Paddling Upstream

 

This afternoon I followed Nietzsche’s advice (as quoted in Warren Linds’ piece); “I decided to [paddle] away into foreign parts, meet what was strange to me.” May you, dear reader/viewer, like me, find, in this issue, space growing all around you, horizons opening. The work in Educational Insights, like all our work in the Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education, presents a “space of possibility” (Johnna Haskell). What a pleasure it has been to spend the afternoon in this particular issue titled: Opening the Space of the Possible. Ardra Cole and Maura McIntyre want us to view research texts as sites of aesthetic contemplation, and the essays, poetry, and visual art in this issue of Educational Insights, aided by the editorial insight and creative skill of guest editors Johnna Haskell and Warren Linds, along with Lynn Fels (Co-ordinating Editor), Madeline Sonik (Poet’s Corner), Barbara Bickel (Art Seen) and the Editorial & Production Team help us do just that.

 

I have found “rich, generous, thoughtful, challenging, enchanting work” (David Jardine and Jennifer Batycky). I have found work that “celebrates questioning, imagining, evolving continuously” and that moves me beyond where I have been (Martha Zacharias). I have constantly returned to that all-important question asked by poet Sohaila Javed: “What is to be done in education that sustains life and peaceful coexistence for all human beings?” As I read in Linda Laidlaw’s piece of rearrangement, and adaptation, of small changes, I am challenged to help to “make classrooms [and the graduate student community, here in the Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry at the University of British Columbia] spirit-filled sanctuaries where the worthiness of personhood thrives and is celebrated” (Sharon Abbey). We have had special opportunities to do so this Fall as we grieve the loss of two of our graduate students and remember the unique worthiness of John Crawford and Ken Schramm (who wanted so much to work on the issue).

 

Kendall Bennie’s use of the surfing metaphor resonates as I compare it to my partner Millie Cumming’s use of canoeing metaphors that are more attuned to the adventure river landscape of Brian Wattchow. Millie encourages us to think of a rushing frothing wild river with a large boulder emerging midstream. The current of the river splits around that boulder on both sides, creating a relatively calm area where the current runs in the direction opposite to the main force of the river: that is an eddy. White-water canoeists search for those eddies and tuck into those eddies with relief. The eddy is safe; the current of the eddy holds you in against the rock, out of the chaos of the river, allowing you to catch your breath and scout out the next part of your journey. If the river has been particularly terrifying, you don’t ever want to leave the eddy, you want to stay there, safe. What is even worse, the exit out of the eddy is fraught with danger. If you timidly attempt to leave the eddy sideways (trying to test the waters as it were), the force of the river tips your canoe immediately, and you are in for a difficult, dangerous, very wet ride. To properly exit an eddy, you need to courageously paddle rapidly upstream against the main current, then, in a major act of faith, take one important stroke to let the river flip you around and allow you to forge on down the river. Each of us who teaches has experienced the calm of the eddy and the need to exit the eddy. With the authors and artists in this issue let us not be afraid to paddle upstream.

 

Graeme Chalmers

Director, Centre for Cross–Faculty Inquiry

University of British Columbia