The Curiosity Shoppe

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

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