Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery

by Mary Catherine Bateson

WRITER AND EDUCATOR Mary Catherine Bateson is best known for the proposal that lives should be looked at as compositions, each one an artistic creation expressing individual responses to the unexpected. This collection can be read as a memoir of unfolding curiosity, for it brings together essays and occasional pieces, many of them previously unpublished or unknown to readers who know the author only from her books, written in the course of an unconventional career.

Bateson’s professional life was interrupted repeatedly. She responded by refocusing her curiosity — by being willing to learn. The connections and echoes between the entries in her book are as intriguing as the contrasts in style and subject matter. The work is grounded in cultural anthropology but shaped by the observation that, in a world of rapid change and encounters with strangers, individuals can no longer depend on following traditionally defined paths.

Willing to Learn is arranged thematically. One section includes a sampling of writings about Bateson’s parents, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. The longest section focuses primarily on the contemporary United States and deals with life stages and gender. Bateson argues that because women’s lives have changed most radically, women are pioneers of emerging patterns that will affect everyone. Another section deals with belief systems, conflict, and change, especially in the Middle East, and the final section with different ways of knowing. Bateson is a singular thinker whose work enriches lives by bringing fresh, original ideas to subjects that affect all of our lives. Willing to Learn is at once an articulation of and an enduring testament to the artistic creation Bateson has produced pursuing her own life’s work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Womens, Memoir, Education

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2004

About the author

Mary Catherine Bateson (born December 8, 1939) is an American writer and cultural anthropologist.

A graduate of the Brearley School, Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

Bateson is a noted author in her field with many published monographs. Among Bateson's books is With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, a recounting of her upbringing by two famous parents. She has taught at Harvard, Amherst, and George Mason University, among others.

Mary Catherine Bateson is a fellow of the International Leadership Forum and was president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York until 2010.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the things Mary Catherine Bateson has to say, yet I don't eagerly pick up her book(s) they way I would pick up a novel. I'd rather have her as a professor or rabbi, speaking to me in person, than to read her words in a book. Since I can't renew this book indefinitely from the library, I may go ahead and buy it, so it's on hand when I need it as a reference.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I come back to the ideas presented in this book over and over again. Bateson's essays shine with insights about how people learn, and how that learning makes us better people and better citizens. Every educator should read this book.

I knocked it down a star since some of it is academic-type reading, so some may not love it. But I did!

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Bateson, and is a world-class social anthropologist/linguist in her own right. This book is a self-edited collection of her essays, written throughout her life, examining life as a continuously changing composition of events, relationships and learning. The first couple essays were tough to get through, but I am thoroughly enjoying the book!