A Teacher Educator Responds to Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura
Jeff McLaughlin
Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Paper presented at the Critical Questions in Education Conference
San Diego, California - February 10, 2026
I am not a visual artist, but I am an enthusiastic patron and collector of visual art and among my reading passions are books about art and art making. It is in this context that I originally discovered Makoto Fujimura, who is an internationally renowned visual artist who also writes a great deal about art. One of his books is entitled Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life. In this book – published in 2017 – Fujimura highlights the role of artists in preserving and enhancing our culture’s appreciation of beauty, creativity, and generosity. As I read (and then re-read) this book, I could not help but see an analog to our positions as teachers and teacher educators in an age when cultural engagement is de-valued in the name of hyperspecialization, reductionism, and dehumanization. Fujimura asserts that artists can play an important role in redeeming our “distressed cultural ecosystem” by embracing and recognizing “genesis moments,” those creative opportunities that arise and provide occasions for the kinds of “generative thinking” that cultivate positive and constructive cultural values. That assertion, I propose, applies equally to the role that classroom teachers can play in enhancing the cultural contexts inhabited by their students. To paraphrase Fujimura, teachers can become “artists of the soul.”
I will first introduce the culture care concept, as described by Fujimura, and then reflect on its relevance to the professional lives of teachers. Finally, some attention will be paid to Fujimura’s ideas within the current anti-culture-care environment in American education and politics. Importantly, I then want to open the session up for discussion of culture care as it relates to some of your own professional situations and interests.
Culture Care
For Fujimura, the essence of culture care lies in the act of “generative thinking” or “generativity.” In the initial chapter of his book, Fujimura defines generativity with reference to three other “g terms,” genesis moments, generosity, and generational thinking. These terms are all discussed with reference to Fujimura’s belief that creators (and I am including teachers in this group) are “artists of the soul.”
First, for genesis moments, which are the starting point for generativity, Makoto Fujimura recounts a story from early in his married life, when his wife Judy brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers, sparking concerns on Makoto’s part about the wisdom of purchasing an expensive bouquet on their limited income. “How could you think of buying flowers if we can’t even eat?” In reply, Judy reminded her husband that “We need to feed our souls, too.” Reflecting on this memory, Fujimura wrote:
The key to recognizing genesis moments is to assume that every moment is fresh. Creativity applied in a moment of weakness and vulnerability can turn failure into enduring conversation, opening new vistas of inspiration and incarnation. To remember what Judy did, to speak of it with others, to value her care – all this is generative, as her act can be honored and become a touch point for others, leading to the birth of ideas and actions, artifacts, and relationships that would not otherwise have been. (p. 18)
Reflect on what might be some analogous experiences from your teaching life when you have taken advantage of – or perhaps failed to take advantage of – genesis moments in your classroom.
The second “g” is generosity, defined as the “fuel” that allows generative thinking to take place. In Fujimura’s words,
Generative thinking is fueled by generosity because it so often must work against a mindset that has survival and utility in the foreground. In a culture dominated by this mindset, generosity has an unexpectedness that can set the context for the renewal of our hearts. An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction – because it is a gift. Life and beauty are gratuitous in the best senses of that word. (p. 18)
As I was preparing for this session, I also happened to be reading a book by Marilyn McEntyre (2021) – an English professor – called Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, in which she also drops the word “generosity” when discussing the elements of good conversation. In her words, “A quality the best conversationalists conspicuously share is generosity. They can minister even to the most problematic partners – the inarticulate, the painfully introverted, and the indifferent” (pp. 106-107). She then provides a few examples of individuals she knows, including fellow teachers, who practiced generosity by regarding others with respect, dignity, and kindness, which has the result of “binding one another together in understanding and love” (p. 106).
Again, reflect on your own experiences as a teacher and the opportunities you have taken to practice generosity (as Fujimura defines it) and thereby allow your students to take risks with half-baked, perhaps impractical or unusable, or even outrageous ideas.
The third “g” is generational thinking and here, Fujimura asserts that generative values and ideas “grow in conversation with the past and in our intention to speak and create so as to cultivate the values of multiple future generations” (p. 20). As teachers, I think this one comes naturally to us as we are in the business of interpreting and conveying the past for our students and also of preparing them to contribute to a rewarding and productive future.
Keep in mind that Makoto Fujimura is an artist and his focus in this book is on the lives and work of artists. But for me, the parallels to our pedagogical lives are inescapable. To highlight one additional concept, in a later chapter in his book, Fujimura identifies various symptoms of what he calls a “distressed ecosystem.” As teachers, we are tasked with working with children and young adults who are growing up in this same distressed ecosystem, so I think Fujimura’s ideas are relevant here, as well.
After drawing an analogy between our cultural ecosystem and physical ecosystems (specifically river pollution), Fujimura writes this: “Many of the streams that feed the river of culture are polluted, and the soil this river should be watering is thus parched and fragmented” (pp. 30-31). He then goes on to describe “some of the fault lines in the cultural soil (starving the soul) as well as some of the sources of poisons in the water (polluting the soil)” (p. 31).
This distressed ecosystem is characterized by:
o reductionism (industrialization, cogs in a machine)
o hyperspecialization (relevant to curriculum, blindness to context)
o lack of meaning, connection, and responsibility (in classrooms, e.g., Kozol)
o view of survival as a bottom-line value (utilitarian pragmatism)
o dehumanization (neglect of personal growth, ethics, moral sensibility)
I will leave it to you to identify how each of these symptoms may manifest in our school systems and on our college campuses.
Relevance to our calling and tasks as teachers
Teachers are – or should be – experts in taking advantage of genesis moments. We sometimes call them “teachable moments.” For example, what is a pedagogical analog to “How could you think of buying flowers if we can’t even eat?” How about the child who excitedly raises a hand to express a thought that, at least on the surface, appears to be unrelated to whatever was occurring in the classroom before the interruption? Or the college student who makes a comment or asks a question that serves to reveal a blatant misunderstanding or to introduce a topic you had not intended to cover. Or how about when a significant local or national event occurs which occupies, excites, or worries your students?
Regarding generosity, consider how – as mentioned earlier – half-baked, perhaps impractical or unusable, or even outrageous ideas manifest in our classrooms. How do we handle them? And how can Fujimura’s definition of generosity play out in our classrooms? As teachers and mentors, we can provide antidotes to the outsized emphasis on utility and survival-value when planning instruction or responding to students’ creative – though perhaps impractical or eccentric – ideas. Should we, as teachers, endeavor to preserve – even define – the common good for our students? And should we help them develop constructive debating skills as a way of caring for culture rather than as a means for tribal preservation?
And to highlight Fujimura’s third “g,” generational thinking, how often do we – as teachers – actually reflect on our important place in history, including in the largest sense (world history, American history, community history), in a medium-level sense (history of education and psychology, political aspects of education, current trends in classroom practice), and in a narrow sense (the life histories of our students, their families, and neighborhoods)? After all, we are in the business of interpreting and conveying the past for our students and also of preparing them to contribute to a rewarding and productive future. To again paraphrase Fujimura, teachers are “custodians of culture” and schools can be “estuaries of culture,” providing “cultural buffering and exposure” and providing a “safe harbor” for students’ creative and cultural development (p. 105, 109-114).
Discussion
o Do the concepts of culture care and generative thinking cause you to think in any new ways about your teaching task and/or calling?
o What stands in the way of us engaging in more generative thinking and teaching? What can we do about that?
o What would a generative classroom look like? What would it mean for our students to be “flourishing?” What are some adjectives that could describe a generative classroom, one that includes genesis moments in the curriculum?
o How have “symptoms of a distressed cultural ecosystem” manifested in your classroom? In our profession as a whole?
o Which of the following are teachers responsible for encouraging and developing in students: vision, courage, perseverance, recognition of beauty, good judgment?
Conclusion
Teachers are “artists of the soul.” This is an awesome calling and a critical mission. “The key to recognizing genesis moments is to assume that every moment is fresh” (p. 18). “Generative thinking is fueled by generosity” (p. 18) and “generative thinking requires generational thinking” (p. 19) because generative values grow in conversation with the past and in the cultivation of the values of future generations.
I will conclude with a series of “What if?” statements, based on statements with which Fujimura concludes his book:
What If? (based on Fujimura, pp. 137-138)
o What if teachers described themselves more often as creative catalysts than as educational technicians?
o What if we saw each moment as a genesis moment and even saw the current problems we are facing as genesis opportunities?
o What if teachers committed themselves to collaborative planning of curricula designed to educate children in the context of generativity?
o What if school became a place to train culture care agents rather than a filter that lets through only those who can “make it?”
o What if we consider our actions, decisions, and creative products in light of 500 years and multiple generations?
o What if we nurtured students who are custodians of culture, willing to risk standing up for what is right but also taking copious notes so they can challenge the status quo?
References
Fujimura, M. (2017). Culture care: Reconnecting with beauty for our common life. IVP Books.
McEntyre, M. (2021).Caring for words in a culture of lies. Eerdmans.