Missing Joe everyday and wanting to share some thoughts:

Great teachers bless us all.  Each of us has been touched by a great teacher.  We remember a person who taught us to think in new ways, discover things we had not considered before, imbued us with a passion for learning, and maybe even touched our soul.  We are blessed because when we have great teachers they give to us their voice, a voice we then get to carry with us.  We get to hear them talk to us as we sort through arguments, as we make decisions, as we live out our lives.

 Like so many people, I have been blessed by Joe’s voice.  I hear him talk about social justice and I hear him try to name and describe the silent machinations of power that shape the world around us.  I hear him carry forward and shepherd the dream born of great turmoil in the sixties through what he described as the “recovery movement” of the 80s and 90s and today. His careful analysis of these times that shaped (and continue to shape) the world in which I grew up and in which we all now live are full of important messages: about teaching and learning and the business of modern education, about how the media shapes our thinking and the thinking of our children, about 20^th century corporate power, about the myriad of social injustices in the world, and (as Joe was so apt to say) ad inifinitum.

 In each area that Joe fixed his critical gaze, his careful critical analysis allowed those who read his work or listened to him speak better understand the way power and people with power shape the world in which we live.   For me one of his most influential analyses was his critical challenge of Howard Gardner’s work. In the first chapter of his edited book Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered, Joe, alongside his fellow authors, challenged Gardner in the following manner:

Garder’s stable, autonomous self that either has or does not have particular forms of intelligence is becoming a psychological anachronism.  While in no way dismissing the power of human beings to affect their destinies, to possess human agency, or to change social conditions we argue that one’s ontological condition must be re-examined in light of the sociological, cultural studies, cultural psychological, and critical-analytical work of the past few decades.  Much of what Gardner and his fellow psychologists consider to be free will and expressions of innate intelligence are manifestations of particular social, cultural, political, linguistic, and economic forces.  While we can make decisions on how we operate as human beings, we are never completely independent of these structuring forces.  

For me embedded within this quote is both Joe’s message of hope and belief “in the power of human beings to affect their destinies” and his message of caution that we must be diligent in attempting to see the limitations that our “particular social, cultural, political, linguistic and economic” zeitgeist create on our capacity to understand and work towards a better humanity. For me this message of hope, tempered by the realization that we must humbly acknowledge our own limitations, is one of Joe’s most important messages.

 Strangely enough though, this voice is not the most important voice I hear when I listen in my head for Joe.  The most important voice comes from how Joe treated me and the many, many other people with whom he worked. It is Joe’s belief in me (and others), care about me (and others), his heartfelt wonder at what it is I (and others) might yet accomplish, that I will most cherish when I need help moving beyond self doubt to action.  It is Joe’s faith, his respect, and his belief in the people with whom he worked or taught or simply sat next to at a meal, that I hear when I listen to Joe’s voice in my head.

 I believe that this love for his fellow human travelers was what allowed Joe to change so many lives.  He could simultaneously challenge the most grave injustices while still holding the belief that people could overcome the challenges we each face and together build a better world.  Each day, when I think of Joe, I remember his heartfelt belief in the potential of his fellow human beings and how he embodied this belief in not only his scholarship but, more importantly, his interactions.  His ability to treat each individual with compassion and wonder is one of the most important legacies from which we can all humbly learn, and is the voice I most cherish.