Thinking
Beyond Oneself – Additional Thoughts
For a number of reasons, I have been thinking more
about the notion that it is important to think beyond oneself. It is important
not only for the sake of creativity and critical thinking. It is important for
the sake of developing a humanistic (other-oriented) perspective to guide what
one does.
When I reflect on my personal life and think about
things I regret doing, what comes to mind are instances when my actions and
decisions were guided by thinking about myself first. To avoid self-abasement,
I shall not offer examples as nearly all of them involve my children. Had I
been a better parent, I would have been putting my children first and foremost
all of the time.
When I reflect on my professional life and think about
things I regret doing, what comes to mind are instances when I was thinking
about my own welfare and values rather than those of others. Again, there are
many examples but those cases would be less flattering than I care to reveal in
a public blog. I imagine that every person could find both personal and
professional cases of thinking primarily about oneself first and not trying to
think beyond oneself. I also imagine that many of those cases might have
resulted in things that person regrets.
On the other hand, when I think about a very few cases when
I made an overt effort to think beyond myself, I find things in which I take
some pride. For example, I think about a comprehensive school reform quality
initiative project that I led with poorly performing rural K-8 schools in the
southeast. Normally, a project has a beginning and an ending, and that was the
case with the U.S. Department of Education project. However, a typical
educational project also involves service and support. The problem with so many
educational projects is that the service and support ends with the project.
This did not happen with one of the 8 schools involved in that effort. After
the project ended, I managed to invite a school representative to participate
in a smart education conference in Beijing, China. A year or so later, I gave
the school a 3D printer knowing that the innovative teachers there and the very
supportive principal would make good use of it. I am about to donate another
technology involving geography education some 6 years or so after the end of
that project.
Another example that comes to mind is the USAID Distributed
Basic Education project in Indonesia in which I participated for 5 years. That
project ended about 7 or 8 years ago. I have maintained contact with a number
of Indonesian educators ever since. I helped initiate the AECT Asia summer
research meetings based on the interest of Indonesians and participated in the
Educational Technology World Conference in Bali in 2016 co-sponsored by Indonesians
and AECT.
Those two examples are cases in which I managed to
think beyond myself and think about service to and support of others over and
above my own personal interests as an academic interested in publications or as
a principal investigator or co-investigator interested in funding. Things that
may begin as projects often involve service to and support of others. It is
important to remember that fact and make an attempt to ensure ongoing service
and support.
I often say that it is not about the technology - it is about the learning. Likewise, it is
not about the publications and funding – it is about service to and support of
others. Or, as Bob Gagné said on many occasions, our job is to help others. Or,
as my father demonstrated on so many occasions, the task is to listen, reflect,
encourage, guide and not turn away. Or, as Rabbi Hillel said, “if not now …
when?” (see https://www.voices-visions.org/content/poster/collection-poster-rabbi-hillel-pirke-avot-114-daniel-bennett-schwartz).
First
Thoughts
I have recently noticed a tendency of many, including
my students, to respond to complex situations and issues based on their own
rather narrow personal experience. This seems completely natural as we come to
have beliefs, habits, and predispositions based on our experience. However, the
nature of many complex situations and issues exceed things we have personally
experienced yet many still base their beliefs about those situations and
issues on personal experience that is somewhat removed from the problem or
situation being judged.
For example, with regard to online learning, someone
who has taken an online learning course might have experienced feeling that the
instructor was distant and perhaps aloof and not very involved in their
progress. Is that sufficient reason to conclude that many or most online
courses have instructors who appear distant, aloof and uninvolved to their
students? Perhaps not.
I have on occasion argued that the primary job of
being a teacher is to get students to have questions, which involves (a)
admitting that one does not know, (b) committing time and effort in searching
for a suitable resolution, (c) being open to alternative explanations, (d)
being willing to question one’s own assumptions, and (e) perhaps revisiting the
problem and explanation more than once.
I am now thinking that such an inquiry process is
basically learning to think beyond oneself – beyond one’s
personal and direct experience. I recall in high school when I was on the
debate team that part of the preparation was to argue both sides of an issue.
That seemed reasonable at the time. I remember learning in a college literature
course that there was a dramatic turn toward the self and writing in the first
person several hundred years ago, and that turn to the self impacted how stories
were told and what was told. At the time, I related that to Descartes’s cogito ergo sum or je pense, donc je suis – I think, therefore I am (or I exist). We
are after all thinking beings. Is it not remarkable that consciousness and
self-consciousness exist at all?
However, over-reliance on one’s beliefs and prior
experience can lead one to make many errors of judgment. I have made my fair
share, and now when I consider the ones that come to mind first, I notice that
my errors were due to an overconfidence in my own beliefs. I had a wrong-headed
confidence in the absolute truth of what I believed to be true, and many of
those so-called truths turned out not to be true.
Rather than further embarrass myself with true
confessions, I only wanted to point out that I have often believed more than I
could possibly have known. At an advanced age, I am just learning to think
beyond myself.
