The Lure of the Transcendent

Collected Essays By Dwayne E. Huebner

Dwayne Huebner, Dwayne Huebner, Vikki Hillis, William F. Pinar, Vikki Hillis, William F. Pinar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780805825343
• eBook ISBN: 9781136496110
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In 1969, Bill Pinar was privileged to study with Dwayne Huebner at Teachers College. In a large room with 70 others, he watched an extraordinary figure in the distance--speaking a tongue few of them grasped--whom they all found compelling. They knew they were in the presence of a most remarkable and learned man. Huebner helped create the world which contemporary curriculum scholars now inhabit and labor to recreate as educators and theoreticians. His generative influence has been evident in many discourses, including the political, the phenomenological, the aesthetic, and the theological. This volume situates Huebner's work historically, emphasizing the ways it foreshadowed the reconceptualization of the field in the 1970s.

1

The Capacity for Wonder and Education

(1959)

I suppose it is strange that an elementary educator should concern himself with such an esoteric topic—it seems more appropriate for a psychologist or philosopher to be discussing this than for a curriculum worker. But perhaps it is only a person who is psychologically or philosophically naive who would either conceive of such a topic or feel the need to speculate about it. Furthermore, I do not expect to provide you with information—facts, but I hope with something to think about. However, as I have thought about why I should do this, two reasons justify such boldness on my part. First, as an elementary teacher and educator I have had opportunity to witness the gradual change in children from the spontaneous, curious, poking, exploring, questioning, wondering child—a child full of awe in pre-school, kindergarten, even first grade to the stodgy, accepting, pliant, unresponsive student in the fifth grade, in the freshman year in college, and, indeed, in graduate school classes.

Only as a result of unusual teaching do we break through this mask formed by the repressive requirements of education to again see glimpses of the spark, the curiosity, and the wonder and awe of the young child. Frequently only at the doctoral level and sometimes not even then, where the student can explore on his own, seeking out newness and strangeness, going down dark paths alone and without fear, urging his major professor to follow along—is the pre-school spirit of joy, of curiosity, and wonder regained. What happens? What do we do in our educational program to snuff out the spark of curiosity and wonder and awe—indeed, kill the child for the sake of conformity and functional performance in this world of technical proficiency? This is one reason why the capacity for wonder should be probed and the influence that education has on this capacity looked into.

But I have another reason. I am not satisfied with our existing knowledge about the educational process. I am sure I am not alone. We need better knowledge in order to operate in the schools more effectively. To get this knowledge we have associated ourselves as professional people with the behavioral sciences. We have been led to believe that through the scientific study of behavior, institutions, and society we will eventually produce the needed controlling and predictive knowledge. I believe that this is so, otherwise, I would not be here.¹

But we are in a curious position in education, for we must run the schools—we must educate the younger generation and ourselves. To do this job we need to use all available knowledge and more. We cannot postpone the educational task until we have the results of the “scientific” knowledge.

But this is where, I think, a problem exists. Because of our desire to have better knowledge and our dependency on the behavioral sciences, and because of our need to operate in the best fashion that we can right now—we have turned largely to one channel of information about human beings, and neglected some others. We have become overly dependent on the behavioral science channel. Though the information coming through is incomplete, charged with static, we nevertheless accept the picture we receive as the real representation. Yet during the next ten - twenty - or one hundred years that picture may change considerably. This, dependency would not be bad, if we, as practicing school people would recognize the transitory, incomplete, static-filled nature of the pictures. Of course, we can build educational programs around this incomplete and perhaps inaccurate picture. The difficulty is that this is not the only channel of information about human beings available to educators. It is not adequate that we base educational programs on psychological or behavioral science models. Behavioral scientists are not the only ones who speculate about and know men, women, and children. True, the behavioral scientist has perhaps the most communicable empirically valid model. But scientific validity is not the only kind of validity. In the existential situation in which we must plan for and act with boys and girls, we must bring all of our knowledge and creative powers to bear, not just those provided by the behavioral scientist.

In our concern to make the study of education scientific we have ignored other channels. The philosopher studies and formulates knowledge about humankind. So does the theologian, and indeed, the poet, the novelist, and the playwright. But I am content for now with the philosopher. As educators we frequently assume that the only contribution that the philosopher can make to education is epistemological (the study of knowledge) or axiological (the study of value). Our educational philosopher is so busy playing with the meaning of meaning and the problem of value that the metaphysical role of the philosopher in the study of the nature of being—of existence itself has been ignored. We forget that the present behavioral science conception of human beings seems to be rooted in one metaphysical tradition. But there are other traditions. And it is with one of these other traditions that I wish to concern myself.

I have found the writing of certain existentialists extremely thought-provoking. I have been reading casually, unsystematically, and perhaps without real comprehension, some of the writings of Gabriel Marcel, Buber, Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Jasper, and Heidegger. They have something to offer not found in behavioral science. Here is a channel of information about human being to which we as professional educators have not been attuned by the producers and users of educational knowledge. As university people we do an injustice by not making these notions available to the educator. Some ideas or concepts may lack socially verifiable, empirical support. But such a lack does not indicate that the concepts or ideas are false or useless, only that the idea and concept have not been fed into the empirical world of the behavioral sciences as rapidly as they might have. The work of some European existential psychologists brought together by Rollo May in his book Existence,² is beginning to bridge the gap between European philosophy and the behavioral sciences.

The idea of the capacity for wonder helps me organize some of the reflections derived from this reading—and makes transparent, to some extent, some problem areas in education. Let me try to communicate to you the meaning I have in mind when I use the word “wonder.”

Wonder has at least two meanings. Frequently we associate it with the feeling of doubt, curiosity, inquiry. We say “I wonder if” or “he wonders whether”—and we associate with it such synonyms as speculate, conjecture, ponder, theorize, question, surmise, imagine. Certainly this is a common meaning, but I have in mind the other sense of the word. The meaning which is more clearly associated with such synonyms as astonishment, amazement, surprise, fascination, awe. I think that it is akin to what Goethe might have had in mind when he said that the “very summit of man’s attainment is the capacity of marvel.” Its meaning seems to be conveyed by this poem of Christina Fraser Tytler.

Sometimes, as in the summer fields

I walk abroad, there comes to me

So strange a sense of mystery,

My heart stands still, my feet must stay,

I am in such strange company.

I look on high—the vasty deep

Of blue outreaches all my mind;

And yet I think beyond to find

Something more vast—and at my feet

The little bryony is twined.

And turning suddenly away,

Grown sick and dizzy with the sense

Of Power, and mine own impotence,

I see the gentle cattle feed

In dumb unthinking innocence.

(“In Summer Fields,” Christina, Catherine Fraser-Tytler)³

A master of Zen Buddhism captured it with these words, “Have you noticed how the pebbles of the road are polished and pure after the rain? And the flowers? No word can describe them. One can only murmur an ‘Ah’ of admiration.”

Wordsworth expresses the sense in this verse:

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So it was when my life began;

So it is now, I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me die!⁴

Flaubert gets at this same kind of thing when he writes,

Often, appropo of no matter what, a drop of water, a shell, a hair, you stopped and stayed motionless, eyes fixed, heart open. The object you contemplated seemed to encroach upon you, by as much as you inclined yourself toward it, and bonds were established.

Wonder seems to be related to the sense of mystery that Schweitzer describes in his memoirs:

After all, is there not much more mystery in the relations of man to man than we generally recognize? None of us can truly assert that he really knows someone else, even if he has lived with him for years. Of that which constitutes our inner life we can impart even to those most intimate with us only fragments; the whole of it we cannot give, nor would they be able to comprehend it. We wander through life together in a semi-darkness in which none of us can distinguish exactly the features of his neighbor; only from time to time, through some experience that we have of our companion, or through some remark that he passes he stands for a moment close to us, as though illumined by a flash of lightning. Then we see him as he really is. After that we again walk on together in the darkness, perhaps for a long time, and try in vain to make out our fellow-traveller’s features.⁵

It is the strange fascination that you feel as you watch the butterfly circle over the milkweed plant in the meadow. You recognize it as a swallowtail and your mind goes back to its caterpillar stage, to its life in the cocoon, to an awareness that it doesn’t have too long to live, and you ask how it is ever able to locate the flowers and the milkweed as it flies yards away but circles back for a perfect landing. You know all these things or can find out more, but still you look and come eventually to the awareness: yes, there it is, and here am I. You go from what Buber calls an I-It relationship to an I-Thou relationship. The butterfly and the fellow traveler and the rainbow and the pebble are no longer just objects and you a subject. They too become subjects which cannot be completely grasped. They have an existence alongside your existence. They too occupy this world and are independent of you, not related to you or your needs. They will continue to occupy the world until their time comes, just as you will continue to occupy it until your time comes.

You encounter these phenomena as other existents and if they have sensory powers they encounter you as another existent. Then the two of you are in relationship, participating in life together, journeying down through time, side by side, together, yet apart.

The educator has accepted too readily the logical division of the world into subjects and objects. He identifies too easily with Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am,” deriving existence from thinking. But it is this encounter with the world, not as an object but as another subject existing independently of a thought, which produces the feeling of awe and wonder. We have this capacity for wonder. It is possible for us to meet this world and the other subjects which make up this world and to stand face to face with them—to feel wonder, amazement, a sense of mystery.

But do we? In general, we don’t. The capacity for wonder seems to have eluded us. It is either underdeveloped or suppressed. Why? What is there about our life which inhibits the functioning or the development of this capacity for wonder?

The reasons, perhaps, are many. Some existentialists seem to have a common core of meaning which hints of the cause. Buber would identify the cause as an over-emphasis on experience and the resulting I-It attitude, to the neglect of relationship and the corresponding I-Thou attitude.

Berdyaev would perhaps label the basic factor for this lack of wonder as our tendency for objectivism—placing everything out before us, in front of us to be grasped, instead of beside us; our making of everything an object to us, rather than a subject with which we communicate. Jaspers would look askance at the emphasis on technique and mass-need meeting by rationalized production. Marcel suggests that the spirit of abstraction, and the tendency to place function uppermost might be the cause. Let me try an interpretation of the possible cause. It is an oversimplification, but will point to what I mean and perhaps what they mean.

We tend to be an extremely anthropocentric if not egocentric people. Our concern is naturally enough for our own need meeting. Hence, the focus of many of our activities and experiences is in terms of what the experience can provide for us. This is not bad, and is certainly natural, but coupled with this is an orientation to the future and the neglect of the present. We focus on the process of becoming rather than on being. We miss the wonder of the here and now for the expected glory or fullness or richness or security of the future. But the struggle for that future and for the betterment of the present in that future makes us less sensitive to the immediacy and wholeness of the present. Rather, we are forced to become selective, to analyze the present to see what can be abstracted from it for later use. Hence, we do not focus on the totality and uniqueness of the phenomena that we encounter. We do not meet it as a subject beyond us, over against us. We see only those objective aspects which have significance and meaning for our need meeting or for the future. Henri Bergson, I think, states this very well in his essay on laughter.

I look and I think I see, I listen and I think I hear, I examine myself and I think I am reading the very depths of my heart. But what I see and hear of the outer world is purely and simply a selection made...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• A Note on Gender and Language
• Introduction by William F. Pinar
• Publication History of the Collected Essays
• 1 The Capacity for Wonder and Education (1959)
• 2 Is The Elementary Curriculum Adequate? (1961)
• 3 Politics and the Curriculum (1962)
• 4 The Art of Teaching (1962)
• 5 Knowledge: An Instrument of Man (1962)
• 6 Knowledge and the Curriculum (1962)
• 7 Classroom Action (1962)
• 8 New Modes of Man’s Relationship to Man (1963)
• 9 Politics and Curriculum (1964)
• 10 Curricular Language and Classroom Meanings (1966)
• 11 Facilitating Change as the Responsibility of the Supervisor (1966)
• 12 Curriculum as Concern for Man’s Temporality (1967)
• 13 Language and Teaching: Reflections in the Light of Heidegger’s Writing about Language (1969)
• 14 The Leadership Role in Curriculum Change (1966/1971)
• 15 Education in the Church (1972)
• 16 Toward a Remaking of Curricular Language (1974)
• 17 The Thingness of Educational Content (1974)
• 18 The Tasks of the Curricular Theorist (1975)
• 19 Poetry and Power: The Politics of Curricular Development (1975)
• 20 The Moribund Curriculum Field: Its Wake and Our Work (1976)
• 21 An Educator’s Perspective on Language about God (1977)
• 22 Toward a Political Economy of Curriculum and Human Development (1977)
• 23 Developing Teacher Competencies (1979)
• 24 Babel: A Reflection on Confounded Speech (1985)
• 25 Education in the Congregation and Seminary (1985)
• 26 Spirituality and Knowing (1985)
• 27 The Redemption of Schooling: The Work of James B. Macdonald (1985)
• 28 Religious Metaphors in the Language of Education (1985)
• 29 Christian Growth in Faith (1985)
• 30 Teaching as a Vocation (1987)
• 31 Practicing the Presence of God (1987)
• 32 Educational Activity and Prophetic Criticism (1991)
• 33 Education and Spirituality (1993)
• 34 Can Theological Education Be Church Education? (1993)
• 35 Challenges Bequeathed (1995)
• Autobiographical Statement
• Chronology of Events (CV)
• Author Index
• Subject Index