Yet\u00a0The Tempest<\/em> is hardly unique in this regard. Many other Shakespeare plays pick up ideas, problems, hopes, and tragic repetitions in their corpus mates. One that’s always struck me comes in\u00a0King Lear <\/em>5.2.8-12:<\/p>\n GLOUCESTER \u00a0No farther, sir: a man may rot even here. “Ripeness is all”: a compact, beautiful utterance in poetry. The note in the Norton Anthology of English Literature<\/em>, 8th edition, the edition from which I’m quoting, says “Compare\u00a0Hamlet<\/em> 5.2.160.” Let’s do that now<\/a>.<\/p>\n HORATIO \u00a0<\/b>If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will\u00a0forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. For Hamlet, readiness<\/em> is all, because of special providence–a divine care over even the tiniest of events, like the fall of a sparrow. His defiance is complete, stated in prose, ironclad. For Edgar, written into being by Shakespeare about four years after Hamlet, ripeness<\/em> is all. Endurance is essential. Yet that defiant poetic ripeness, no less than Hamlet’s defiant prose readiness, is a call to action. “Come on!” And Gloucester replies, “That’s true, too.”<\/p>\n Why the\u00a0too<\/em>? Perhaps Shakespeare has Gloucester, a foolish but ultimately loving elder, affirm the mysterious blend of readiness and ripeness in any meaningful action. Perhaps this internal reflection, if it is one, can align with Doc Searls’ lovely and loving words at Aaron Swartz’ memorial service last week, as reported today by Dave Winer<\/a>: When you’re young you think life is a sprint. To which I respond, in the spirit of Gloucester and the poet who brought him to life, we must be young, we must be older, we must be mature. Life is a sprint, and it is a marathon, and it is a relay race. All.<\/p>\n Almost two years ago, I arrived at Virginia Tech and was invited to contribute to the Task Force on Instructional Technology that had been meeting for several weeks already. My assignment was to provide a central statement that could serve as a spine, or a point of synthesis, for the work the committee was engaged in. Over the next seven days, I will be sharing the statement I wrote. Although the statement went through a vetting process and was formally accepted by the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Vice-President for Information Technologies, the two administrators who had commissioned the Task Force, the words are mine (aside from the people and materials quoted, of course), and I take responsibility for the ideas and their expression here.<\/p>\n I offer these words in the spirit of the #pdftribute that sprang up following Aaron’s death<\/a>, as well as in the spirit of Dave Winer’s wise and troubling reflection “Why I Write.”<\/a> The ideas will be familiar to those who have been following my work for some time. What’s different in this series is that I put many threads together in writing for the first time. I’m confident I’ve grown and learned a great deal since I wrote this. As time permits, I may offer additional commentary along the way. But the original words are here, just as they appear on the official Task Force site.<\/p>\n My thanks to Virginia Tech for the opportunity to write this statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The will to learn in an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. The will to learn becomes a “problem” only under specialized circumstances like those of a school, where a curriculum is set, students confined, and a path fixed. The problem exists not so much in learning itself, but in the fact that what the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning–curiosity, a desire for competence, inspiration to emulate a model, and a deep sense of commitment to the web of social reciprocity. Our concern has been with how those energies may be cultivated in support of school learning.<\/em> The aims and purposes of education demonstrate our most deeply cherished values, as well as our collective understanding of what it means to be human. Such values and understandings are no less powerful for being largely tacit. When we design our schools, however, we inevitably find that these values and understandings lead to conflicting ideas of how best to proceed, and with what ends in mind.<\/p>\n No single vision can decide these inevitable conflicts. Nevertheless, the guiding vision of a participatory democracy, our nation’s flawed and uneven and inspiring experiment in self-government, may at least suggest that maximizing human potential within a framework of tolerance and civic commitment can guide our many efforts to build the best educational experiences we can imagine. In The Culture Of Education <\/em>(Harvard University Press, 1996), Jerome Bruner describes “mutual learning cultures” organized around principles of community and freedom, liberal learning and the specific competencies required to participate in the world of work:<\/p>\n Such classroom cultures are organized to model how the broader culture should\u00a0work\u00a0if it were operating at its best and\u00a0liveliest\u00a0and if it were\u00a0concentrating\u00a0on the task of education. There\u00a0is mutual sharing of knowledge and ideas, mutual aid in\u00a0mastering\u00a0material, division of labor and exchange or roles, opportunity to reflect on the group’s activities. That, in any case, is one possible version of “culture at its best.” School, in such a dispensation, is conceived of both as an exercise in consciousness raising about the possibilities of communal mental activity, and as a means for acquiring knowledge and skill. The teacher is the enabler,\u00a0primus inter pares<\/em>.<\/p>\n Such a vision of “culture at its best” informs the founding of this nation at a very deep level.<\/p>\n One of the most important participants in that vision was Benjamin Franklin. A printer, publisher, artisan, scientist, writer, diplomat, and politician, Franklin was also, in biographer Walter Isaacson’s words, “\u201ca consummate networker with an inventive curiosity\u201d who \u201cwould have felt right at home in the information revolution.\u201d Franklin also stands for the fascinating blend of worldly success and innovative genius that our schools seek to empower among our citizens. To have “Benjamins” on hand is a necessary part of American life. Work and success are important, to be sure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three sections follow, all related, implicitly. Shakespeare often seems to me to be quoting himself. I once saw a stunning performance of\u00a0The Tempest\u00a0in which the director made certain scenes especially resonant by pointing out, in every way one can on … Continue reading
\nEDGAR \u00a0What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
\nTheir going hence, even as their coming hither;
\nRipeness is all. Come on!
\nGLOUCESTER \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And that’s true, too.\u00a0Exeunt<\/em><\/p>\n
\nHAMLET \u00a0<\/b>Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special\u00a0providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,\u00a0’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be\u00a0now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The\u00a0readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows\u00a0what is’t to leave betimes, let be.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWhen\u00a0you’re older you see it’s a marathon.
\nAnd when you’re mature you see it’s a relay race.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n–Jerome Bruner, Toward A Theory of Instruction <\/em>(1966)<\/p>\n![\"Benjamin](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Franklin.jpg?resize=258%2C318\")
<\/p>\n![\"Benjamins\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Benjamins.jpg?resize=439%2C450\")
<\/a>Yet it is even more important to be <\/strong>a Franklin, metaphorically and etymologically speaking:<\/p>\n![\"OED_Franklin\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/OED_Franklin.jpg?resize=584%2C323\")
<\/a> As the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> explains, to be a “franklin” is to be a freeholder, a liberal host, a citizen with the freedom of the domain. The digital age offers opportunities of unprecedented depth and reach for participation in global innovation and conversation, for employing and weaving a World Wide Web of “social reciprocity,” to use Bruner’s term in the epigraph above. We owe it to our faculty, staff, and students to empower them all with the concepts, skills, and experiences that will make them free and full citizens of the digital age.<\/p>\n