Lately, I've been reading What Are People For? (1990 North Point Press, San Francisco. ISBN 0865474206), a collection of essays by philosopher, poet, framer, and teacher Wendell Berry.  It was on my reading list ever since I ran across a one of his quotes from the essay "The Responsibility of the Poet".  Here's the original quote along with some of my thoughts and a couple of other snippets.

It has seemed to me increasingly that a poem -- a good poem -- exists at the center of a complex remembering, to which it relates as both cause and effect. (pg. 88)

Berry also has a great passage about how poetry and all art can be fundamentally missional:

By its formal integrity a poem reminds us of the formal integrity of other works, creatures, and structures of the world....Thus the poet affirms and collaborates in the formality of Creation. (pg. 89)

It's intriguing to me how unimpressed Berry is with the progress of our modern times in general.  For exmple, he compares the creation of poetry to "love" and says that it must be "amateur work" as opposed to "professional" (89-90).  His skepticism of professionalism seems to be routed in his feelings that the Consumer-Industrial Complex is dehumanizing everything, turning all human interactions into transactions.  Poetry done well is a champion in that it cannot be used in such a system:

...it cannot be written or understood by anyone thinking of praise or publication or promotion. (pg. 90)

According to Berry, the problem is not to be "original" in the modern sense, but to so perform the art that it causes "its history to resound and sing around it", so waking us from our "sleep" by its reverberations (90).  Now I like the sound of that.

PHOTO: David Marshall (http://davidaaronmarshall.com), from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wberry.jpg Creative Commons 2.0 Share-Alike.

You can't keep an orchard if your only skill is pruning. If all you know is how to snip off what you don't like, you will soon have deformed and stunted trees.  If you can't help but snip, you'll soon have nothing but stumps.

Growing a healthy orchard takes skill and hard work.  The wise person knows to nurture the whole tree: bud, leaf, and branch.  And she pays special attention to nourishing the root.  A tree well nourished needs little pruning.  It grows full and round and produces just as much fruit as it's branches could possibly hold.

Of course, I'm not really speaking of trees at all.  Rather, I'm taking about the orchard of people we've been given.  It's a tremendous tradgedy when we see the potential in those around us but only find in our hands tools to snip and trim.  The ways of coercion and control will never grow a healthy human.

Lay down negativity, criticism, sarcasim, and severity.   Sure, it means things will grow a little wild, but true life is a wild and wonderful thing.   Wonderous things always emerge when choose instead the nuturing tools of service, kindness, hope, and encouragement.  We will gain the penitrating and effective influence that comes from feeding human beings until they are whole.

Educational resources are usually labelled according to educators curricular goals. I propose to do the contrary, to label four different approaches which enable the student to gain access to any educational resource which may help him to define and achieve his own goals:

1. Reference services to educational objects - which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these things can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories and showrooms like museums and theatres; others can be in daily use in factories, airports or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off-hours.

2. Skill exchanges - which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills, and the addresses at which they can be reached.

3. Peer-matching - a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.

4. Reference services to educators-at-large - who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, paraprofessionals and freelances, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators... could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients.

- - (Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society. 1973, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Pg. 81)

I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.

- - (Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society. 1973, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Pg. 57)

HT: "ivan illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning" @ http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm.

Standing in the kitchen, getting ready for a rare outing of just the three of us (his younger sisters were with their grandparents), the request seemed innocuous enough…”Would you read mommy the story you wrote?”  Surprisingly, he stated that he preferred she read it herself.  And so she did.  A few moments into reading it, she pointed out a spelling mistake, and that’s when everything came out.  At first, he tried to hold it back, but the force of the tears was too strong.  Soon, he was crying uncontrollably.  Our repeated inquiries into the problem were met with, “I don’t know.”  After several minutes of getting nowhere, we sent him to his room – a different environment – to calm down.

As he settled a little bit, I went up to his room, sat next to him on the bed, and began calmly asking questions.  I sought to isolate the moment he began to feel sad.  “Have you felt sad all morning?”  “No,” he said.  Incidentally, I would have been surprised; he always treasures a bit of time with just mom and dad.  “Was it when mommy said something about the spelling mistake?”  Again, “No.”  Believing that we are often too quick to criticize him, I was expecting him to say yes to this one.  “Was it when I asked you to read your story to mommy?”  “Yes,” he replied.  I began seeing that the problem was bigger than I had expected.  “Are you proud of your story?”  “I’m not sure,” he said.  “Is that because you’re not sure if you should be proud of it?”  “Yes.”

What we discovered was that he had become so sensitized to criticism that he had begun to anticipate it.  So, even when I suggested he share the story with his mom, he was imagining us telling him that it wasn’t good enough – and he just couldn’t take it (perhaps especially on this day when he was supposed to feel special with mom and dad).  To him, incidentally, the comment about the spelling mistake was merely a confirmation.  As we talked, in my mind’s eye, I could see this sensitivity expressed in his slumped shoulders when he begrudgingly practiced piano, or in his lack of interest in practicing sports; actually, in a general lack of enthusiasm.  So, as we continued talking about it, I asked him how he feels when he is criticized, and I’ll never forget his answer – “Small.”

From there, we had a good conversation that included me telling him that I also feel small when I’m criticized.  I told him that I never want to make him feel small, but rather so big that he can dream and reach his dreams.  Implicit and explicit in our talk was an apology for allowing him to feel that way.  And so we struck a deal: I’ll be careful not to criticize; he’ll work not to receive things as criticism; and he’ll work to not criticize others (something I had noticed him doing a lot more).

I’m happy to say that a lot has changed since that day – in both of us.  I’m very conscious of talking about the many good things he does instead of taking them for granted, and I’m also working hard to call attention to the one time he does something right instead of the nine other times he might do it wrong.  “Thanks for hanging up your towel after your shower.  Did you notice how it dries so much faster and the bathroom looks nicer?”  “I appreciate it when you take your plate to the sink after dinner; it helps me to get done faster.”

He has responded to our talk and the change in my behavior amazingly quickly.  His demeanor has returned to the happy, fun, kind eight year old that was too often being hidden.  The thing I’ve enjoyed the most, though, perhaps because of its subtlety, is this: he’s playing piano without being asked, and his back is straight as he does!

As I told this story to a group of close friends, one shared another in return.  It was about a couple that parented and coached three Olympic athletes (sorry, I can’t remember the sport).  Their approach to coaching was simple: every time one of their children came off of the field, they isolated one thing that he/she did well and talked about it.  By focusing on the positive, the parents enabled the kids to replay – and reinforce – what was right rather than causing them to replay the mistakes.  I think that’s a smart approach.  And who among us likes being criticized anyway?

Seth Godin, in his book, Tribes, states that people fear criticism far more than they fear failure.  In my experience, he’s right.  Have you ever felt crippled by criticism or the prospect of criticism?  God help me that I not do that to anyone ever again!

Best Solution (IMHO): Harold Prin's Joomla and MW authenication plugins (more below).

Many developers, designers, and open-source enthusiasts want to combine Joomla! -- the world's most popular CMS -- with MediaWiki -- one of the most powerful wiki engines (the software that powers Wikipedia).  Both systems excel at what they do: Joomla! at managing content and functioning as a base operating system for websites, and MW creating powerful and expansive documentation sites.  As good as these two systems are, it's amazing that relatively few good solutions tie the two pieces of software together. Most bridges to date either compromise security or include hacks that complicate updates of one or the other the systems.

I've tried the old Joomlawiki extension (even have a BETA produced for Joomla 1.5 not widely distributed), but it used a heavily modified old version of MediaWiki, far behind many of the best new features and compatibility with some of the better MW extensions.