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.