Earlier this month, we (Kenji and I) had the privilege of giving a talk about Sacred Rok at the Stanford Alpine Club. This is a great group of young people who inherit a rich history, going back to the days when Tom Frost was a student at Stanford.
We advertised our talk with the headline: “Ron and Kenji working on a climbing project? That sounds like a ridiculous idea to anyone who knows their backgrounds. Ron Kauk is known as a rock climber for whom it is a way of life. Kenji Hakuta is known as a professor of education and policy wonk, but he can barely make it up a 5.10. Working on a climbing project? If that sounds strange, come find out!”
That was our trailer message. We wanted to throw our collaboration into the public sphere, in a safe environment where we knew we would have a sympathetic audience (Kenji is, after all, a professor there), and to use it as an occasion where we could bring our narrative together, at least to the next step.
We had a good showing of people, including some friends from outside of Stanford, for which we were grateful – since our announcement said that we were talking about this collaboration, we had put it out there that this would not be a normal Ron’s climbing slides and videos talk. As with anything where you go into the unknown, we had our insecurities about attendance, you might say, as we spent time on the slide show nervously pulling together our pictures and story.
We got a pretty good narrative together. Kenji introduced the show saying that this is a work in progress, that we had never talked about this publicly before, and here we go. Kenji said that we consider ourselves accomplished in our respective fields – Ron in climbing, Kenji in education, and that we wanted to do something together that would do something beyond more of the same.
We had pre-arranged about 200 slides to move at 8 seconds per slide, and we just let them run in the background as we talked. Ron started by talking about his climbing history, accompanied by slides showing his presence in the magazines and films by the climbing industry. He talked about the expectations of the industry on climbers, and contrasted what it was like then, and what it is like now.
The slides then switched to pictures of Kenji starting up UC Merced, something that he did when he left his secure job at Stanford (and subsequently returned to after 3 years). Kenji talked about the fun of starting a new university, but the institutional tugs that make it difficult to do new and innovative things because of expectations about the “organization” (in this case, academia and the UC system). We talked about the parallels between the “climbing” and the “university” industries, what they want you to do, and what it takes to establish yourself within them.
Kenji then showed slides of why he climbs and hangs out in nature – the beauty and the companionship of important people, including his son Luis (who was in the audience).
Ron showed his slides of nature that he has been taking in Yosemite, wowing the audience with the beauty of water, rocks, and light. We interspersed pictures of Ron taking pictures, with Kenji joking that Ron was training to become the cross between John Muir and Ansel Adams (no kidding!)
Ron and Kenji then talked about the collaboration, how it evolved over time, using the organizational energy of Nancy (Kenji’s wife) to form a non-profit, took foster kids to Yosemite, and our plans.
We ended the show with our draft logo of a T-shirt that Ron’s friend, an artist with much experience in these matters, had drafted – something to inspire the kinds of kids we hope to inspire.
We have a summary of our slide show up on YouTube – check it out
After the talk, there were excellent questions, sharing and interest – about personal experiences, involvement with different efforts to get kids out there, and even a few “huh?” looks.
One thread that kept coming up was whether we had any kind of “curriculum” in mind, besides sitting by a river or a boulder. Without a curriculum, how would be expect to affect more than just the few kids that we take on trips? That is one big and important question.
What exactly is our curriculum, our formal course of study?
Kenji’s colleague at Stanford, Guadalupe Valdés, specializes in the teaching of foreign and second languages, and she actually talks about the problems of what she calls the “curricularization of language”. What she means by this mouthful of syllables is that when language teachers teach language, they notice things that don’t sound right – a student of English says “I didn’t say nothing”, to which the teacher instantly wants to correct it as “I don’t say anything.” Then all this becomes part of the curriculum, something to teach explicitly. The real question is, is language like any subject matter, like math or science, which needs a curriculum? Or is language, as part of the human fabric of communication, something that should be taught as a means rather than an object?
What those questions were evoking was whether the way of nature is something that can be “curricularized” or whether it is more like language — a way of thinking, feeling and relating.
We pretty much think that Guadalupe is showing us how to think about the education of nature – that it is not about encapsulating it into curricular units to be dispensed through education, but felt and appreciated and nurtured.
Imagine a curriculum of nature in which trees are to be appreciated. The path can be to read about trees, classify them, draw them, and appreciate their genetic structure. Another path is to be handed a sapling, with the assignment being to make it live and thrive.
What these conversations made us realize is that we have been on this path of nature. What remains is the challenge of how this insight can stir others into thinking in parallel and resonant ways.
Newsletter 3 March 28th, 2010
Earlier this month, we (Kenji and I) had the privilege of giving a talk about Sacred Rok at the Stanford Alpine Club. This is a great group of young people who inherit a rich history, going back to the days when Tom Frost was a student at Stanford.
We advertised our talk with the headline: “Ron and Kenji working on a climbing project? That sounds like a ridiculous idea to anyone who knows their backgrounds. Ron Kauk is known as a rock climber for whom it is a way of life. Kenji Hakuta is known as a professor of education and policy wonk, but he can barely make it up a 5.10. Working on a climbing project? If that sounds strange, come find out!”
That was our trailer message. We wanted to throw our collaboration into the public sphere, in a safe environment where we knew we would have a sympathetic audience (Kenji is, after all, a professor there), and to use it as an occasion where we could bring our narrative together, at least to the next step.
We had a good showing of people, including some friends from outside of Stanford, for which we were grateful – since our announcement said that we were talking about this collaboration, we had put it out there that this would not be a normal Ron’s climbing slides and videos talk. As with anything where you go into the unknown, we had our insecurities about attendance, you might say, as we spent time on the slide show nervously pulling together our pictures and story.
We got a pretty good narrative together. Kenji introduced the show saying that this is a work in progress, that we had never talked about this publicly before, and here we go. Kenji said that we consider ourselves accomplished in our respective fields – Ron in climbing, Kenji in education, and that we wanted to do something together that would do something beyond more of the same.
We had pre-arranged about 200 slides to move at 8 seconds per slide, and we just let them run in the background as we talked. Ron started by talking about his climbing history, accompanied by slides showing his presence in the magazines and films by the climbing industry. He talked about the expectations of the industry on climbers, and contrasted what it was like then, and what it is like now.
The slides then switched to pictures of Kenji starting up UC Merced, something that he did when he left his secure job at Stanford (and subsequently returned to after 3 years). Kenji talked about the fun of starting a new university, but the institutional tugs that make it difficult to do new and innovative things because of expectations about the “organization” (in this case, academia and the UC system). We talked about the parallels between the “climbing” and the “university” industries, what they want you to do, and what it takes to establish yourself within them.
Kenji then showed slides of why he climbs and hangs out in nature – the beauty and the companionship of important people, including his son Luis (who was in the audience).
Ron showed his slides of nature that he has been taking in Yosemite, wowing the audience with the beauty of water, rocks, and light. We interspersed pictures of Ron taking pictures, with Kenji joking that Ron was training to become the cross between John Muir and Ansel Adams (no kidding!)
Ron and Kenji then talked about the collaboration, how it evolved over time, using the organizational energy of Nancy (Kenji’s wife) to form a non-profit, took foster kids to Yosemite, and our plans.
We ended the show with our draft logo of a T-shirt that Ron’s friend, an artist with much experience in these matters, had drafted – something to inspire the kinds of kids we hope to inspire.
We have a summary of our slide show up on YouTube – check it out
After the talk, there were excellent questions, sharing and interest – about personal experiences, involvement with different efforts to get kids out there, and even a few “huh?” looks.
One thread that kept coming up was whether we had any kind of “curriculum” in mind, besides sitting by a river or a boulder. Without a curriculum, how would be expect to affect more than just the few kids that we take on trips? That is one big and important question.
What exactly is our curriculum, our formal course of study?
Kenji’s colleague at Stanford, Guadalupe Valdés, specializes in the teaching of foreign and second languages, and she actually talks about the problems of what she calls the “curricularization of language”. What she means by this mouthful of syllables is that when language teachers teach language, they notice things that don’t sound right – a student of English says “I didn’t say nothing”, to which the teacher instantly wants to correct it as “I don’t say anything.” Then all this becomes part of the curriculum, something to teach explicitly. The real question is, is language like any subject matter, like math or science, which needs a curriculum? Or is language, as part of the human fabric of communication, something that should be taught as a means rather than an object?
What those questions were evoking was whether the way of nature is something that can be “curricularized” or whether it is more like language — a way of thinking, feeling and relating.
We pretty much think that Guadalupe is showing us how to think about the education of nature – that it is not about encapsulating it into curricular units to be dispensed through education, but felt and appreciated and nurtured.
Imagine a curriculum of nature in which trees are to be appreciated. The path can be to read about trees, classify them, draw them, and appreciate their genetic structure. Another path is to be handed a sapling, with the assignment being to make it live and thrive.
What these conversations made us realize is that we have been on this path of nature. What remains is the challenge of how this insight can stir others into thinking in parallel and resonant ways.
Ron and Kenji