If you’ve never picked up James Paul Gee’s The Anti-Education Era be prepared to get your feathers ruffled. Gee doesn’t beat around the bush or hide his thinking behind overly academic language. No, instead he’s perfectly willing to call certain kinds of thinking exactly what they are – “stupid.”
Thankfully he doesn’t wield this word without seriously considering the tendencies that lead to such poor thinking. As I considered his arguments and ideas for why we so struggle to think in smart and complex ways, I found that Chapter 15 really highlighted the main pieces of his argument by organizing the problem into two categories. The big issue is that we 1) avoid the kinds of “heavy” thinking that would lead to truth and 2) we prefer meaning to truth (Gee, 2013, p.133).
The unfortunate reality is that while we really need the kinds of thinking Gee champions in order to navigate this world, we won’t “get smart” over night. However, with a bit of help from Gee’s discussion we can at least grow in our awareness of how smartness might be achieved. We can start acclimating ourselves to heavy lifting, one mental benchpress and curl at a time.
Body builders don’t achieve olympic lifts like this over night:
And neither will we.
If you’re interested in a more expanded summary and a few more of my own thoughts, you can read my brief essay here: The Need to Move Toward Complex Thinking.
References
Gee, James Paul. (2013). The Anti-Education Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
Mike. (2007). Weight Lifting. [Image file]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjzitek/475244661.
Farrukh. (2012). Weight lifting. [Image file]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/7687322150.
The Ice-Cream Coffee Teacher 
Hi Anna,
I greatly enjoyed reading your post and essay this week! I especially resonated with the quote you included in your essay’s introduction regarding our dislike as humans to let our mind be bogged down by “heavy things.” So often we tell others, and ourselves, to let go, or to carry on, never bothering to really tackle what is bothering us; or, adventuring into a tricky topic. We simply keep moving, hoping it will take care of itself. Another quote from your paper also stuck with me, “When we have mastery with the light, we can then move toward the heavy.” I think this is so powerful, because isn’t this what we do as educators? We equip our kids with the skills they need in “light” settings and contexts, to prepare them for the “real world,” full of difficult and “heavy” things.
Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks! Glad you were able to connect to that idea, as well. It was just such a powerful image for me as I read Gee. I like your phrase here a lot, too, “adventuring into a tricky topic.” Seeing it as an adventure would be a good way to frame it and perhaps convince us (and our students) to address the heavier things.
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Anna,
I really enjoyed reading both your blog post and your essay. Your blog really draws the reader in and gives a great outline for what your essay discusses. The overview of Chapter 15 for Gee’s book was well done! I found myself nodding throughout. The ideas of seeking evidence and argument are certainly a theme throughout this book. I found this to be true in Chapter 8 as well. Your description of how an individual must first learn the foundational skills before advancing to more complex moves was really well stated! Great images too!
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Thanks! I’m glad the images and ideas were able to work together to get across my ideas. It’s good to know (one way or another) whether one’s ideas are actually making sense. Totally agree about Chapter 8. I actually thought about blending it in my discussion a bit, but didn’t have room.
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