Evocateur of the Possible

On Oprah's[1] Super Soul Conversations of 2018, Jean Houston describes herself as an "evocateur of the possible" and a "midwife of souls." Those two metaphors have captured my imagination since listening to that monumental conversation. After that conversation, I read the Wizard of Oz and Jean's book, the Wizard of Us. I recommend it for anyone in the fields of education and psychotherapy. I have read so much about the metaphor of the midwife both in education and therapy. As much as I like the metaphor, and it still stimulates me, it is the evocateur of the possible that is beginning to conjure fire in my heart.

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Each weekday around the world, there are bands of people committed to numbing routines of attending class and doing jobs they would sleep-walk through. It is all fun and games until our stupor losses its charm. Only then do we begin to ask questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives. In the absence of evocative stirrings of our spirits, we can float through our life's doldrums. Such states of stability define most of our contemporary initiatory customs. Our education system fits into this pattern of stabilising equilibrium. Are we surprised when school-going children and university students drop out of the system? If trapped in a facts-churning machine, the education system leaves imagination and curiosity out of the learning ecosystem. Manualised learning is at the centre of learning and teaching. When the teacher has the manual and follows it to the letter, what else is left for them to explore?

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These days, the standard lesson plan begins with clear objectives and ends with a conclusion. Learning appears to end after forty minutes. When the sirene goes, the class is over. Both the learners and the teacher can have some respite. The conditioning of the learners is that they have a syllabus and an associated checklist they must satisfy at the end of the lesson. In my time as a teacher, earners were interested in well-defined outcomes and products, less of the process of discovery and inquiry. A box of wellformed answers pacifies the anxiety of unknowing. Unfortunately, such an approach to teaching does not inspire learners to be adventurers. I think the teacher can be an evocateur of the possible.

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What can a teacher then do to become an evocateur of the possible, igniting curiosity and imagination? Kenneth W. Davis and Scott R. Weeden[2] propose that a teacher can be a trickster on the learner's journey. When a teacher is a trickster, they turn the classroom into a theatre of dreams. Davis and Weeden are aware of the temptation of the teacher to take the role of the sage. The sage embodies wisdom assigned to wise elder woman or man, guiding. However tempting the role of the sage for a teacher might be, the teacher best benefits themselves and the learner when they embrace the role of the trickster. The trickster figure in myths and legends acts like a fool and initiates wisdom and insight. Julie Cruikshank and Angela Sidney[3] state that the trickster creates human beings and teaches them the principles of culture. Thus, tricksters can promote culture and see that it is carried on. According to Hyde[4], they achieve this by constructing and crossing borders and bringing previously concealed distinctions into view. Right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead—we continuously distinguish—the trickster will jump the line and confound the distinction in every situation. The legendary embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox, the trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and deceit, contradiction and paradox.

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On the one hand, as Nancy Hathaway[5] points out, tricksters are slick, greedy, and occasionally cruel. They deceive, cheat, commit inexcusable acts, and cause chaos for everyone. On the other hand, they carry out the critical function of giving culture to humanity. They teach us how to hunt, cook, and survive in the wilderness. Tricksters and teachers can be said to play similar roles in the function of a cultural initiator. However, the resemblance might go even further. Tricksters are cultural disruptors and creators of culture and its particular limits. The trickster will employ theatrics, humour and directness to approach obstacles.

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Like Davis and Weeden, I am aware that many people may find it strange to think of teachers as tricksters. What happens in the classroom is a serious subject because our pupils' growth is on the line. Some teachers may find it difficult to believe that they could deceive their students or do anything other than finish the backbreaking work of educating the next generation. These teachers must remember that the classroom is a location where life adventures can begin and continue, whether we realise it or not.

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The trickster teacher becomes the evocateur of the possible by reintroducing theatre, storytelling, and magic in the classroom. Magic ignites intrigue and curiosity for all participants in the learning drama. When the class ends, explorative learning continues in the lifeworld of the teacher and the learners. The beginning of the following class would be not so much as what the learners remember from the previous lesson, called recap. Instead, the lesson would begin with a sharing from the learners about where curiosity took them after the class. What more did they discover between the two classes? There would not be any need for tedious homework assignments. The learners would intuitively carry with them the explorative attitude, instilling in them the excitement of enquiry and search. The trickster teacher returns mystery to the classroom. The mysterious is not something we cannot understand; instead, it continually beckons us into its deeper comprehension.

[1] https://www.oprah.com/own-podcasts/jean-houston-lessons-from-the-wizard-of-oz

[2] Davis, K. W., & Weeden, S. R. (2009). Teacher as Trickster on the Learner's Journey.?Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,?9(2), 70-81.

[3] Cruikshank, J. and Sidney, A. (1998). How the World Began. Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America. Ed. Swann, B. New York: Random House, 138-40.

[4] Hyde, L. (1998). Trickster Makes This World. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

[5] Hathaway, N. (2001). The Friendly Guide to Mythology. New York: Viking Press.