Patience is a Virtue in the Classroom

John Singleton Copley’s A Boy with a Flying Squirrel, 1765.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/11/the-power-of-patience

"The Power of Patience: Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention" 
by Jennifer L. Roberts

"I want to focus today on the slow end of this tempo spectrum, on creating opportunities for students to engage in deceleration, patience, and immersive attention. I would argue that these are the kind of practices that now most need to be actively engineered by faculty, because they simply are no longer available “in nature,” as it were. Every external pressure, social and technological, is pushing students in the other direction, toward immediacy, rapidity, and spontaneity—and against this other kind of opportunity. I want to give them the permission and the structures to slow down."


"What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience."


"Where patience once indicated a lack of control, now it is a form of control over the tempo of contemporary life that otherwise controls us. Patience no longer connotes disempowerment—perhaps now patience is power."

May inspiration and creativity be with you!

School Days

Norman Rockwell, Knowledge is Power, cover for the October 27, 1917 edition of "The Saturday Evening Post."


With much of the country going back to school soon, I thought I would post about an interesting cover Norman Rockwell made for The Saturday Evening Post, the source for all that is Americana. It is often called Knowledge is Power from the writing on the chalkboard created by the student in the image. The young boy is presumably working on his punishment that was doled out, no doubt, because of some cheeky remark about why he must be in school.

The twist of the image, so common to Rockwell works, is in the "power" being transferred to the boy from his teacher by the "knowledge" he himself is gaining in the scene. His teacher is, probably inappropriately, being visited by a suitor in the classroom. We can see the man leaning up against her desk coyly, as he hides a ribbon wrapped package behind his back. The teacher looks uninterested with the man's presence, but, her cool exterior is betrayed by the flush of her cheeks. Despite being punished by his teacher, we can tell the boy is quite pleased by the situation: the happy look upon his face reveals that he too sees the irony in the picture, and knows he now holds some measure of power over his teacher.

How will the boy use this knowledge to his advantage?
Will the teacher make some sort of deal with the student to keep her love affair hush hush?
Does the man receive any kind of reciprocation from the beautiful teacher?
I hope this image makes you smile as you think of the knowledge that will soon be swirling about in the coming school year.

May inspiration and creativity be with you!