>i find my self return to Karen Gallas's work "Sometimes I can be
>anything: power, gender and identity in a primary classroom". in this
>research on first and second graders, she quickly notes the multiple
>practices of classroom domination practiced by boys - privileged,
>middleclass, white boys - who gain domination through various public
>disruptions. it is Gallas' theory that these boys are practicing ways of
>asserting dominance that is appreciated by other privileged boys within
>the classroom. she ironically labels these boys "bad boys", for indeed,
>within the culture of elementary school teachers this is a common label
>for such boys.
I feel a sense of imbalance arising by Phillip's comments, but one
which proves helpful in understanding some of the comments posted
here. I am specifically responding to the reference to Karen Gallas'
research in first and second grade classrooms about "bad boys" and
its application to college and university settings. How is it that
this is a helpful linkage? There has been a background strain within
some of the postings on the Daly case in which educational settings
and levels are dealt with as if they were all perfectly
interchangeable. I feel very uncomfortable with that. Unless, of
course, we are not actually looking at the findings of studies, but
using them metaphorically such that boorish 6 year old boys serve as
the archetypes of boorish 21 year old males.
> my guess is that Daly has had to deal with the bad boys of
>our culture -
> their methodical disruptions intended to discredit partial truths that
>may in fact conflict with their Truths. Daly's book Gyn-Ecology is
>certainly such an effort, i believe. and perhaps she learned that the
>price is to big to pay, having to deal with the bad boys.
What does the descriptor "methodical disruptions" mean? Phillip, are
you using a metaphor here in comparing the interactions of all(?),
some(?), a few(?), a tiny few(?)18-22 year old (or older) male
college students with the sorts of activities in class which Gallas
found among some 6 and 7 year old boys? Or, do you guess that they
are more or less the same behaviors -- just carried out at different
ages? I have been teaching college-level students for almost a
decade, and had taught secondary school students for a decade before
that. I can't say that I have frequently experienced an identity of
classroom behavior between these older students and what I understand
would be that of younger boys.
> Paul mentioned the case of Brown vs. Board of education - and while
>laws legitimizing segregation were certainly struck down, other unexpected
>consequences occured - the high rate of black students relegated to
>special education classes, tracked into low skill remediation classes, and
>high rates of suspensions and explusions. some black have lamented the
>passing of all black schools, noting that while those schools did suffer
>from a lack of resources, at least the life story of the children was
>honored. Ogbu's work demonstrating the demoralizing effects of belonging
>to a despised class of people within systems controlled by
>self-privileging groups certainly gives one pause to consider that laws
>espousing equality don't always lead to equality. in truth, many blacks
>did not benefit from the ruling that desegrated schools.
I am struck by the absence of any sense that the Brown decision was,
on balance, one of the great moral epiphanies in US history. From it
and so much of the work of the 50s-70s flowed incredibly positive
changes in very concrete ways of life for African Americans and
others including majority Whites. And, while Ogbu's insights demand
some sophisticated consideration, the conclusion that many blacks did
not benefit from the decision seems to me to mistake the part for the
whole, that is, that it was not desegregation which was faulty, but
the extraordinary tenacity of racist economic and social systems
which mobilized to cripple the move toward equality.
It seems to me that the separatist rhetoric of some feminist
theorists and ethnic/racial minority spokespeople which seems to
re-ghettoize entire populations is self-crippling in its overall
effect. When I first started teaching counseling and psychotherapy to
undergraduates eight years ago, I spent some time searching through
available textbooks. I was looking for a volume which would give more
than cursory attention to gender, class, ethnic and racial matters as
crucial factors in the helping encounter. It was shocking to discover
how little the mainstream texts regarded these issues. I was pleased,
though, to find Allen Ivey's work and have used it subsequently.
Within those classes, I regularly confront my students and myself
with the question of "what now?" What is it that we ought to be
engaged in as a group of learners? Is there, indeed, any purpose for
my (predominantly) White middle-class students and myself who share
their majority identity to move beyond ourselves toward others who
are different? Is it possible to do so? And, in support of what
values and what goals? So much of separatist sentiment seems to me
to be a counsel of futility on human communication.
We have a nation which is rent by powerful forces -- of oppression,
of hatred, of socioeconomic advantage triumphant on the backs of the
poor. Women experience continued sexual and gender harassment and its
kin by men. Racial and ethnic minorities still live under the blight
of four centuries of socially-accepted oppression. And, an awful lot
of comfortable academics protected by tenure fail to address their
own (our own?) issues of class bigotry. But, what are we to do in
response? I ask this because, in the Daly instance, we are dealing
with a university setting--not a nursery for 4-year-olds, or a
kindergarten for 5-year-olds, or an elementary school for 6- and 7-
and 8-year olds. And, it seems to me that, unless higher education
strives towards creating an arena filled with equality and respect
and a courageous pursuit of truth -- one in which we resist
separatisms ferociously -- then the future beckons with dire
prospects. I believe that the university's role may be so central to
the national commonweal that breaches of equality must be so rare and
so obviously warranted that dissent on those cases is marginal. If
people (women, African Americans, etc.) are kept separate as
children, and then as adolescents, and then again as young adults,
when will we ever emerge from that separatism?
>just as all women have not benefited from the title ix laws - and i
>think that Daly recognizes this truth, and so did attempt to provide a
>safe place for women. and men who understand the value of a safe place
>for women would not attempt to invade that place, is my guess.
I think you're probably right on every one of those points. Why,
though, would one expect a law to benefit everyone? And, her attempt
was, at least on the face of it, illegal as you seem to acknowledge
in your discussion of Antigone's choice. If so, could her university
be asked to collaborate in the illegality?
>and i think the story of Mary Daly is too a tragedy - perhaps not on
>the scale of Antigone - but certainly a tragedy - as mary bryson
>pointed out, was the intention of the university to support Daly and help
>her work out this difficulty, or was it to confront her with an either /
>or choice and the Law? Daly knows, as many of us do, the importance for
>women to have a safe place away from bad boys - and sometimes that means
>that even we good boys can't play.
Yet, nothing in the situation denied her the opportunity as a
feminist and a caring human person to provide a safe place for the
discussion and review of these matters away from good or bad boys.
Why didn't she provide a safe place outside the context of a
coeducational university which turned its back on single-sex
education more than a quarter century ago? Why not forego a salary
and the protections of tenure (both fruits of that same structure
which rejected her pedagogy) and set up an independent discussion
group at her own home which would provide complete safety from "bad
boys"?
I find myself thinking about my experience with a boy named Johnny
P. on the streets of New York when I was 11. He had a great bat and
a real baseball which the rest of us didn't have (broom sticks and
Spaldeens seemed the most we could manage). He also had a significant
temper. Those times we played, it became clear that Johnny P. felt
himself exempted from the rules of the game because it was his bat
and his ball we were playing with. For the rest of us, all throughout
the afternoon we'd argue about the rules and, I guess, learn
something about accommodation and social agreement in the ways some
researchers claim that games teach 11 year old boys. But, when it
came to an interpretation of the rules with Johnny P., he didn't want
to argue or discuss fine points or to change what he didn't like in
the rules. When he claimed that a point was non-negotiable, we
discovered he was absolutely true to his word. We must have played
for a week with Johnny P's bat and baseball. And, every one of those
games -- every one of them -- ended prematurely when Johnny P.
refused to argue about the rules. He would just get angry and pick up
his bat and grab his baseball and walk off. I recall we all felt bad
about that and, somehow, even guilty. So, the next day, we'd start up
the game again and Johnny P. would end it in the same fashion. This
went on for one summer week. But, after that week, we decided we'd
forego his offer. And, I don't think we ever played with his bat and
baseball again.
[Am I Johnny P. for saying Title IX is non-negotiable? Is Mary Daly
for saying she'd only teach women if the safe place to do so was
within her university? Or, should I search for another story?]
Vinny Hevern
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY