Ideas Have Consequences, pt 1 from Denise

As I mentioned to you all a while back, I was finding Weaver hard to understand until well into the first chapter. Right around the middle of the 1st chapter I started really connecting with his ideas. He starts to talk about what has happened to the imagination of modern man.

Weaver really gets going, I think, about page 28 when he starts talking about our culture’s preoccupation with immediacy and the focus on ‘removing the veil’ and exposing everything previously considered private. “It is contended that such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the real nature of the world. The assertion that this is the real world begs the most important question of all. The raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a human framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support.”p.29

My daughters have led lives sheltered from alot of what many would call the ‘real world’. We hardly watch any TV (the ads gross me out!!), the newspaper is vulger, the radio often trashy, too. Now that they are teens I stuggle more and more, knowing that they will be ‘out there’. But then I ask myself…what IS ‘out there’. THe ‘real world’ many tell me I am protecting them from isn’t MY world. IS it the real world?

I was thinking alot after our recent discussion over your classroom issue, Sandi. As I said, I was so grateful to you for sharing this situation with us. It’s the spirit of CIRCE to seek the truth and TALK ABOUT WHAT THAT IS.

I think the atmosphere of CIRCE encourages the re-establishment of higher ideals. On btm. 32, top 33…”(communities)which are but people living together in one place, without friendship or common understanding, and without capacity, when the test comes, to pull together for survival”. CIRCE encourages the opposite of this, I think.

I’m interested especially in what you all think of pages 28-32 and what it means to the importance of the child being both protected (especially their imaginations!)and prepared for living in the world.

Ideas Have Consequences, pt 1

Well, I am going to post some of my rambling thoughts to get things started here. 

The first thing I was struck with in Weaver’s introduction was his discussion on the superiority of an ideal-what a lost concept!  Again and again I see that we as a society are long past the “norm” of holding up the ideal and likewise the authority that must accompany the ideal.  I have seen that part of my task as a teacher is to help my students understand the value of the ideal and their striving to attain it.  This is tough and beyond trying to be faithful to point to the ideal, I am not sure how to help them.  I am seeing it is very necessary for me to keep the focus beyond just the task of the hour-the ideal inspires.

I also loved the analogy of our loss of ideals with Macbeth-this created a very clear picture for me!

I’ll keep writing more thoughts over the next few days, so chime in with your thoughts.