Subsuming the Taxonomy in the Hedge
The fragment of the ancient/modern script is still wedged under the tree root
She has forgotten which tree
Where
But she traces the surface of the fragment with her memory
Remembers indistinctly
~~~
Her curriculum map is the arroyo
rhizomatic,
all parts of speech, grammars, syntaxes, mother tongues…
…texts and images and sensations and spirits and places and processes and perceptions and extra and intra perceptions and pack rats and pack rat burrows and pine cones and twigs and gatherings and adornments…
~~~
She has been vexed (hexed?) by Bloom’s Taxonomy1
And its ubiquitous grip on modernist education institutions
Its taken-for-grantedness
How it reduces learning/cognition/knowing to a chartful of verbs (the verbs do keep growing—could there be even more off the charts?)
How it submits an unmeasurable physical and metaphysical process to scientific measure for validity
And, oh Lord, its paternalism: this selection of verbs will guide the perpetually ignorant teacher through curriculum maps to learning objectives and predetermined outcomes. A positivist heaven, if you will.
The Taxonomy is not meant to be sacrosanct,2 but is it?
What if the student learns other than the objective? Has the student failed? Has the teacher?
~~~
bell hooks’s learning objective might be,
Student will re-love to learn, re-learn to love
Gloria Anzaldúa’s learning objective might be,
Student will transverse the false border, talk with friends
Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.
Lynda Barry’s learning objective might be,
Student will not know but will create anyway
To be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape!
love in a loveless culture
traverse borders like the serpent and the eagle, the ocean, likely and unlikely friendships
start with not knowing
~~~
~~~
~~~
***Perhaps my vex with Bloom’s Taxonomy is misplaced rage.
(Sure, I stir to dysregulation at many messages, but walking helps me listen, through steps, to my own body as messenger).
I sense entangling the Taxonomy, letting the vines crawl and shift it with their collective grip, as a leverage point to transform educational ecology.***
~~~
She reads about the Buddhist concept of fire burning fire—the fire that burns from the fire that is burning up the fuel
~~~
In the arroyo, she slowly pours the Taxonomy through the sieve of her breath
it tumbles to her belly
rises to float in her lungs where it snags and sticks
She exhales a jewel-like hologram
that immediately turns coal in her hands
Something to return to the earth
~~~
Is the memory of the ancient/modern script’s indecipherable message
the same as the actual fragment’s indecipherable message?
She watches, through eras, as the tree slowly subsumes the script in its underworld rhizome
Remembers indistinctly
hedge
Student may voice learning needs that may be different from teacher’s needs, which could look like:
co-creating with creation
self determining
self-knowing processing, gerunding self
~~~
She is walking her dog who has stopped to sniff around next to the sidewalk in a neighbor’s side yard. Dusk nightens the neighborhood corner. A truck drives slowly up behind her, stops, spooks her, a man leans out, gruffly asks her if she is going to pick up her dog’s shit.
She realizes the man is her neighbor. She’s only spoken to him a few times over the years. She knows two things about him—he’s a vet (based on his license plate) and he has a prosthetic leg.
Her dog has not shit in his yard. She pulls an empty, translucent white, used-to-be-produce-bag-but-is-now-a-poop-bag from her pocket, waves it like a crinkly flag in the air. He looks at it, changes his tone, says, Sorry, someone left their dog’s shit in my driveway.
I’m sorry that happened, she says.
It’s not your fault, but someone left it there for me to pick up.
Sorry about that, she repeats.
He slowly drives forward.
It’s not your fault, he repeats, still leaning out the window.
Take care, she says, a little louder, so he can hear as he drives up the street.
Have a good evening, he calls out.
~~~
The arroyo will provide conditions and opportunities for the student to:
hedge
rock
sand
grass in morning sun
turn juniper branch offering berries
tweet tweet as Dark-eyed Juncos
croak through a Raven’s throat
hear traffic always in the distance
not hear traffic in the distance because arroyo is now in student
hello, I thank you I thank you
not want to pick up a piece of plastic in the arroyo but will pick up a piece of plastic in the arroyo and carry it
sense that there are no words now for what is due, for what is in becoming
notice this snaking shape in the sand made by an unknown tool. notice the snaking shape snakes through the snaking arroyo shape
shhheee mythos
flaw
sense someone in the periphery
hear footsteps walking alongside her
eat a small feast of two pine needles and a juniper berry
flow like the sand pattern of the last storm’s water
process without product
incubate through a season
enjoy a lovely morning made beautiful by climate crisis, the tension of this
let herself feel this
let herself feel
listen to a woodpecker tapping
smell the different air smell in the shade
pick up a small rock and consider the microscopic world she has upheaved
absorb the wound through the tree’s wound
converse with her dead dad visiting as a pair of Flickers
stop to sit on a rock beneath a tree that is graying ghost
sit there until she becomes uncomfortable
move to a soft, sandy spot
sit again with legs crossed gently picking up handfuls of sand and letting them sieve through her fingers
palimpsest through eras
absorb self through arroyo mirror
inflorescence in and out of spirit with blue grama grass
She provides herself with the conditions to koan
Did I make a passing grade? She asks her teacher
Arroyo assesses in breeze that wavers the grasses, the hairs, the groves, the silence, the shady patches
Knowledge Check!3
1. What is the highest level of cognitive learning in rhizomatic arroyo hedge? *
Knowledge
Comprehension
Evaluation
Analysis
2. Which of the following is a key element of rhizomatic arroyo hedge? *
Creative thinking
Social interaction
Emotional intelligence
3. Which of the following best describes the “Application” level of rhizomatic arroyo hedge?
Remembering previously learned information.
Applying knowledge to solve new problems or situations.
Creating and generating original ideas.
~~~
Hello I thank you I thank you
Prompt:
What Taxonomy hexes you? With what might you subsume it?
References:
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Excerpts from borderlands/la frontera: The new Mestiza. Retrieved November 6, 2025, from https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/romance/spanish/219/13eeuu/anzaldua.html
Hooks, B. (2018). All about love: New visions. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.
Piperson. (2013, December 18). The great comic book heroes: Lynda Barry’s “two questions.” The Great Comic Book Heroes. https://thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2013/12/lynda-barrys-two-questions.html
example: https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/taxonomies-learning
“Our point is not to suggest that they are sacrosanct […]” .https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/taxonomies-learning
adapted from “Bloom’s Taxonomy Decoded”: https://www.learningeverest.com/blooms-taxonomy-decoded/