Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way - Hardcover

Bateson, Mary Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060168595 ISBN 13: 9780060168599

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1994

Synopsis

The author of Composing a Life provides a thought-provoking study of the art of learning that explains how a continuation of the learning process throughout a lifetime adds pleasure and understanding to human life and helps ensure the future. $60,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Catherine Bateson is Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University.

Reviews

This gracefully written meditation on how we learn by anthropologist Bateson ( Composing a Life ) stresses that most learning occurs outside of schools. Her view of learning as an improvisational, lifelong, participatory activity that changes the learner is enriched by personal examples drawn from her years spent abroad--as a teenager in Israel (1956-58) and on a return trip there in 1988-89, as a fieldworker and young professor in the Philippines (1966-68) and as a teacher and new mother in Iran (1972-79) with her husband Barkev, an Armenian Christian who grew up in Syria. Shuttling among cultures, Bateson brings fresh perspectives to concepts of beauty, the self, competition vs. cooperation, parenting, rituals, the division of labor between women and men and the stultifying effects of television. A wise and liberating book, Bateson's multicultural exploration calls attention to the guiding power of metaphor to provide a framework of meaning, such as the Gaia hypothesis, which conceives of the planet as a living organism. $60,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In her earlier works, Bateson has written about "two intellectual pioneers," her parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and in her surprise best-seller, Composing a Life (1989), the elusive phenomenon of creativity. Here she turns the beam of her ardent, disciplined mind on the crucial and often misunderstood process of learning. Bateson believes that our educational system has many shortcomings, most of which are traceable to some basic misconceptions about how we learn, a lifelong process essential to survival. To live well and responsibly in a diverse and dynamic world, Bateson explains, we must learn not only to accept, but to treasure a multiplicity of viewpoints, the persistence of ambiguity, and the constancy of change. We must learn to see the big picture, be attentive to subtleties, absorb "peripheral visions," and excel at improvisation. To illustrate these sensible and versatile theories, Bateson relates intriguing stories from her culturally diverse life, especially her experiences living in Israel, Iran, and the Philippines. She considers learning within the contexts of parent-child relationships, ritual, the power of metaphor, the mutability of the self, the obsession with novelty, and the pitfalls of fundamentalism and other instances of "narrowed attention." She also frees "multiculturalism" from its superficial and political trappings and altogether invigorates her readers with her faith in our adaptive abilities. Donna Seaman

Anthropologist Bateson continues the themes introduced in her earlier work, Composing a Life (LJ 9/1/89), drawing on her multicultural experiences in Israel, the Philippines, and prerevolutionary Iran. Using "stories and reflections strung together to suggest a style of learning from experience," she presents learning as a lifelong process incorporating observation, attention, and awareness of multiple viewpoints, ultimately involving improvisation and participation. Her reflective style often obscures her message, as story follows story with the unifying themes understated. Recommended for general collections where Bateson's books circulate well.
--Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060168595
• ISBN 13: 9780060168599
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243