THE DALLAS INSTITUTE
OF
HUMANITIES
AND
CULTURE’S
Cowan Center For Education
Newsletter Spring 2014 • Volume III, Issue III
From the Cowan Center Director Dear Colleagues and Friends,
On June 26, Principals gathered at the Dallas Institute to read, write, think and speak about the challenges of leadership in light of Sophocles’ classic play.
“Antigone: When Tyranny and Truths Collide,” was designed by the Dallas Institute’s Cowan Center to help these dedicated educators end their year in thoughtful community. “Then reflect, my son: you are poised once more, on the razor-edge of fate.” —Tiresias to Creon
I forgot how much I love the novel MobyDick. Reading it is a challenge, to be sure, but each even-numbered summer I get to re-read it for The Epic Tradition Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers. Diving through the cetological chapters demands a fortitude not usually called for in daily life, but I always feel a peculiar kind of pride that I have weathered the storm by the time I finish. Of course, getting through the rest of the novel is no small matter, but there again, I am always pulled into the drama of Ishmael’s tale and Ahab’s woe and discover new insights—disturbing and delightful— about life each time. That’s because the novel is a “classic,” a topic on my mind, having just come from discussions about great works in the Lyric Tradition II Summer Institute in June. I like what T. S. Eliot says about a “classic”: “If there is one word on which we can fix, which will suggest the maximum of what I mean by the term ‘a classic,’ it is the word maturity,” and those are Eliot’s italics. “Maturity,” like “wisdom,” is one of the words you rarely hear in educational discussions, and I find this disconcerting. One would hope that in a matter such as education, the concept of maturity would be a hallmark, a defining feature, to be found both in the maturity of thought of those who put forward new ideas and in the increased maturity of those who have received an education. Unfortunately, neither is the case. More often, our students are taught to value fiscal viability over intellectual or emotional maturity as the end of an education, and ideas are typically presented with much fanfare in the marketplace as the next “big idea,” which is usually more “big” than legitimate “idea,” at least as far as thoughtfulness is concerned. In his book Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, Mark Edmundson credits this devaluing to our consumerist culture, which sees a new thing as infinitely superior to the old thing, regardless of its value.
Note the advances from one generation to the next on the iphone, or the upgrades that computers seek out in the night. Although my own computers proclaim the achievement of these acquisitions to me on many mornings, I rarely find that they affect my productivity. Eliot had something to say about this proclivity back in 1941: “In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism.” By “provincialism,” Eliot means, in part, a “distortion of values, the exclusion of some, the exaggeration of others, which springs not from lack of wide geographical perambulation, but from applying standards acquired within a limited area, to the whole of human experience.” This is where Moby-Dick and other great, difficult works and problems from all the disciplines come in. Things that challenge and wound us, that make us feel inadequate and vulnerable as well as elated and joyful, these are the things that mature us in ways that familiar, safe things can never do. We know this, so we’re not doing our students any favors by breaking everything down into bytes that can be digested in the first go. Furthermore, we’re not doing our teachers or our administrators any favors by giving them the biggest job in the world—that of building human beings—and then not encouraging them to continue developing the subtleties of their own imaginations with ongoing study in things beyond management theory. Education is an epic venture. We should be writing it with “condor’s quills...dipped in Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand,” as Ishmael explains the epic project, giving all of us the opportunity to take on the qualities of the “classics” that make them profound and endure.
To read the Cowan Center Newsletter online, go to the Cowan Center link on the homepage of the Dallas Institute’s website: dallasinstitute.org.
Becoming a “Teacher of Worth” Reflections by an Alumna
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n Evaluation of the 1987 Summer Classics Institute At the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture It is difficult for me to assess the value of the Classics Institute this summer, because its value seems measureless. The four weeks I spent there during the summer months, and the final week spent at home synthesizing the insights of the summer in a long paper, seemed to me islands of delight in the uncertain and stormy seas of a teacher’s life. The unhesitating and forthright pursuit of the joy of study, learning, and intellectual community at the Institute seems, to my admittedly limited experience, uniquely connected to this particular community of scholars. I have attended some fine institutions of learning, but nowhere have I found the outstanding qualities of high-mindedness, educational guidance, and intellectual leadership embodied in Dr. Cowan, Dr. Gower, and their exceptional teaching staff. If the purpose of the Institute is to “renew” teachers, I believe that it more than fulfills this promise. I came to teaching somewhat later in life than most, and, though I possessed a fine education, it was more than ten years behind me. My studies in English and intellectual history seemed long ago and far away that first year of teaching, and as I recently stumbled through that first year, I often wondered despairingly whether I knew anything at all. Though I tried not to become one, I saw many teachers who had simply given up trying to teach any sort of higher-order learning at all, preferring routine skill tests and worksheets with concrete answers to probing discussion, stimulating lectures, and demanding essay examinations. I came to see that the reason for this
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sad state of affairs was that teachers themselves were not sure enough of their own wisdom to actively demand real intellectual development from their students—these teachers were fleeing humiliation. During my summer at the Teacher’s Institute, my own education of long ago was rescued, dusted off, shaken up, healed, reformed, and extended, and I myself have been sent back to my classroom with renewed confidence, insight, and capability. My faith in myself was renewed through the loving care, careful direction, and unstinting praise of the Institute staff. I think that all the teachers assembled this summer felt that love and care, from the moment we entered the Institute each day, breathing its bookish, sanctified air, smelling the crisp scent of fresh coffee and the breakfast buffet set out welcomingly. Each finely tuned lecture sent us, stimulated, to our morning seminars; awed, but not frightened by the work being studied and by its possibilities. Each seminar challenged us to a duel of wit and insight. Each noon fed our souls as well as our stomachs with fine food, good talk, and companionship. Each afternoon workshop synthesized and cemented our insights of the morning hours. I came to the Institute each morning with anticipation and a sense that the day was electric with possibilities; I left for home each afternoon replete, as from a feast, in a glow of contentment and wonder. There is no subject that I teach (and I will teach four this year, in English and history) that will be unaffected by my experience this summer with the Classics Institute. My planning for school during the past four weeks has included Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, which, because of the Institute, I will
be bold enough to teach thoroughly. The knowledge about these specific works that I gained during the Institute will be valuable, but the larger benefit I gained concerns my knowledge of how to teach them. The models with which I was provided in
“If the purpose of the Institute is to ‘renew’ teachers, I believe that it more than fulfills this promise.”
Drs. Cowan, Gower, Allums, Hoyle, Slattery, and Stewart, showed me the right way to teach literature, and through their wise guidance and generous praise gave me the confidence to attempt again this year the work of teaching the great ideas of the past to the students of today. August 21, 1987
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first attended the Dallas Institute of Humanities’ summer programs for teachers in 1987 and 1988, shortly after I began my career as an educator. Those classes made me a teacher of worth, one who was capable of helping students transform them-
selves through the world of ideas. Now, 28 years later, having just finished taking an invigorating weeklong journey into the world of the lyric in the new Lyric Tradition II Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers, I am reflecting on the experience and realizing that “coming home” to the Dallas Institute this summer was exactly what I needed to be able to start my new school year with passion and drive and a renewed commitment to the mission of helping students to fall in love with literature, language, and thought. Whether I was sitting on the shady porch of that beautiful old house on Routh Street talking to my colleagues about T.S. Eliot, striving to express my ideas about the Fugitive poets in the seminar room, or musing over my writing notebook in the garden with a yellow cat prowling encouragingly near my feet, the fact is that over the course of this past week, I have been re-visioning myself as a teacher, thinker, reader, and writer in ways that cannot fail to inform my classroom practice. During my many years as a classroom teacher, lecturer, and writer, I have often encountered other teachers who are past participants in the Summer Institutes. When I do, I’m never surprised to find that they are individuals of immense curiosity, empathy, spirit, and passion. That’s what the programs that are now in the Dallas Institute’s Cowan Center do to people. They light a fire that does not go out, a fire that warms and inspirits their classrooms, a fire that ignites in their students a desire to embark on the heroic quest of the intellect. These teachers are the people who are truly “of use, “ as Marge Piercy says in her poem, the people on whom one can count to stand shoulder to shoulder fighting with all their strength the rising tide of mediocrity, complacency, and entropy that threatens to enervate our culture and our land. What makes the experience of the Summer Institutes unique is its emphasis on empowering teachers by giving them a genuine experience of scholarship of the best kind—the kind that replicates itself because its gen-
erosity of spirit is so great that it cannot fail to bear fruit. At the Summer Institutes, human beings working together for the good of all enter into the great works of human thought to bring forth both an individual and a collective wisdom that can transform the world. If teachers do not have a place to do the important work of the intellect that often is impossible in the day-today sound and fury of the American public school, they will lose, or never gain in the first place, the understanding and wisdom that enables them to make their disciplines a way of knowing the world, a way of interpreting experience. And if teachers lose the ability to do that, our students will never know that their studies are not a series of irrelevant tasks, but a way in which they can learn the most important lesson of their lives—the skill and art of extracting meaning from the experiences of their lives. June 24, 2014 Lynne Weber holds the Trustee Master Teacher Chair in the Humanities at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas. She attended the 1987 and 1988 Summer Institutes and returned for her first Lyric Tradition Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers in June, 2014. A 28-year veteran teacher, Lynne currently teaches 12th grade Advanced Placement Literature and Composition and 10th grade English.
For information about how to support teacher learning at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, contact Emily Hargrove, Director of Communications and Development. 214-981-8820 ehargrove@dallasinstitute.org
“If teachers do not have a place to do the important work of the intellect that often is impossible in the day-to-day sound and fury of the American public school, they will lose the understanding and wisdom that enables them to make their disciplines a way of knowing the world, a way of interpreting experience. And if teachers lose the ability to do that, students will never know that their studies are not a series of irrelevant tasks, but a way in which they can learn the most important lesson—the skill and art of extracting meaning from the experiences of their lives.”
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The Inaugural Lyric Tradition II Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers The Lyric Tradition II Summer Institute completes the genre wheel, the poetic “kinds” as described in Dr. Louise Cowan’s literary genre theory. It was truly a “Summer Institute” week. The teachers were eager and dedicated, the staff was gracious and the work was good. And for providing support that enabled us to do the program, we are particularly grateful for our donors—Deborah and Gary Bieritz, Danielle and Gus Gonzales, and Dr. Willard Spiegelman. June 16-20, 2014 Forty teachers enrolled, alumni of the Epic Tradition and Tragedy/Comedy Summer Institutes Syllabus: Monday: Spatial Form and Image T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound Tuesday: The World’s Body The Fugitive Poets Wednesday: The Redress of Poetry The Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes Thursday: A Universe Shared with Creatures Friday: The Ongoing Struggle to Redeem the Time— Contemporary Poetry (brief lectures by each participant)
Comments by 2014 participants: “Again I say that the Institute altered my teaching of literacy. Teachers need to be overcome with a text, to be put back in the learner’s seat. Teachers need to be reminded of how important it is to read, think, talk, rethink, and talk more about a text. THIS work is hard but when teachers experience it they are more comfortable in replicating these behaviors in their classrooms. As always, thank you, Dallas Institute, for exposing me to new work and for holding my hand as I attempt to wade through these waters.” Doretha Allen Literacy and Academic Facilitator Dallas ISD 4
“The Lyric II class, like all my experiences with Cowan Center programs, inspired new perspectives and renewed my passion for both my dedication to wisdom and my own love of learning. Being in the Lyric classes the last two summers with people, some of whom with which I’ve been learning for 15 years, dedicated to poetry, learning, teaching, and humanity has been one of the most satisfying personal and professional experiences of my life. I come to the Dallas Institute to renew my soul. Even when events are difficult, I leave renewed. I am able to return to the world with some glimmer of hope because I am made whole again.” Jennifer Gunn English Department Chair Rockwall-Heath HS “Attending this class was spiritually and intellectually revitalizing. I had no idea how much I needed this restoration, and I am so grateful to you.” Brian Hudson 9th and 10th grade English The Hockaday School “As an educator for almost 30 years, I have participated in a plethora of AP workshops, campus trade days, seminars, team exercises, education retreats, and other exercises in ‘teacher development,’ but none of these enriches and transforms me like the experience at the Summer Institute.” Peter Kenny Advanced Placement English IV Flower Mound HS “I think we all felt the poetry and the communion-like effect. We felt the poetry and heard its music. Thank you for all you do and for caring.” Dámaris Luckey 9th-12th grade Spanish Booker T. Washingon HSVPA Dallas ISD “The Summer Institute always makes me cry for the beauty of it.” Amy Moore Art and Painting, Singley Academy Irving ISD