The Underlying Message
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is not specifically about orthodox Zen Buddhist practice nor does if specifically teaches how to repair a motorcycle. It does, however, dig into the inner structure of the thought process to form a foundation to support any form of logic. This is accomplished by means of a trek through the author’s mind as he recounts his past in attempt to rediscover who he once was. As the author comes to term with his duality, the reader is conditioned to understand the author’s philosophical ideas, which are the underlying beams of his value system.
Pirsig presents his message through lectures to the reader. These lectures are comprised of history, philosophy, and common sense. The author purposely uses the term chautauqua to define these lectures. He describes a chautauqua as “an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer” (p.17). Throughout the story Pirsig breaks from his incomplete lecture to focus on the current situation of his motorcycle trip. As the story continues, some nonspecific aspect triggers the author’s mind to restart a new lecture, and eventually, they all tie together. The most common reoccurring lecture themes include the purpose of institutions, the search for quality and the need of balance between two extremes. These are interesting highlights of the book, but it is not the author’s intention to convert his audience to his value system. Rather, it is Pirsig’s goal to present how he created his value system as an example to show how to tackle such a complex and abstract subject. In fact, the reoccurring themes themselves are complex and abstract subjects, and Pirsig breaks each of them apart to analyze the system, just how one would tear down an engine to understand how a motorcycle functions.
Institutions and their role obviously weighed heavily upon the author’s mind. He explored the system from the whole down to its most minute parts. First, he chose one type of institution, education. From past experience as a student and professor, Pirsig naturally had formed an opinion on the matter. He observed that students are taught to imitate, and the result is a drone modeled after the instructor. This is done to please the instructor so a higher grade can be received. The n...
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...y harm him. The narrator did not understand who he was until he saw that Chris finally realized it. “I knew it” (p. 370). Phaedrus let go and submitted in the mental hospital for the love of his son. The narrator was abandoning Chris for the same reason. It was not until both identities had racked themselves apart that they could be brought back together, and the quality of their lives change.
Suddenly the introduction seems fitting.
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good–
Need we ask anyone to tell us these thing?”
Pirsig did not want to mold our minds. Instead, he showed us the way. He taught his audience how to think and to learn. That was the author’s hidden intent all along, and if he were to just come out and say it, it would lose its meaning. The reader has to tear himself apart to find out what makes him tick. What is the driving force that is the basis for his actions? What does the reader hold important and why? What values should he possess and when should they hold? Once we do understand ourselves, we can understand our surroundings, and our quality of life increases.
Many people would go as far as to say that a professor’s job is to deliver knowledge to students, and a student’s job is to absorb it, without reservation. Pirsig emphasizes how this relationship can fail through his description of Phaedrus’ time in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. One student in Phaedrus’ philosophy class questions Aristotle’s views of rhetoric stating that within the text, “‘There are some dubious statements,’” and the professor responds, “‘We are not here to learn what you think…We are here to learn what Aristotle thinks,’” (Pirsig 371). Basically, Pirsig is saying that there is a problem with the conventional professor-student relationship. This is because when a professor begins to feel vulnerable, like in the situation above, the professor transforms into a sovereign leader. When students live under an oppressive regime in the classroom they find themselves incapable to learn on their own terms. I agree that this relationship does need to change, a point that needs emphasizing since so many believe that if the system has operated this long, it can continue to work. I think Phaedrus is mistaken because he overlooks the real reason why the student is struggling with the professor. The issue that this lone student and Phaedrus both experience is that they are confronting the knowledge that the Professor has avowed individually. Instead, to gain more use out of the knowledge John Henry Newman would argue that these students should work with others. This will enable them to, “to adjust together the claims and relations of their subjects of investigation,” (Newman 77). Newman would surely extend this same argument that collaboration must take place between opinions on a certain subject matter, such as Aristotle. The adjustment of claims, which Newman discusses, improves education for the student. Their
He further stated that with all sincerity in themselves and colleagues, public school is now regarded as outmoded and barbarous. This thought, according to him is both observable to students and the teachers alike, but the students inhabit in it for a short period, while the teachers are condemned to it. Pursuant to teachers being condemned, they live and work as intellectual guerrillas strong-minded to stimulate students, ignite their inquisitiveness, and to open their minds, yet reluctant to stay behind in their profession. Together with this, teachers...
It’s no surprise that there are faults within our schools in today’s society. As both authors’ point out if our educational system is
“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (Freire 213).
In our education system, a professor will be given lecture for hours to hundreds of students in some large universities with expectation to increase their knowledge. At the end of the day, some of them will drop, some will finish their major with a low GPA, and others will graduate with a good grade, but a few knowledges remain in their memories. As a matter of fact, some people can be holding their PhD without be able to help their children at home with a basic homework in physics. The education system teaches them how to learn. Nowadays, we even have classes to learn how to learn strategies; as a result, our students become often as product “prisoners” of our education system because in the education system that transfer knowledge, students learn to a score good grade. If we assume that students who work just for grade are prisoners in Plato’s metaphor, their teachers and parents are prisoners as well. In the school system, some teachers don’t have any love for their career or for their students; therefore, students are going to dislike the study and work just for passing grade because of lack of dialogue between students and teachers. This issue is well emphasis when “The underlying assumption of dialogue is that knowledge is not a finished product, but is rather shaped in praxis out of a context-dependent partnership
One teacher may adopt the banking concept while the other may utilize the problem-posing concept. However, while problem-posing education generates creativity by giving students the ability to communicate, banking education does not. Freire asserts that in the “banking” concept of education, “the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it” (217). Freire indicates that students, who are victims of banking education, have no control over how an instructor chooses to teach. Therefore, creativity is destroyed by the fact that it was not even permitted in the first place. Students are not able to express their opinions or solve problems using their own methods because in order to pass the class, students not only need to adapt to the teaching style of their professors but think like them too. Freire’s quote relates to experiences I have had with “banking” teachers throughout my twelve years of formal education. Those teachers only taught using textbooks, therefore, they insisted that the textbook was always right. If I were to solve a math problem using a technique different from the book, then I would not get points for the problem even though my answer was right. And if I were to interpret an open-ended essay different from how my teacher would then my interpretations would be wrong. By doing this, my teachers destroyed my creativity. I was prohibited from my own thoughts and penalized if I expressed them. The only alternative for me was to become a “robot” that followed the orders of authorities, but being a “robot” was not something I was ashamed of. In fact, my role as a “robot” led me to better understand the “drama of Education” in which teachers attempt to “regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students”. I was able to figure out that my own teachers had tried to handle the way the world “entered into me” by
Does it have a specific contribution to make to our understanding of moral experience? Is there a price to be paid for its different perspective, and if so, is the price worth paying?” This opening statement gives us a taste of his thoughts about VE already. Louden goes to raise his objections. I will consider the objections he raises under the headings in his article, those being ‘Agents vs Acts’ , ‘Who is Virtuous’ , ‘Style over Substance’ , and ‘Utopianism’ .
...ng his family behind. Even though there was so much conflict with his family, they were still his family. He wanted them to know what happened to him instead of living in worry over what could have happened to him. He used his new name to keep them from coming to get him, because he needed to take this journey for himself. As it came to an end, and he was aware of that end, Chris wanted them to know and to find him. He was also cut off from civilization for so long, he might have assumed that someone was looking for him, so by writing his birth name, they would know it was him and contact his family.
A quick glance at Life of Pi and a reader may take away the idea that it is an easy read and a novel full of imagination, but take a Freudian view on the work and it transforms into a representation of the human psyche. Martel’s novel takes the reader on a journey with Pi as he struggles for his own survival. Pi experiences a breakdown of each component that makes up ones personality according to Freud throughout the novel. One by one id, ego and super ego both express a huge factor in Pi’s choices and emotions throughout his story. The readers are also introduced to an alternate ending to choose from. This alternate ending plays a key role in understanding how to view the novel through Freudian lenses. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis clarifies many troubling issues raised in the novel Life of Pi.
Many have the belief that in order to know where to go, there needs to be an understanding of where one has been, hence the idea of “Tradition”. The education system that society has become accustomed to having, follows the idea that the teacher reflects how he/she was taught and uses the same process to mold his/her students. In the article “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education”, (1970), Paulo Freire describes the traditional teaching and names it the “banking-education” system. Freire states that the students have no creativity, they are expected to absorb information, memorize and satisfactorily test to be considered knowledgeable. The 1989 film directed by Peter Weir, “Dead Poets Society”,
I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could have tolerated anything so primitive. The pieces of the educational revolution are lying around unassembled."
Rather than preparing students to be thoughtful, self-directed and ethical beings capable of arriving at social truths through critical dilemmas, schools prepare students to be ‘rubber stamps’ with dictatorial work and political structures, train students for work by providing the student with a limited set of skills and information to do a particular job, and discourage the chase of individuality and creativity. (Dewey, 1916).
In The “Banking” Concept of Education, Paulo Freire effectively uses tone, ethos, pathos, and logos to argue that his proposed Problem-Posing education system is better than the common banking concept of education (Freire 33). The audience that Freire is writing to is going to consist of teachers and students. Teachers and students are effected most of all by the system of education that is used, and they are the ones that care most about how students are educated. In The “Banking” Concept of Education, Freire compares the current method of education to a monetary banking system where the information is deposited by the teacher into the students, and then the teacher withdraws the information when they please (27). Freire argues that the banking
Since the beginning of human civilization, the education system has been constantly advancing and intensifying. Although some of these advances have been beneficial to the progression of students’ learning, some of these changes have taken away from the true essence of school. The books Utopia, by Sir Thomas More, and The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells, illustrate abstract societies and the different systems within it. Both of the education systems in these societies were not perfect in any way. The ideal education system should give its students a well-rounded education, have no grading system, the students should not participate in standardized testing, and the schools should have teachers who care about the success of their students.
Doing the weekly readings and watching the videos, my mind exploded with possibilities for change - not unlike Raphael’s “brain popp[ing] open” (Senge, 2012, p. 64). Senge brings to our attention that schools were organised due to the necessity of the industrial age. However he also states that it’s time to move on from this out-dated mode, as i...