Jane's
Journal
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December
6, 2004 |
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Jane
Pray
for Doubt
It was a great joy for me to welcome Michael
Culliton and Gail von Hahmann recently. They are Certified Teachers
of the dialogue education approach, and they had just completed
leading the introductory course Learning
to Listen-Learning to Teach for a group of men and women
heading overseas to teach adults.
We had a great dinner by the fire, and
an even more delicious conversation about learning, teaching,
life, and love. Gail is working in Afghanistan with the Ministry
of Education. Michael works for NETWORK - A Social Justice Lobby
in Washington D.C. They are both excited advocates of dialogue
education.
My question to them was: What are we doing
now that we can do better? What are the biggest problems we are
making for learners by holding to these principles? What can we
change in what we do and how we do it?
These to me are generic questions, not
specific to dialogue education or to our company. These are questions
I must ask everyday as a human being. Our educational paradigm
is a step, a tiny step, on a great journey of learning about learning.
Unless we see it as true scientists, skeptics, doubters, we are
not able to be faithful to it. Unless we are praying for doubt,
we are not men and women of faith.
We now have some fifty principles and practices
(cf. Training Through Dialogue,
1995 and Learning
to Listen, Learning to Teach Revised Edition 2002).
What are the principles we have not yet named? Which of the present
principles and practices needs re-thinking in the light of today's
context and current discoveries in science?
I had the joy of seeing What
the Bleep Do We Know - a brilliant film about
quantum physics that made me dance in my movie seat. I am so glad
that I had the audacity to include six quantum principles in the
revised version of the 1994 book Learning to Listen Learning
to Teach. Bold! Don't miss the film and let me know how
you celebrate being part of a quantum universe, full of grace
and full of doubt.
