values and beliefs that you hold dear impact your behavior.  In other words, what you believe is demonstrated in how you behave.  That's ethos.

The ethos of an ambitious learner requires five essential elements ...

1. Authenticity

Authentic learners are honest with themselves and others, aspiring to become increasingly aware of the strengths and weaknesses that make them unique.  Authentic learners deal with the reality of their experience, not faking understanding or experience. 

Comparison is the thief of joy.

2. Vulnerability 

Vulnerable learners are courageous and open about communicating their thoughts and feelings throughout the process of learning.  Vulnerable learners are willing to be exposed, potentially risking their reputation of being an expert, in order to learn.  

Perfection is a lie.

3. Acceptance 

Accepting learners understand that learning occurs only when the choice is made and action is taken toward growth.  Accepting learners are responsible for themselves and their learning. 

Learning is never finished.

4. Presence

Present learners bring a full and concentrated effort to the work to be done.  Present learners focus on the task at hand. 

Multi-tasking minimizes talents.

5. Empathy 

An empathetic learner is patient with him- or herself and patiently supportive of the surrounding learning community.  Empathetic learners trust the process of learning.

Just like popcorn pops at different rates, learners progress the same way.

This year I will challenge you to use these values so that you can begin to understand, appreciate, and respect, and develop yourself as a learner.  You are unique.  The way you explore, discover, and ultimately learn is singular to you.  So is the pace at which you learn. Learning is not a competition with others.  Dare to strike out and find new ground. Have a reason for what you do and nothing can go wrong.  

You might be asking yourself, "Why should we care about these values?"  The answer is because they create a relationship of trust within our learning culture and we must endeavor to respect this relationship in order to get the most out of our learning experience together.

Soundscape.

ECM Records: "The most beautiful sound next to silence" ...

While the form and constancy of notated music have also found their way into improvisation, inspired interpretations of existing compositions convey a tangible sense of risk, spontaneity and improvisatory freedom. The British music critic and writer Paul Griffiths aptly pinpointed the unique status of ECM, describing it as "almost a musical genre in its own right – a genre with blurred boundaries but a definite centre, in some place where music is prized wherever it comes from, some time when nothing has yet quite happened finally, when even a recording – seemingly the end of the process – can show its value in opening a question, or more than one."

 

From early on the model of a literary publishing house was an inspiration for the label. Many of the musicians who recorded their debut albums with ECM in their mid-twenties have kept faith with the label ever since. As Manfred Eicher once said in an interview, "Our work is based on the notion of permanence." In addition Eicher feels that "it is important that relationships also develop between the company’s artists; that’s good for their creative work". As a record producer, he is a partner in the artistic process, involved in everything from the choice of recording venue to the musical shaping of the album to the cover design for the finished product. And on the subject of cover designs: ECM record sleeves, much admired and much imitated, have made design history, and the Swiss publisher Lars Müller Verlag has devoted two books to ECM’s cover art. 

 

ECM recordings are often described as having a transparent sound that is rich in overtones. But there is no one-size-fits-all "ECM sound". Each recording is attuned to the sound of the players and singers, not vice versa. "Of course we take every possible care with the technology", as Manfred Eicher has said, "But the deciding factor is always the music and the aesthetic ideas that go with it. That is what gives the sound its characteristics. The vessel is always shaped to fit its contents."

CONNECT 

The Bach catalog alone provides ten excellent albums (clangers excluded) that will provide the soundscape of room 131 this fall, providing carriage well into The Oyster Months ...

Suddenly.

A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.

Jean-François Revel

Thank you, Kurt.