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Lolis Elie on "Making it Happen Event"
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It's lonely outside the box
David Thornburg is a balding, smiling middle-aged man who seems not the least bit threatening.
But surveying the room of organizations represented at Making It Happen: A New Orleans Rebuilding Resource Festival, he offered a different vision of himself and his compatriots.
"Our pictures are on other people's dart boards. We're dangerous. We're radical," he said. "We believe in the power and potential of children. We don't believe that the bell curve is anything but an artifact."
Thornburg describes himself and his colleagues at the center that bears his name as "pragmatic visionaries." They teach educators and school systems to use technology to improve learning in their schools.
"I had a teacher come up to me after a presentation and say, 'Dr. Thornburg, if every child learns, who's going to pick up the garbage?'
"I said, 'If every child learns, one of them will figure out a way for the garbage to pick itself up,' " he said.
Walking the talk
The Thornburg Center was one of several organizations invited by the Ashe Cultural Center, Concordia Architects and the Center for Empowered Decision Making to participate in Making It Happen.
The three-day event was convened last weekend as a showcase for good ideas and as a networking event to help New Orleans educators and activists create partnerships with organizations in other parts of the country.
"We wanted to be involved in an action agenda, something that didn't feel like it was just planning and talking and writing," said Carol BeBelle, the director of the Ashe Cultural Arts Center.
I focused on the experts in education like the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound schools, the Henry Ford Academy, which is inside of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., and the Big Picture Company. All of these groups have pioneered education approaches that move away from the traditional chalk-and-talk educational model and focus more on encouraging students to get excited about the experience of learning.
Garbage pickup
As I spoke to representatives from the organizations, I kept harking back to something Gov. Kathleen Blanco said when she appointed her Louisiana Recovery Commission.
She said she had instructed the commissioners to think outside the box.
That statement bordered on dishonesty. How else can you describe her decision to appoint a blue ribbon panel of commissioners known more for their maintenance of the status quo than for their wild-eyed radicalism?
If we are serious about new approaches, visionary thinkers like David Thornburg need to be speaking to policy makers at the Governor's Mansion, not just to activists at the Ashe Center.
Otherwise, our approach to education will continue to ensure that there are plenty of people to pick up the garbage.
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Lolis Eric Elie can be reached at lelie@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3330.