Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Creating Onramps for Calling
Sept 2007
Author: Laurent Daloz
Pages 272
I start this report on a personal note. I am always amazed when American social scientists make this huge effort to tell me what I believe. Laurent daloz at different points in this book falls into this category, in the name of Empiricism; there is this prejudicial analysis of the Fundamental Christianity. I do look forward to the day when what core Bible Believers are committed to will be evaluated on a truly empirical social scientific standards.
Having noted this, Laurent Daloz did a great job. He opened with a thesis: Education of the adult learner must focus on a “transformational journey”. Examples of
Daloz choose Kierkegaard’s quotation to begin illustrating his points, according to this theologian/philosopher, “education is the curriculum one has to run through in order to catch up with oneself.” This is another way of saying, the essence of the knowledge we are seeking to discover in education is found in the core of our existence. Daloz compounded his thesis by asserting that “we are learning all the time, from our families, our workplace, our friends and our environment.” Teachers of adult learners need to ask the question: “Where are our students going?” And “What are we for them in their journeys?” Each student is in motion, each learner’s motion has a destination; and the motion to the destination is carried on as “a conversation.”
Mentors are personalities that we invent and allow into our lives for various reasons. It may be because of their insight, understanding, intuition or many other reasons (Jung, 1958. P. 71). Mentors may be mythical or personal, their key role is to assure us that we can survive our journey. They are helpers, equippers, midwifes and promise keepers (Park, 1986)[1]. The metaphorical archetypal context of mentoring is in structured guidance of the Mentees. Mentors are like magicians, they are people who have refined – more than the rest of us – how our world works. Mentors are defined by their willingness to care, they continuously deal with development of identity (p. 18, 19).
Development is rooted in direction and it involves a lot more than change (p. 23). It is not gradual and linear but it involves leaps and can be visualized as a series of spiraling plateaus. Development involves movement across space and time and is discovered only as it is recounted in the stories of the people. The Garden of Eden and the
The process of mentoring involves the details of engendering trust, issuing a challenge, providing encouragement and offering a vision (p.31). Mentoring can be measured and understood by “the extent to which it creates a desire for continued growth.” (p. 62). Daloz described the mentoring process using the structures of aging and the Phase Theories as proposed by Levinson (1978), he also used the conceptualized systems of “growing wiser” as defined by Keagan in the Stage Theory (1982). He rounded these up by explaining Perry’s “scheme of intellectual and ethical development.”
Perry’s scheme intrigues me. He defines a movement from dualism to commitment surrounded by contextual relativism. I think that this smack of double speaks. How can you affirm contextual relativity and commitment at the same time? I know my thoughts challenge the academy, but does not the very foundation of the concept of relativism challenge the reality of commitment? In an attempt to avoid dualism then, Daloz (and Perry before him!) falls into an error. It is an error that says A can be B when the context is right. A will always be A and B will be B, it behoves the adult learner though to recognize and be clear about A to Z including r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y…! On recognizing and affirming the reality of A to Z, the adult learner can then decide about correlations of small letter a to capital letter A and small letter b to capital letter B. This is not contextual relativism; this is simple classification and correct placement of each letter in the alphabet of life. This is what Apostle Paul said concerning the mature Christian, “He learns to discern between good and evil!”[2] This is a critical facility that the adult learner must acquire, a clarity that defies dualism but is clear about the value of choice.
The author wrote about the sense of insecurity that learners moving from an externally validated truth to an internally validated truth feels, he recommends that writing this feeling down in Journals may assist in engaging with and negotiating with the feelings. This is good counsel.
Running through the book is a veiled implication that there is no right or wrong, I cannot accept this. It is a perspective that tears into the foundation of the learner and creates instability in judgment. An adult learner needs to be assisted to clearly see the face of essential evil. Was that not the responsibility of Dante’s mentor – Virgil? He assisted him to negotiate engagement with terror of the Inferno and Purgatory, he helped him to transverse the unimaginable and to win the freedom of sanity and life and precious time with his beloved Beatrice in Heaven. The Mentor/Mentee pair of Athena and Telemachus went through this same process of choice and differentiation as well. It is clear that a true mentor at the least has this responsibility to his mentee.
This is a great book, in spite of my many objections to its anti evangelical undertone, it makes a very stimulating reading, it has a lot of great and applicable principles.
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