.

was it Ray Bradbury who wrote,
"there will come soft rains"?
I have always loved his expression
and at this moment, warm rains fall.
everything grows greener with each
incoming breath. fresh green of
early spring, scent of new growth.
season of lilacs. pale pink tulip
trees, tender blossoms carpeting
wet grass and time dripping
with promise.

since it is still too early to pry
traffic from the street below, the sound
of silence marks the difference between
fresh strawberries on a porcelain plate,
a half-filled jar of golden honey and
the story of a stormy lake outside.
but the incessant sight of dawn
demands one question: how to
navigate out of an endless loop?

this endless maze of days, its sameness,
repetition, stasis. tangled thoughts that
knot the notion of reform into a stolen
idea, into something that repeats. again
and again like the backbeat of a drum
in someone's special song. as if its
con/text could actually re-configure
endlessness. as if Forever is the
Middle C that triggers many semiotic
sequences for the very same event.
to find the one that finally fits
the best. as if living is a book!

if not fixed, if not words that always
stick to the same place on a page,
what is living but a space that sways
like waves. malleable, fluid, permeable.
its surging walls, its many sprays and
spills. liquid-labyrinthine constructs
that flood one's sense of place with
the same site in cultural history,
but continually redefining edges.

as if to learn to think differently,
Dewey's question distracts me.
he asks: should education become
a function of society or should
society be a function of education?
inspite of the meaninglessness of
a word like `society` (afterall,
which society?), his question
pleads me through my endless loop
of thought. as long as formalized
education remains a social process,
educational and societal systems
require permeability. they need
to flow.

symbiosis; Dewey's vision that
schools have the capacity (if not
the ethical and compassionate duty)
to advance (democratic) ideals by
challenging the social order, by
teaching how to question the world.
but is his proposal for change a
systemic one or an individual one?
where does one position hope?
spinning the wheels and cubing the
jargon at 6 a.m. inevitably leads
me to this; an emancipatory view
of education begins with a vision
of community. but if the hidden
curriculum in school "incarcerates
learners in the semiotics of power",
and if we redress this hidden
curriculum in education (which
breeds a blind acceptance of
inherited priviledge), does it
also allow for the possibility
of correcting social injustice?
this presumes a collective desire
to re-empower those who are
disenfranchised, as if to teach
an awareness of each others needs?
but can empathy be taught?
is empathy the permeable membrane
that connects classrooms with
communities, and bureaucracies
with individuals? his notion of
an emergent curriculum and empathy,
coupled with an authentic desire
for structural change, becomes
a question. what happens when
formalized education becomes
a task of spiritual proportions?

what if systemic change happens
only after individual perceptions
change? can teachers let go of
the banking concept of education
(the one that views learners as
passive depositories) in favour
of a problem-posing approach
(where students become social
researchers engaged in a self-
conscious critique of cultural
contradictions)? does this new
view em-power everyone to
question the forces that govern
their lives? to question what is?
to inspire ethical action?
what if these contradictions
are the catalysts that lead
to life's inertia?

outside, traffic whirrs.
who will break this machine?
what if change is as easy as
removing all that is familiar?
as if to know a place for the
first time (in TS Eliot's words),
to understand the relationship
between aporias and epiphanies,
between fluid and static,
between prescribed and emergent,
between repetition and difference.
between time dripping with promise
and hope recycled like soft rains
on lime-green growth.

so the day begins.

and was it Ray Bradbury who wrote,
"there will come soft rains"?
I have always loved his expression
and at this moment, warm rains fall.
everything grows greener with each
incoming breath. fresh green of
early spring, scent of new growth.
season of lilacs. pale pink tulip
trees, tender blossoms carpeting
wet grass and time dripping
with promise.