Blogging the Self for Lifelong Learning
The fifth post in a series about informal journaling for lifelong learners. Almost 15 years ago, I wrote a rationale for the use of blogging for learners. I have since returned to these ideas for a deeper look in the context of new experiences.
Looking over the main ideas expressed in that earlier article, some of these ideas act as a catalyst to ask myself: what was I thinking at that time to come up with those ideas? What was the context?
I think that a special aspect of informal learning is when it involves inviting others into our learning journeys to celebrate learning projects.
Using Blogs for journaling is a process of externalizing in digital form our inner conversations. It provides a tool of inclusion that invites us to ask questions but also invites others to join us in mutual self-expression.
I asserted at that time that Blogging is primarily a solitary activity, not a collaborative one, and though there is a deeper understanding now that self-expression involves a solitary activity, what gives it its energy is the sharing of personal thoughts with others as well as re-working earlier ideas to make deeper connections.
Thoughts you express during blogging might mirror others’ thoughts. However, because the main focus of blogging is to develop individual capacities for self-making, for soul-work, any approach to facilitate this process needs to be voluntary, egalitarian, and respectful of the individual.
As blogging is an involved, sustained, and intensive activity, it is critical to recognize the blogging tool is facilitating identity construction and reconstruction. This process is constantly unfolding, as we become more connected to our communities and more self-actualizing as individuals.
The blogging process connects others’ ideas to our own experience, weaves them into our own voiced views, and changes our views during the act of writing itself. Hofmeyr (2006) describes the essential nature of the self-making process from a humanistic perspective:
A re-conceptualized self appeared on the scene: exit self, the product; enter self, the creator. The self is now no longer considered as the passive product of an external system of constraint but as the active agent of its own formation (p.216).
To promote the self as creator, the blogging tool requires us to place ourselves at the center of our own learning activities. It compels us to continually review and revise and re-envision our selfhood, our ideas, our deep-set beliefs. Blogging captures on the screen the choices made, the questions asked, the evolving ways we classify ideas, drafts, iterations and themes we return to again and again.
Humanism requires individuals to become prepared to make choices about themselves, their lives, their families, and their life-world. The freedom to choose, the choice to acquiesce or to withhold consent, the choice to become self-directed or not, are essentially the core issues Humanism delves into.
Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom, summed up the individuation process and the struggle for self-actualization humans uniquely face:
Although character development is shaped by the basic conditions of life and although there is no biologically fixed human nature, human nature has a dynamism of its own that constitutes an active factor in the evolution of the social process (Fromm, 1969, pp. 316-317).
Maslow argued that through the process of learning more about oneself, one can learn to make better value choices, further spurring self-actualization. The ability to make effective choices is one central theme of humanism. Another central theme is that there is an essential, or transcendent, self, which is that 'something' that impels us towards growth as individuals and impels us to attempt to improve our human society (Pearson & Podechi, 1999).
The successful pursuit of blogging as an autonomous agent requires us to embrace solitude. The promise of improved interaction with others through blogging itself as a digital medium is illusory – the act of connection starts with the reader’s or writer’s conscious deliberate choice of finding affinity with others, not in the medium itself. From solitude comes an opportunity for self-making, writing to mirror our inner minds, and this in turn leads to self-affinity, self-acceptance, and self-knowledge.
Blogging affords us a special chance to journal our transitions and record and bear witness to the difficulties we can encounter when told we are free to choose the topics to write about, and yet find ourselves afraid to do so, and instead surrender our will to others. This tentative stance taken by new bloggers is important to account for when guiding others towards more self-regulated blogging. Giving in to the cues and unspoken rules of conduct is counter-productive. It stifles voices and shifts the decision-making away from learners to the experts, and this undermines the potential of blogging.
Blogging enables this process. Humanism aims to assist learners to find and use their voices to venture out as witnesses and agents of change in their communities and themselves. Humanism stands opposed to paternalism, instead drawing the source for its strength from the hopes and dreams for self-actualization of individual learners, not the vested interests of institutionalized education and the organizations that act as its stakeholders. The main reason that humanism must play a central role in education policy is that when the self is reduced to observable behaviors and competencies, the objectification of humanity begins, shifting the responsibility for betterment from individual learners, to the nameless authority of social agencies and corporate interests. Humanism focuses on how we relate to human beings and oneself, and not on how to make use of available human resources. Humanism is a critic of the trend towards technicism, where workplace pedagogy is surrendered to the interests of CEOs, when control lies in the hands of business, industry and governments (Collins, 1985).
In effect, the critical role of humanism is to counter the consequences that ensue when, instead of being autonomous learners, seeking self-education, men and women are still being educated on behalf of their rulers (Collins, 1995 pg. 88).
Blogging is a disruptive technology that requires individuals to engage in continuous questioning, probing and doing so as self-regulated, autonomous agents. Blogging provides an opportunity for everyone to step beyond the technicist paradigm, where everything considered significant learning is accredited, certified, and measured. Blogging provides the potential for global self-education. Humanism aims to cultivate this capacity for self-education, or self-direction-with-others, through a process of nurturing within intentional learning environments.
Maslow argued that the inner core of a self-determining individual is free to uncover ones real self, and decide what one will become (Maslow, 1962). This capacity for self-growth and self-renewal leads to self-actualizing growth. Self-knowledge, in effect, helps people make better choices and helps them gain better knowledge of universal human nature. Self-directed learning acknowledges that not only can adults learn, but can learn better without undue pressure from externally imposed directives (Collins, 1995).
Welton (2006) described Cleary and Hogan’s argument that self-education is a potentiality that students should be encouraged to gradually embrace. Both the successful nurturing of this potentiality, and its responsible, mature use, are based on how we relate with others. The self-development of ones potential depends largely on oneself and the degree one learns to embrace learning as a personal responsibility. This type of learning, however, is best exercised and developed in a non-coercive, engaging and meaningful manner. As educators, we have the responsibility to assist the adult learner to reflect on the manner in which values, beliefs, and behaviors previously deemed unchallengeable can be critically analyzed (Brookfield, 1985). Humanist educators also need to become advocates for supportive, non-threatening learning environments. I shift gears from promoting the blogging tool as a means to facilitate self-work through solitude to exploring other areas in which blogging can play a significant part aiding in personal growth.
Blogging is useful for guiding learners through difficult life transitions, overcoming difficult life challenges, and leaving a legacy for others.
Humanism is like a servant bard, cultivating the unfolding collective narrative of humanity's struggle between our tendencies towards solitary individualism and potentialities for transcendent individualism. Like Humanism, blogging gives voice to the stirrings of the emancipated self as a self-in-the-making.
Blogging from a humanist perspective requires us to examine critically our personal experience and be receptive to others’ ideas. Every situation places us in a web of roles and responsibilities, stirrings of discontent, of yearning. Humanistic educators who engage their learners in blogging activities need to consider carefully different strategies to enable learners to be empowered to take part in their communities, and assist their students to become autonomous, self-directing beings.
Blogging can become an inclusive tool as long as facilitators aim to prepare learners to engage in self-making and persist in this journey. All individuals are ultimately responsible for contributing to the creating of greater possibilities, and that the need to grow is the generating force for engaging in a lifetime enterprise of self-creation that has consequences on others (Pearson and Podeschi,1999, pg. 51).
References:
Brookfield, S. (1993). Self-directed learning: Political clarity, and the critical practice of adult education. Adult Education Quarterly, 43(4), 227-242.
Collins, M. (1995). Critical commentaries on the role of the adult educator: From self-directed learning to postmodernist sensibilities.
M. Welton (Ed.) In defense of the lifeworld: Critical perspectives on adult learning (pp. 71-97). Albany: SUNY Press.
Fromm, Erich. (1969). Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon Books
Hofmeyr, B. (2006). The Power Not to Be (What we Are): The Power and Ethics of Self-creation in Foucault. In Journal of Moral Philosophy, 3(2), 215-230
Norman, R. (2004). Introduction. In R. Norman, On humanism thinking in action (pp. 1-25). New York: Taylor Francis.
Pearson, E. & Podeschi, R. (1999). Humanism and Individualism: Maslow and his Critics. In Adult Education Quarterly, 50(1), 41-55.
Welton, M. (2006). A Rich Exchange. In MDDE 613 Forum on Postmodernism and Humanism, retrieved November 10, 2006, from http://cde.lms.athabascau.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1787amp;parent=9923