The mind that never experiences "boredom" cannot hear its own voice. The consciousness that never encounters emptiness has no space in which to expand.
What an insightful comment on boredom is! You have captured the essence of what we seem to have lost. Yet boredom can force one to experiment. My six year old daughter copied a graphic artist we knew who produced hundreds of copies of one picture in her own way. This led to a lifelong interest in art. Then, bored with art, she turned to music. Now she has a rich life of interests based on fleeing boredom.
What a thought-provoking post. I learned only in my 60s that I have am mildly ADHD. I've made it this far, so it's more interesting than anything. As a graduate student, before my knees passed their use-by date, I found long runs extremely conducive to solving complex calculus problems. Today I'm a hot-yoga aficionado. The intense exertion in a 100 degree room is one of the few places that my mind actually stops flitting.
A second reflection. I recall a priest talking about starting a monastery in NYC. They had the privilege of a visit by Mother (now Saint) Teresa. The monastery focused on providing food, shelter and kindness to the homeless. The priest spoke with Mother Teresa of the lack of time they had for their mission. She advised them to be sure to pray a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day. No exceptions. He objected that they already did so, yet still remained overstretched. Her reply? Well, then, try praying two Holy Hours each day!
Finally, and perhaps most germane to CCR, I wonder how your reflections, Michael, might relate to Iain McGilchrist's work on the true (not the silly-but-widely-believed) right-brain/left-brain differences. He contends that our right brains apprehend and sort through the enormity of our experience, while the left brain specializes in using simplified models (created through right-brain observation (essentially subroutines or maps). [I deeply apologize to Prof. McGilchrist for making a hash of his work...]
Perhaps your "boredom" is somehow involved in sorting through and identifying patterns in our right brain's apprehension. These we later "turn into" useful maps embedded in our left brains.
i wonder if this can be done successfully in practice or if there are existing schools doing this? in a digital world that steals these moments of boredom, can students still reap the benefits of educational boredom? totally agree with the last paragraph that this is not just an alternative pedagogy but a cultural resistance
Brilliant prose as usual. This piece is probably a commentary on itself; a testament to what happens when someone values the meditative space of quiet reflection, even if the mainstream doesn’t.
Great exposition of the theory of contemplation. It's the sort of thing that makes a classical teacher get all warm and fuzzy inside until he realizes that it's all just about what we are aspiring to and not about what is actually happening with real young people in real classrooms.
The brute fact of the matter is that the modern school classroom, a space packed full of age-segregated adolescents who would rather be doing just about anything at all other than looking at a book or doing something that requires sustained thought - is not made for silence. And that's because, if we go back about 200 years to when education as we know it started, it was invented in a culture that had already left the old understanding of silence behind and so had to construct an educational system to fit the new reality of constant noise, constant activity, and constant obsessive measurement of results.
If the teacher does not keep students moving with rapid-fire Q&A or interactive practices on the board we're stressing attempts to copy everything down off of projected notes since there will be a test next week, undirected socializing and playing immediately starts and the entire point of being in a classroom is lost.
Of course this all sounds very negative. I actually believe all the aspirational stuff in your post. But I've been teaching for 15 years, and all I ever hear these days from anyone in administration is how I must make every student measurably "engage" in every class period, and if any of them aren't, I need to come up with new strategies to secure that result.
It’s aspirational, yes. But it’s also viable. We do it every day at Cincinnati Classical Academy. We can do it because we built the school from the ground up as a classical school, and we follow our aspirational mission. We are not alone.
I want to believe it is viable. What I'm trying to understand are practical strategies for making it viable under the conditions of a modern classroom.
What an insightful comment on boredom is! You have captured the essence of what we seem to have lost. Yet boredom can force one to experiment. My six year old daughter copied a graphic artist we knew who produced hundreds of copies of one picture in her own way. This led to a lifelong interest in art. Then, bored with art, she turned to music. Now she has a rich life of interests based on fleeing boredom.
Oh, so many roads to choose from.
What a thought-provoking post. I learned only in my 60s that I have am mildly ADHD. I've made it this far, so it's more interesting than anything. As a graduate student, before my knees passed their use-by date, I found long runs extremely conducive to solving complex calculus problems. Today I'm a hot-yoga aficionado. The intense exertion in a 100 degree room is one of the few places that my mind actually stops flitting.
A second reflection. I recall a priest talking about starting a monastery in NYC. They had the privilege of a visit by Mother (now Saint) Teresa. The monastery focused on providing food, shelter and kindness to the homeless. The priest spoke with Mother Teresa of the lack of time they had for their mission. She advised them to be sure to pray a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day. No exceptions. He objected that they already did so, yet still remained overstretched. Her reply? Well, then, try praying two Holy Hours each day!
Finally, and perhaps most germane to CCR, I wonder how your reflections, Michael, might relate to Iain McGilchrist's work on the true (not the silly-but-widely-believed) right-brain/left-brain differences. He contends that our right brains apprehend and sort through the enormity of our experience, while the left brain specializes in using simplified models (created through right-brain observation (essentially subroutines or maps). [I deeply apologize to Prof. McGilchrist for making a hash of his work...]
Perhaps your "boredom" is somehow involved in sorting through and identifying patterns in our right brain's apprehension. These we later "turn into" useful maps embedded in our left brains.
i wonder if this can be done successfully in practice or if there are existing schools doing this? in a digital world that steals these moments of boredom, can students still reap the benefits of educational boredom? totally agree with the last paragraph that this is not just an alternative pedagogy but a cultural resistance
"The mind furnished with poetry, philosophy, and sacred texts never experiences true emptiness; it always has material for contemplation."
Brilliant prose as usual. This piece is probably a commentary on itself; a testament to what happens when someone values the meditative space of quiet reflection, even if the mainstream doesn’t.
Great exposition of the theory of contemplation. It's the sort of thing that makes a classical teacher get all warm and fuzzy inside until he realizes that it's all just about what we are aspiring to and not about what is actually happening with real young people in real classrooms.
The brute fact of the matter is that the modern school classroom, a space packed full of age-segregated adolescents who would rather be doing just about anything at all other than looking at a book or doing something that requires sustained thought - is not made for silence. And that's because, if we go back about 200 years to when education as we know it started, it was invented in a culture that had already left the old understanding of silence behind and so had to construct an educational system to fit the new reality of constant noise, constant activity, and constant obsessive measurement of results.
If the teacher does not keep students moving with rapid-fire Q&A or interactive practices on the board we're stressing attempts to copy everything down off of projected notes since there will be a test next week, undirected socializing and playing immediately starts and the entire point of being in a classroom is lost.
Of course this all sounds very negative. I actually believe all the aspirational stuff in your post. But I've been teaching for 15 years, and all I ever hear these days from anyone in administration is how I must make every student measurably "engage" in every class period, and if any of them aren't, I need to come up with new strategies to secure that result.
It’s aspirational, yes. But it’s also viable. We do it every day at Cincinnati Classical Academy. We can do it because we built the school from the ground up as a classical school, and we follow our aspirational mission. We are not alone.
I want to believe it is viable. What I'm trying to understand are practical strategies for making it viable under the conditions of a modern classroom.