[Xmca-l] Re: My Hometown Minneapolis

Sat Jun 6 14:18:24 PDT 2020

Thanks, Peg. N.B., though, the WHO now defunded by the USA but fortunately
refunded by the PRC, has just said that masks ARE for healthy people. You
remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a "Western"
view of transmission (doctors in the US and Europe) and an Eastern view
(here in Korea and China). The "Western" view was all about droplets, which
adhered to surfaces and then were transmitted to eyes, nose, and mouth by
unwashed hands and face touching. The "Eastern" view was all about
aerosols, which hang in the air and doesn't adhere to a surface at all. As
Michael Osterholm--another Minnesotan!--explained, an aerosol is what you
see in a sunbeam and also what you smell when you stand two aisles away
from the perfume department. Now the science is in--it's an aerosol, and a
good N-94 (we call them K-95s) will protect you, not just from the people
you are talking to but from folks who are two aisles away. It will even
protect your lungs and nose from the tear gas if it's tight enough, though
you will still need eye protection. I use one with an elastic band that
bypasses my ears and a clip that holds the elastic behind my head.  Trump
says: "Take it!" (hydroxychloroquine, which has zero prophylactic vaue but
will exascerbate your heart condition). Ocasio-Cortez says, "Wear it!"
(Hey, I wonder who's right...?)

Anthony's right to warn against American-centrism: it is examples like
Korea that show the world that the pandemic doesn't have to go the American
way. We had NO lockdown, and our schools are up and running again (sort
of--one of our Vygotsky group just had her school closed because a
NEIGHBORING school had a kid test positive and the teachers are worried
that kids from the two schools play and study together after hours). We
just test and trace--and trust, too, because you really have to trust your
neighbors and your government to do the kind of tracking we do over
here. It's also worth remembering what Korea had to do to get here--for a
whole year in 2017-2018, there were weekly street demos to remove the
previous malignancy (a hard-right government that had seized power through
a massive disinformation campaign in a very tightly contested election).
That president didn't golf or tweet, but she did watch the sinking of a
ferry with more than three hundred high school kids below decks on the TV
while having her hair done....

Henry--I don't think I ever used the phrase "the brutality of the Chinese
regime". Actually, the Chinese regime was and is neither more nor less
brutal than any other. The whole point I was trying to make, actually, was
the the legitimate Chinese regime under Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili had to be
removed by a military coup in order crush the demonstrations, and even the
legitimate military authorities had to be bypassed in order to open fire on
ordinary people. Unless we understand that, we get a kind of Chinese
exceptionalism when we compare Beijing 1989 with what happened later that
year in Romania, and the following year in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union generally.The troops didn't open fire there, but in Beijing they did.
Why? Well, I suppose that it was because the PLA has been and to some
extent still is an army based on sympathetic warlords and local bandits.
That seems a trivial reason, but combined with the mistaken attempts by
student leaders to eliminate the particpation of the working class in the
national movement, it was decisive.

I don't mean to sucker-punch this thread, but for those like Henry who are
considering the social democratic alternative, I would like to draw
attention to the link below, a critique of a recent book using social
democracy as a model for understanding, among other things, progressive
education and Vygotskyan theory. It's also worth considering the abject
failure of precisely those governments run by the social democrats to cope
with Covid-19: Spain and Sweden. Even in Italy, the UK, and Brazil you have
far-right governments which are resting on a health system built up by
social democracy and you see very similar failures. Social democracy rests
on the economic "successes" of capitalism (specifically: imperalism, where
capital is exported for profits that can be used to buy off the working
class). Social democracy then tries to tinker with the crises, trying to
attentuate it with Adam Smith's triumvirate of wages, rents, and interests.

There are, of course, limits to any analogy, but if you think of a health
crisis as a developmental crisis writ large, you can see why the Chinese
model was so much better. Imagine a child who is undergoing a crisis at
three or at thirteen. You don't treat the crisis at three by injecting the
child with ritalin (although, you know, there WAS a US drug company that
wanted to market anti-depressants to children using Eeyore and drugs for
ADHD using Tigger!). You shouldn't try to treat the crisis at thirteen by
fiddling with the child's new hormone balance. Mutatis mutandis, that would
be like taking hydroxychloroquine instead of wearing a mask.

(More discussion and even more farfetched analogies in the article linked
below!)

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://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRInS53PItg$ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847__;!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRInS53PItg$ >*

Some free e-prints available at:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1745847__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRInD1yINdQ$ 

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRIkcgpwAhg$ 

On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 11:35 PM Peg Griffin, Ph.D. <Peg.Griffin@att.net>
wrote:

> Sorry, but I seem to have misled you about masks here, David.  Wouldn’t
> want people to think it’s a good idea to pour bleach on cloth and wear it!
> (Apparently some people, in this country at least, are using bleach on
> their skin or on their food;  wouldn’t like to suggest such dangerous
> practices.)
>
> Our homemade masks are mostly three layers of cotton, some with pouches
> for filters if someone has or wants one.  They are intended to be worn by
> those of us who may unknowingly be asymptomatic and undiagnosed but still
> infected with SARS-CoV-2 and able to spread it easily to those we are
> chanting and walking and kneeling and standing with.  We have a continuing
> very poor diagnostic testing program in most places in this country. The
> masks are to lessen the danger an individual MIGHT BE to public health
> rather than a personal health measure way to protect an individual from
> getting the virus.  Every night, we soak and wash whatever masks we have
> custody of that have been used – soak in detergent and bleach and rinse
> well, but some odor of bleach remains, and leave it for a few days before
> recycling it.  Those who wear masks like the N-94 are people who need to be
> protected by the mask the wearer from getting the virus as they go into
> spaces recognized as having infected people likely to spread the infection.
>
> Of course, as for many things, we do not have a well-functioning public
> health system so the N-94 type masks are expensive and in short supply in
> many places.
>
> On the other hand, though, sometimes  rising to the concrete of homemade
> masks (needed, yes, but liked because they are so damned whimsical) and the
> making of them seem to yield confidence, camaraderie, apprenticeships for
> public engagement and purpose.  It’s a bonus that what the virus pandemic
> has demanded now often plays a part in people learning and using
> anti-fascist tools against police violence and government misdirection.
>
>
>
> BTW, what particularly struck me about the DC mayor’s apparent acceptance
> of BLM in the street art and new street name, is the immediate challenge
> from DC BLM and, as immediately, the mayor acknowledging that the symbols
> do not mask the gap in actions that BLM demands!   Could this be a
> dialectic or what?
>
> There are about a dozen well sponsored and organized protests in DC today
> – reduces worries by some of us about severe dangers to the big number of
> us that could be used for target practice in one place.
>
>
>
> BTW:  I appreciate getting news updates I learn from (recently off the top
> of my head) from Carol MacDonald, David Preiss, David Kellog …). It is
> different than published material and fills a different function for me.
>
> Peg
>
>
>
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg
> *Sent:* Friday, June 5, 2020 5:11 PM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: My Hometown Minneapolis
>
>
>
> (Is this thread American-centric? If so, 'twere a grievous fault. But
> grievously hath Haydi answered it--I don't think anybody can consider his
> dense, encyclopaedic blocks of text--the polar opposite of Anthony's
> American-centric orthography as well as Anthony's style and content--in any
> way American-centric....)
>
>
>
> Perhaps American-centrism and American-exceptionalism is in the way we
> read events rather than in the events themselves, Anthony. To me, the
> situation in and around Washington DC looks very much like the situation in
> and around Beijing in May1989. As in DC, Beijing had laws preventing the
> entry of the armed forces other than those of the Beijing Military
> Region into the city (the exclusion laws were actually written into the
> Chinese constitution by Mao, who was always afraid of powerful military
> opponents like Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao). The Beijing Military Region,
> however, was loyal to the people of Beijing and to the General Secretary
> Zhao Ziyang, and they opposed to a coup. So, as in DC, the "martial law"
> forces were called to the city perimeter where they halted for several
> weeks. As in DC, the provenance of the "martial law" forces were quite
> mysterious--they didn't carry insignia and it later turned out that these
> were forces personally loyal to two PLA warlords, the brothers Yang Baibing
> and Yang Shangkun. As in DC, there were different waves of demonstrators
> inside the city: someone put up artworks in the square (as the mayor did in
> DC this morning) and others told people to go home and organize and not
> stay to be massacred. And then, almost exactly thirty-one years ago, the
> unmarked shock troops went in shooting, and at least a thousand people
> died.  I hope that part is NOT like DC, but so far the "American
> exceptionalists" have been proved wrong on every single detail.
>
>
>
> Clorox on cloth? Gadzooks, Peg. Don't Americans have real N-94s yet? At
> the very height of the Daegu outbreak people had to resort to cloth masks
> (I don't think anybody used Clorox, though). Then the government brought in
> a rationing system so that health care workers could get PPE, and the
> extras are still rationed according to the numbers on registration cards:
> we go to the pharmacy twice a week to pick up our ration of three masks. No
> one is allowed onto a bus, a subway, or into a public building without one.
> Yesterday I went hiking for two hours and whenever I saw someone coming
> towards me they hastily put on a mask and bowed.
>
>
>
> (Do you know, the largest factory for PPE in the USA, and possibly the
> world until recently, is 3M in Minneapolis? There's a solid
> transitional demand for a general strike--Masks for all! Occupy 3M!)
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Sangmyung University
>
>
>
> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>
> Outlines, Spring 2020
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRIkip-rZ_A$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Xp_sgr0_UzNqr7vRI1XOMts503dCWTEnbJj5gRjnZG4dhhNbDC9HkM8UT-m4O5QGCUaqfQ$>
>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>
>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Vw3X4zA8KPUUBNGynYlMCNQcwZnTt6OiOBJZ8qXREer7VAs4eCUOBOokaQpiRIkcgpwAhg$ 
>
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xp_sgr0_UzNqr7vRI1XOMts503dCWTEnbJj5gRjnZG4dhhNbDC9HkM8UT-m4O5QTbNA7-g$>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 6:30 PM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Thank you, I'll take a look. Sounds similar to dialectics, little I know
> of both.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thursday, June 4, 2020, Richard Beach <rbeach@umn.edu> wrote:
>
> Anthony, the concept of “expansive learning” posits that objects/motive in
> activity are ideally always open to change/transformation—that they are
> never fixed given that as participants encounter new
> contradictions/challenges, they “learn to”/formulate new objects/motives.
> This requires learners to be open to exploring optional actions/tools/norms
> as they redefine/revise their ever expanding objects/motives.
>
>
>
> Coping with decades-long racist practices in Minneapolis, requires
> “expansive learning” to continually experiment with new objects/motives
> given that some of the tools/practices attempted in the past haven’t
> necessarily worked, although attempts were made to do so, only to be
> blocked by a timid political leadership
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.startribune.com/in-2008-we-had-a-reform-plan-for-the-mpd-it-got-derailed-by-politics/570998162/__;!!Mih3wA!SLGpQj8PmApHqKlEeH3z-ohB8R76qeqnpglVMrj9N2HOiJRn_QxL9FXpHMmS9eXEdK2Cgg$>
> .
>
>
>
> For more on expansive learning theory, see attached reports:
>
> Engeström,Y., & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning:
> Foundations, findings and future challenges. *Educational Research
> Review, 5*, 1–24.
>
> Sannino, A., Engeström, Y., & Lemos, M. (2016). Formative interventions
> for expansivelearning and transformative agency. *Journal of the Learning
> Sciences, 25*(4), 599-633.
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200607/469e59c3/attachment.html 