[Xmca-l] Re: The most, the best educated and the most dangerous

[Alfredo Jornet Gil]

On the thread of 'most educated and the most dangerous', for those who read Spanish, here is an article on a religious school in Madrid, El Pilar, known for being the school were many figures crucial in Spanish Politics were educated, both during and after Franco, and including former president José María Aznar (who, together with Blair and Bush, and against their people's wish, threw us in a violet war in Irak). I can't say about Blair, but I remember that by that time almost everybody laughed about Bush' educational level, whereas Aznar has always been an intellectual. They all were very dangerous anyway. 

Here the link (Spanish): http://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2012-02-19/el-pilar-un-colegio-de-dirigentes_232887/

The question of level of education has been raised both in England with respect with Brexit voters, and in the US with respect to Trump's voters, as if the electoral outcomes could be understood only if one consider the voters poorly educated. But does actually knowing MORE or LESS of what is being taught at today's schools affect at all whether you are dangerous or not to human well being and rights? Evidence seems to suggest that 'not much'. Perhaps, instead of asking the voter's level of education, we could ask the schools' level of humanity. I think education is the question number 1, at all levels, and yet, starting by the salary people seem to be willing to pay (to teachers, TA's, etc), it is one of the lowest in the list (if a list of how much people is paid for what they do has anything to say about how much a practice is valued). 

Hope not to be taking the thread off track.
Alfredo

________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of lpscholar2@gmail.com <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Sent: 07 March 2017 21:33
To: Edward Wall; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The most, the best educated and the most dangerous

Ulvi and others interested in this thread.
I would like to recommend an article by Michael Cole and Katherine Brown titled :
‘A Utopian Methodology as a Tool for Cultural and Critical Psychologies : Toward a POSITIVE Critical Theory’.
This article (2001) is located in the edited book by Martin Packer and Mark Tappan (Cultural and Critical Perspectives on Human Development).

If you google the article a pdf is available. I tried sending the article but do not think it arrived.

I found Martin’s *preview* in the introductory pages relevant to Ulvi’s question giving an overview of various cultural psychologies and various critical perspectives.

Cole and Brown’s article is a *positive* critical response that refutes Adorno’s negative dialectics..
It specifically addresses the public who do not benefit from reading academic texts through the engagement with those who do benefit from reading academic texts. Engaging the *interplay* between and within the traditions of cultural psychologies AND critical psychologies.



Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Edward Wall
Sent: March 6, 2017 9:20 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The most, the best educated and the most dangerous

Ulvi

     I have thought about your question and read what others have offered. Here are some thoughts

     In most societies a purpose of education is to inculcate societal norms and. hence, in is not surprising that some of the better exemplars are those who place themselves on the side of the dominant class. However, those that often rise those critical decision points you mention are not necessarily the best educated. They are, what one might term, well educated. That is, they go to the ‘right’ schools, know the ‘right’ [people, wear the ‘right’ clothes, eat the ‘right’ food. They often display, as Detienne and Vernant put it, "mental attitudes and intellectual behavior which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years. That is, they display what the Greeks termed metis or cunning; Odysseys being the exemplar.

    Metis, I happen to think (from the viewpoint of a teacher), is a very interesting and troubling trait.

Ed



> On Mar 4, 2017, at  1:41 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, given that education is a class issue in capitalist society, any
> society,
> that the best most educated are placing themselves en masse on the side of
> the dominant class
>
> can we think that the most "educated" and also the "best" educated are
> at the same time the most dangerous people for the humanity
>
> because they are located at the most critical decision-making points
> of a social order.
>
> Well,  this can be a really trivial issue but since I could not meet it in
> my country's intellectual life,communist and non communist, I needed to ask
> it for world experience.
>
> It seems that the best educated seem to be en masse the most dangerous ones
> to initiate wars etc whereas the least educated formally but the best
> self-educated via working class instititutions seem to be the most
> emancipatory and in fact best educated people in the real sense of the
> world (e.g. José Marti)
>
> Erdogan is obviously not the most educated in my country, Turkey, nor was
> Hitler nor Bush.
>
> But Obama, Clinton, Hollande, Javier Solana (who destroyed Yugoslavia with
> Nato bombing) Merkel were and all well educated...and quite dangerous.
>
> I was really surprised to the self- gathered conscience of one of my
> friends when he stated that Hillary Clinton was a very dangerous woman.
>
> Thanks
> Ulvi