So What?

I was having difficulty finding a way into this chapter, when I realized that Jennifer Wilson, a current MA participant, had given me one – as well as giving me a genuine laugh-out-loud moment – with a recent posting to our virtual learning environment. Jennifer sent in some wonderfully enthusiastic and (to me) empowering feedback on the experience she was having on the teacher education module that we are doing together. She then wrote:

I can just imagine Julian saying, ‘Thank you. So what?’

And I thought, Jennifer understands just what I mean by the, ‘So what?’ that I so often use. And that, in turn, made me realize how easy it would be to misinter-pret it. As a spoken utterance, ‘So what?’ usually carries a sense of interpersonal aggression, and probably an implication that there is no significance worth attaching to what has gone before. That, of course, is not what I mean. I want to celebrate what has gone before, whether that is in terms of something read, or thought, or felt, or done, or all of these things, and then to encourage the next step, the view towards the future in which that which is to be celebrated will find its developmental significance. ‘So what?’ I have come to realize, is the link that my own trajectory as teacher educator has forged for me with what Dewey (1931/1970) (see p.120 above) described as the revolutionary aspect of American Pragmatism, the idea that one’ s positions are justified less with reference to the past than with reference to the future; less, even, with reference to a traditional sense of truth than to an expression of hope.