Tuesday, September 26, 2017

where middle school students are



in search of meaning

“disrupt one’s thinking. . .”
an argument in a provocative book,
Disrupting Things: Why How We Read Matters,

the authors seem to make 
an assumption that the student
is too secure in world-view,
too allied with conventionality,
too complacent,
too allied with the way others say 
to think, to feel,

rather, I think the student
feels too alone, too different,
feels that the world of the classroom
often doesn’t speak to the truth
of what the student thinks, feels,

rather than “disrupting,”
it seems to me that the student
needs empowering the lonely self within
to find allies in its basic reach toward wholeness
in a book, a class, an expression 
of idea, feeling, insight,

I contend that students are not too secure
and need disruption of that security,
but rather that they know 
the world outside them
needs to be disrupted,
so that who they are
can express itself, become itself.

by Henry H. Walker

September 24, ‘17

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