Experience = Knowledge
I had a really interesting - lets call it a 'debate' at my part time workplace today. It isn't a dance based environment but it allowed me to reflect through the conversation about knowledge and experience.
It seemed from looking at different rituals, to marriage and civil partnerships, right through to feminism and that is where it got less enjoyable. We spoke about sexual assault and how I believed it was more prominent that women were sexually assaulted and a video I had seen which highlighted some lack of equality between men and women by asking a question to a group of men and afterwards a group of women; what steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourself from being sexually assaulted?
The men laughed nervously and a few people said 'don't go to prison' and things like this. But the summary of it was that they didn't really think about it.
The same question was asked of women, who started to mention a lot of various things; don't go running at night, don't wear headphones if running in the woods, don't make eye contact with men in the street, make assertive eye contact with men in the street, etc.
When I explained this was where I thought the problem lied and from my experience it does tend to be women who are more likely to be at risk from sexual assault, the men in the conversation (all 3) told me they didn't agree with me. In fact one went as far to say I shouldn't generalise and it wasn't gender specific - I did not say it only happened to women, but I did say from my experience and knowledge as a woman I am more likely to be wolf whistled at walking down the street, my bum is more likely to be pinched in a club, etc. They disagreed again.
I had to leave the conversation (which was probably good) to deliver a session, and on the way I had a brilliant bit of time to reflect on the conversation.
I was cross, I said to myself how can they not agree with my experience? It's my experience, they cannot disagree or agree simply because they have not had my experience.
I then realised that the experiences I have had have turned into my knowledge... from my experience I think it to be more likely woman get sexually assaulted than man, and that experience has become my knowledge, in my perception of reality.
They have not had my experience, so from their experiences they have gained their knowledge of the subject. So whilst I at first felt they were being ignorant, it is simply that they haven't had the same experiences me. And equally their could be other subjects where roles were reversed.
So moving away from the subject that helped me arrive here, our experiences are processed in our thoughts as what we know to be true, from our perception of reality. So the experiences become our knowing, our knowledge. Does this mean our knowledge is always true?
I suppose it is true to us, from our sense, but I think that is why our knowledge is always changing, what we think to be true might change or be added to with new knowledge from experience - be this a discussion with a colleague or a student, a class that went slightly different, a class you took with a teacher you learnt from or literature you read.
And how do we transfer this knowledge making sure its the truest knowledge we can pass on? I suppose a tendue in a ballet class will always be a tendue? It might be more the knowledge we pass on during speaking instructions, expressing ourselves, what we choose to teach, etc.
A long winded path to get to this thought, what do you guys think? If you could focus more on the experience=knowledge part rather than the discussion I had at work I would appreciate it as I don't want to side track even more from the subject as I normally do!
I'd love to get more opinions on this as I know some of you have written some amazing blogs on this - sometimes I'm afraid I'm having a completely wrong train of thought, but I think we don't have a 'wrong' train of thought, rather we have more knowledge/experience to access! :)
It seemed from looking at different rituals, to marriage and civil partnerships, right through to feminism and that is where it got less enjoyable. We spoke about sexual assault and how I believed it was more prominent that women were sexually assaulted and a video I had seen which highlighted some lack of equality between men and women by asking a question to a group of men and afterwards a group of women; what steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourself from being sexually assaulted?
The men laughed nervously and a few people said 'don't go to prison' and things like this. But the summary of it was that they didn't really think about it.
The same question was asked of women, who started to mention a lot of various things; don't go running at night, don't wear headphones if running in the woods, don't make eye contact with men in the street, make assertive eye contact with men in the street, etc.
When I explained this was where I thought the problem lied and from my experience it does tend to be women who are more likely to be at risk from sexual assault, the men in the conversation (all 3) told me they didn't agree with me. In fact one went as far to say I shouldn't generalise and it wasn't gender specific - I did not say it only happened to women, but I did say from my experience and knowledge as a woman I am more likely to be wolf whistled at walking down the street, my bum is more likely to be pinched in a club, etc. They disagreed again.
I had to leave the conversation (which was probably good) to deliver a session, and on the way I had a brilliant bit of time to reflect on the conversation.
I was cross, I said to myself how can they not agree with my experience? It's my experience, they cannot disagree or agree simply because they have not had my experience.
I then realised that the experiences I have had have turned into my knowledge... from my experience I think it to be more likely woman get sexually assaulted than man, and that experience has become my knowledge, in my perception of reality.
They have not had my experience, so from their experiences they have gained their knowledge of the subject. So whilst I at first felt they were being ignorant, it is simply that they haven't had the same experiences me. And equally their could be other subjects where roles were reversed.
So moving away from the subject that helped me arrive here, our experiences are processed in our thoughts as what we know to be true, from our perception of reality. So the experiences become our knowing, our knowledge. Does this mean our knowledge is always true?
I suppose it is true to us, from our sense, but I think that is why our knowledge is always changing, what we think to be true might change or be added to with new knowledge from experience - be this a discussion with a colleague or a student, a class that went slightly different, a class you took with a teacher you learnt from or literature you read.
And how do we transfer this knowledge making sure its the truest knowledge we can pass on? I suppose a tendue in a ballet class will always be a tendue? It might be more the knowledge we pass on during speaking instructions, expressing ourselves, what we choose to teach, etc.
A long winded path to get to this thought, what do you guys think? If you could focus more on the experience=knowledge part rather than the discussion I had at work I would appreciate it as I don't want to side track even more from the subject as I normally do!
I'd love to get more opinions on this as I know some of you have written some amazing blogs on this - sometimes I'm afraid I'm having a completely wrong train of thought, but I think we don't have a 'wrong' train of thought, rather we have more knowledge/experience to access! :)
I actually had a similar conversation upon sharing that exact same FB post. It actually wound up leading to me unfriending someone for the very first time, it got that nasty of a response.
ReplyDeleteBut in terms of knowledge, I think it's hard for some to understand that our own experience isn't necessarily universal, thus making it hard to listen to and respect others' voices and experiences. Someone has to be right or wrong, instead of just accepting that our knowledge may differ or even potentially clash. It seems like we're always in a process of evolving knowledge. If presenting, that might almost be a good disclaimer at the beginning--better to be upfront about it, I suppose.
Yes I think the post got a really varied reaction! It can be really hard to accept others opinions sometimes if your experience was different. It is funny how such bizarre conversations can influence a completely different thing you weren't even thinking of at the time! I thinking that due to a brain always processing this experience/knowledge and as you said evolving, even when we aren't thinking about that particular subject our brain is still piecing together parts of the jigsaw.
DeleteHi Chrissie, so interesting to read your post, it made me think when my 5year old daughter exclaimed the other day: "but how can something be true, if its not true for every body? Then its not really true". ;-) It made me think, that when you are a kid, many things seem so absolute, there must be only one universal truth. But then you start to realise, that also truth is constructed by each individual, as you say influenced by our individual experiences and knowledge at a certain time, but also influenced by the social and cultural "truths", that we are exposed to and experience on a daily basis. I feel that if one perceives knowledge as something fluid and ever changing, this will probably influence the way one perceives truth (as something changing also, rather than something universal and static). I think a teacher can share or offer her "truth" to her students, as one out of many possibilities for them to approach or look at something, without imposing it as "the" truth, what they will take or make out of that experience will be very personal. Like with a tendu, I think there are thousands of ways to approach a tendu, do you focus on the sensation of the sole of your foot sliding on the floor, or the biomechanic aspects, or the shape it creates, or the dynamics... and even the way we experience one of this approaches, will be influenced by our previous experiences and knowledge. I find this quite fascinating, how you can look at or approach one thing in so many ways, experiencing it differently each time.
DeleteHi Agata - your daughter is very insightful! Yes I think the idea of looking at what is truth in regards to dance teaching left my questioning a lot of things - how can I teach my truth if it isn't the truth? But ultimately that's the only way we can teach is through our truth! I always think of tendues also as a good example of this. I normally use the metaphor of thinking about pushing the floor away with your foot so they can get that lengthening - however whilst teaching a class the other day who hadn't done any dance before, I realised this was causing them to think about twisting in the hips as they tried to keep the whole foot on the floor at first. So the metaphor, even though that was how I learnt about a tendu and is my truth, they experienced it in a different way to me. So I need to use different bits of my knowledge now to influence what will become their truth when performing a tendu (for example, prioritising the straightening of the leg at first rather than expecting the foot to point as well, or simply to take the leg out without twisting in the hips, etc). And I suppose even that example in itself shows the fluidity of knowledge and truth, as each time they perform it (hopefully) their truth about what a tendu is and how they use their body to perform it will change as we add layers of knowledge throughout classes (adding in the pointed foot, adding turnout, adding a focus on the supporting leg, thinking about each muscle in the foot peeling off the floor, etc).
Delete