Adopting and/or changing narratives to create a dualistic approach has important implications for education. I am thinking that at first in the United States we had the theory of the melting pot, where different nationalities/people gave up something of themselves so that the greater good would function. This was followed by the concept of multiculturalism, where different nationalities/people would each contribute what they are, what they have, without sacrificing who they were. We would become a collection of identities. Now, perhaps we need to come to the point where we need to be able to hold dual narratives spontaneously. We need to be both individuals and collectives simultaneously.
I heard a speaker on critical theory, Professor Jürgen Habermas, University of Frankfurt, discussing how we have both a civic solidarity and an informal solidarity and we need a way to expand our consciousness to include both as with a nationalism (dedication to the state as our collective/democratic problem solving entity) and also a supra state that exists beyond our state to enable us to resolve those collective problems that can't be solved on the national level. His example of this supra state would be the European Union, a collective. The United States, is, of course, a federal system, which brings together states in a power sharing arrangement. A federation of states. Whereas France was created as a unity state. He suggests we need a transnationalization of democracy to address the systematic problems that nations can not solve independently. I suppose he means things like climate change, nuclear proliferation etc. The nations would still enforce laws, as they do in the EU, but there would be an avenue for solving problems based on a common overarching model.
A speaker on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Dr. Yakir Englander also talked about the importance of living with dual narratives. This for the different nations but also for the different communities within Judaism. We must not try to solve another's problems directly because that solution might create dangers for those more intimately involved with the struggle. For example, it is not helpful when an American Jewish tourist goes to Jerusalem and wears an IDF t-shirt. This is hurtful to the Palestinians. We need to be careful with our holiness because there is violence in holiness. Englander has set up an organization that works with Palestinian and Israeli youth to help them develop this dual narrative. There is also this need for separate groups to create a dialogue with each other -- women in Judaism, denominations within Judaism. Is is a chutzpah for people to try and solve others problems without first developing an ability for this kind of dualism. Not all issues can be resolved through fundamentalism -- as with accepting gay Jews while also accepting Torah's teaching on the lifestyle.
This duality will help us see that there are two areas of conflict that need to be resolved. The actual conflict, those lived by the people engaged in the situation, and our image of the conflict. Dialogue in these situations is vital but only if seen within the context that dialogue is part of action. Action is the way to resolve conflicts. People with a different image of the problem are the ones most likely to call others naive or more derogatory names; those involved with the actual problem are more open to different types of solutions.
Often these dualities can be upsetting because they can represent many aspects of a situation. Rather than adopting them completely we might consider using them as simulation exercises. Taking data and putting it into a scenario in our minds -- much like scientists use simulations of data (such as years of coordinates of the movement of planets) to help them see where things are going. We might play these dualities into the future to see which might lead to the best results.
In education, perhaps we can see this narrative in terms of the open classroom, where individual teachers and local schools retaining curriculum control is one side of the coin where the common core, with national control of curriculum being the other side of the coin. We must, I suggest, be able to integrate these two narratives in a way that is authentic. We can focus not on self improvement but on selves improvement.
In the education sense, perhaps libraries can show the way as resource sharing, where one library holds an item and shares it with other libraries and other techniques might be adopted by colleges/universities whereby we integrate instructors from one college into another college or have instructors from two (or more) institutions teaching together in an expanded notion of classroom. There would be an open classroom motif, where we stitch together a collective from the accepted notion of individual control of the classroom. We grow through some of the issues of curricula prerogatives because we need the collective dynamism without giving up the individual responsibility.
The common core curriculum might be expanded to the common core resource pool. Perhaps everyone would accept Google (or another search engine) as the common resource pool and then create subsets of data (databases) to supplement and add to the classroom. Google as the master index (common core) but create subsets of this index to build local control (information of specific concern to a teacher or set of teachers).
Dualism is a good tool as we go forward into the shared economy. Where we can accept people both as they are and as we want them to be. Where a wide variety of sources can be seen as legitimate and authoritative.
What better tool to carry with us into the shared economy than information and access to it in such a variety of situations.
Dualism is not new. We have had conflicting political social ideas as cultures have evolved and in many ways, it is our ability to work with and accept dualism without resorting to judgement and control that leads to a flowering of ideas and culture. Jane Addams, the social and peace activist, spoke of "tolerated puzzlement," which was a way to encounter new ideas and people without the need to be judgmental. It is this spirit of openness and acceptance that creates the creative infrastructure we need to peace and learning to flourish and forms as a foundation for the American Pragmatism movement that holds a key as we continue to encounter (radical) uncertainty. We can confront uncertainty with ideas not impulses. You don't need to change people, you need to hear them.
Perhaps "tolerated puzzlement" was a precursor to the "Yes, and .." theory of improv as a way to create linkage between people and ideas.
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