teaching and learning

From: Peter Farruggio (pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Date: Sat Sep 30 2000 - 20:58:04 PDT


Paul is right, and this question plays out on many more levels in schools
than just the social reproduction of class roles among high school
kids. Consider the current high stakes testing mania sweeping across the
US. This is part of a general all-out attack on democratic public
education and the rise in expectations among the US working class since the
expansion of higher ed for the baby boomers in the 1960s. The push for
more and tougher tests and "standards," the insistence to test non-English
speakers with English tests, the high school exit exams and grade
retentions for low scores, are all part of a campaign by the top levels of
the ruling elite to make the proles feel like failures in school, unworthy
to attend college. Why do this just now? Because the current corporate
policy is not a reinvigoration of the US industrial base, but rather the
old imperialist strategy of seeking cheap labor (like maquiladoras), which
brings with it a calculation that the more modest amounts of skilled and
intellectual labor can be brought on-board through a brain drain (thus the
demands by "cutting edge" software entrepreneurs, the darlings of Wall St,
for relaxed visa policies for intellectual labor from poorer countries -
they favor this cheaper policy over the demand to increase public spending
[taxes!!!] on US public education, where millions of young geniuses go
undeveloped today in decrepit schools) Through their right wing think
tanks, publicity spin doctors, and bought Republocrats, these ruling
circles push the ideology that public ed is failing and can only be fixed
by privatization (vouchers) A part of this program has been the
orchestrated and well-funded attacks on "whole language," and "fuzzy math"
and any other pedagogies that encourage thinking and questioning. This is
good enough for the children of the bourgeoisie, but dangerous for the masses.

Within this political/economic context, as I visit urban, public school
classrooms every week, what I see more and more is "back to basics"
teaching that has the kids working on low level linear tasks, and seeing
books as nothing more than "work" rather than as places for interesting
info and even enjoyment and entertainment.

How can one who is concerned with teaching and learning not be interested
in looking at the societal context? Schools of Ed can train their students
in the best and most culturally relevant pedagogy (as many are still doing,
including myself); but what good is it if these teachers find themselves in
schools where they are ordered to "just use the basals" and "just teach to
the test"????

As does the society around us, we who want to change the world must operate
on many levels at the same time.

Pete Farruggio

At 08:44 AM 9/29/00, you wrote:
>Bill posted:.
>
>"In coming to this discussion, Andy and I, for example, are interested in
>different forms of activity. He, as an opponent of bourgeois society may
>have sweeping reforms in mind, and I, I am keeping my vision focussed around
>learning and teaching. So he and I, just by example again, are interested
>in different aspects of Leont'ev. It seems we must be careful in insisting
>the discussion must focus on X, when it is X, like the egg in making an
>omellette, that may be something that some of us can take as a given."
>
>I question whether keeping ones vision focused on "learning and teaching"
>without taking into consideration (a) the historical separation of physical
>and mental labor; (b) the relationship of teaching and learning (the
>education industry) to the other branches of production in the social
>division of labor can lead to a complete understanding of the phenomena, its
>forms of appearance. Of course one might be able to determine better
>techniques for doing whatever it is that is done in the classrooms through
>such a focus but my own research has shown over and over again that
>educational "problems" have less to do with pedagogy than with the entire
>social context of education and the specific relationship of "schools" to
>the rest of the students' lives.
>
>I have been trying to hatch an egg that popped out with Dot's discussion of
>internalization v appropriation: specifically her comment that
>internalization also includes the internalization of "unconscious" elements.
>A prime educational example is found in Eckhert's "Jocks and Burnouts".
>Following in the tradition of Willis' "Learning to Labour", Eckert
>demonstrates that one of the most important components of high school
>students' education is the internalization of positions within a social
>division of labor characteristic of the society as a whole. All of this
>functions much to the side of what goes down in "Civics".
>
>As to being able to make an omelette without knowing its history, or being
>aware of the social division of labor that brings eggs to your refrigerator,
>sure. You can also drive a car without knowing how to build one, wear shoes
>without knowing how to make them, or tie a knot without understanding the
>principles of counteracting forces. . And if the social division of labor
>that produces cars were to be disrupted (no more oil, for example) then you
>would simply stop driving, just as you would eat no omelettes without the
>social divsion of labor that provides you with eggs.--hopefully this issue
>will be more of a focus when we look at the transition from actions to
>operations later in the reading, extending this from the level of individual
>to that of social consciousness.
>
>Paul H. Dillon



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