[Dialogue] Question - a bolt from the Costa Rican blue sky from Steve Harrington

[Gordon Harper]

On 4/23/2011 10:42 PM, steve harrington wrote the following to me, with 
cc to Jim Wiegel and Jack Gilles.  I'll share my response in hopes of 
others chiming in.
> Gordon,
>
> I just got this from LiDona, she mentions you as an "instigator" 
> involved in fleshing out the life triangles.
>
> Can you confirm this?
>
> See attached "Life Triangles" are these the ones you helped build in S66?
> Reaching back into ancient history Ceci n'est pas une /pipe - or is it?/
>
> //Could you share a little paragraph or 2 re:
> -what was the occasion that caused the life triangles came to be made?
> -any memory of who was there?

Oh, Hell --

Don't you just hate it, when you've been outed by one of your colleagues!

All right, full disclosure requires I confess that, in a sense, what 
LiDona says about the summer program in 1966 is true: I was there.  But 
"as an instigator in fleshing out" or having "helped to build" the Life 
Triangles--that's pushing it.  LiDona is too generous.

That was a marvelous summer, 1966.  Living in Hyde Park, I had finished 
a year of teaching in the Collegeat the University of Chicago andwas 
getting a few last licks into work on my PhD dissertation.  I was also 
deeply involved in the Southeast Sector Cadre (there were five across 
the city of Chicago at that time) and working on my pedagogy training.  
We were getting ready to issue the call (the letter would be signed by 
John Baggett) for the first national gathering of spirit colleagues, 
cadres and pedagogues at the end of that summer.

Our first child was about to be born (as he was, the rascal, right 
during this summer program to which you allude).  Hundreds of us were 
marching from Buckingham Fountain to the home of the first Mayor Daley 
every week that summer to protest the mobile classrooms that the city 
was using (only) in its black neighborhoods.  Roxana and I werepacking 
up the household for our move to Kalamazoo, MI in a few weeks, for me to 
assume my new position in the fall as Assistant Professor of English at 
Western Michigan University.

In the midst of all this (and clearly in a fit of insanity), I decided 
to sign up for and participate in the month-long Teacher Training 
Institute on the West Side that July.

This wasn't the very first summer program, as Jim Wiegel can tell you.  
He showed up the year before to be in that one, for college students, 
and just hung around from then on.

Still, this program was early in our history of summer eventfulness, and 
a bit chaotic, something we sort of put together as we went along.  It 
was a forerunner to and foretaste of our future major research assemblies.

We were a group of about twenty-five teachers, maybe half from the 
residential Order and half coming in from around the country.  We came 
together to look at the state of education in America and to build some 
of the new theoretical and practical models needed from the standpoint 
of structural revolutionaries.  People told horror stories about their 
personal educational experiences (which rather shocked me into a new 
awareness, since I felt I had had many fine teachers and good schools).  
We put together revolutionary designs and strategies for bringing 
imaginal methods to classrooms from preschools to universities, and we 
ended the program by issuing a bold manifesto to the world of education 
(it was the mid-60s).  As I recall, I was the only university faculty in 
the group, and men were the minority.

(I'm still hoping that the document and manifesto we produced will turn 
up one of these days out of all the corporate and individual archival 
work going on.  It would be a delight and instructive to revisit those 
from this point in time.  I may still have a copy buried in one of my 
boxes, but it hasn't surfaced yet.)

But to your questions.  We met in one of the side rooms off the basement 
corridor on the West Side, probably room C or D.  It is quite true that 
the Life Triangles were part of our sessions.  Part indeed--the massive 
set of cascading triangles completely occupied one entire wall of our 
meeting room!  It was obvious to all of us who joined that summer 
program that major work had been going on (and was continuing) to flesh 
these out, and they certainly constituted an almost overpowering 
presence in our sessions.

I do recall our group talking about them and working on them a bit, but 
they don't stand out for me as our primary focus in the TTI.   They 
pushed us to think comprehensively and dynamically, and aspects of them 
clearly had relevance to the various models, strategies and curricular 
pieces that we constructed.  The essential design work on them, however, 
had started prior to our program, as LiDona indicates, in the 
residential Teacher Cadre and would continue after it, most specifically 
in the subsequent Teacher House to which she notes our TTI gave birth.

You've already got a list of many of those who participated in the TTI 
.  A couple others: I think Jim Campbell was also in it, and a teacher 
from New Trier High School, Bill Gregory, and I worked together on 
several things.  His daughter would shortly thereafter publish a book 
that attained a certain recognition, /Hey, White Girl/ !, about her 
experience, after having grown up in an affluent Chicago suburb, of 
doing a year of high school in 5th City.

A heady time, a wild swirl of engagement, many vivid memories but little 
to the point of your list of items.  When our son, Geoffrey, was born, 
the whole TTI demonstrated in fine fashion how you celebrated such an 
event.  Those of us who weren't yet part of the residential community 
got to see, out of the corner of our eyes, some of the activity in 5th 
City, the growing numbers coming through the halls to take RS-1 and 
advanced courses and to think about the impending first Council of the 
Spirit Movement.   I took away and used in my own teaching at Western 
Michigan over the next few years a much deeper understanding of imaginal 
education.

It did feel rather like being in at the birth, I must say, but only 
marginally of the depth thinking and work that went into creating those 
Life Triangles.  For that story, Steve, you still have to look 
elsewhere.  Hopefully, others can help you here.

So--you've pushed my buttons enough to get these memories to emerge.  
All the best in your further research --

Gordon






On 4/23/2011 10:42 PM, steve har wrote:
> Gordon,
>
> I just got this from LiDona, she mentions you as an "instigator" 
> involved in fleshing out the life triangles.
>
> Can you confirm this?
>
> See attached "Life Triangles" are these the ones you helped build in S66?
> Reaching back into ancient history Ceci n'est pas une /pipe - or is it?/
>
> //Could you share a little paragraph or 2 re:
> -what was the occasion that caused the life triangles came to be made?
> -any memory of who was there?
>
> Re the model
> -seems like there was:
>
> a little of
> Matthews's Sartre language [ensoi, pour soi?
> Matthews's X of History "eschatatological community?
> Rudolph Otto's Fear an Fascination?
> Ur curriculum: yin/yang?
>
> Also curious about the juxtaposition of
> -anthropology
> -theology
> -ethics
>
> -philosophy
> -art
> -history
>
> anything to say about this?
>
> Re the Method
> Without going off some theoretical deep end,  the triangles  seem to 
> be artifacts or images of , "phenomenological reduction". Which I 
> theorize was a method Mathews was a master at.
>
> For a too simple reference point see: 
> http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/180957/eidetic-reduction
>
> Any  comments would be very welcome. As you may surmise, I'm trying to 
> get at some the roots of Imaginal Education especially and 5th City 
> Preschool which I think must have been a wonderful and hair-raising 
> laboratory for doing pedagogy with the smallest and most profound 
> human beings.
>
> Steve
>

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