Iain Mavro Coggins's Biography
Member Info
Denver
Yes
Dec 2011
My experiences as a public school student drove me into teaching with a mind for reform. Yet my experiences as a teacher drove me to a complete rethinking of what it means to be educated. Foremost in my mind is the question of purpose—what John Dewey termed “the aims of education”—and how to revive a truly learner-centered approach to schooling. I have been influenced by many thinkers, especially Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, an early 20th century Japanese education reformer. His theory of soka, or “value-creation” profound influences my work.
Influences
The spare, direct prose of Hemingway, the freedom of imagery in Latin American literature, especially that of Garcia Marquez and Neruda, the articulate sense of place and moment found in Joyce, the epic sweep of Homer and Melville, the introspective detail of Thoreau, the foundation of story in both Western and Eastern myth systems, the joy of pure imagination in Bradbury.
Upcoming Works
Lost Apple, to be released this spring.
Recommended Links
Interests & Hobbies
Drinking tea, riding buses and trains, especially trains, inhabiting cafes, viewing films, reading, walking city streets and watching people, reading, drinking tea, forgetting the time in libraries, teaching kids, reading to kids, reading with kids, having spirited nerf dart wars with my own kids, drinking tea, smoking fine tobacco in a straight billiard briar pipe (but I gave it up so I only dream of it now), hiking on the mesa when high clouds are coming over the mountains, talking while driving, forgetting where to turn and having to be corrected by my wife, reading, drinking tea, eating chocolate that the kids don't know about in bed with my wife, constantly changing the wallpaper on my smartphone, drinking tea, reading....
...[W]hat is most urgently needed is a paradigm shift from looking at education for society's sake to building a society that serves the essential needs of education.”
—Daisaku Ikeda
About Iain
My experiences as a public school student drove me into teaching with a mind for reform. Yet my experiences as a teacher drove me to a complete rethinking of what it means to be educated. Foremost in my mind is the question of purpose—what John Dewey termed “...
Causes Iain Coggins Supports
Education as a human right, rather than as a privilege or an opportunity.
Iain’s Favorite Books
Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Dream of Scipio, The Chymical Wedding, Utopia, 1984, The Martian Chronicles, John Carter of Mars,...