Still musing...
aloud. I'm thinking that one way of thinking about curricular content is in
terms of what one pays attention to (knowing what counts as an instance of
--) and how one attends to it (the tools of a discipline). Habits of mind,
cognitive strategies, all of that are implied, but distributed & emergent
within classroom practice. That's anyway what I mean by critical
abstractions of a discipline.
I'm also thinking about values & development & Lee's point that Bill picked
up on -- that failure is not an option. How realistic is that stance
outside the classroom, in late capitalism? In my naivete, it seems not only
reasonable but necessary in an environment where values (as in social;
moral) matter, & the only way to capitalize on human resources. Eugene has
used the phrase, "Do no harm" -- as idealistic as it can get. But what is
the alternative?
This points directly to critical theory -- i.e., a theory about
redistributive justice -- a theory that is virtually impossible to practice
except in the sense of keeping a vision alive -- that is, as an
orientation, a matrix for reflexivity. In practice, "do less harm" may be
the only realization possible in late capitalism....
Judy
p.s. -- I do NOT mean by 'critical theory' the control of a meta-discourse.
Like every tool, the test of its value is in its use. As anyone who reads
critical theory knows, it's too often a tool for self-positioning, for status.
Judy
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