[Xmca-l] Scalability and Transitional Programmes

[David Kellogg]

Greg--

You still didn't really reply to my last one, about the civil liberties
issue. I caught some heat off-list for addressing it too specifically to
you--the references to "heung" [fun interests] and "han" [tragic interest],
you know. When someone does "insa" you have to 'insa' back!.

But actually, I think that civil liberties issue can be usefully expanded
on, in response to your own replies to the Latour Questions. I think that
in looking for discontinuable activities, we do well to keep in mind
scalability, as you did. But I also think that scalability is related to
transitionality, an issue that has come up before.

A transitional programme is one that starts small. So for example when you
have unemployment, you demand a shorter workweek (as in France) at no loss
in pay (as not in France). When you have inflation, you demand a COLA (as
in the USA) which cannot be passed on to the consumer (as not in the USA).

As Ed (Wall) said, online teaching (and online communting) is the thin edge
of a very nasty wedge. You acknowledge this when you talk about the
disadvantages of eliminating the distance commute in Utah. It's not just
that the solution isn't readily scalable. It's that it's very easily
co-opted by efforts to fire teachers and turn classrooms over to those who
have already mastered the transition to self-instruction.

When I did the questionnaire (on the website, as the designers intended), I
advocated smaller classes (as in tertiary education) at no loss in teaching
expertise or teaching compensation (as not in tertiary education). I see
this as a transitional programme--one that is scalable, but also one that,
precisely through the process of scaling, will eventually cast doubt on a
basic premise of the pre-crisis order (that is, on the idea that it is
possible or even desirable to replace education with self-instruction).

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of *Critical
Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and  educational
action research'  in Mind Culture and Activity*

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270
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