reflections on what happened sunday evening
In my experience with meetings over many years, the best part was consistently what was not planned, and the best part of any “plan” was consistently creating a rich environment.
What I will remember most about the Berlin gathering are the muthannas – the relationships that I felt were mutually nurturing – AND what happened on Sunday evening. And the best part of the “plan” for the meeting was bringing together people of different ages and backgrounds, but especially bringing together people who are skilled in “reading words” and people who are immersed in “reading life”. That evening is so rich; we should neither lose the tremendous learning embedded in it nor the opportunity to deepen and broaden the dialogue and understanding that can come out of it. I always say that the purpose of dialogue is not to understand the other as much as to understand the self. That evening offers a unique opportunity in this regard.
What I said above touches something deeply personal (which I mentioned in my presentation): the on-going ‘dialogue’ I had since 1976 with my illiterate mother’s world (which even continued after her death in 1984). Since the 1970s, my work moved constantly away from “reading words” to “reading life”. In academia, even when people try to “read life”, they usually do that via professional terms and official meanings.
The tension on Sunday evening – in my opinion – was due to the absence of on-going dialogue (since the strange creature called ‘education’ was invented several centuries ago) between activists, union organizers, artists… on the one hand and academicians, educators… etc on the other. In this sense, the Berlin meeting is exceptionally significant and meaningful – provided that we reflect on it from a perspective that is wider than just who is right and who is wrong, who has respect and who lacks it, etc.
What happened on Sunday evening points to something that is deep and fundamental: the fact that living/ experiencing is much more than what the mind can comprehend and words can express/ capture, and consequently, much more than what academia can understand and deal with – or even acknowledge. Part of what I felt that evening was that some people, who were there and who have rich experiences and knowledges, and are involved in real and meaningful actions in life, felt (and I believe rightly so) that those who work within academia and educational institutions have difficulty appreciating or even recognizing the tremendous knowledges and experiences they posses – much of which cannot be expressed via dominant professional terms and concepts.
I fully understand the feeling of those who felt their experiences, voices, and perspectives were not represented in the various panels because I have personally experienced such feelings all my life at two levels: as a Palestinian and after I “discovered” my illiterate mother’s mathematics. Because she had none of the dominant symbols, I failed to see the richness of her knowledge (and her math in particular) until I was 35 years old! Without her, I would not have been able to understand what people were saying and why they were saying it or why they were angry that Sunday evening. Just like her world was invisible to me, the “worlds” of those in the meeting who are immersed in life seem to be invisible to academicians and professional educators. (I am posting next to these reflections the first article I published concerning my illiterate mother’s mathematics. Since I ‘discovered’ her world in 1976, it has been most inspiring to me and, at the same time, a mystery. Similarly, I believe that what happened on Sunday evening can be very inspiring, and also revealing in pointing – in particular – to the difference between education and learning, and thus very relevant and meaningful to the purpose of our meeting in the first place: to un-align – I prefer unplug – ourselves from the dominant single path of learning, progressing, and developing, which historically started with the invention of education.