selections from
Snorings of a Slumbering Educator: A Restless Dream in Progress
incubating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful within childrenin an age of Compliance Pedagogy
by bob nordling
Preface
When distrust revokes autonomy,collaboration evokes automatons.
Prentice A. (Pap) Pearsonin Resistance is Futile: The Assimilation from Teacher to Technician - They Won’t Feel a Thing!
With poetry, the imagination takes its place on the margin, exactly where the function of unreality comes to charm or to disturb--always to awaken--the sleeping being lost in its automatisms.
Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
If Descartes is correct in asserting “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), then it was inevitable that Prentice A. “Pap” Pearson, 'the gadfly of Alexandria' (not to be confused with Socrates 'the gadfly of Athens'), would buzz into existence. Others have asserted that “Pap”, the self-proclaimed 'poet lariat of education', does not truly exist but rather wrote (writes) under a pseudonym. Putting such controversies aside, the reader (along with leading educational visionaries currently assessing Pearson’s enduring importance) are sure to proclaim with one voice that the writings that follow are sheer “Pap”. One suspects that after shish ke-bobbing so many sacred cows, Pearson himself would caution his readers that his “Pap-al” pronouncements should be taken with a few grains of fallibility.
Bob NordlingThe Long Winter, 21st Century
discoverer and faithful archivist of the lost fragments of Prentice A. “Pap” Pearsonand 'grandstander on the shoulders of giants'
Pap's Universal Disclaimer
If with care utmostyou have always served,heave the first coconut.
Ah! Perchance we can reflect together,have a laugh at our common expense,for we are with certainty far from beingoverdrawn on our own foibles.
I am Onamato-peon, Hear Me Roar!
Bob Nordling (9/27/14)
“You can bend but never break me‘cause it only serves to make memore determined to achieve my final goalAnd I come back even strongernot a novice any longer‘cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul”
-- lyrics from “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton
Whenever we contrive
a one-size-fits-all curriculum
ergonomically contorted
to conduct all students
unto the same pace and place,
(the state’s testing room)
we short-circuit in ample ways
the flow of curiosity
and that revolt
against the resistance of the unknown
which empowers human ingenuity
through the course of winding cycles
of discovery,
and in its stead
substitute a series
of rehearsed accounts,
by a safari tour guide
attempting to kindle the passions
of an adventure
that never really happened.
As long as the tourists
have the opportunity to take home
a commemoration of the non(experience)
a mounted Rhino head
(completion of an Advanced Placement course)
a shaken water-filled globe raining golden faux-flakes
(perfect attendance certificate)
the substitution of a memento
in lieu of the momentum of progressive complexity
will go unnoticed
until the emboldened tourists
bluster into the actual wilds of life
and realize their acquiescence
in a rawr! deal.
Risk A-Verse
Bob Nordling(9/12/14)
Two schools of thought
ask the same question . . .
one in the open.
one as a student roster,
one calling it standard operating procedure,
one seeking to reclaim time for entertainment
diminishing rehearsal for future living.
one behind closed doors,
one as a collaboration team,
one calling it 'standards' operating procedure,
one seeking to reclaim time for compliance
diminishing the vitality of immediate learning.
Both are portraits distorted
by palettes beyond their control
both having in common
interests and aspirations on hold
each asking in spite of the other’s detestations . . .
“Is it on the test!”
The Lost Fragments of Prentice A. "Pap" Pearson
(2012)
The attraction of lifelong learning
is proportional to the distance between
how learning is undertaken
in schools
and how it has been taken up
in the great professions over the centuries.
Prentice A. “Pap” Pearson in The Gravity of Adult 'No Child Left Behind' Mass Hysteria: Orbit-uaries for 21st Century Learners
Life is not a multiple choice test,
except for those afflicted by multiple-personality disorder
and public education organizations.
Both are excused for unsound choices,
the former because the choices are involuntary,
the latter because they are economical.
Prentice A. “Pap” Pearson in Lowering the bar: Limbo-tomizing Generation Next
If Bernie Madoff received a century sentence
for accepting billions for investments
with non-existent fiscal value
and decades of false testaments,
when will the trillions of student hours
bound by Federal visions of equity
be redeemable for international learning parity
and thriving ‘in perpetuity’.
And do good intentions mitigate
for children’s passions so bridled
a Ken Sir-passing mine, can find
no such cause entitled.
Prentice A. “Pap” Pearson in The Bridge to Nowhere: Surface Knowledging the Achievement Gap (Vol. I: The Rote Less Travelled). Voodoo Pedagogics Press.
*With a wink to SIr Ken Robinson, author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything