Generativity - from Family to Society

Here we are back to where we started; Tomasello’s theory: our special cognitive skill, “understanding others as intentional being like the self” (Tomasello, 1999, Page6).  This special cognitive skill had led us to this highly integrated, complicated society.  Lave and Wenger’s theories are also deeply connected to Tomasello’s, but Mark Bracher’s this book, Radical Pedagogy, Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation (Playgrave Macmillan, NY, NY, 2006) brought us back exactly to the place where Tomasello pointed out to us.  Plus, I feel that Bracher is telling our society what we lost on the way we have come this far. 

I have been noticing that, in each chapter in this book, half of what he says could have ideally done by our first social and cultural environment: family.  I would say family is the elemental place to learn about generativity.  In this book, Bracher gave us an example of an infant smiling, he says, “The generativity impulse in general and the need to teach particular both have their origins in our earliest experiences with our caregivers, in which we were the recipients of their generative impulse, their need to teach, their need to be needed.”  How you, as an infant, were fulfilled with caregiver’s recognition, and at the same time caregiver’s desire of the other was also fulfilled by you is the first step for everyone to be ready to learn and also to teach. This first step, whether it is from your own family or someone who takes care of you, must be the most crucial elements for human being.  Seeding generativity is the responsibility as an adult to pass over to next generation.  What is generativity then?  Generativity is “a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation” (Erikson, quoted in John Kotre’s web site).  John Kotre expressed this genrativity as “creativity between the generations” (John Kotre web site. http://www.johnkotre.com/generativity.htm) John’s interpretation is very interesting way to look at this word that has deep meaning.   

If we cannot meet our identity needs and if we cannot fill the others’ identity needs, learning would not take place, which means there is no teaching.  As I said in our class sometimes, it seems to me that a job for a teacher is getting bigger and bigger, when I read this Bracher’s book, it felt to me it would be impossible for me, as one teacher, to support and help the identity needs for all  my students, because it is a big responsibility and I don’t even know if I am ready to do it.  But this is urgent; someone has to make a move to do something about this, because somehow, our base environment (family) is not working to support this most important part of human society. 

            As I always say about a connection between our social problem and education, we have communities, which should support to fill the gap where family (our base environment) missed, but these kinds of communities are disappearing very quickly.  What happened to them?  Is it because of technology? So that people feel we don’t need older generation to teach us something?  Would all those high tech machines in Hospitals and frequent visits to Doctors make us feel that new mothers could do everything by themselves?  I don’t know why but ideal kind of communities are leaving us. 

           This weekend, I watched a movie called, “Lars and the Real Girl” (Directed by Craig Gillespie, 2007).  This is a story about a young man who could not connect with people especially with girls, not because he doesn’t love them, but because he has never learned to be attached by someone or to attach to someone.  This unique character of his was result of him not having a mother from his day one; she died at his birth.  This movie is the story about all his communities support him to let him heal his pain through his own way (even he doesn’t realize what he is really doing).  With his doctor’s lead, everyone who is around him supports him and let him be what he needs to be because everyone loves him.  (He doesn’t realize this until one point, and at the end, I think he understands this in his way…)  It is such a wonderful story; it makes me feel like to live in that community.

This might be a bit exaggerated for the movie I watched, but as Tomasello says, “Human being have evolved in such a way that their normal cognitive ontogeny depends on a certain kind of cultural environment for its recognition” (Tomasello, 2006, Page 215), we need to be a team and support for each others’ identity development, in which there will be “learning” and “teaching”, because we care about each other.  We are responsible for others to be ready for learning and for teaching.  Now I am ready to tackle this difficult task; how do I, as an adult educator, integrate identity needs for myself and others, and also the base of this need; generativity into my teaching.  I need a heck of creativity!