Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy | 2019
For you, for us: Aspiring to embody and enact intellectual humility through the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Abstract
We recently asked our Facebook friends to help us crowdsource an idea. We were intrigued and inspired by Scott Jarvie’s and Kevin Burke’s discussion about “intellectual humility” (see this issue) and solicited examples of individuals (or groups) that embodied and enacted this trait. Jarvie and Burke draw upon Michael Patrick Lynch’s (2017) definition of “intellectual humility,” which refers to “a cluster of attitudes that we can take toward ourselves—recognizing your own fallibility, realizing that you don’t really know as much as you think, and owning your limitations and biases” (para 13). We received a great many answers to our query, which included people many would recognize, like Jimmy Carter, Maya Angelou, Grace Lee Boggs, Kiese Laymon, and Parker Palmer. Also forwarded were community leaders like Reyna Montoya, who is an educator, activist, entrepreneur, artist, and community organizer. She founded and runs Aliento, a community organization based in Phoenix, AZ that is led by DACA and undocumented youth and that works—through art creation, political education workshops, and leadership development—to develop “collective people power” and to facilitate “the well being, emotional healing, and leadership development of those impacted by the inequalities of lacking an immigration status” (Aliento, 2016, para 1). Other suggestions of people embodying or enacting intellectual humility included professional colleagues such as Katy Swalwell (Iowa State University) and Jacqueline Byrd Martin (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University). We were also told about a woman who was the focus of a recent dissertation who embodies intellectual humility—a Kurdish woman without formal education who became an activist when her son and daughter joined the Kurdish guerrilla movement. She learned how to read and write, became active in politics, and began spending her time fighting against her oppressive traditional values, family, relatives, and the state. We also heard about Theresa Davis, an artist, poet, and activist from Atlanta. A recent profile of her in ArtsAtl magazine describes how her