[Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"

[Anthony Barra]

The "sentient meat" reference: "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson,
1991 -- year after year, a reliable classroom favorite

It's short and sweet:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html__;!!Mih3wA!VJzfiEC6bWCRHXufqymUpDpqWFqNXBVaTCIZBKtpn8lFmQghrM0rUHLQmaa3QxvumGAcKg$  Odd
creatures, for sure ~

On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 10:14 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael, Anthony, Elizabeth--and (of course) Annalisa:
>
> I apologize for changing the threadline title AGAIN. I feel like the
> five-year-old who is always unscrewing the back of the TV set to see the
> little people inside; I was very dissatisfied withe the abstract theory on
> the other line, according to which everything is everything and mediation
> and unmediation are equally both and I wanted a way of finding the people
> inside it. I thought the term "meatspace", which Annalisa has heard before,
> captured that feeling pretty well (and there are also some echoes of a
> corruscating book review I once read in MCA titled something like "Yer
> askin' me to believe in sentient MEAT????")
>
> Let's use Michael's categories of "teacher presence" and "social presence"
> instead, so long as we keep in mind the point that Michael made at the end,
> that is, the teacher is always present even when the teacher is not present
> (as when the child is doing homework alone) and the additional point that
> teacher presence is one kind of social presence. But because presence and
> absence are (like mediated and unmediated) equally both ungradeable
> categories, I would prefer to talk about teacher distancing and social
> distancing. Michael Osterholm has objected to the term social distancing
> for the same reasons I raised earlier--it's a physical, mechanical
> distancing that actually creates a higher form of solidarity (and that is
> why the elements of society which oppose higher forms of solidarity oppose
> it). So I put "social distancing" in scare quotes. But the teacher
> distancing is real enough.
>
> Real but not by itself of developmental significance. What worries me is
> the possibility that we are adding to the kinds of inequalitiees that
> Annalisa, Henry and Tom are talking about on the other thread. It seems to
> me that teacher distancing differentially hurts some populations. I
> disagree that Koreans are more homogeneous than other cultures (in class
> terms significantly  less so) and I also think that if you were to sit
> through a lecture in the Korean language without understanding Korean you
> would not agree that language is the least important aspect of teacher
> presence. But (to bring these two together) I think that students who are
> able to focus on language, and on particular kinds of language, are
> disproportionately enabled in conditions of teacher distancing. This is the
> issue that dare not speak its name, for when Bernstein tried to raise it he
> was, as Halliday noted, "driven out of the field".  One of the reasons I
> wrote the article linked below is that Ruqaiya Hasan was not.
>
> 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/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!VJzfiEC6bWCRHXufqymUpDpqWFqNXBVaTCIZBKtpn8lFmQghrM0rUHLQmaa3QxvMJe5eVg$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zce9P2I5M_FZBJKElhGyP20UejX0w$>
>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VJzfiEC6bWCRHXufqymUpDpqWFqNXBVaTCIZBKtpn8lFmQghrM0rUHLQmaa3QxvTtFZeTw$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zce9P2I5M_FZBJKElhGyP026P9-1A$>
>
>
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