Our culture is full of all types of celebrations: religious, ethnic, seasonal, historical, and those marking rites of passage. Examples include Christmas, the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico, Mardi Gras and May Day, Bastille Day, and one we can all relate to, birthday parties. There are many customs, rituals, and practices associated with these celebrations and they serve very important purposes. As Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) suggest, "Customs and rituals seem created to fulfill some of our most basic needs, providing guidance, stability and continuity in our daily lives while giving support in difficult times" (p. 6). These authors also explain that rituals help to create feelings of "fellowship, friendship and kinship between family members, and between individuals, families and societies" (p. 6).
Because schools in general and TYIs in particular are so embedded in American culture, they too can benefit from embracing celebrations as part of their operation. For this reason, learning celebration is an important element in the NDTYI process. Celebrations are used to reinforce and recognize the design specifications of each of the previous design elements, from learning signature through learning finance.
The National Design Group spent time at its last meeting discussing the question, "What are the design specifications and new designs for learning celebration that will lead to the accomplishment of the previous design elements of new designs for the two-year institution of higher education?" These elements included learning context, learning signature, learning outcomes, learning process, learning organization, learning partnerships, learning staff and staff development, learning environment, and learning finance.
The discussion began with the most common celebration in educational institutions: graduation. It was noted that many students do not go through graduation ceremonies and that they should be recognized somehow, along with those who receive certificates and awards. Another comment was that celebration, in a specification sense, should be continuous and frequent, as opposed to a yearly graduation ceremony.
One group member offered the idea that there should be "celebrations of returning to learning," for those who have chosen to stop out or drop out. Another said, "Yes, welcome them back. We need more than orientation; we need to welcome them back."
From another National Design Group member, "When you graduate you (should) get your own personal patch that you put on a quilt. The quilt is made of your own personal symbol. The quilt gets big--it is hung in a public space. Each person has his or her own patch for the public quilt." Another idea was that students might have a symbol like a patch or sticker for their cars to show "that they are on their way to something."
There was also discussion about rewarding academic excellence in the form of cash rebates, learning adventure credits for future learning, and tuition reductions. The possibility of course vouchers was discussed. A college president explained how her Pathways Program works. It is funded by the Department of Social Services for women who have been on welfare. The twelve-week program helps women to develop a personal and a career plan: "The dining room is decorated with balloons, and there are corsages. The women give personal testimonials about their plans for the future. There are prior graduates who come back and tell stories about how their lives have changed as a result of this program. They invite their children and other family members. We need to figure out more ways to bring people together. We bring legislators in for this event."
One National Design Group member suggested that celebrations be related to quality and rewards. Student plans, he noted, could be posted on a Web Page so that others could learn of their goals. This would be a state-of-the-art kind of celebration. Others mentioned a reverse job fair, where students could learn to market their skills and abilities. Use of more ethnic music in all types of celebrations, including graduation, was suggested. Someone remembered a "Clean-Up Day" at a community college in his community. Participants were fed and then outfitted with rakes in order to beautify the community.
Design specifications such as incentives and motivation were also mentioned in this discussion. Recognition and awards came to mind. It was noted that recognition and awards are typically an individual process, but one which also connects the individual to the community. As an example, it was mentioned that Motorola recognizes work teams: "At Motorola, the president and upper management put on a skit for the employees at least two times a year. It would be like the deans and vice presidents putting on a skit. There are costumes. The president of Motorola comes out with boxing gloves and trunks on. It gives everyone an opportunity to laugh."
Another idea, which seemed important to members of the National Design Group was a large group gathering where the president stands up to recognize people and give out awards. There was also the idea of inventing sessions where people can stand up and present ideas for change and innovation; one of the rules is that no "but" comments are allowed in response to suggestions made.
"Pizza with the President" was endorsed as a good way to celebrate. So was cooking breakfast for employees at special holidays like Christmas. A president noted that she handwrites faculty letters of appointment. Another person shared that she does the same for retirees. The discussion ended with a story about former President Roland Dille of Moorhead State University in Minnesota, who had a ceremony for students who did not graduate. They looked forward to this event as much as the administration did: "It was a picnic environment with speeches for encouragement and good humor."
Discussions and exchanges of this sort took place as part of the process for creating design specifications for celebration. There was also research into the very nature of celebration and ritual, and this information will be shared in the section that follows. Finally, examples of educational institutions celebrating in other new and unique ways were sought. Some of these examples will be described later in this chapter.
It is necessary for learning celebration to relate to each of the previous design elements. This is required for alignment to occur. In other words, learning celebration has to be designed in consideration of all of the processes and steps involved in the redesign of the whole institution. As an example, learning celebration cannot be considered separately from the learning process, which is centered in constructivism, where learners create their own meanings. Learners will derive their own meanings from the celebrations in which they take part.
So learning celebration must be consistent, supportive, and coherent with each of the design elements. Consider learning signature as another example. With graduation ceremonies and celebrations, the learning signature should play an integral role. It might appear as a graphic element; it might be interpreted dramatically or even musically. The learning signature should be incorporated into whatever celebrations seem useful and important to the institution, for it helps to communicate what the school represents.
In order to understand how TYIs might more fully embrace celebrations and even invent new ones, it is helpful to consider the historical and cultural background of the ceremonies, rites, and rituals which typically accompany them. According to the Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Hunter & Whitten, 1976), celebrations include "repetitive and stylized performances of elemental behavior forms characteristic of a culture and the contextual meanings given those forms by cultural tradition" (p. 69). Celebrations occur when there are cyclical disturbances such as a change in the social status and role of a group member or members, or changes in human life conditions.
Cultural anthropologists consider the differences between ritual, rite, ceremony, public performance, festival, and carnival in struggling to define the key concept: ritual (Hunter & Whitten, 1976). They concluded the following:
The typical contemporary definition of ritual is that it can be identified as formal, patterned, and stereotyped public performances, which differs from earlier usages of the term. Historically, anthropologists connected ritual with religious practice. (p. 1120)
Questions related to this study include distinguishing neurotic ritual from social ritual; ". . . formal behavior in informal settings or new contexts; and perhaps most critically, whether or how to distinguish religious ritual from secular ritual" (p. 1120).
Common to the interpretations of Emile Durkheim, who studied the Australian Aboriginals, and Bronislaw Malinowski, who analyzed open-sea fishing practices in the Trobiand Islands, is the "understanding of ritual as a public communication, with society and stability as the message" (Hunter & Whitten, 1976, p. 1121). Anthropologists have long understood that religion and its ritual practices mirror social order. But more recently, they have considered "how ritual can reorganize experience or even create new experience" (p. 1121). The ultimate end of ritual is a dynamic reorganizing of society and lived experience.
Examining ritual and celebration from a broader and less academic perspective, Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) write,
All over the world, at the key points in our lives and the highlights of our calendar, we perform special ceremonial actions that follow patterns which find parallels in virtually all societies. The form of each of these rituals is prescribed by society, and an official such as a priest is often present to see that the correct formula is followed. The resulting ceremonies are some of the most intriguing human activities. (p. 8)
Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) note that while rituals can be theatrical and public, others are touching intimate events that often come at life's turning points. Sometimes, people are said to be "born again" as the result of a ritual experience. The author explains, "It is not surprising, then, that participants in rituals are usually deeply involved in what they are doing: the emotions stirred may be some of the most profound we experience and they may have repercussions that last for the rest of our lives" (p. 9).
The purposes that rituals serve are important, according to Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996), for they foster cooperation and collaboration and help to join individuals and communities together. Heuerman and Olson (1997) tell how the self-managed teams in their corporation celebrated after being tested on group process skills:
If they passed, they would be given a financial reward to be used for a team outing. Of the first fifteen teams, thirteen passed. The other two were successful eventually. One team went to northern Minnesota for a fishing outing. Others went to dinner and to a casino. Some went to horse races. One team had a Saturday night outing planned with a limousine, dinner reservations, and night clubs. They were excited. The week before their night out a team member's brother died in California. The team canceled their outing quietly and used the money to purchase an airline ticket for the team member so he could go to his brother's funeral. (p. 43)
Celebrations and rituals serve other functions as well. Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) writes, "The repetition of actions and words in ceremonies that have been followed sometimes for hundreds of years can create a feeling of coherence and continuity that provides a sense of our place in the larger universe" (p. 10). He adds "continuity" to the list of functions that rituals serve, for many have a long history. Some have survived for centuries because of their religious roots. For instance, Christian and Muslim prayers are based on formulas set out by Christ and Muhammad (p. 10).
Yet, rituals can and do change, and Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) refers to the ancient European celebration of May Day as an example. For the Celts, May Day was a festival where fires were set to mark the beginning of summer: "They rolled wheels of fire down hillsides, lit bonfires, and drove their cattle through the flames in a ceremony of purification" (p. 10). But the modern May Day has been transformed into a holiday sometimes associated with socialism. In Minneapolis, the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre puts on a spectacular May Day parade and festival at Powderhorn Park; this celebration is known throughout the United States. Ingpen and Wilkinson add that new ritual practices may or may not have religious ties. Welfare State International has helped to create naming ceremonies for newborn children, and the British Humanist Association has created funeral ceremonies without religious references for those who want them.
Ritual practices are not necessarily old, for they can be easily adapted to modern issues and challenges. In Lights of Passage: Rituals and Rites of Passage for the Problems and Pleasures of Modern Life , Wall and Ferguson (1994) explain how rituals can be used today. They suggest rituals of work and career, intimate relationships, family, rites of youth and friendship, divorce, mid-life, and rituals of endings and beginnings. Many of these ritual adaptations would be useful to consider for the TYIs.
Other characteristics of rituals cited by Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996) include those with a seasonal or agricultural flavor. The latter category has much to do with the passing of the seasons or time itself, whether it be midsummer or midwinter. The seasonal festivals are among the most ancient of celebrations, which is certainly true of May Day.
In terms of the number and speed of changes in TYIs, it is also worth considering that rites of passage are common elements in rituals. Folklorist Arnold van Gennep broke rites into three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation. Explained Ingpen and Wilkinson (1996), "First, the person is cut off from his or her old role. Next, there is a period of adjustment and transition from one status to the next; this often involves some sort of physical transformation. Finally the person rejoins society with a new social status" (p. 129).
In many celebrations with accompanying rites and rituals, food plays an important role, and there are many customs associated with eating it. Many are tied to religious rulings such as the culinary rules of Judaism which require the preparation of meat and dairy foods with separate utensils. Food provides rich symbolism in many cultures such as during the Jewish New Year when pieces of bread and apple dipped in honey are eaten (Ingpen & Wilkinson, 1996).
Food customs also relate to giving and sharing and can therefore serve powerfully to bind a group together:
Sharing food is one of the most important ways in which people can express their friendship and solidarity and this is true whether the meal is formal or informal. The recent revival of annual feasting in some southwestern French villages is a good example of social binding through food. So is a custom of the Wamiran people of Papua, New Guinea, who say that food must be shared with all who have set eyes on it--the exclusion of any such person is a mark of social rejection. (Ingpen & Wilkinson, 1996, p. 133)
Matthew Fox, a theologian and founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California, has written extensively about ritual and celebration from the perspectives of religion and education. In Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science (Fox & Sheldrake, 1996), he writes that the purpose of ritual is to "connect the present participants with the original event that the ritual commemorates and also to link them with all those who have participated in the ritual in the past" (p. 166). He adds, "Ritual is something to do with crossing time, annihilating distance in time, [and] bringing the past into the present" (p. 166).
Citing aboriginals as a group that has educated its young through ritual, Fox (1994) writes, "It's impossible to have a healthy educational system without ritual, and by ritual I don't mean forcing kids in to hear prayer from a pulpit. I mean imbibing the great myths and the great stories that are greater than industrial capitalism" (p. 197). Another benefit of ritual practices among aboriginals is that they release the creativity of the community: "In short, renewed ritual will make community happen again, for a community is a group that shares a common task together " (p. 262).
According to Fox and Sheldrake (1996), the desired characteristics of ritual include that it be interesting and connecting; creative and imaginative; a remembrance; and an eschatology or a remembering what hasn't happened yet, a way of experiencing the future. He notes that the concepts related to ritual include a personal story, amazement, a sense of wonder, connection to an original moment of insight, and inventing newness as opposed to freezing novelty. The principles for ritual that Fox (1994) cites include bringing back the body, play, and participation; making room for darkness, silence, and suffering; and awakening the prophet in each person.
In The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time (1994), Fox describes effective rituals that he has experienced:
Another time, a large group of us did circle dances on the first floor of a large building that had floor-to-ceiling windows. During our dance, I happened to glance at the windows and saw three men lined up with their noses and hands pressed against the windowpane. Two were homeless persons, and the third had a briefcase (I imagined him to be a lawyer or a banker). It was like a scene from a Dickens novel: The hunger was explicit--hunger for ritual, hunger for community, hunger for letting go and for being part of the circle dance of the spheres, hunger for cosmology. For me that hungry trinity seemed to represent our entire species, which is so hungry for ritual. (p. 278)
He describes another example in which participants were pelted with flowers. The occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of M. C. Richards' book, Centering: In Poetry, Pottery and the Person (1964). At the event, people told many stories about Richards. The weekend was finished off with the Pelting with Flowers ritual of the Papago people of Arizona. Fox (1994) writes, "In it all participants gathered in concentric circles and pelted one another with flowers that had been moistened and softened ahead of time through careful preparation. The philosophy of this ceremony is that we are all here on Earth to strike one another with beauty" (p. 291).
Fox (1994) ends a chapter on ritual with these thoughts:There are personal rituals as well as community rituals. Indeed, there are as many forms and occasions for ritual as there are occasions in our social, personal, and cosmic histories. Humanity is the species with a larynx; we are the ones who can do ritual, who can praise, who can remember, who can celebrate an infinite number of sacred moments in our lives, and in the lifetime of the universe itself, who can truly preserve single moments of radiance and "keep them alive in our lives," as Herschel puts it. (p. 295)
In an effort to more fully understand the nature of celebration, NDTYI turned to the work of Margaret Wheatley (Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1996) and her studies of nature and natural processes. Does nature celebrate, and if it does, what can be learned from it? According to Heuerman, who has studied at Wheatley's Berkana Institute, celebration in nature is organic and probably occurs continuously. Celebration, he noted, is a manmade construct (Tom Heuerman, personal communication, June 2, 1997). Perhaps celebration in TYIs should appear more often than it does. Perhaps it should be allowed to occur more naturally and spontaneously. Learning, after all, is a very celebrative process. Think of the joy of discovery in a young child as he or she learns to take first steps. For the child, learning to walk is definitely a celebration.
The truth is that students, teachers, and administrators need and want celebration and ritual, and there are many avenues for incorporation. In the literature review, it is mentioned that rituals can be related to work and career, intimate relationships, family, rites of youth and friendship, divorce, mid-life, and rituals of endings and beginnings. In thinking about the last area alone, endings and beginnings, many possibilities come to mind for use in the TYI setting. In terms of staff reduction or new hires, there should be rituals or celebrations to mark these important transitions. And given the rate of change projected for the future, students would find it extremely valuable to learn and practice rituals of change, regardless of the context. Celebration and ritual should be a part of every type of activity in the TYI.
Concepts that give direction to design specifications for learning celebration include, but are not limited to, the following:
During the era of the industrial revolution, creativity was marginalized and often considered suspect. It still is. Recently I heard that the New York public school system has eliminated art classes from its curriculum because of budget cuts. The notion that art is a luxury item to the minds and spirits of children--that it can be dropped like a sugary dessert from our diets--contradicts the laws or habits of the universe as we now know them: the universe is intrinsically creative, always begetting, always birthing, always doing new things. What a pity that our human-devised work worlds, including the preparation for work that we call education, have yet to realize the intrinsic value of creativity. (p. 116)
The design specifications recommended to guide learning celebration in NDTYI are presented in Exhibit 13.
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The National Design Group was not asked to recommend particular celebrations to be highlighted in this part of the section. Rather, they did make suggestions for some learning celebrations that they had experienced or initiated and that had special meaning for them. These suggestions were presented in the introduction to this chapter.
And so the reader is left to invent learning celebrations that they think would be in keeping with the design specifications for learning celebration recommended earlier. One idea that the NDTYI staff developed is as follows:
Storytelling could be a part of any of an institution's celebrations: stories of successes, stories of failures, and stories of how communities came together to support one another. Think of the stories that can now be told by educational institutions involved in the Red River Valley areas of North Dakota and Minnesota that were recently flooded. Professional storytellers could be brought in to teach the art of storytelling in order to get everyone started. Credit courses in storytelling could also be offered. Stories could be told not only live and in person but also via the Internet and on Web Pages, so that more readers could share in them. There could be storytelling events and festivals throughout the school year.
A final thought is offered about graduation. Perhaps this celebration should be redone entirely. Throw out the caps and gowns, but bring in rituals of transition like plays about dream jobs and dream contributions, or what students' lives could be like in ten years. There is room for storytelling here. Graduate everybody every year to another level of lifelong learning. This should include not only students, but faculty, staff, administrators, and community members.
Designing down includes consideration of the fact that American culture greatly influences TYIs. Because celebration is a part of the culture and because it serves so many useful and important purposes, it must be an integral step in the design process. For these reasons, this chapter sought to look at how to develop new designs for learning celebration, as well as how to connect them to the other design elements.
The process began with the National Design Group meeting to discuss what some possibilities might be. Many good ideas resulted from these exchanges. The participants realized that the rituals and customs associated with celebration relate to such changes in human life conditions as working out of poverty and adjusting to retirement. The literature review explained how rituals serve such diverse purposes as marking turning points, providing coherence and continuity, even allowing for new adaptations to modern problems and issues. It was shown that celebrations and rituals have a very rich history, but that new applications are not only possible, but required.
Among the scholars studied, Matthew Fox explained how ritual can work to create the notion of community--an important goal for TYIs. He emphasized that Americans are "hungry" for both ritual and community. A number of key concepts for ritual were identified, and they include connections and support.
Design specifications were cited in an effort to provide a platform from which TYIs can work to create their own learning celebrations. Several examples of possibilities were provided to get designers started. This is an area ripe for development.
We completed the last meeting of the National Design Group with a festive meal and storytelling about our adventure together in design. All staff members who had been involved in the process and were available in the area were invited: support staff, Work Group members, resource persons, and the NCRVE Site Director at the University of Minnesota. It was the holiday season, and so we all joined in a song written for the event by William Ammentorp that went as follows (think of Nat):
Hi touch roasting on the social hearth,
Logos that we all oppose.
New designs baptized in a hostile fire
Old ideas wrapped up in new clothes.
Everybody knows . . .
Those old turkeys just won't go
Down the path to do what's right
So we say any time, any day,
New Designs are with you tonight!
[*] The initial collection of related literature and first draft of design specifications for learning celebration were done by Patricia Copa. The first draft of this section was written by Peggy DeVries with guidance from George Copa. The overall editing of the section was done by George Copa.