RE: What's new in classroom configurations

From: White, Phillip (Phillip.White@cudenver.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2005 - 09:05:16 PST


Jay wrote:

Much of the design "problem" presumably originates in the contradictions
of the activity-complex: control, information delivery, dialogue, inquiry
... and the surrounding assumptions about teacher-student ratio,
age-homogeneity of students, isolation of learning environments from other
social settings, curricular authority, student incompetence, etc.

No amount of good design is going to save a fundamentally dysfunctional
institution.

                 yes, absolutely correct - the design plan reminded me of the classrooms i worked in through-out the seventies - and as Jay points out, the contradictions arise throughout the historical and maintained hierarchical powers relations that suffuses the institution of education - the institution is not just there for "education" - it's also for "disciplining docile bodies" (Foucault).

phillip





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