“
Meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us. In the past, religious narratives could serve this purpose, or narratives of national progress. Sometimes national and religious narratives co-existed and mutually reinforced one another. In the US, we now are witnessing the last vestiges of these grand narratives in court battles over school prayer and fears that the country is “falling behind”, but the reality is that, for a substantial portion of the population, these narratives have been dead for a long time and no longer serve. They are simply not grand enough to grapple with an increasingly global, post-industrial, media-saturated world, and not grounded enough to pass the necessary and healthy skepticism towards grand narratives that we find in an increasingly diverse and informed public. As our focus shifts from the national to the global, our grand narratives must also shift.
Fortunately there is a meaningful narrative that has been emerging all around us over the past several decades. It is rarely named and therefore not often noticed. Nonetheless it is there, waiting for anybody interested in creating a meaningful learning environment to harness and bring significance back into the classroom. It is the grand narrative grand enough to make the others seem small, grounded enough to pass under the radar of our skepticism toward grand narratives. It is the simple narrative that tells us that beyond our own provincial grand narratives we are all interconnected, sharing one planet, and that our future depends on us and future generations.
”Michael Wesch, “Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance”
