As long ago I used to do quite regularly, I'm updating the subject
line of this thread again. Maybe it will continue and maybe not.
But I was fascinated by Valerie's reference to Bucky Fuller and
the thesis that elaborate testing, and by extension (or inclusion)
the emphasis on being able to write the "right sort" of essays and
other genres in academia and so many specialized fields can also
serve the function of managing and controlling, dividing and
conquering, really bright people.
There are after all two sorts of principal threats to the ruling
class. One is the great mass of working people who can stop,
strike, rebel, etc. And we know of course a lot about the
mechanisms of control, from hegemony to mystification, ideology,
policing, etc. used in this case. But the other are the specialist
elites, who are often given enough to make us feel we're doing
"ok" under their system, though nowhere near what the ruling class
appropriate for themselves. We are co-opted, bought out rather
cheaply (by their standards), and very occasionally even promoted
to positions of real power. But there must also be much less
visible strategies at work, and I think that the system of
academic (and later, professional, career) rewards is one of them.
An illusion of local-scale meritocracy under the much bigger
system of social injustice and maintenance of status quo power.
And in some ways, I think, testing, even the best testing we can
imagine (like my Gold Standard proposal yesterday) is a key means
of this system of control. Those of us who do well on tests are
even more likely to believe that this reflects our merit, our
talent, our hard work -- even when maybe we doubt that those who
do poorly do so because of a lack of these qualities. If the
children of the oppressed do poorly for reasons having little to
do with their innate talents or potential efforts, then should we
not also reason that we do well for reasons equally unobvious,
equally not to be attributed solely to us as individuals?
We do well insofar as we are pre-tuned, pre-adapted to the needs
that determine what is tested for and what is valued. Not our
needs generally, nor those of the mass of people. We are selected
because we are potentially useful to people who pay us, who fund
us, who fund our institutions, who pay our policymakers. In some
cases we fit with new needs, in some cases the traditions that
define our usefulness are very old and represent long-unchanged
aspects of the larger political economy and social system. I think
an interesting history of testing could be written from such a
point of view. Has it been?
Valerie also noted the ways in which testing implements the divide-
and-conquer strategy with respect to useful specialists. As a
relatively small group numerically, with much less social
diversity overall than the whole mass of the population, we ought
to be able to more easily organize and unite, but we don't. We do
well on very different measures of our usefulness, most obviously,
say, between humanist scholars and scientists, and while one could
point to much larger patterns of activity and discourse that split
us apart, our modes of testing or of judging the value of work and
productivity are still quite good guides to the history of how we
have been "managed". No?
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
On May 10, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Valerie Wilkinson wrote:
Referring to some of the threads:
"Why don't people talk about wisdom anymore?" is definitely a
rhetorical question that makes the tacit assumption that they/we
don't. But wisdom, like love, is abstract until informed by
examples.
I could ask the question, "Why do we shun the Platonic ideal?" I
fear it wouldn't kick off much of a conversation. But is the
idea of "organic" learning any more informative? It is strictly
environmental, but the environment may include religious
education and symbolic organizational practices which support the
dominant paradigm or the people who make the rules or the people
who watch out for everyone's safety.
David Kellogg said: "Here are some countervailing facts to
consider, before we leap to conclusions about the malign effects
of Confucianism (which, like most truly ancient cultural
traditions, has an irrepressibly creative and humanist core) on
dysfunctional American education." YES! and well, uh - it works
if you can play the game - and there is always a dialectic going
with Taoism somewhere.
It is so hard to get outside of a system you are in. And if you
are in international academia, you are committed to a system in
some guise that employs you or publishes your papers or creates
the forum where you may share your ideas. To get talking points
in that system you have to be able to talk to the talk. To talk
the talk, it is best, but not requisite, to have grown up in the
system.
Much of what we are talking about has been talked over in various
fora - from IQ and differentiated intelligence to language and
manners and then the whole cultural marginalizing process that
forces some to accept a role which "native intelligence" could
easily overcome - since experiential learning toward mastery is
ascendant - except for the weights and burdens of various kinds
laden upon the underprivileged by various social mechanisms, some
of which are designed to do just that, weigh them down, keep them
oppressed.
If "we" locate and export the gifted (alpha) to another level and
focus the lowered tiered learning towards acceptance,
satisfaction with a guarantee of "enough" - many gifted people
(of the other intelligences besides articulated declarative
knowledge) will spend the rest of their lives struggling to make
ends meet, to pay their mortgages, take care of their kids ---
Interestingly, Bucky Fuller described the purpose of the
elaborate written testing system, the complex poetry and
memorization of classical texts to "manage" the more gifted in
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Since the "pirate
captains" vanished (but did they?) there isn't any proof of his
wonderfully provocative claims, but I'm pretty sure that the
demand for "specialization" is one of the great causes of failure
to communicate from group to group. It's crippling to have jargon
barriers.
This note may seem to have gotten off the track of learning in
kindergarten and the whole thing - but I believe that radical
return to experiential learning from breast to bicycle to doing
stuff with your friends will ground much learning experience. Of
course we have to keep up with the books and specialize - but we
have to do the other as well or more, or more in the beginning
and always some - because experiential learning is integrative
and inclusive.
(was this a rant?)
Valerie Wilkinson
On 2009.May.7, at 12:41 AM, Jay Lemke wrote:
I think that we mostly agree, Eugene, given different emphasis
because of our different backgrounds.
I did think it was interesting that you noted that in
totalitarian discourses the leakage across a binary division can
be made to undermine basic moral principles. I suppose that
there are times when one needs a way to undermine other
people's, and maybe also one's own, moral certainties. But
clearly doing so can also be very destructive, depending on the
circumstances and the consequences.
So we have to tack between stronger binaries and weaker ones,
and that takes a measure of wisdom. Why don't people talk about
wisdom any > more?
As to the defense of science, of course it depends on what we
want to mean by science or scientific. If it is just
systematically gathered empirical information, then I think we
always have to take it into account, but not necessarily be
ruled by it. Realities exist, but they can also change and be
changed. If it means some particular way of doing research, then
I am less favorable, and more Feyerabendian. If it means
honestly trying to examine alternative interpretations and
proposals, then count me in! If it is defending a particular
current scientific theory, say neo-Darwinian evolutionary
theory, then I have to look carefully at a wide range of
circumstances to make my choice.
"Complex process of mutually informing" sounds just right to me!
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke