AUSSIE

Blog entry posted November 30th, 2009 by Dale Worsley

Consider, for a moment, the metaphor, how it works and what it does for us. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis, which, yes, does have bluffs, but is hardly on top of a mountain, when he declared that he had seen the mountaintop. We knew what he was talking about, though: a spiritual apex. When the Chinese proverbists say, “Give a dude a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” they’re not talking about mackerels (at least I don’t think they are) but you get a good understanding through the image.

One of my favorite metaphors comes from Darwin’s Origin of Species when, trying to give us a handle (metaphor!) on natural selection, he writes, “The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” It’s mixed, I know, and wouldn’t survive in my high school English teacher Mrs. Church’s classroom for very long, but I love it. I only partially understand it. I’m still trying to unpack (metaphor!) it. But it operates like a little machine in my brain, spitting out sensations of wonder – and questions.

What, then, would be an apt metaphor for big ideas, and how they operate in course curricula? Let’s try a few out. “Big ideas are suitcases. You take them along on a journey, unpacking them along the way.” I’m sorry, the idea of stuffing my dirty clothes back into the suitcase until I can get to a washing machine sours that one for me. What about, “Big ideas are like gold mines. When you dig into them, you come up with lots of nuggets.” That one, too, doesn’t work for me. It seems clichéd, and the image of all those tailings polluting nearby streams distresses me. What about, “Big ideas are like piñatas, fat bright birds that hang from a ceiling. When you beat them with a stick hard enough, candy rains down all over the floor.”

I think that’s it!

Let’s try it out on my big idea for geometry from last week: It’s the wings of geometry that allow us to fly. (Metaphor!) When you give it a good whack, what falls out? Well, mainly questions, for me. What are the wings of geometry? How do they allow us to fly? And what are all of these figures, properties, definitions, postulates and theorems scattered about in their bright little wrappers? How do they govern the qualities and relationships of the figures? How do they illuminate the physical world as we find it, lend us logic, allow us to mold objects to our uses?

This candy is starting to resemble a pretty good set of essential and guiding questions to organize my course. I guess the piñata metaphor’s holding up, then.

Upon reflection, is candy the right idea, with all that processed sugar to send the kids bouncing off the walls (metaphor!)? Somebody must be manufacturing more enlightened piñatas, these days, with vitamin chewies or fruit roll ups or something healthy stuffed into the belly of the papier-mâché bird…but I digress.

Whatever the metaphor, the main point is this: a good statement of understanding produces lots of curiosity-arousing questions. And we know what Dorothy Parker says about curiosity. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

If curiosity is a disease, I hope we never find the cure. Enjoy. (What is enjoyment, anyway?)