The Pedagogy of the Ordinary Person
is the commonplace pedagogy practiced by American
teachers. These teachers look out at a sea of faces
and see the waves but fail to distinguish the individual
breakers that can lift a body high and bring him
to a distant shore. This is the pedagogy of the
mundane in human existence, a belief not in the
divine nature of man (toward, God, Peace, Justice,
a Brave, New World), fail to distinguish one student
from another, to notice the discernible characteristics
of diversity even within the same race, and are
intellectually more fit for work in the fields or
the factory than work in the greatest profession
on earth. These teachers might concentrate on the
few high achievers to the dismay and rejection of
all others, but fail to understand that those same
high achievers do not need them, have never needed
them, and will not ever need them, and will achieve
with or without them. They do use their time with
these high achievers as a means of validating themselves
as teachers, as absurd as this notion is: The high
achievers in any society would best be taught by
getting out of their way, not using them as an excuse
for the neglect of the many.
The Pedagogy of the Einstein in Every Person is
the opposite of the Pedagogy of the Ordinary Person.
This pedagogy recognizes that Albert Einstein was
not the exception in the human race, but the norm..,
not the exceptional but the ordinary.., not unusually
talented, but with normal human talents...that in
each and every human being are an Albert Einstein
waiting to emerge. That there are few Einstein's
is not witness to a large body of contrary evidence
but to the failure of educators to educate, the
failure to teach to the extraordinary in every person,
and the vast number of education students who took
a major in poor teaching and a minor in the mediocrity
of teaching.
Any individual who has ever worked in Washington,
D.C., quickly realizes a basic truth: Washington
is a city of ordinary people. Anybody who studies
life learns sooner or later another basic truth:
There is no such thing as an ordinary person. Studs
Terkel wrote a series of books in which he interviewed
ordinary people to extract their stories. In reading
Division Street (1967), Hard Times) 1960), or The
Great Divide(1988), one quickly grasps the veracity
of this point: Each person has an extraordinary
story to tell: Each person is truly extraordinary.
They who follow the Pedagogy of the Einstein in
Every Person commit themselves to great teaching,
lifelong improvement, determination to reach every
child, awareness of the divine nature in every person,
a love for each and every child, a sense of mission,
absolute integrity, honesty, and teaching reflection
on practices, and a passionate desire to teach greatly,
value each student, and help each student reach
his total fulfillment of body, mind, and spirit.
These teachers live by the motto:" For what
does it profit a teacher if he gains the whole world,
if he loses even one single student?"
The extraordinary belief that there is an Einstein
in every person is one great hope for education:
For in each and every teacher...there is also this
Einstein desperately seeking a way out, escape from
the commonplace, seeking to reach the stars and
beyond.., for if there is an Einstein in every person,
then in every person on earth is also a great teacher.
The great mystery of the educational swamp is how
to dispose of the mundane dominant part of man and
advance the peculiar gifted particle that can lead
mankind on a evolutionary pathway towards the bright
and beckoning future.
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