[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] Rudolph Steiner



I think in your reference to the Christian Bakhtin, working precariously in a Stalinist state, you are closer to what I see as the real situation. Really Vygotsky and Steiner were in similar positions. That is, the state organizes mass forms of formal schooling which function to reproduce the social relations for which the state is guardian. But ...

In most circumstances, there are openings, chinks in the armour, which allow the light and the air to get in. You found such a chink in 5D, Mike. In liberal democracies like the US, Australia, Europe, there exist rights to run schools whose curriculum is outside the official state system, for example. Often this rests on the notion of religious freedom (Thank God for the Reformation!) and separation of church and state.

I think what Jay was looking for (and this was certainly my point) is what opportunities exist for intervention in the system of formal schooling which can open things up a bit without raising the banner for the overthrow of either formal schooling in general, or this particular statified form. This is one strategy, different from the sectarian strategy of setting of "Red Unions" (reference to 1930s/40s Marxist debates on trade unions).

Andy

mike cole wrote:
Thanks a lot.
Tentatively, from what folks have contributed to this important thread, it
seems that forms of formal education are not related forms of state
political organization.

Is this a correct conclusion? I am finding it hard to get this issue out of
my head
as I wander between obligatory day to day requirements.

So far as I can tell, Jay/Andy et al., a state sponsored formal school
system cannot prepare new generations to be critical thinkers, unless we
narrow the definition of critical drastically. I hope I am wrong and would
really like paths
to look for evidence of conditions under which such a form of formal
education
has been, or is currently, in existence.

Very roughly, it seems to me that up to the point where state-sponsored
education has trained enough people to replicate its modes  of power,
transmission education wins. ONLY if/when one has a system of higher
education as a form of "institutionalized critical intelligence" is there
hope for the kind of education Jay is pointing to. And even that has to be
fought for, day in day out. And when times are tough, like they are in
California today, the outcome is anything but certain.

So, on our reading stacks we have people like Bakhtin, who lived in a  state
where critical thinking out in public was suicidal, and who (like many
feminist theorists, post-colonial theorists, among others) tried to theorize
the resources of the weak for the externalization of critical thought that
could both get under the radar and have a memory.

Off to order up the books that Tony has suggested.
mike



On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, mike cole wrote:

 Any brief access point, tony?
For education, there's:
Entwistle, Harold. Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Radical
Politics. London: Routledge, 1979.

This includes Croce and Gentile as well as Gramsci.
Entwistle makes an argument that has been taken up by E.D. Hirsch to
support his "Cultural Literacy" (a/k/a "Core Knowledge) program:
He argues that progressive education was advocated by Gentile (Mussolini's
Education minister), while Gramsci -- to the contrary -- advocated
non-progressive education for the sake of progressive political purposes
(Hirsch likes posing as the Gramsci of our day).

For more general social theory, there's:
Bellamy, Richard. Modern Italian Social Theory: Ideology and Politics from
Pareto to the Present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.

This book includes three chapters focusing on each of Croce, Gentile, and
Gramsci. All three were influenced in different ways by Hegel and by Marx.

 On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
 On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, mike cole wrote:
***

 So laid back, artsy, democratic education can be the developmental

precursor
of vicious rascist fascism. Now there is a thought to contemplate.
mike

 The trajectory from Croce to Gentile (Mussolinit's Minister of
Education)

may be worth considering in this regard.


Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
 are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
                 -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hegel Summer School
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/hss10.htm
Hegel, Goethe and the Planet: 13 February 2010.

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca