My 20 minute daily prolific writing(aka rambling) on why I agree with bell hooks

“If, as Thomas Merton suggests in his essay on pedagogy “Learning to Live,” the purpose of education is to show students how to define themselves in “authentically and spontaneously in relation” to the world, then professors can best teach if we are self-actualized”(20).
Whoa. While I am all for bell hooks theory and her expressivist values, I am suddenly realizing the reason why there may be so many critics of expressivism in the modern day education world. It takes WORK. Any system that requires a group or body of people to reflect inward is usually held at an arms’ distance. Take religion for example. It is always unpopular to self-actualize because it is a dangerous activity—one that removes the individual from the collective. There is a sense of polarity when discussing self-actualization, as if something within the inner personhood has swelled up to shout “no! something is not right here!” For if we did not do so, what would we be more than one of a million nameless beings that followed the major hearkenings of the newspapers and the Ipads and so on and so forth. I do not believe that self-actualization has occurred on many levels in our world today. If it had, we would not be seeing the fifteen minutes of fame stories that fill our mainstream media, or treating celebrity as a sort of pulpit for political change. We would instead be understanding of our spiritual state, our ethical needs and the opportunities for reason and change and work towards those ends. This leads me on to thoughts of why the movie “Avatar” was such a hit at the movies. It was a storyline that spoke to the inner man. There was something timeless in its quality, something that linked our world’s past with our current projecture and I believe that its message is something that could potentially spur on self-actualization in many the minds of mankind. There is a propensity towards clouded vision, towards linking yourself towards the onward pulling chain and assimilating to its structure and design. That is the nature of our college system! When I reflect back on my own experience in obtaining my undergraduate degree, I mostly see how relevant the instructors were to my speed and depth of learning. There were classes that inspired--classes that led me to new levels. And then there were the ones that comprised the majority of my academic experience. Droll, lacking of depth and meaning. So much knowledge, so little time. While this cram method may have to work for scenarios like history and mathematics, I believe that there is a freedom within the boundaries of English and writing. Instead of focusing on the mathematics of grammar within the composition classroom, I agree with bell hooks and believe that time would be better spent(in the interest of the individual and therefore the collective for everything in the interest of the individual is always in the interest of the collective)—that time would be better spent cultivating the internal, allowing for some inner spark to ignite and develop in your budding students over the course of the three or four months they have you. We know that life is a journey—we experience its waves each and every day—so as thinkers and composition teachers, allow your students the meaningful education that they desire and require.