[Xmca-l] Re: The Learning Sciences in the era of U.S. Nationalism

[Glassman, Michael]

Hi Alfredo,

Your short post is deeply resonant for me and I find your questions at the end especially poignant.  For Dewey and those around him education was supposed to be the backstop against the rise of somebody like Trump.  Lately I have been thinking that in some ways we treat Trump as if he had come from some type of other planet to dominate and destroy us - a Twilight Zone episode - To Serve Man with Small Hands Perhaps.  But that keeps us from thinking about the causes proximal and distal that have caused this to happen - not only here but around the world.  There seems to be limited self-reflection.  How much has what we have let the education systems become has played into this - the insane competition, the standardization, the control through ritual.  And as education researchers we often say to the larger society, we'll make your children do better, to be more competitive, we'll be number one, or at least number six on PISA - instead of saying we are losing the thread, we are losing too much of what is possible through education.  

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2017 3:25 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Learning Sciences in the era of U.S. Nationalism

Mike,

thanks a lot for sharing this article. You and Michael, who have and know more history, have spoken in terms of reminiscences. I have lived and know less, and the article feels like fresh air. During my PhD, I begun to increasingly feel that I had to due something to act and respond to the increasing ecological and humanitarian globe crises. But how could I do anything if I had children and a PhD to finalise?? What could I do that would also be doing my job as researcher in a department of education? It was very difficult to find anything, partly because almost every academic quest would focus on learning, but so little on social development. How many scientific articles are dedicated to socio-political questions in the most cited educational journals? I felt very powerless. 

To be able to address these questions within my expertise, is a challenge partly because contrary to Dewey's hope, educational research has only marginally focused on these questions, and yet they may be exactly the question that matter to education. What are we educating for? Indeed, what is education for? I think we face a serious problem when someone (like myself), being an educational researchers/scholar, still has to scratch her head wondering <<how can I make my profession matter to social change and development?>> Vygotsky would be shocked!

Alfredo 


From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
Sent: 19 January 2017 04:51
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Learning Sciences in the era of U.S. Nationalism

Yes Michael,

It feels like the world of the later 1930's about the time I was born as that period came down to me through the prism of a family of "premature anti fascists."

For a great re-creation of those times see the highly ambivalent film by Frank Capra, "meet John Doe." It has American big capital interconnected with fascism combined with populist collectivism in a manner that points at the media (as then experienced) as the bad guys in disguise. Happy Ending, Beethoven Ode to Joy and all.

It's come round again, nastier this time.

Mike
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 6:20 PM Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
wrote:

> Mike
>
>
>
> It was so interesting to read this note after reading the Cognition 
> and Instruction essay.  All the way through it I kept thinking we have 
> been here before.  It reminded me of the scholars, especially those 
> who had escaped from Germany, trying to make sense of what had 
> happened to their society during World War II.  The foremost in my 
> mind was Lewin.  Except I wonder if he would say the process of 
> transformative action starts not with emergence of quasi-needs, but 
> our willingness and abilities to step back from our quasi-needs and 
> the ways that they drive us, often to dysfunctional behaviors that it 
> ultimately destructive to both our society and to us as individuals.  
> How hard this is to do, we have to keep going back again and again.  
> The quasi-needs, tribalism, acceptance, standing are always there.  It is how they shape us that is critical.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 8:31 PM
>
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] The Learning Sciences in the era of U.S. Nationalism
>
>
>
> In following  the perezhivanie thread I encountered the note I re-membered.
>
> And interestingly mis-remembered. A translation into my focus on 
> mediational means. He places the starting point of the process of 
> transformative action at the emergence of quasi-needs (from Kurt Lewin).
>
> That seems correct to me. The new mediational means emerge under 
> environmental presses. Ever functionalist ego need a goal(!). (The 
> problem with functionalism) In David's words,
>
>
>
> Perhaps the place we should look for "exaptations" that can save both 
> our personalities and our environment is not in our evolved needs, but 
> in yet to be designed quasi-needs. Artificial organs, after all, 
> always suggest new and ever more artificial functions, like chess and language.
>
>
>
> This point seems worth keeping in mind as we look at where this group 
> of critical scholars who work within the Learning Sciences 
> disciplinary framework would like to lead us.
>
>
>
> mike
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>