–It’s a bag of gold.

—What would I do with a bag of gold?

—What would you like to do with a bag of gold?

—I don’t have time for your philosophical questions.

The aim, therefore, of the philosophy of education must be to get at the meanings, the assumptions, the commitments which are implicit, but too often unacknowledged, within the educational practices already engaged in. Such an ‘uncovering of meaning,’ critically engaged in, inevitably reveals beliefs which are not sustainable or which require refining. They put the practitioners in touch with intellectual and moral traditions which give greater depth to what they are doing and which provide the basis of professional commitment, often against Government or others who wish to import a more impoverished language of educational purposes.
–Richard Pring, Philosophy of Educational Research, 3rd ed. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)

Time for a word-association game. Like Kafka and his companions as they read his writings together, we can laugh until we cry.

Takeaway
Measure
Target
Outcome
Metric
Dashboard
Timeline
Action Item
Practical (pedant alert: not parallel!)
Pragmatic
Operational (and operationalize)

Not one of these words is necessarily a bad thing (ok, maybe the concept of a “takeaway” is a bad thing and always already reductive). Yet how quickly these words enlarge to fill our entire field of view. How loud and near they become, so much so that anything outside their lexicon comes to sound like a lonely bell tolling from an ivory tower.

But send not to learn for whom the bell tolls! Here is Pring again:

    Similarly with educational research. Here, as elsewhere, there is the constant danger of the ‘bewitchment of the intelligence by the use of language.’ It is easy to stipulate a straightforward statement of aims, broken down with a finite range of measurable objectives or targets. It is relatively easy then to identify the means which, empirically, can be shown to attain these targets. It would seem to be but a matter of administrative efficiency to ensure, through various ‘performance related awards’ or through relevant funding ‘drivers’ and ‘levers,’ that a compliant teaching force will adopt the right means to attain the right ends.
But the more philosophically minded have doubts.

Indeed. To take up yet another metaphor: trains are good things, and if we are to rely on them, we do well to run our trains on time. But we must not be too narrowly practical. Not too “grounded.” Without the 30,000 foot view as our foundation, we may find we have operationalized our timely trains thus:

Image: http://www.sevenoaksart.co.uk/trains.htm

I continue to think about what we mean by a “degree.” Or rather, I think about what a degree might or should mean, and what we in higher ed increasingly act as if it means, and how that disjunction (if it is one, which I think it is) plays out across our practices, our assumptions, our mission statements, and our civic life. (I’m sure I’ve left out several crucial areas there.)

My thoughts are spurred by a conversation I had several days ago with a colleague who wanted to know what kind of certificate we might offer as an incentive for open participants to complete a cMOOC. I started thinking about the difference between a certificate and a credential. I talked about credentials many years ago in a presentation I podcast here. At the time, though, I simply urged we recall the root meaning of credential, a word that derives from credence, the mark of believability and the grounds for trust we stipulate as a result of some experience or, perhaps, a formation of character we have collectively witnessed.

I didn’t then have the contrast, though, that would drive the point home. I think now the contrast is between “credential,” a condition of being, and “certificate,” something that is not of a person so much as about some specific competency the person has demonstrated. I grant that I am skeptical of any education that focuses narrowly on “competency,” as if skills could be divorced from contexts, or ideas, or personhood. I grant that my skepticism may lead me to exaggerate the distinction I’m trying to make. Yet the distinction may prove useful in articulating how two views might diverge, an what the consequences might be.

Incorrigible and largely unrepentant English professor that I am, I went on an etymology hunt. R. W. Emerson observed that language is fossil poetry, so it was time for some paleontology. I usually go to the Oxford English Dictionary for my etymologies, for there I will also find a useful set of historical definitions that help chart how early usage changes over time. Tonight, though, I had only my iPad with me at dinner. (I try to travel lighter at conferences when possible–I’m writing this post from the annual meeting of the AAC&U.) I have long known how to use Google to define a word: simply type in the search box “define x” (without quotation marks and with a word where the x goes, of course), and away you go. On a lark, and because Google is always introducing cool new things on the sly (aside from tracking its users, that is), I typed “etymology credential” — and here’s what came up!

Ah. The word was first an adjective, and only later became a noun. First a descriptor, then the thing it described. Alas, the thing described, a credential document, seems to have skipped the possible middle sense of a quality or virtue. Instead, a credential, a trustworthiness or recommendation, is typically reduced to that piece of paper we call a diploma–in other words, a certificate.

As “credential” moves toward “certficate,” “recommendation” becomes “document,” indeed an “official document” attesting to facts, records, achievements, ownership. I’m not arguing that facts, records, achielvement, and ownership are unimportant. Not at all. They’re vital. But taken outside the context of trust, of personhood, of recommendation, credentials edge toward a kind of “guarantee,” or a license. Something transformative becomes  instead flat and transactional. Get a certificate, get a raise, get a job. Yes, and those are important, But what of the person?

I continue to mull these things over. A small shift in meaning may lead to a large and potentially regrettable shift in civic and cultural practice. I am especially struck by this possibility in the aftermath of the challenging and fascinating opening forum tonight at the AAC&U meeting.

And I think of the words we say at our higher education commencement ceremonies when it comes time to award to–or is it confer upon?–our students their degrees: we deans present our degree candidates to the President, and say that we are doing so upon the “recommendation of the faculty.” In that moment, deep within that phrase and yet still visible if one knows to look, we may still find what is most valuable about a truly credential education.

I have been thinking very hard lately about the nature and value of focused learning, and especially the kinds of focused learning experiences we might explore and craft within school. I greatly admire the DALMOOC George Siemens and his research group at UT-Arlington crafted last fall, but I also worry a little about the binary structure. As a practical matter, the dichotomy makes a great deal of sense. Those of us who are trying to work on modes of openly networked learning continually struggle with the question of how to define, recognize, and reward multiple modes of engagement–or to speak even more precisely, multiple ranges of commitment. Yet I wonder if one can truly read a book, hear a symphony, or watch a movie without being all in. I wonder if being led and being leaders are necessarily always mutually exclusive. That’s not to say that what Tom Woodward calls the “energy inputs” of open participants who come and go during a course of study are of no benefit to the class. Quite the contrary. But I do worry. Are formal structures of  what may amount to lesser commitment really a way forward? The opposite extreme, of course, is a formal structure of pedantic insistence–i.e., much or most of what constitutes school-based learning– that can bleach away all the energy of self-directed learning. But these are sad realities of misguided practice, not necessities. I just don’t think that “instructor-led” or “learner-centered” set up the deeper conceptual framework very well. And if I never again hear the grinding binary of “guide at the side / sage on the stage,”  I will weep tears of joy. Even Ivan Illich, the great prophet of deschooling, recognized the role and importance of the genuine pedagogue.

For me the positive vectors are commitment, openness; a willingness to dwell in conjectures and dilemmas and to insist on precision (or the nearest aspirational approximation) when precise information and precise execution are needed to keep the spacecraft from disintegrating. I must also testify that experts lead in many different ways, and many of those different ways are not only important and eminently cherishable but have in fact changed my life. When I watch The Godfather, or read A. S. Byatt, or talk with a gifted and humane practitioner of the healing arts and sciences, I give myself over to the experts, not uncritically, but with commitment and a desire to open myself toward those talents, so long as they are not exercised with cruelty or in mere self-interest.

I too keep looking for the sweet spots.

Oddly, that search has also characterized much of my scholarly work as a Miltonist. How could it not, when one of Milton’s choicest lines is “the sober certainty of waking bliss”?

Here’s an anthology of sweet-spot readings, placed together with minimal commentary: bread crumbs along my wandering way.

[Jimmy Henderson] has been compared to Miller as a strict disciplinarian. Certainly he is an excellent leader. Jimmy sees the band as self-disciplined out of pride in themselves as artists and pride in being associated with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. “Discipline we do have,” he affirms, “but regimentation we do not. There is an enormous difference. Regimentation has no place in music.”

Patricia Willard, from her liner notes to  The Direct Disc Sound of The Glenn Miller Orchestra, directed by Jimmy Henderson (The Great American Gramophone Company, 1977. GADD-1020).

Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond accepted models, patterns, or standards” — all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit. from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed it eh bureaucracy of the institution.

If you are interested (and it is not for everyone), you can achieve Orbit by finding the personal courage to be genuine and to take the best course of action to get the job done rather than following the pallid path of corporate appropriateness.

To be of optimum value to the corporate endeavor, you must invest enough individuality to counteract the pull of Corporate Gravity, but not so much that you escape that pull altogether. Just enough to stay out of the Hairball.

Through this measured assertion of your own uniqueness, it is possible to establish a dynamic relationship with the Hairball–to Orbit around the institutional mass. If you do this, you make an asset of the gravity in that it becomes a force that keeps you from flying out into the overwhelming nothingness of deep space.

But if you allow that same gravity to suck you into the bureaucratic Hairball, you will find yourself in a different kind of nothingness. The nothingness of a normalcy made stagnant by a compulsion to cling to past successes. The nothingness of the Hairball.

Gordon Mackenzie, Orbiting The Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace (Viking, 1996), p. 33. H/t @marianafunes. NB: I question that “it is not for everyone.” I believe Mackenzie is delivering a strong caution there, not a statement about eligibility or desirability. Or he may simply be trying to forestall objections.

By virtue of a privilege which he shared with the greatest creative artists, the composer [Maurice Ravel] never lost, in his obstinate determination to acquire technical mastery, that fresh sensibility which is the privilege of childhood and is normally lost with advancing years.

Alexis Roland-Manuel, quoted in Richard Freed’s liner notes to the original 1975 Vox Quad recording of Daphnis et Chloe (Ballet Suites Nos. 1&2) and Ma Mere l’Oye, as reproduced in the Mobile Fidelity SACD reissue of that recording in 2005. Ravel is one of my favorite composers, and I cannot imagine a sweeter spot than at the intersection of an “obstinate determination to acquire technical mastery” and “that fresh sensibility which is the privilege of childhood….” How to keep that intersection always in view and always yielding energy? Great teachers have a feel for those tasks.

And yes, such commitments are difficult to manage, especially when they take vastly different forms, experiences, and methodologies. Ironically, an obsession with standardization built out of superficial outputs, outcomes, and analytics will appear to ease the learner’s path, only to rob the learner of the very many-mindedness that leads to the deepest, most transferable, most enduring learning of all.

The changing values of the 1960s influenced the CMU [Carnegie Mellon University] drama department’s instructional program. A few faculty members explored innovative techniques, while others adhered to the acting methods they had learned, or passed along specialized skills like mime, dance, and diction. The diversity of their approaches was both helpful and challenging for the undergraduates. Leon Katz remembers, “There was no uniform attitude to the faculty. We had five acting teachers. All of them were tremendously good and they loathed what one another was doing. Each one had a totally different conceptual training. The students were confused. They would go to [department chairman] Earle Gister and say, “What are we supposed to believe? We’re totally confused!” He said, “Good, that’s your training. You sort it out and find the thing that’s right for you.”

Carol De Giere, The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical (Bethel, CT: Scene 1 Publishing, 2014, pp. 21-22)