Sunday, December 11, 2011

More Paolo

Your Existence Gives Me Hope
I like being human, being a person, precisely because it is not already given as certain, unequivocal, or irrevocable that I am or will be "correct," that I will bear witness to what is authentic, that I am or will be just, that I will respect others, that I will not lie and thereby diminish the value of others because of my envy or even anger of their questioning my presence in the world. I like being human because I know that my passing through the world is not predetermined, preestablished. That my destiny is not a given but something that needs to be constructed and for which I must assume responsibility. I like being human because I am involved with others in making history out of possibility, not simply resigned to fatalistic stagnation. Consequently, the future is something to be constructed through trial and error rather than an inexorable vice that determines all our actions.  - Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

A space to keep inspiring things . . .

A thirdspace?
A cupboard for mismatched china?

We should devote ourselves humbly but perseveringly to our profession in all its aspects: scientific formation, ethical rectitude, respect for others, coherence, a capacity to live with and learn from what is different, and an ability to relate to others without letting our illhumor or our antipathy get in the way of our balanced judgment of the facts. - Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

The planet is set up for
Wild things, not money and reputations, not desks
And questions, but the obliterating intelligence of
Pure play. - Aram Saroyan
No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own selfimportance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority. - Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
"[W]e cannot think of ethical questions in regard to elephants, for example" - Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom



















While Homo sapiens were emerging from the basic life-support structure, intervening creatively in the world, they invented language to be able to give a name to things that resulted from its intervention, "grasping" intellectuality and being able to communicate what had been "grasped." It was becoming simultaneously clear that human existence is, in fact, a radical and profound tension between good and evil, between dignity and indignity, between decency and indecency, between the beauty and the ugliness of the world. In other words, it was becoming clear that it is impossible to humanly exist without assuming the right and the duty to opt, to decide, to struggle, to be political. All of which brings us back again to the preeminence of education experience and to its eminently ethical character, which in its turn leads us to the radical nature of "hope." In other words, though I know that things can get worse, I also know that I am able to intervene to improve them. - Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Friday, December 9, 2011

Final Papers

It's finals time.  I have many papers due in not many days.  Tea is called for.  The mismatched china matches the mismatched bits in mah mahnd.
 
UPDATE:
Also, study music.