In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter Seven recollecting After explicating in the first chapter of this book Whitehead’s three stages of education, I attempted in the subsequent five chapters to expand and deepen what the stages mean by drawing analogies between them and triads of concepts from some of Whitehead’s metaphysical writings. Each analogy has been unique, an attempt to look afresh at romance, precision , and generalization from the standpoint of the ideas developed in a book of Whitehead’s not written with education in mind. My focus has not been to on developing an overall argument about the stages, nor about Whitehead’s metaphysics, although I have suggested strands of continuity from chapter to chapter and presumed the analogies to be analogous. In this concluding chapter, I change focus, recollecting how the cumulative effect of the five different analogies enhances our understanding of each of the three stages of education. I follow these refocusing recollections of romance, precision, and generalization with a similar one concerning the metaphysical perspectives that stimulated the fashioning of those analogies. In each of the four cases, I proceed by six numbered sets of paragraphs where each number stands for the chapter of this book contributing the features I’m recollecting, concluding with a few additional paragraphs that I’ve labeled with this present chapter’s number to indicate their function as a general concluding recollection. I call what I’m doing in this chapter a process of recollection because I’m not summarizing the prior chapters but collecting some of their salient features into new versions of what I’ve said, complete with some fresh allusions and applications they have suggested. I’m interpreting my interpretations , assessing their significance and import, just as we always do when recollecting what we have previously thought or done. 189 190 Modes of Learning romance 1. Our education should begin with romance, the salient feature of which is an appreciative openness to the world around us. Both the appreciation and the openness are natural proclivities, although our teachers must often work against habits learned elsewhere that have accustomed us to dampen down such spontaneities. Their pedagogical challenge is to kindle where needed our delight in the things we come upon, to encourage us to enjoy this object or person, that occurrence or happenstance, for what it is. These things appear before us, and we embrace them delightedly. The things of the world are connected, however, and so each new thing we encounter is steeped with import. It points beyond itself, luring us away from its solitary immediacy toward neighboring things that it also is or implies, including possibilities it might harbor or could even become. In this sense, romance is discursive: our experiences fit together, they tell a story. We enjoy not merely this or that but the adventure of which they are components. Appreciative openness is a process of discovery, an exploration of what we experience that begins with what is nearby and leads us somewhere else. Imaginative curiosity should reign supreme in a romantic learning environment, with us as its loyal subjects. 2. Appreciation of this sort pays no attention to truth. It’s concern is with things as they seem to be, not as they really are. Colors and sounds attract our interest without our needing to know what they are colors of or by what means the sounds were made. We sigh comfortably at the rustle of a wind in the willow and are awestruck by the gale-force winds of a nor’easter, without feeling any need to know the causes or consequences of either. It is enough to enjoy the moment and leave the explanations for some other time. And we can assist Mr. Toad in his escape from prison or warn Ulysses that the storm is driving him dangerously close to Scylla, without caring one whit that what we are imagining is true. It is enough that our fancy has been tickled. This attitude is aesthetic; it is the way of approaching experience we associate with the arts, with music and painting, poetry and fiction, dance and theater. What is valued is the beauty of the sounds or images, of the bodily movement or the developing storyline. We create beautiful objects as well as enjoy them, and we easily imagine the beauty of natural objects as the work of unseen agencies whose artistic powers are proof of their divinity. So our teachers encourage us to find beauty everywhere and fol- [3.17.150.163...

Share