Judy wrote,
> Eugene, I think that everything you say makes sense if the learning
> is aimed at "what" and not "who am I." Obviously, both sorts of learning
> co-occur during school. Sometimes, by focusing on the "what," the
> student learns a new way of being. But sometimes, the "what" requires
> that the student not be who s/he knows him/herself to be, and the
> student will not/ can not forego her own way of being in order to
> attend to the "what." The problem is not a different way of
> reasoning through common artefacts as your example shows, but
> a different way of caring/valuing/weighting artifacts, including
> features of the linguistic system, a problem of different selection
> values from the whole set of semiotics in the culture....
> I'm not explaining this well - I imagine it's a systemic issue, the
> sort of problem Jay Lemke explains well, one differently
> weighted system interacting with another to compound the
> differences that communicants must somehow account for or slide by.
Thanks for the clarification -- it is very helpful. I wonder if Mike meant
something similar when he raised his question and I misunderstood it. I
think that the issue is in integration (or disintegration) of relationship
rather than in artifacts (there is nothing in the artifact itself that makes
it resistant/painful). Recently I read the book, "The right man for the job"
where a young man learn how to repossess furniture from poor black
neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. While feeling a great degree of sympathy
for the poor people he came to harass requiring payments, he was very proud
to announce his "victory" to guys in the repo office seeking for their
acceptance. Students also can be torn between conflicting relations they
want or have to participate. Can the teacher help to reconcile the conflict
(especially if the teacher is a part of it)? I think it depends on how
much the teacher is willing and can afford to risk to share responsibility
for managing the conflicting relationship with the student.
What do you think?
Eugene
Eugene