Re: failure, resistance, development

From: Bill Barowy (wbarowy@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2001 - 06:39:53 PDT


Bowles and Gintis does put exit and voice in opposition, with the claim that
the market economy and liberal democratic state favor the former, hence
limiting development of the individual. And so I see reason for your
suspicion. Let me write out what sense I can make and see where you take it.
I choose voice. Hopefully I will also respond to your (Judy's) previous
question regarding what is the lesson for chat.

A lot of clarity is needed here -- first, to take Mike's definition of
development as the physiological and psychological changes in a person over
time, you and i recognize that these changes are shaped by a person's
social-and-technological environments. Within these environments, i.e.
ensembles of systems in which a person participates, changes are value laden.
Some changes are preferred over others. Within a family, a child is shaped by
the expectations of the parents, and Mikes description of prolepsis in CP gives
us one process by which cultural propagation of values occur, and which
sustains things like class distinctions. For those of us who are educators, we
teach classes, and we look for evidence that the 'material' of the class is
taken up by the students, and we are judgemental about how extensive that
uptake has been, and some of us assign grades accordingly. Education in the
U.S. is, I think, an ensemble of value laden systems in which, in the division
of labor, it is the role of teachers to be judgemental of the changes in
students.

Lets get to the claims about development part. To do that, I'd like to shift
the analysis to the research/education systems. You and I, and others, also
participating in the same or similar systems, and also in disparate ones,
appropriate sets of values in a manner as best as I can describe as a
dialectical process of assimilation and accomodation -- new values are taken up
shaped by, and shaping, old ones. While Mike's definition is not value laden,
possibly because it comes from a view in recognition of culture, I find I have
to be careful when I am taking off my education hat and putting on my
researcher's hat, especially since I have participated in many funded projects
that promoted particular strategies for learning sciences and maths. When I
use the word 'development' for individuals, it is in the manner that Mike
defines it, and similarly for institutions.

But with both kinds of development, there are value traps everywhere. Perhaps
'suspicion' is more appropriately substituted with 'caution', and it is useful
for us to follow Garfinkels advice and expose ourselves and what we take for
granted as researchers. Perhaps this is a lesson for chat -- my
interpretation/extension of bowles and gintis is that cognitive theorists bring
meritocratic assumptions to their work -- that it is what is in the head of the
individual that determines his/her academic merits. Similarly with activity
theory, a researcher can be judgemental about changes in a system, being
positive, negative, and neutral, based upon personal values built by a lifetime
of experience in same, similar and otherwise systems.

Does any of this make sense? How do you think of development?

bb

--- Judith Diamondstone <diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> Hi, Bill,
>
> you quoted:
> >"...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)
>
> Is freedom to choose "independently of collective sentiment" an "exit"
> strategy? And thus in contradiction with "voice"?
>
> Claims about development make me immediately suspicious - paranoia NOT the
> issue here.... CHAT has heads up on in-the-head psych. models, but bottom
> line, we all end up judging others in terms of what we believe, out of our
> own social histories, development SHOULD be. That strikes romantic me as
> anti-developmental.
>
> judy
>

=====
"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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