Words exist because of meaning;
once you’ve gotten the meaning,
you can forget the words.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words
so I can have a word with him?
–Chuang Tzu
Making the Connections
“…The standard model for the development of cancer is, therefore, a fundamentally genetic one.” I concluded. “However, as you ladies know, I’m always trying to provide you with the latest; so I want to show you something I found just the other day in a Scientific American article.”
I turned to pull the screen down and dim the lights, and there was the usual shuffling in their seats as the projector warmed up.
“Now I want everyone to pay attention to this picture in the bottom right hand corner.” I pointed. “These are karyotypes of human chromosomes where they have been able to tag each of the individual chromosomes with a different florescent dye so that it is easy to identify chromosome number 1 from chromosome number 2, etc.”
“This,” I said, circling the top portion of the diagram. “Is the karyotype of a normal, healthy human cell. You can see that each of the 23 pairs is properly aligned, and you can see how the chromosome 1 pair is yellow in color, chromosome 2, green, 3 light blue…you get the idea.”
I scanned the room for nods of understanding and continued.
“This, though,” I said, circling the bottom half. “Is the karyotype of a cell from a tumor, and as you can tell from the colors, the chromosomes are all broken apart and rearranged. Here we have three chromosome number 7s.” I pointed. “Here there is only one number 11, with the bits and pieces of the other number 11 now part of numbers 3, 8, and 21…the chromosomes of this cell are totally abnormal.”
Again, I scanned the room for nods and then deliberately paused for dramatic effect.
“And when you do the karyotypes for the other cells in this tumor…every single one is different.”
There was an audible collective gasp.
“But that means…” blurted Maddie. I nodded for her to continue. “That means that no two cancers are alike—even if they are cancers of the same organ!”
There were a lot of concerned expressions as people processed that information.
“Which means?” I queried.
Devon raised her hand, and again, I nodded.
“That you cannot treat them the same.” She answered
“Precisely.” I responded. “If this research is accurate, this—we’ll call it the ‘chromosomal hypothesis’—if this chromosomal hypothesis is correct, then the standard model—the idea that cancer is the result of a specific sequence of mutations and that if we could just figure out what they are, we could potentially change those genes back—the standard model doesn’t work.”
“But Mr. Brock,” replied Sandy. “That would mean cancer is theoretically uncureable. We could only treat it, not fix it.”
“Exactly.” I said. “If—we’ll call it the ‘genetic hypothesis’—if the genetic hypothesis of the standard model is in fact how the majority of cancer operates, we could theoretically one day cure cancer. But if this new chromosomal hypothesis is how most cancer occurs, then we need to be focusing our research on better treatment options, more targeted chemotherapies.”
There was now a low buzz of murmur from the entire class.
“And this is not just some academic scientific matter. Not only are lives potentially at stake but billions of dollars of your money.”
That brought puzzled frowns on everyone but Devon.
“Why don’t you explain it.” I said to her.
Everyone turned expectantly, and Devon spoke.
“I learned this from the lab where I worked this summer. Most medical research is funded by the federal government.”
“The NIH alone,” I said. “Has a budget of over forty billion. And those are your tax dollars people.”
Again, I paused for some dramatic effect.
“Right now,” I continued. “Nearly all of the money devoted to cancer research is going toward research that employs the standard model. But if the genetic hypothesis is not really correct—if it turns out that this new, recent finding is indeed the way the world actually works—then the money we are currently spending on trying to find a cure for cancer is basically what?”
“Wasted,” several of the girls responded.
“And you all will eventually be the ones…” I started to say.
“Paying the bill.” Devon finished.
“To Know as We are Known”1
It may sound like a ridiculous truism to say that a teacher’s greatest challenge in the classroom is teaching, but the reality is that moments of real learning such as Devon’s and her classmates’ are too often the result of fortuitous happenstance rather than deliberate intention. In the overwhelming deluge of tasks educators must cope with daily–attendance, grading, IEPs, student discipline, faculty meetings, and so forth–it is easy to neglect the teaching act itself and to take refuge in specific instructional techniques, assuming that simply exposing students to the material through an explicit set of maneuvers will itself somehow cause them to absorb it. That is, after all, the essence of a Cartesian understanding of education, and most theoreticians from Plato to Sizer have focused on this so-called “science” of teaching. Courses on pedagogy and behavioral management make up most of the classes in almost every teacher training program, and the cookbook curricula of the textbook industry and on-line learning are simply outgrowths of this fixation on instructional technique. Behavioral psychologists have even suggested that teaching is merely an exercise in habituation that a properly designed machine could perform.2
But I want to argue that there is a distinction between teaching and training and that an ecological paradigm’s understanding of education can provide us with a better definition of what it means to teach.3 Ecosystems are at their very foundation about relationships, and in fact, all of modern science has come to recognize that everything from quarks to cells to ecosystems to galaxies are constantly tugging and pulling at one another in one vast networked web of interacting connections: “community is the essential form of reality.”4 But if reality is this enormous community of relationships–including us–then our knowledge of it can only come through our active participation in that community and the relationships we form with its parts. Put simply, “we know reality only by being in community with it ourselves,”5 and therefore to truly know something—science, math, history, language…anything!—we must enter into a relationship with it; we must treat it as an “Other” that can actually impact and alter who we are.
The essence of the teaching act, then, is a process of creating ways of relating to a subject that fundamentally alters a person’s experience of reality. It is establishing those conditions that will enable students to join in and to form real relationships with the subject matter they are studying and thereby change who they are (which, intriguingly, is precisely what the neuroscience shows happens6). Yet only as teachers engage in their own relationship with a subject with their students can teachers use their own modeling of how to encounter the subject as “Other” to aid their students in entering into a similar relationship (i.e. learn). Thus, without the teacher as a co-learner, joining students and subject matter in a community of concurrent dialogue “about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline,”7 reality’s truths will not disclose themselves and true understanding will not occur. In other words, if the teacher is not showing how a subject alters his or her reality, then the students are not likely to have it alter theirs.
Light a Candle 