Social Construction

Posted by admin on May 27, 2012

 

Portfolio Notes:

Gaining perspective and understanding through the ability to suspend personal biases, etc. are but one aspect to growth in thinking.  Finding and developing the ability to consider issues, ideas, and new thinking from alternate positional perspectives - in my opinion - is equally as important.  How do we remind ourselves to consider all perspective in research and all interpersonal dialogue where we might not agree with an alternate perspective?

  

  

Continuing my thinking on positioning of personal perspective which truly informs, and in some ways dictates, our social construction of reality, I recalled a poem that accompanied a gift given to me by my parents when I completed my undergraduate degree in biology. As a graduation gift, my parents gave me a small statue.

The statue is of a chimpanzee sitting on a stack of science books – one of which has “Darwin” along the spine, and the chimp is sitting in the famous ‘thinker’ position with his gaze fixed upon the human skull he holds in his hand. Provocative in its own merit as you wonder what the chimp might be thinking, the artist included a poem, which reads:

Darwin’s Mistake

Three monkeys sat on a coconut tree,
Discussing things as they’re said to be;
Said one to the others, “Now listen, you two
There’s a certain rumor that can’t be true
That man descended from our noble race;
The very idea is a disgrace.
—–

No monkey ever deserted his wife,
Starved her babies and ruined her life;
And you’ve never known a mother-monk
To leave her babies with others to bunk,
Or pass them on from one to another
Till they scarcely know who was their mother;
—–

And another thing you’ll never see,
A monk building a fence around a coconut tree
And let the coconuts go to waste
Forbidding all other monks to taste;
Why, if I’d put a fence round the tree
Starvation would force you to steal from me;
—–

Here’s another thing a monk won’t do
Go out at night and get on the stew
Or use a gun or club or knife
To take some other monkey’s life;
Yes, man descended — the ornery cuss,
But, brothers, he didn’t descend from us!”

 

Darwin’s Monkey

So back to the question, is nature curriculum, does it have intention of design? Can this question be answered without specifically outlining and articulating our core values and beliefs?

(*Thumbnail photo credit http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs31/f/2008/208/0/f/Mirror_Sunglasses_Reflection_by_bender01101.jpg)

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