TACTics
Journal
A Publication for and by TOC
for Education Practitioners
August 30, 2002
In this week’s issue:
Elementary/Secondary TACTics
(1) Using Theory of
Constraint—Of Clouds, Conflict, and College
Classrooms, Emmy Stark Zitter
Editor’s Notes
(2) Kay Buckner-Seal
ELEMENTARY/SECONDARY
TACTICS
(1) Theory of Constraint—Of Clouds,
Conflicts, and College
Classrooms
By Emmy Stark Zitter
I was introduced to the Theory
of Constraint this summer in an intense, week long course for educators here in
Israel. My thanks to Gila Glatter and the Mofet Institute for presenting me
with a new and rich tool for teaching literature.
For my final assignment in the
course, I was asked to apply the tools that we had learned for conflict
resolution to my own teaching field.
I teach literature to college
students. I saw in the use of the “cloud” for conflict resolution a number of
potential ways both to clarify conflicts in literature and to open up a more
theoretical discussion of the role of conflict in the creation of a literary
work.
For example, I would ask the
students to apply the conflict resolution cloud to two dilemmas that arise in a
text written by Zitkala Sa (Native American name of Gertrude Simmons Bonin, a
writer in the first half of the twentieth century). “Impressions of an Indian
Childhood” is a short autobiographical text in which Zitkala Sa describes
conflicts and dilemmas of a Native American child who is educated by white
missionaries. (The full text is available in the Norton Anthology of American
Literature, Shorter, 4 th ed.,
ed. Baym, Franklin, et. al, 1995, pp. 1686-1697). I would begin by asking the
students to consider the internal conflict that Zitkala Sa’s mother faces when
the missionaries offer to take her child and educate her so as to help her succeed
in the larger American society.
A number of possible clouds for
understanding and perhaps resolving this conflict might emerge. The following
is one possibility: The clouds stating the conflicting desires are quite
obvious: in D we would write, “send my daughter to school in the East” and in
D’, “leave my daughter on the reservation.” For the conflicting needs we would
have to think things out a bit more. It seems to me that in B we could write,
“to give my daughter reading and writing skills that she will need to succeed
in life” and in C, “to keep my daughter close to her family.” For A, the shared
goal, we might put, “Zitkala Sa’s mother’s desire to give her daughter tools
for a good life—what every mother wants for her child.”
Reading the clouds from left to
right, we end up with the following statements: In order to give my daughter
the tools for a good life, I have to give her reading and writing skills that
she will need. In order to give her reading and writing skills, I have to send
my daughter to school in the East.
On the other hand…
In order to give my daughter
the tools for a good life, I have to keep my daughter close to her family. In
order to keep her close to the family, I have to leave my daughter on the
reservation (refuse to send her to school in the East).
We would then go on to make
sure that clouds D and D’ are indeed in conflict and then begin to examine B
and C more closely to see if the connections between them and the connected
desire are necessary, or if there are any alternative desires that would meet
the needs of both sides. And, indeed, some possible alternatives do suggest
themselves. For example, the text mentions that many of the Indian youth have
already gone to the East to be educated and then have returned to the reservation.
Perhaps the mother
could arrange to have one of
those who have returned teach her daughter, thus keeping her close to the
family and giving her the reading and writing skills she will need at the same
time—a win-win solution to her conflict.
Alternatively, she could
re-examine her premise in “B” and ask whether Zitkala Sa really does need
conventional reading and writing skills to succeed in life or whether the
native arts that the mother herself was teaching her—beadwork and
storytelling—would perhaps be enough. This could open up an important
discussion about cultural definitions of success, both in art and in life.
A second cloud covers a more
difficult because more theoretical conflict, that within Zitkala Sa herself as
she grows up. (In “School Days of an Indian Girl,” she continues the story of
her difficult times in the school in the East, which she calls “The Land of Red
Apples,” a clear allusion to the mythic tree of knowledge of good and evil that
brings death to an ideal world). Perhaps we could form the conflict in terms of
Zitkala Sa’s decision, not only to go East, a decision made as a little girl
and based on simple
curiosity and ignorance, but on
her later decision to continue her studies well after the rest of her peers
have finished. Zitkala Sa must decide whether simply to be content having
learned the rudiments of reading and writing, or to continue getting a complete
education, winning academic prizes, and ultimately becoming a well known writer
and teacher in the English language.
Again, a number of possible
clouds can be created. Here is one possibility: In D, we place Zitkala Sa’s
desire to continue her education in the East past the basics, in D’ her desire
to return to her people and her family out West.
The shared goal, A, is creation
of a complete and integrated identity.
Once again, the tough clouds
are B and C, the different needs behind the conflicting desires. In B we might
write of the need to express herself as a writer, with all the tools that a
white man’s education will give her, including myths and symbols in the
Judeo-Christian tradition such as the aforementioned “red apples.” In C we
could write of the need to keep her Indian identity, one based on an oral and
not a written tradition and associated with her mother’s teachings. A dramatic
dichotomy of these two
conflicting needs emerges by
comparing Zitkala Sa’s use of the most western of myths, that of the forbidden
apples that get her chased out of her own little Garden of Eden, with her
re-telling of the Native American legend of what she herself calls the forbidden fruit,” in the story of “the dead
man’s plum bush” that her mother tells her (p. 1694).
The sentences that cover this
complex conflict then read as follows: In order to give myself a complete
identity, I have to continue to learn to express myself as a writer. In order
to continue to learn to express myself as a writer, I have to remain in the
East for more years and continue my studies there.
On the other hand…
In order to give myself a
complete identity, I must keep my Indian identity, based on an oral and not a
written tradition. In order to keep an identity based on an oral tradition, I
must return to the reservation and to my family in the West.
Once again, we check that the
conflict is absolute—stay in the East or return to the West; we check that
there is indeed a shared goal—an integrated identity; and then we turn our
attention to B and C and their relationships to the conflicting desires. We
might come to the conclusion that C and D’ are not actually necessarily
related, that, in fact, Zitkala Sa can hold onto her Indian identity even as
she continues to learn the language of the white man. In fact, she could go
back to those oral legends and tales that she so values—and actually writes
them down in English, thereby helping save them from extinction. And, in fact, that is exactly what Zitkala
Sa did, in real life—besides her autobiographical essays, her other written
works were written collections of oral Indian legends.
But—and this is an important
but—it seems to me that in this area, conflict resolution, however creative,
has its limits. For although Zitkala Sa keeps some of her Indian identity and
in fact uses her skills with the white man’s language to convey that identity
to others, there is no absolute resolution possible between two cultures as
different as that of an oral and written tradition. And here the class could
discuss some of the theoretical and practical difficulties of translating from
culture to culture, e.g. how one catches the experiential dimension of oral
transmission in a written work and how the larger Western tradition of written
literature changes Zitkala Sa’s vision of what it was like to be raised outside
that tradition. Even more theoretically, we could discuss how unresolved
conflicts between cultures and within Zitkala Sa/Gertrude Bonin herself
actually fuel the work, giving a seemingly simple story the power that makes it
a rich and memorable Modernist text.
In one of her beautiful
descriptions of her idyllic childhood, Zitkala Sa describes how “the mere
shifting of a cloud shadow in the landscape near by was sufficient to change
our impulses” (p. 1692). She then describes how she sometimes would forget the
“cloud shadow” and instead plays the game of chasing her own shadow. This game
becomes a poignant symbol of Zitkala Sa’s divided self, as she attempts to put
together both her western and Native American identities. It is, of course, a
game doomed to failure, as the two identities, like a child and her shadow, can
never wholly be merged.
The image of the “cloud
shadows”, on the other hand, reminds the reader of a childhood that is wholly
at one with itself and the natural world around it.
In the context of this
analysis, they remind us, as well, of the “clouds” in Theory of Constraint that
can be used to illuminate a text written almost one hundred years ago, casting
light on the story like a full moon rising over a still Dakota prairie evening.
Emmy Stark Zitter
Michlelet Jerusalem—Jerusalem
College
August 2002
EDITOR’S NOTES
(2) Kay Buckner-Seal
Emmy, thanks for sharing! Your
article was a fine example of how the TOCFE tools help us gain deeper
understanding of the complex ideas, experiences, and cultural perspectives
found in literature. Your article inspires thought and I hope that our readers
feel free to share some of those thoughts with us.
We would love to hear from you.
Send your responses, applications of the thinking processes, lessons,
announcements, and etc. by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd.,
Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or send hyperlink to cedwards@cedarville.net
or bucknek@earthlink.net.