Honoring Context in Translating Confucius

Arthur Waley translated and annotated The Analects of Confucius. This is a book that I have kept around since college. I've lived in South Korea, which derives much of its culture from "Confucianism," and I have taken a few trips to China, where I've had tours and lectures on Confucius thought. Nearly everything I have learned about Confucius as a learner and educator has inspired me as a learner and educator. He is referred to as a "resilient idealist." In an imperfect world, he walked the uphill path everyday towards idealism and peace, and he felt that this walk was worthwhile. Some common misconceptions of Confucius is that he is some kind of god, which many Westerners may assume when they visit Confucius Temples in China and see grand sculptures and paintings of him in places called temples. While there may be some who consider him to be a god or prophet, it is better to see him as a great scholar and learner.

In this translation of The Analects of Confucius by Arthur Waley, I first have to comment on his complete loyalty to context for interpreting and expressing these "Selected Sayings." In his introduction, Waley takes great pains to contextualize key terms, vocabulary, and phrases. I admire his discipline in his translation process. As an English teacher, I appreciate how significant the context in which a word is placed impacts its meaning. Waley writes:

"Thought grows out of environment. Ideally speaking the translator of such a book as the Analects ought to furnish a complete analysis of early Chinese society, of the processes of which were at work within it and of the outside forces to which it reacted. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the period is far too incomplete for any such synthesis to be possible. The literary documents are scanty and of uncertain date; scientific archaeology in China has suffered constant setbacks and is still in its infancy. All that I have attempted in the following pages is to arrange such information as is accessible under a series of disconnected headings, in a convenient order, but without pretense of unity or logical sequence" (p. 13).

I admire the intellectual humility that Waley presents in this introduction to his translation. It reveals the disciplined attention to detail that he spends on each word in his translation. He is acutely aware that words are historical and that their historicity affects their meaning. To understand the Analects, the appropriate process is to first understand the sayings as they were intended to have meaning within the historical context to which they were responding to. Then, we would analyze how these meanings could be reconstructed to make meaning in a modern context. I believe this is the process of translation that occurs any time we try to interpret the meaning of something in a new context. Just in this case, we are attempting to interpret some ideas uttered over 2000 years ago. (This is the same struggle with comprehending Shakespeare. So much of his meaning and wit is highly contextualized. It is necessary to understand the context before the wealth of meaning can be realized.)

This turned into a tangent on translation and context. Posts on the content of Confucius' Analects will have to occur another time.

Project-Based Assessment: Importance of Clear Expectations

Project-based learning is complex because you are asking students to create something authentic and unique in nature that represents actual learning that should have occurred during the unit of instruction leading up to the project. This year, which was my first year at a school with a total emphasis on project-based assessment, I have realized that I teach better and the students have better results when I have a complete understanding and relatively concrete expectation of what I want them to create. This means that I need to be able to conceptualize what I am asking them to conceptualize, and I need to be able to create what I am asking them to create. I need to have a clear understanding of how the content and exercises from my unit should contribute to the creation of their project. When I have established these expectations, it is completely possible for students to go beyond those expectations to create things that never thought of, but it is my responsibility as the teacher to establish a clear standard to meet and how to meet that standard.

In a more traditional classroom, tests are concrete assessments of learning. In a way, written tests simplify teaching and learning because it is a clear product towards which you are preparing students to be able to complete on their own. It is comparatively simple to conceptualize the answers to specific questions on a test and deliver straightforward instruction and examples to prepare students to answer them independently.

Project-based assessment requires a more creative vision of what a learning process and product should be. It is still crucial, however, that I am clear with what my expectations are so that I can clearly answer questions and direct students towards successful projects. If I lack that vision, then projects come in that also lack real vision and purpose. They may be creative and interesting in production but lack the depth and nuance of disciplined and applied knowledge to support them.

Tinker and Free Speech in Schools

Tinker v. Des Moines set in motion a debate around the First Amendment that we explored at the Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia today. Should students be allowed to walk around school wearing "I 'heart' boobies" bracelets? Can a student hold up a sign stating, "Bong hits 4 Jesus" during a school sponsored event off campus? These were the questions that stemmed from the Tinker case of 1969. In 1969, Mary Beth Tinker, went to school wearing a black armband representing her protest of the Vietnam War. She was told to remove the armband and was suspended from school. The family filed a lawsuit, arguing that her First Amendment rights were violated, and ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the family. The opinion included a famous line, "It can hardly be argued that either student or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Our English class had participated in the ACE program this year, which included monthly visits from local lawyers and judges. Today was the concluding event, and it was fun to see students put in the position to think critically and express their views. A piece of advice from one of our hosts to any future lawyers was, "It does not matter whether you are right or wrong; what matters is that you are able to express a cogent case for your position." This makes a lot of sense to me as an English teacher because matters are rarely every black or white, and I expect my students to think critically everyday to see multiple perspectives on any issue. We sat in a beautiful courtroom, and Nine students even dressed up in robes to act as official court justices to hear the case that other students made to them.

As a teacher, I know that just the opportunity to get out of the school building and experience city was refreshing. It was a reminder of why we are in school to begin with: to prepare students for life beyond school. Opportunities for students to get outside of the bubble of their school are important. It makes their education more tangible, and they get to ss how adults, other than their teachers, socialize and work. If we are educating students to prepare them to life, how can we find more authentic ways to open the world up for them? A bigger question would be, what is the role of school in society?

Passion and Fatigue in Teaching and Learning

Any good teacher would tell you the importance of being excited about the content and learning experiences that you are orchestrating in your classroom. You want to be excited to learn along with your students and show them the passion that you have for learning in general and your subject in particular. Great teachers are life-long learners.

Some barriers to maintaining this passion is that school is compulsory and teaching is a job that does not always provide the ideal environment for teachers to develop. Within a context of a compulsory education system (that often lacks support and adequate leadership) with an emphasis on meeting discrete standards while working with adolescents who are in the process of figuring out who they are, it can be difficult to maintain and model a passion for learning for 181 days out of 181 days. Within any professional field, it is important to find ways to rejuvenate. Books, like Thrive, are being written on this very topic.

Over my spring break, I talked with a couple adult friends of mine about their experiences in school. They said that their best teachers the ones who were excited about teaching and learning almost everyday. I love to learn, so how do I maintain this value of learning in my classroom everyday when I am also only human?

This is a relevant question to be asking at the end of May when everyone in a school has some fatigue. I still want to emphasize that learning is an ongoing, life-long process that will not shut down after a few weeks. This passion for learning speaks to the importance of teachers being intellectuals and writers of their own curriculum given the context in which they work. Teaching really needs to be a fun and engaging job. What does it say about the profession when teachers get burned out and stop teaching?

Coaching and Teaching: Lessons from Athletics (#1)

As I reflect on my experiences as an adolescent, I've realized that some of my most formative moments have come from the sports I played. Some of the most important and inspirational lessons I have learned and shape who I am today come from coaches and the experience of participating on a team. As I watch sports and competition today, I love seeing those athletes and coaches whose passion for the process of winning and greatness is palpable. The great ones who sustain their greatness love the process of training, learning, and competing.

Recently, the last 23 members of the US Men's National Team have been announced. On ESPN, there has been a documentary of their process to select the final team. When athletes make it to this level, they want to represent their country, so the competition is fierce. Here are some of the lessons that stood out:

• Sacrificing your individuality for something greater than yourself. 
• When the players needed to push themselves during conditioning, they thought of their family, their teammates, their nation. These things pushed them to another level.
• The importance of competition.
• Coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, has infused a high degree of competition in the camp, whereby nobody can feel comfortable with their spot on the final roster. Everyone needs to feel pushed to compete at the highest level. In this competitive environment, the team has the best chance for success.
• This is an interesting type of competition because all of these athletes at the camp are pulling for each other, but at the same time, they need the competitive instinct to try to be better than their peer. 
• "It's not about yesterday and what you did. It's about today and how you deliver tomorrow." - Jurgen Klinsmann
• "You go through rough times, but those rough times are what set you up for something greater." - Jozy Altidore

These values and ethics that can be learned from the process of competing in athletics are invaluable life lessons, and there are direct connections to teaching and learning. We want students to learn to collaborate towards a shared goal. We want students to strive to be great. We want students to find their strengths and maximize them, and identify their weaknesses and improve them. We want students to have healthy and fair experiences with competition where they learn to win or lose with honor and respect. We want students to be able to pick themselves up after a defeat, learn from their mistakes, and push on to continued growth. I cannot list all of the valuable lessons embedded in athletics, but for athletes, having this competitive space with a passionate coach can be priceless.

Here is a link that gives more information about the Inside US Soccer Series. And, here is a video introducing the series:

Teaching Reading and 1984

We are approaching the end of out first year of SLA Beeber’s existence. Currently, we are reading 1984 by George Orwell. During my spring break, I read 1984 for the first time and was blown away. This is Orwell’s social manifesto, his critical statement on how the history of the world could turn if we are not careful. I enjoyed the book, but as I was reading it, I realized that many of the connections that I was making to it came from my knowledge and learning experiences around politics and society, which I know I did not have as high school student. Therefore, how to engage 15-16 year old freshmen in a book like this in May, I realized, was going to be a challenging task. This is an essential question posed to every teacher as he or she writes his or her curriculum. It is an art to design learning experiences that are engaging not for us, but for students sitting in out classroom who have to be there at a particular time. This of course, is very different from the natural process of reading in my everyday life whereby I pick up a book, read at my own pace, and have occasional discussions about the book with my friends, family, and colleagues. I need to be thinking from the perspective of my students.

Pedagogical Decisions:

One of the crucial pedagogical decisions I made was to allow my students to read the book at their own pace. We had four weeks left in the school year, and I felt strongly that if I plopped 1984 in front of them and insisted that they read 75 pages per week, then I would effectively be sending the majority of my students to sparknotes to read summaries and analyses to participate in classroom discussions and complete the projects and assignments related to the book. In class, therefore, I was explicit about the type of reading experience that I wanted them to have with the book. I explicitly stated that school in general, and English teachers in particular, often turn students off from reading, rather than offering experiences would encourage them to enjoy books and become lifelong readers. I told them that by giving them the opportunity to read at their own pace, I was encouraging them to enjoy reading the book, instead of having an “anxiety-induced reading experience,” and to practice the reading skills that I have emphasized this year: 1) that reading is a thinking process of inquiry, inferences, and reflection 2) that good readers re-read when they do not comprehend (they see it as their responsibility for understanding the text). I told them that I did not want them flocking to sparknotes to make meaning of the text, unless they were totally lost and needed the assistance. This gave students the space to focus on re-reading, rather than feeling the pressure to plow through the text. I believe that re-reading and focusing on self-monitoring of their comprehension is an authentic reading skill that they will hopefully take with them from this class and this unit in particular.

Student Response:

One student read the entire book in the first weekend. This student is already a voracious and inquisitive reader, so I feel strongly that I set her up to knock it out of the park, in terms of reading and enjoying the book. If I had required everyone to read the first 75 pages in the first week, would she have still read the entire book? Or, would she have just read the book as an assignment to meet the expectations of the school task?

Another student came to me and said that she read the first 23 pages twice and still did not understand what was going on. I was proud of this because it showed that she was self-monitoring and using the reading skills we had talked about this year, which emphasized comprehension. She still needed assistance with decoding the book and connecting to it.

Many other students are reading the book as varying levels of engagement. Some students are struggling with the book and find it boring. Some students say the book it “popping,” which is a positive review. I class, a student asked, “How do I read a book that I don’t like?” I was initially taken aback by the question. It is a good question because there are times in the academic and professional world where we are expected to read things that we may not initially find enjoyable. My response was that you need to find a way to enjoy what you are reading. I read quickest and with the highest level of comprehension when I enjoy what I am reading.

However, this still does not answer her question because now we need to figure out how do we psyche ourselves into enjoying something that we do not initially enjoy? I ultimately realized that we tend to enjoy reading things that we can connect to or of which we see the broader relevance to society and world events. Therefore, the essential task is around always assuming that there is social value and personal lessons in nearly all literature and art, and being patient enough and alert enough to find the ways in which I can relate to what I am reading or see the ways in which the book relates to broader events and experiences of the world.

Therefore, if we can approach everything that we read and seek to learn about with a degree of intellectual curiosity and wonder, we are more likely to enjoy and comprehend what we are reading.

Still Wondering:

I am still wondering about the rigor and expectations of this pedagogical decision. Is there value in the “higher” expectation that students read 75 pages per week? Am I lowering my standard by allowing students to reading at their own pace?