Re: affectivity in education

Graham Nuthall (G.Nuthall who-is-at educ.canterbury.ac.nz)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 09:03:12 +1300

I really enjoyed and was strongly challenged by Jay's piece on affectivity
in education. He wrote:

<Because of the historical-cultural linkages, the neglect of affectivity in
education, i.e. neglecting to value its _study_, also probably has to be
investigated in relation to the denigration of 'emotion' and all to do with
it in upper-middle class North European cultures, from which most of our
academic disciplinary traditions (in the US anyway) descend.<

Curiously I was first alerted to this by something that Piaget wrote. I
can't recall, refind the reference, but its probably in Play Dreams and
Imitation in Childhood. He made the point that in Western culture we have
never developed, as it were, a -physics- of the emotions. Consequently
adolescents' ability to deal with the emotions is pre-operational. We have
no stable schema of emotional/ affective states that allow us to be more
than childlike in our understanding and ability to represent them and talk
about them. I presume it is the result/cause of affectivity never being a
part of what we consider appropriate in schools.

Thanks Jay for your piece. It has sent me back to the drawing board in my
research planning.
Graham

Graham Nuthall
Professor of Education
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone 64 03 3642255 Fax 64 03 3642418
http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/educ/ultp.html