Robert Bly PowerPoint

Lessons 5,6, 6.5

Social consciousness pedagogy

‘I am angry with myself when I discover
that I have been subtly controlling and
molding another person in my own image’
(Carl Rogers, 'A Way of Being', 1980)

We will start off this lesson by showing the movie 'Christabel' starring Elizabeth Hurley (1988) Color 147 minutes un- rated. Based on a true story centering on a young English woman who marries her German lover, with the married couple settling down to raise a family in 1930’s Germany. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi party gives way to Allied attack and the woman becomes torn between home schooling her children or allowing them to be publicly schooled, dealing with the scorn, cruelty and hate of the ruling German class; and so on. A brief discussion follows the film presentation.

Following the discussion at the end of the first class in the sequence, the instructor hands out reading material that describes the Nazi education action learning plan: where anti-Semitism indoctrination was fundamental 3rd Reich rubric: Nazi education reform and racial cleansing were major subjects of the curriculum: history maintained the stereotype of the Jew as a stateless wanderer; as a figure consumed with massing enormous amounts of money illustrated with drawings, panels and cartoons of this nature: was the thesis of the of course offerings; . There is enough time after the movie for a short discussion of the reading material content for the next class.

Lesson 1 part two

Content: “How German girls should act in the presence of a Jewish man; became the theme of a series of drawings by a 13 year old artist named Brunner; the first panel showed a street scene in which a Jewish man tips his hat to a German woman with the caption:

“A Jew wants to win over a German girl to himself”

But as portrayed in the second image he quickly experience the scorn of the German girl who greeted him with a slap to the face so hard that it knocked his ‘hat’ to the ground”

**Conclusion of the article writer: the political socialization reality of Nazi Germany culture was reinforced by this student art work.

The assignment for your middle school class with mostly 13 year olds to analyze and evaluate (deconstruct) the National Socialist lesson: Respond to one of the questions below.

If you were a German boy and your family was protecting and hiding some Jews, like Anne Frank in your house: how would you react to the message from your government and your teacher as a spokesman for this attitude, tone and purpose (genocide)?
If you were a girl and heard this lesson would you ‘slap the Jew so hard it would knock his hat off”? Or would you sympathize with him as a suffering discrimination; someone who is living the holocaust nightmare?
If you heard a talk show host or a night show comedian ridiculing and reviling a homeless person in his program/act how would you react to a joke such as? Why is it easy to date a homeless woman? (You can drop her off anyplace) heard on a TC sports talk station.

I would expect a short paper from the students; and then ask for volunteers who would read some of their comments once I had reviewed the assignment; or I might scan a few and post them on the video screen; basically creating a discussion of holocaust side effects as they percolate down through contemporary society, entertainment, arts, news papers and so on.


Lesson 2

Today we are going to be discussing a lesson from R.D Laing ‘The Politics of Experience”. In this prompt we see another spin on the same theme operant in the American school system: we are asking our 11th graders to evaluate this scenario: (we believe they are mature enough to evaluate a situation involving fifth graders, some of them may have experienced aspects of the situation; and be able to judge to some degree; we are trying to develop that ability; you as instructor are interested in how your students react to a manipulative psychologist/teacher.

‘[A]n observer just enters a fifth grade classroom the teacher asks “which of you nice boys would like to take the observer’s coat and hang it up?”

“From the waving of hands it seems like every student in the room would love to hang up the observer’s coat: believing it was an honor. The teacher chooses a favorite student to hang up the coat. The same situation arises when the teacher asks the students who would like to answer the next math problem and so on. From the flurry of hands relative to each assignment there was apparently much competition to hang up the coat and solve the problem” p. 68

As teachers with principles of freedom and democracy in the back of our minds at least; we realize this ‘drama’ is beside the point of any ‘academic’ learning, basic skills and so to speak. It can be classified under education roughly as values and ‘affective’ education. Laing is concerned with the totality of a situation in which children are conditioned to perform in conformity and unison to perceived social norms. Laing continues:

“ what strikes us here is the precision with which the teacher was able to mobilize the potentialities of the boys for proper social behavior. The large number of waving hands proves that most of the boys have already become absurd: they have no choice…A skilled teacher sets up many situations in such a way that a negative attitude can only be construed as treason”, p.69

For my group of juniors in an alternative school (there could be 9th through 12th graders) I would like them to tell me what they think of that teacher’s methods? And answer these questions
Would this type of teacher motivate you to be better in math? Would you conform to the lesson stereotype? Teacher or student?
What type of a report would you take home to your parents about what you learned in math today?
Look up the word ‘servile” and in a paragraph or two or write as much as you want; tell me if that definition means to you relative to the Laing anecdote

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Lesson 3 (for writing teachers)

The same class of fifth graders has just finished your last lesson on (psychological images) in poetry. If we take this analysis a bit further I think we can see that just maybe the monster that Louis Carroll was illustrating in ‘The Jabberwocky’ is an abstract ‘nonsense’ image designed to give the appearance of making sense. When in fact this insertion of the weird, the macabre, the grotesque may reflect the growing interest of writers in the science of psychology that was emerging at that time. And of course we are referring and relying on Laing’s inference that the social learning experience intruding in the classroom is in fact absurd, unspeakably more absurd and directly alarming than what is being reflected subconsciously by authors like Carroll, a child can respond to outside the range of ‘normal’ experience. (We know it has to be bothering them…what is going on in the world, atrocities, holocaust, senseless violence: but not in my teacher!)

The Newkirk (2001) article in the Elementary School journal indicates young readers enter the narratives they read to the extent they feel a part of the unfolding story; they are able to describe in their writing ‘the vivid detail, the physical positions they took in their writing that allowed them to experience the unfolding action’. Newkirk raises the question: do writers of fiction experience the same form of transportation into the worlds they create? And is this form of psychological instrument related to the pleasure students take in producing fictional worlds, that to the adult reader may seem devoid of any psychological reality?

One of the stories the author refers to is ‘Optimus Primal vs. Megatron”; it is a story filled with battles, force fields that mutate in ways that gain and lose power. What a student wrote creatively about the narrative is

“the optimas flew over out of the hatch and Megatron and their teams were close behind, trying to get to a mountain full of energon to make them more powerful”

When asked about the creative process that led to his story the student responded,

“When I write a story I sometimes get into it so much that I actually feel it is happening. I just write as fast as I can to get all my thoughts down because it feels like it is really happening like it’s war and I really have to think fast and be careful –the leaders(?) ” A classmate, Sarah, responded, “It’s kind of like watching a movie and your in it”.

I have very limited experience teaching elementary school children but I believe it is a mistake to indoctrinate, manipulate, underestimate the intelligence of, or attempt to shape perception of reality and psychological learning of the students at any stage of learning. Instead the instructor should be looking for ways to enable children, high school students, collegians and adults to use their creative mental resources to unload, unburden themselves as adults do, cope and find their way out of the myths, mazes, and boxes that Laing and the critics of social learning suggest, that adults or children have created for them. It is even more of a problem if the students do not have the reading ability and knowledge of conventions that will enable them to follow the leads, the leaders, or the bread crumb trail they (sometimes) leave behind.

Performance poem

Stopping by the Hall on a snowy evening
Who could forget the frost at midnight image
Of Coleridge in brief retrospect
To Gurney’s class at State
College long forgotten
How they wheeled me out of there
Scarce would I imagine to see
That scene déjà vu all over again
Reflected in brief words and eye exchange
A view with much more depth
Than I imagined in St. Stephen’s class.
Wrapped in a shawl, eyes
Flashing an instant in the glow of lamps
On the mall I pictured
Earlier in a paper drama
Under arbor beams of giant Acer and Elm
Your face now appearing in shadow
A chiaroscuro affecting likelihood (key er us cur oh)
That reality is greater than fiction
Among a montage is arranged
About other less enduring scenes:
What I can’t forget is the beauty
Of it and a theme that cements it
For that reason alone
Well worth the observation
Of a non-enervating experience
Converted in story board format
In my imagination forever etched
Of snowflakes embracing your face
How could I not be distracted
But only for that recursive snapshot
Realizing this was a moment meant to be
Later while so many others were
Artificial un aesthetic unworthy
Conforming not even with harlequin covers
Wherein lies popular validation
That low and behold identifies them
For the phenomenon they are
Not accountable to science
A different form of reality
And you notice the difference
From that moment a faded intuition
Sensed only several days later
A persistent image evolving through the lines
Wrenched from rubble of fragments
Reflecting ambiguous plurality experiences.

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Assignment: Nonsense poetry or is there something more to it?


Our 4th grade assignment for the next three class periods is to create a Performance Poem of our own based on the Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Jabberwocky’

In the first part of the lesson the instructor who is engaging in some experimental research about the effect of multi media on creativity in children, will pass out a copy of the poem; and, then will read it to the class; asking if there are any questions about the poem or the author.

The class will divide in workgroups of four or five students, while the instructor hands out drawing paper and coloring materials magic markers, color crayons, pencils, water colors, to each group; students engage in discussing the poem. Each student in the group will then generate a realistic or abstract image more than one is alright but maintain quality and consistency in your designs - of what the student thinks the Jabberwocky looks like; the drawings may include a title and notes but make sure they are legible. Your group members can make as many drawings as they want before the end of the class meeting. Each group should be thinking about a soundtrack based on a favorite song as a theme for their images. At the end the first lesson the students will turn in their drawings and pictures to the teacher.

For the second lesson of the sequence. The instructor will have scanned all the creations and added some transitions and effects and created a video of each group’s drawings for the class to enjoy and evaluate . The class discusses the videos of the Jabberwocky and votes on which of the groups has created the best images of the monster; each group gets to select a song that would accompany their video; and presents that to the instructor; each group hands in one favorite song, ideally an mp3 file; (this can be an original audio that is relevant or perhaps only tangentially relevant); or we can synchronize with a remote audio in the room for the performance

For the third and final lesson the instructor adds the audio element to the Jabberwocky videos the groups have presented; what we would like to see and hear then is the winning group standing before the class reciting the performance poem in unison as the music video plays for the class; we will present this production package for each group; then the class will vote again to see which performance in totality is ‘best of’. .

After all the Jabberwocky is supposedly about nothing and nonsense speech or writing that is designed to give the appearance of making sense; we want to know what the students make of this; was this really the author’s intent? After the performances do the students still agree on which is the best overall presentation? Why does the piece work? What was admirable about it, and so on. Do you see any correlation between the performance poem each group presented and what is being presented on You Tube or music videos in general ? What are the differences between our amateur productions and a professional performance poem presentation?

Finally was the Jabberwocky purely “nonsense poetry” or is there something more meaningful to it?

Performance poem critique

I admired several of Tim Siebel’s performance poems on You Tube, Tim Siebel -10 - Check Outside -Poetry worked because of the tone, and attitude and purpose of his dramatic interpretation performance that can be vaguely defined as a response to the Dah Lak performance relative to it on You Tube; demonstrating a complete counterpoint in style, diction and imagery to the Dah Lak poem; it struck me as a polished professional demonstration of a skill long developed with practice and performance; the more I got into it I realized the complexity of the tapestry he was tapping into.

Tim Siebel reminds me of Dan Ackroyd one of my all time favorite comedy actors who I believe succeeds because of his craftmanship and methodic acting. What makes Tim’s performance ‘work’ for me is his very effective delivery of a dramatic monologue using voice tonality that is controlled, analytical and diagnostic; it creates images, territory and borders of interest like the news media does: reporting the news and weather from its perspective (like the Weathermen, and Panthers?) on a moment to moment basis; alerting the public to deal with whatever alarming signs, songs, police sirens that might be ringing out of some sense of outrage that might lead to flashes of anarchy. Tim’s controlled performance is decorous counterpoint to anarchy of the Dah Lak poems; the ‘fearsome’ symbol laden media is sublimated to his remarkable oral interpretation, debunking the persistent suggestion there is something to fear besides fear itself.


He maintains a conservative poet image but that is refreshing; as Parra states poetry is offering improvements on the blank page; on the contrary in the Abyss video (on the same URL that relates to the Dah Lak poem) - the guitar sounded abysmal out of tune perhaps deliberately so Isaiah would sound better in his hip hop vocal. It was a very incongruous a bit grotesque URL that would have better been left blank. On the other hand I thought Tim S__ could have used a multimedia screen image behind him like that used in the Abyss video: perhaps Jacques Louis David’s, ‘ Socrates’

Tim’s is the best pure example of both a performance and a poem I found, because obviously the material object is represented in the person of the poet, lyrics, images, themes past and present, voice, drama; it is a skilled artistic performance based on and because of the poet’s dramatic use of tone, inflection, meter and rhythm (he actually moved as he spoke miming a man at work) that elevates it to the different form of reality I am looking for that separates popular from serious art.

Lessons 3&4

Lesson 3 At a group meeting for English teachers at our school we discuss the status of the department; after listening to the Principal who is very concerned for the livelihood of the school in the next education deficit funding bill facing the State Senate; aware teacher’s careers are also at stake in the school district in an at risk arts oriented inner city high school facing probation and loss of funding sources if scores continue to fall below national standards for the NCLB in the lower grades 3 and 4 for reading and at grades 10 and 11 for below national creative writing standards.

One of our sources is an article out of The Elementary School Journal (Strickland, 2001) that cites various teacher concerns and strategies they might be using to improve the test scores of the students in the elementary classroom. One question that arises is, do the teachers feel that ‘teaching to the test specifically’ would interfere with the traditional established curriculum; but in maintaining the status quo the teachers perhaps would hinder the process of change and reform; and, compromise needed for sustained funding for the school; this is an issue affecting school closure, parents, teachers, principals, school boards and stakeholders.

When comments are asked for as the discussion comes to close, I respond that from my experience I have noticed that the majority of student responses that do not meet the criteria of an above the mean score of 2.3 on a 1 to 4 scale generally have fundamental problems with usage, grammar, and mechanics that preclude them from scoring above 2. Only once a student has achieved that minimum level of competency can that student be expected to master more complex criteria of style, organization and content.

I commented it was imperative that an at risk school district school on the verge of closure, job loss and relocation: initiate a program to teach basics of language skill develop in those three core areas of language development beginning in kindergarten through 3rd grade; as integrated strategies that include retraining of teachers to major adjustment and change not only the students but the whole curriculum to the test of no child left behind program; thereupon creating the initiative of building core skills geared for meeting national standards in language arts, and reading that will bring the school up to speed on the NCLB.

Attendees are asked to fill out a questionnaire; extra sheets will be provided if anyone feels the need to make their opinions heard: on who and what is responsible for this crisis, and what we as teachers can do to fix it. Where should basic skills education begin? Kindergarten__, First grade__, Second__, 3rd…? Please feel free to vent. Your suggestions are necessary for the survival of the school charter. Data gathered will be used on a forthcoming Lichter report.

Lesson 4.

In my second lesson I am going to experiment with the idea of sequencing a series of studies that encourage the student to write creatively about their experience upon viewing a short slide presentation about a specific painting, and the life of the artist and the culture that led the artist to represent his image of the civilization of his day. Over the next semester we will be covering the works of artists from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century After the presentation that will consist of a visual of the painting; while some audio of the instructor accompanies the video; we are working on overdubbing and a soundtrack if need be. The video presentation will be followed by a discussion. Students can then form small groups to discuss the presentation; or, they can begin writing their paper; each student, must author his own paper, but ideas generated by the class discussion or small group can be used in the individual writing assignment.

The subject of our first lecture and video is THE FIFER by French artist Eduourd Manet, 1832-1883 that is considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful paintings. Manet eschewed formal school but was tutored by the artist Coutour; continuing his education he studied the works of old masters. He started selling his works at amateur exhibitions and art fairs. His work was viewed as controversial like Daumier for what was viewed as a pedestrian display that somewhat defied the classical tradition; but the vibrancy and energy of the dashing piper makes a profound impression that is initially deceptive in its display: the verdant olive background; a confident young musician in a vibrant parade costume; beautiful instruments; no shadow and so on. In your paper: prose or poetry, comment on the feeling you get from the Manet painting; is the music of the image pleasing and convincing for you? What do you make of the idea that Manet rebelled against the conventions of his era? Answer these questions or put it in your own words like a poem of approximately 35 lines; or, prose of at least one page. Make sure you write a critique not a report about the painting crafting in into a creative essay that expresses what you imagine of the beauty of the painting. What you did or did not appreciate, interpret our judge about the painting.

You might think of this assignment as a version 1.0 of the compound/ complex sentences Ms. J___has been teaching you in your 4th grade reading class last hour; that we have discussed the last few weeks; think of the compound sentence as your report –then add some commentary remarks, notes, explanation of how you feel as the second half of this sentence the complex part: and add that portion to the second half of the math problem. Now you have a simple basis of an essay; using that basic principle the compound leads to the complex; you have the context covered; take it as far as you want in two pages. Papers will be scored 1-4 taking into account content, organization, style, usage, mechanics and grammar: so have fun with this lesson.

The student will be asked to create a [blog] and produce a hard copy of the writing assignment that demonstrates competency in basic writing skills and expresses with clarity and simplicity the student’s impression of the painting, the artist, the context of the times and so on. We will discuss composition of that blog in a later lesson. You may also want to comment on the imitation, imagination, ideas and aesthetics; and, how these elements affect the image that emerges. Publish the assignment on your blog or turn in the assignment at our next class.

Pope Leo II

Riding the creative crested wave
Surfing the curls along the tube
Pipeline diligent at practice of intricacies
Re: composing the latest object d’art
Destined to be deconstructed
At best relegated to validation
Alignment [with] ideology [?] is requisite
Found dissecting images evolving of
Those photos destined to be included
In the next portfolio of emerging video
Becoming in the process mixed
Media art that brings together everything
One could possibly imagine into
Genre X view: deficit interest is this aggregate
Representing the fate predicted in the first
Song broadcast on urban bandstand:
Spin it KFAI: crash gearbox rocks
The spiral staircase where no
One’s allowed to escape their fate
Long since distributed in the free disc bin
Production every musician ever met except
Johnny Holm and his traveling troubadours:
Experienced his hand shake that night we
Played a critical crowd
At Clearbrook Liqour Lounge

Oh if only for the lonely meditate a moment
On Leo Kottke on stage_-- State Theatre
He alone does wondrous things
His tacit act: isolated figure on a plane
An entourage of tuned guitars
Twelve string Martin in hand advent
Hello(((crescendo becomes an amplified
Spokesman for the church of sound
You leave the bell tower spell bound
Your socks blown off
Acoustically. Mason Profit, Bo Diddley
Ain’t got nothin’ on you - Imagine what Leo could do
With a huge LCD multi media video screen
Behind him. He probably has one by now.
But what images are going to be
There finally is the question?
I think my class did dig my pastoral classic
Lesson: with mandolin and harpsichord video
Greensleeves plan,,B” as back up.

Lessons 1&2

The lesson I had in mind was based on two articles I found on Google Scholar. One was a “Report in Argument’s Clothing An Ecological Perpsective on writing instruction in the Seventh Grade class room” (Nystrand & Graff, 2001) in the Elementary School Journal; the other was “The Revolt against Realism: the attraction of fiction for young writers” (Newkirk, 2001) Elementary School Journal.

These two articles presented different scenarios in which instructors of writing assessed a particular issue of transfer of learning in the classroom. In the Nystrand & Graff article an experienced teacher with 30 years in the classroom encountered ‘unanticipated difficulties in helping her seventh grade students produce effective arguments in their written work; despite best practices of a skilled, dedicated teacher: hers was a challenging and not altogether successful effort. The fact that the students were still not writing arguments (and probably thought they were)” This situation is the research problem addressed in Nystrand.

There is a beautiful example of one of the best students writing of this kind of I would hesitate to say breed let’s say pedigree: created by the student writing sample p. 481. I have often seen this failure of the student to demonstrate some difference in organization and style that separates creative from report writing in scoring for No Child Left Behind with this same inability, lack of skill or defect at K-11 level and beyond. This example fits perfectly into the analogue I face with my adult corrections client who has a similar problem not understanding the difference between, and believing his writing and e-mailings which I assess at lower middle school at best scarcely resembles a format I recommend he correspond with attorneys and judges [in such mode and so on] are adequate but miss the tree for the forest consistently.

I would use the writing sample of the creative report as the group workshop media; and, each teacher would be encouraged to comment on their assessment and evaluation of the writing and in a short statement as possible suggest how that deficit might be addressed in their teaching practices. I am of the belief that there needs be substantial training in mechanics, usage and grammar; well before a student can be expected to write creatively (and style beyond that is one of the first indications of creativity) they must be well grounded in the conventions of language; and herein lies an major problem and so on. I would attempt to integrate lessons in the basics into each students personal learning recommendations for improvement portfolio. There probably needs be some threshold of performance for admission to advanced creative writing; a screening for fundamentals in conventions would achieve some of but not all those ends; but can these features of language that amount to errors in syntax and semantics in progressively more complex writing tasks be taught in 1st and 2nd grade is another question.

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My second lesson for discussion in the creative writing teacher small group is about the criteria young writers use to select their fictional story topics; and how the media has transformed from a largely paper and book bound state to the modern state of the art and education visual imaging delivery system.

Not surprisingly one of the criteria is ‘ease’ as one of the students writes

“ Writing fiction is easier than writing a true story because you don’t have to think so much; you can just make up stuff”

The article points out that adults and parents tend to look at this approach as a cop out on middle class ideals; but the students show a surprising resilience to this attitude and state of mind of their conservative elders; and ironically reflect the ideal of the leisure society

“When I write a story I sometimes get into it so much that I actually feel it happening; I just write as fast as I can to get all my thoughts down…it’s like war. I have to get my thoughts down…you have to think fast and be careful”

In the small group then we could briefly discuss each participant’s thoughts on the student’s writing, and the thought behind it; one of these issues is the way developing creative writers use the context of the modern media and how a writing teacher can use this knowledge to enhance the creative process for the students