Reflections on Palmer Ch. 6

The foundational idea of this chapter, that teachers should come together to collaborate and improve their teaching, is a sound one. I tend to agree that the most rapid progress in any field occurs when there is a healthy balance between the individual and community. I also agree that modern teachers, especially at public schools, tend to be somewhat isolated from their colleagues. This seems to be an inevitable consequence of how we practice teaching as a society. The teacher typically works alone, and so any community must be created intentionally -- it does not naturally arise in the same way as with other, more group oriented occupations. Fortunately, the need for a community of teachers has begun to be recognized by both teachers themselves and the state, hence recent credential requirements for continuing education, etc.

I am not as persuaded by Palmer's vision for the teaching community. This vision is naturally based on Palmer's own work, and the activities he proposes require both a high degree of trust as well as buy in to the ideas in the book. I think this kind of group-self-reflection would be impossible to implement on a large scale - many people would simply refuse to participate in a genuine way, and so the necessary safe environment is lost. Even apart from pragmatic considerations, I'm still not convinced of the inherent value of the activities themselves. E.g., trying to mine the subconscious through free association for unique metaphors for the self as teacher and then actually using those metaphors to inform teaching seems little better than voodoo to me. This sort of approach, all too common in the self-help genre, is based on Freudian ideas of an independently intelligent subconscious that have been entirely discredited by modern Psychology. A metaphor for the self-as-teacher based on the first word that pops into one's head is in reality as good as random.