Free-fall, Take: lost count

[greensinger]

Permaculture course coming to a close in the next two weeks. Feeling both closer and more distant to this community as time passes. Slept fourteen hours Monday night. I'm having new experiences. Growing pains. I'm reading Freire and bell hooks, linking them with what Tom's been giving us glimpses of and remembering this time last year when I was desiring to learn to teach. But not just teach in the traditional sense, more to empower people to feel their agency in any situation, whether that's in a classroom, building a house, or speaking truth to power. One of the missing pieces in my mind just fit into place with the re-introduction of critical thinking as a critical tool. So much of most lives are based upon assumptions held to with near-religious fervor, and so much of my difficulty in communicating with people, I've felt over the years, is that I'm willing to turn a critical eye on my own assumptions and most folks don't even realize the option to do so exists. When faced with it head-on after years of indoctrination, the first reaction is fear, because it's unfamiliar territory. Pagans often call this "shadow-work," and for a reason: much of what's hidden doesn't feel pretty, and it will try to obscure itself.

So how do we introduce people who have been through the banking model of education to a critical pedagogy? Before they do the highest degree of harm to their kids?

...more on all of this later. For now, enjoy some links:

Conscious Parenting Family Circles (from Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies)

radical links