exploring a philosophy of education 2

Exploring a philosophy of education should be like a slow boat to China. The waters are immense, the boat is slow, and there is not likely to be a traffic jam.
In this long journey, one can play cards onboard or one can compose an epic poem. Or, one can contemplate one's life events and get a rough estimate how long it is ging to get to where one's going and what will one find there.

There is a story of a man who left his own city to live in another. When he came to the gatekeeper of the new city, he asked, "How is living in this city? What are the inhabitants like?"

The gatekeeper said in response, "What were the inhabitants of your city like?"

"They are all crooks, scoundrels, and opportunists!"

"Well, unfortunately, that's what you will find in this city. Thiefs, pimps and murderers."

The traveler continue to walk on.

Another traveler came upon the new city and asked the gatekeeper the same question: "What are the inhabitants of this city like?"

To this, the gatekeeper answered as before with the previous traveler, "What were the inhabitants in your city like?"

"Oh, they are wonderful! Kind, generous, forgiving, and beautiful!"

"Then, by golly, you will find the exact thing here!"

----------------------------

The moral here is that one who judges may judge himself how he judges others. It is like asking the question: What does it mean a rolling stone gathers no moss?
The answer may be: One who lives in glass house shouldn't throw stones. One answers one parable with another parable. We carry with us what we are everywhere we go.

The Tao Te Ching says, "He who travels lighter travels farther."

The point is not to take excessive baggage when traveling.

How does all this relate to my educational philosophy? Don't expect that education is just a place to learn a new skill or another theory. Expect, at least a liberal arts degree, education to change you. Hopefully to be one who is reflective, independent, honest, and tenacious. The truth is never easy to recognize.

exploring a philosophy of education

What is my philosophy of education in a nutshell?

I would put wisdom ahead of knowledge. This I would follow the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching is a book written in China around 500 B.C. and it is the second most translated book in the world. It begins with the words attributed to Lao Tzu, "The Tao that can be told is not the Tao; and the name that can be named is not the name.
The Tao is dark upon dark, mystery within mystery..."

I do not mean to be obscure or to be ambiguous in this saying that the unknowable is indeed the unknowable. Ludwig Wittgenstein the Western philsopher said nearly the same thing, some 2,500 years later, when he said, at the end of his philosophical treatise,The Philosophical Tractatus, "Whereof one can speak, thereof one must speak clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one remain silent."

This to me means knowledge has a limitation - witness what Dr. Faustaus sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge in Goethe's original work. Knowledge per se does not solve anything. We must acknowledge that we are finite beings. I am a finite being.

Values must be the foremost goal to any kind of knowledge. What we yearn to learn must in some way benefit the human race as a whole. For example, having so much investment in Science and Technology seem to me a waste and ultimately mechanictizes life. The disapprortionate investments in the military and the space program seems like to cut off all of one's own limbs except for the right arm. We likewise should not clone a human being until we are pretty damn sure we aren't creating monsters.

These are notes for now. But they are the most fundamental beliefs I have about education. I need a little more time and space to reflect, because as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." For that, he gave up his life. The least I can do is to give myself a day or two to examine my own life. I am no angel. I don't really think I can ever be one. Think about that for a minute. It is not a threat. It is an attempt at rescue.

24th anniversary

The Californ gold dust lured my great-grandfather's village mates to America in the 1800's. He himself came when it was too late. The gold was gone but lumber was good in Hoquiam, WA. He came and operated a restaurant and had shares in a laundry. He was a man of great strength and so he was nicknamed "Locke Li," meaning that his surname was "Locke" and "Li" meant strength. He came to the US circa 1860, almost exactly 100 years before I did.

The Mayor of Hoquiam went with my great-grandfather to his Toishan villages to conscript 500 men from his Locke clan to come to the US to work in the railroad construction for logging. If you were to hike into the woods in Humptulips near Hoquiam you can still find abandoned railroad tracks. And maybe you would luck out and find an empty opium bottle. Opium was a pain killer that gave very laid back dreams. It was the stuff that the British East India Company sold in China, enforced by the English Navy.

It depends on whom you talk to, but according to my mother, and my mother's prevaricating tongue, we were the original Chinese in WA State - the Locke Family. Regardless, we know that we came from Toishan (Toishan means "to carry the mountain") and the Toishanese were the first Chinese in WA State.

In time, the Lockes spread like brush fire in the State of Washington, branching into the small towns of Hoquiam, Aberdeen, Elma, Olympia, and Shelton, Seattle, Everett, and so on, and branched into California, Arizona, and so on eventually into Chicago, Detroit,and NYC. They worked hard, were thrifty, and banded together for mutual support, and so in time, they "grew" the first Chinese Governor in the US,the former Governor of WA State, Gary Locke, who is currently the U.S. Secretary of Commerce with the Obama Administration.

I am the first poet of the Locke Family, for whatever that is worth, to gain national attention in the US.

Today, however, is the exact 24th anniversary of my father's death. I don't know how to think of it yet, but I will think. He is buried in Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is also buried. I was a young man of 37 when he died. Today I am 61, not an old man yet, but definitely not a young man anymore.

It is time to look beyond the tip of my nose and to see a farther vision. And not just for myself or my spouse and relatives and close friends, et al, but to see a longer and bigger vision. Let me ask you, what would you like to see in the world? If it is good, I would like to help.

marriage vows

Vows before Judge Carolyn Hayek.

New Venture: Marriage

Enter into this edifice.
Show no fear.
It is forever.

Susan and Koon.
This day.

temple in China

I am getting behind in my courses again. It seems that the only way to go is to live in subjective time. By subjective time I mean to consider the inner lives of objects. They are actually philosophical zombies.

Goal Statement for LNT 501

Goals Statement

Koon Woon
LNT Spring 2010, UIS
Professor William Kline


This year I have reached the age of 61. Therefore, to speak about my intermediate and long-range goals must show some kind of realism and modesty, because of the short time I have left to realize those goals. Being at this older chronological age, I must also take into account of my health and the things that I will be able to do with the amount of energy I can expend on these life’s projects.

Ever since my maternal Uncles told me stories when I was a young boy in China, I wanted to understand things literary to gain insight into life. The most important step was/is to read books of literature – novels, short fiction, plays, and poetry.

I grew up in the era what was known as the “Sputnik Scare,” when the Soviet Union orbited around the Earth the world’s first man-made satellite back in the 1950’s. The names of all the cities in the world that the Sputnik flew over were announced. This was to say that a nuclear bomb could have been dropped over those cities. This spurted the “Space Race” and the emphasis on science and engineering in our schools and industry.
It filtered down to our relatively small town Aberdeen, Washington high school. I was an exceedingly good student in science and math, and so the school counselors and my teachers urged me to study for an occupation in engineering or in physics or math.

Suddenly the war in Vietnam broke out and the “Flower Power Movement” of the “Hippie Scene” and Counterculture, the Student Movement, the Peace Movement, the Black Panthers, the Freedom Marches of Martin Luther King Jr. and the introduction of East Asian philosophy and culture all sprung up to take the imagination of the youths. I was caught in that maelstrom. This led me to study Marxism and finding little converts or sympathetic ears I “dropped out” of things conventional – school, employment, middle-class goals, etc. in order to seek personal fulfillment.

Unfortunately, I was hit with a genetic time-bomb; schizoaffective disorder (mental illness) in my twenties which was totally disabling and it is still ongoing, though much sanity has been recovered due to medications and psychiatric intervention. I did manage to publish a book of poetry, finish a degree in Liberal Studies at Antioch University Seattle, and gotten engaged to a kind-hearted woman.

So, at this point, at age 61, I want to finish a Master’s degree in liberal studies with emphasis on literature and philosophy. Since life is short and art is long, I want to work with younger writers and continue with editing and publishing a small literary magazine and press that I founded and operated. I have founded an S- corporation as a subsidiary to a nonprofit corporation for the purposes of promoting literature and world peace.

I hope to augment my disability income with profits from these publishing entities. I do have some success so far; I have published several titles of poetry and short fiction with my Goldfish Press. In fact, a couple of books are now on the shelves at Antioch University Seattle and in a city library in Wisconsin and are on sale at Amazon.com.

I want to become a senior editor of poetry and managing editor of the press. My fiancée has agreed to help me. I have attracted several capable young people who also want to be part of the publishing company.

I fully realize, however, that my time and energy will be limited in making this worthy project grow, and so much of it will depend on motivating others to carry on. To be realistic about my own financial future, my best bet is to work with the Social Security Administration who awards my disability payments and can possibly allowed me to established a Passport to Self-Support plan, where I can operate a company with assets up to $5 million and a salary of $30,000 a year. Since my main requirement is medicine and medical treatments, I must operate within the rules of the Social Security Administration and state regulations to work within these limits. So, this is actually a problem in maximization within constraints. However, whatever guise all these rules and exceptions can take, my main objective is to keep on receiving medical attention and function within the limits set by laws and regulation and at the same time, maximizes the good I can do as a nonprofit agency administrator.

My basic qualification is that I have operated a restaurant in the past and have taken some MBA courses in management from Western Governors University. Also, I have been, as mentioned above, acted as editor and publisher of my own literary press, and I have even been a judge of poetry contests and organizer of literary events. In any case, literature and world peace is what my heart is into. We all do what we can. I will give it my best shot.

poem

Like watercress, needing only
muddy stream and running water

Anywhere in the world we are casted
we survive and spread our propagation

But we sometimes end up
as ornaments on top of thin congee

Congee without much meat or seasoning
we of the Chinese Diaspora

Thin out and thin out more
like water itself, never to return...

Hugo House reading of Chinese Diaspora poetry

Will Michael Yuan make it through?

Changming (Michael) Yuan tells me that he might have trouble at the border crossing from Canada tomorrow to get down here for the reading at Hugo House. If he can't show up, what should I do? I could handle it all by myself. I could have the audience (the open mic people) read from the Chinese poetry books (in English translation) that I have.

What should a prince do when his nation is overrun by brigands? The Tao Te Ching tells him to meditate on plum blossoms. Here is a way to relieve stress. Here is a way to calm down one's mind. When the world is more than one mind, out of the ordinary things happen and we do not know reality as readily as before.

"At the edge of precision," said one ancient Chinese philosopher, "the universe quavers."

I see this as one step in my goal as a literary theorist. I am after all a part of the Chinese Diaspora. I am an existential instantiation of the said Chinese poetic diaspora.

I hope they at the US side of the Canadian border let Michael through.