Rummaging in the Fields of Light

Book excerpt: At issue is what elevates standards. The common opinion seems to be that standards can elevate themselves. The underlying assumption here is that unless you program such activities, professionals won't develop; they will just teach, a process from which, presumably, nothing of value is to be learned. Mastered or flipped, reinvention of classrooms exacts a high cost, as indeed, does all teaching wherever it is carefully and lovingly taught. I would revise the old adage about teaching: "Those who can, teach; those who either can't or haven't shouldn't." It takes a lifetime to discover that those in authority may not know what is better, that older need not imply wiser. It is a difficult lesson for a teacher, enthroned with degrees and remuneration, to teach. The irony of the term "empowerment" is that power cannot be taught or acquired as if it were simply some specialized fund of information. Only we have privileged access to the process that shifts and roils inside our own experience. And only we can alter that process once it makes itself known to us. The mind we have is the only one we get: furnished or unfurnished.