Having trouble keeping up with the volume and I'd like to write about a couple
of terms we've been using so I understand them better. Failure and resistence.
Both of these terms have usage as expressing values within a
technocratic/meritocratic system as a school. Failing and the indentity formed
in failing, I think, are elements of one process that B&G claim leads to class
distinction -- we have lots of academic examples, such as with maths and
reading: in the former which I know better, early experiences shape a persons
self-efficacy and consequently what more math that person is willing to learn.
Addressing the affective side of identity, I've encountered students with the
'math anxiety' Sheila Tobias wrote about when I was teaching in an
undergraduate basic math (remedial) program. As a result, I find there is
substance to the idea that failure shapes what a person believes him/herself
capable of accomplishing, and consequently what career decisions that person
makes. With math, which is necessary for pursuing engineering, many of the
students in the basic math program had already self-selected not to pursue
technical degrees such as in engineering. Consequently, they also
self-selected out of well-paying engineering jobs, and they enacted the
re-production of the rough-grain class distinctions that accompany more
fine-grained distinctions as profession-and-salary. But with one qualification
-- the 'self-selection' is, I think, not entirely up to the individual, but
occurs in the nexus of individual and social processes. For example, as a
result of the basic math program experience, one (but only one that I know of)
student decided to take additional math courses -- subsequent successes lead
the student to pursue an engineering degree. The student was forced by the
university system to take algebra as requirement for his degree. Taking the
basic math classes, in light of the dearth of his prior merits in math, was an
option that offered some chance of success with the algebra requirement. He
chose to do so, but his decision was not only the consequence of his prior
conditioning, but of the constraints and affordances society provided at that
point in time.
Resistance is something to unpack further -- in one view it would seem as a
persons decision not to comply, and compliance, B&G claim, is the mark of a
'good' middle manager, who, in a hierarchical and bureaucratic system, will
carry out the charges of his/her supervisor. But I'll stop with this example,
because time will only permit the sharing of a paragraph from a chapter by B&G
in a later book entitled 'Bowles and Gintis revisited'.
"...personal development is in general best served through an interaction of
two stratetgies: exercising one's freedom to choose independently of collective
sentiment, and entering into mutual, reciprocal, and participatory action with
others to achieve commonly defined goals. These two strategies are precisely
Albert Hirschman's twin notion of 'exit' and 'voice'." (p. 229)
gotta run,
bb
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 01 2001 - 01:01:36 PDT