Re: class, culture, and education

Martin ELLISON (martin who-is-at mpce.mq.edu.au)
Sun, 22 Nov 1998 19:54:08 +1100

Jay Lemke wrote, "The usually stated goal for the education of those who
do not as often 'succeed' (whether in science and mathematics, or in
overall academic record) is to make them just like the anglophone-born,
middle and upper-middle class, euro-Americans in their measurable
academic achievement."

Question for Prof. Lemke: What kinds of goals do your students have?
That is to say, if the education activity system is seen as having the
student as activity subject, what is the objective? You can say that
"measures of academic success" are relatively arbitrary, but surely, if
the arbiter of academic success is the student, they have different
levels of perceived success.

You may point out that the students' goals are historically conditioned
and determined, but that (if used as a way of ignoring the students'
perspective) is a form of devaluation of the students' agency.