[Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

[David Kellogg]

 Phillip:

Arm wrestling is something that Korean children, male and female, do to
resolve all kinds of disputes, sexist and not sexist. I think, if I
remember correctly, the teacher who did the study used finger wrestling so
that nobody would get hurt; I do rememberr that she had girls playing boys
and boys playing girls. Arm wrestling is also part of the
(mandatory) physical education curriculum for both boys and girls.That is
why a team of teachers included it in the state-mandated textbook, written
in 1997, the year that I arrived in Korea. The lessons are, for better or
worse, not discretionary; every lesson in the state-mandated textbook must
be used by every single elementary school class in the country.  The year
of the study is 2007 and I did not meet Nikolai Veresov for another seven
years. Nikolai has never worked here in Korea.

Moral education, which I would call broadly anti-sexist and in general more
progressive than anything found in other countries where I have taught, is
mandatory from kindergarten right up through graduate school (and in fact I
am currently teaching a course called 교직윤리와 인성 ("Professional Ethics
and Human Personality"?) If anyone is actually interested in the
moral/ethical content of Korean textbooks there's a pretty good article on
it.

Yong-Ho Kim & David Kellogg (2015) Rocks and other hard places: tracing
ethical thinking in Korean and English dialog, Language and Education,
29:6, 493-508, DOI:10.1080/09500782.2015.1049616
To link to this article: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2015.1049616__;!!Mih3wA!T9JZvAO-gUflmKMcPH20wfrvTPkvFlHOaNpRGIuguGrtaMIrXjf4Mp1GLOfBLTbg_oi45g$ 

It is based on Ruqaiya Hasan's idea--that ideology is not merely an
explicit content but rather encoded in grammar, e.g. the sentence Mood that
some genders use in preference to others. (Yes, Anthony, it's Halliday, and
I'd love to talk about it!)

One last comment. Korea has been, and is still, an occupied country.
American influence on the Korean educational system has been, to say the
least, mercurial; it has involved, for example, purging progressive
educators trained in the USA and replacing them with ones who were
literally trained in Nazi Germany and it has also involved purging pro-Nazi
educators and replacing them with supporters of John Dewey. The year we did
the study there were mass demonstrations because American tanks ran over
two middle school girls who were on their way to a birthday party. Many
anti-racist and anti-sexist teachers here would like to see English removed
from the curriculum altogether. Most would like to see all foreign
influence on the curriculum eliminated, and that includes me (double
meaning intended).

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!T9JZvAO-gUflmKMcPH20wfrvTPkvFlHOaNpRGIuguGrtaMIrXjf4Mp1GLOfBLTa01mPCEA$ 
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!T9JZvAO-gUflmKMcPH20wfrvTPkvFlHOaNpRGIuguGrtaMIrXjf4Mp1GLOfBLTaWOCZm1g$ 


On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 11:14 PM White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
wrote:

> Annalisa - i was hoping that someone - preferably male - would pick up on
> the arm wrestling and find it problematic - but you have - great!
>
> there is learning connected to arm-wrestling - and it's a recursive
> performance of hetero-normative masculinity - that men use power to decide
> - that men are active participants - women as passive - on the sidelines -
> sometimes they get to stamp their feet and attempt to intervene accusing
> the men of behaving like children - regardless, whether or not the men step
> back during the moment, their rivalry is the pivot point of multiple
> western civilisation narratives.
>
> what's really disturbing is that Veresov, who had been in early childhood
> education, appears to have no grasp of male gendered sexist relationships.
>
> so yes - you're right -  this is a particular sexist lesson, and it's so
> normalised that a Vygotskian educator doesn't ever recognise it.
>
> i think that it is really important to recognise that Vygotsky's theories
> of development and learning can be applied by fascist and nazis and white
> supremacy, all forms of repression and authoritarianism.  being a
> Vygotskian doesn't automatically mean one's enlightened.
>
> i think that this is especially pertinent during these times of Black
> Lives Matter and a fascist in the White House.
>
> phillip
>
>
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