Try to imagine what future learners might look like. No, try to re-imagine it. I say “re-imagine” because that is what it seems we will need to do. I and many of like ilk must work on a new world, a new narrative.
Let me explain. One of my favorite books is Thomas Berry’s The Dream of the Earth. The crucial chapter in the book is titled “The New Story”. I cannot paraphrase Berry here, nor summarize. His own words or too apt and too wise for that. He says,
It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned a new story. (123)
I keep a bookmark on this page because I can return to it regularly without exhausting the depth of this well. Note how he uses the word “learned”. Implies a teacher, but a re-imagined teacher. We are all slouching toward this new story of we know not what. If Berry is right, then nothing is more important than the revelation of the new narrative. This should be the teacher’s grail–the new story. Technology is not the new story. No. But technology can point us toward the story. Better yet, it can help us re-invent the story not from the mouldered cloth of history (that dead end can be seen in the recurrent fundamentalism worldwide), but from the fine silk of humanity spinning and weaving a new web. “Teachers” are the new Theseus. The mythic Theseus reeled out a thread as he walked through the labyrinth to do battle with the Minotaur. We do not have that luxury. Instead we must spin forth into the labyrinth, blind but determined (pun intended), a new thread and then walk forth into the mystery of the new labyrinth, the new story. I agree with Berry here and without histrionics insist that without this new story we cannot be confident in our future ventures. We cannot live without meaningful stories. The corollary of that is that bad stories will kill us. Can anyone who sees our country as others see us deny that we are in the midst of a killing story? Our narrative autism will be our downfall not only as a nation, but as a race. This is the largest context within which “teachers” work. It is hard to maintain this satellite’s perspective because we have become so detail driven, but we must kick ourselves into this wider orbit at least every once in a while. Unless, of course, we prefer irrelevance.
