Re: [xmca] Rudolph Steiner and the critique of pure tolerance

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Oh, boy. Do I disagree!
 
I think there is an inherent contradiction in the whole idea of teaching critical thinking. Yes, critical thinking can be learned. No, it cannot be taught. But in this critical thinking is not different from ANY other form of higher conceptual thinking, whose direct teaching, as Vygotsky teaches us that Tolstoy taught us, is pedagogically fruitless. Now, since that is the case, I think the key DEMOCRATIC problem for education was...and remains...equal access, and let learners of every class and color and shape and flavor make of it what they can. 
 
I think Westerners (who are generally very POOR in critical thinking where their own system is concerned) are inclined to imagine that equal access is a solved problem, because of universal compulsory education. But the ongoing privatization of tertiary education, and more subtle forms of tracking in secondary and even primary education (in which "progressive education" often proves as complicit as any other form), demonstrate that it is anything but solved. 
 
As my wife likes to point out, the sheer BOREDOM of much learning, and the shoddy MEDIOCRITY reinforced by testing practices have a progressive side, since they are historically the result of the replacement of heritocracy with meritocracy. At least a small number of motivated working class kids can actually make boredom and mediocrity work to their advantage, particularly in competition with the smug and pre-bored progeny of the bourgeoisie. That's how Jews got into our current exalted positions in academia; it's how Obama became president, too.
 
Even if compulsory education DID provide equal access, which is highly doubtful, we have to recognize that in general, democratic solutions of ANY kind are not very secure in a period of utter reaction like our own. State education is something to be strongly defended, not abandoned; and "alternatives" to state education are something to be profoundly skeptical, yea, critical, about. Education has to be a party to which everybody gets an invitation, and that pretty much rules out any private or even chartered approach no matter how congenial they may be to "progressive" schemes. Here I think Andy's comparison with Red Unions is spot on. 
 
I also don't think that the "Red Union" strategy is always and everywhere sectarian, Andy (though it was certainly sectarian in the struggle against fascism). In Korea, the "Red Union" (or so the government likes to call it) is the only viable union going. Naturally, it is the target of a campaign to ban it on the part of the neo-Francoists who are currently in power (on the grounds that teachers and civil servants should not be political). The defense of this union has nothing red or even pink about it, it's a matter of struggling for the basic democratic right to organize.
 
Just as the attempt to "depoliticize" unions is always and everywhere profoundly political, protestant efforts to "secularize" governments were always and everywhere profoundly sectarian. If you want the protestant version of a polity, just look at the Siege of Munster!
I don't think the Reformation was responsible for the separation of church and state. That's a highly Weberian (that is, idealist) way to look at it. 
 
Church and state were first separated in Catholic France, and even there it was less thanks to the enlightenment than to the revolution. The Jacobins figured, I figure correctly, that If there are no atheists in foxholes, then there are no democrats in churches either. 
 
Tolerance? Well, it's a little like getting the rich to share their wealth...hey, if they will agree, I will agree.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Sun, 1/10/10, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:


From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Rudolph Steiner
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, January 10, 2010, 8:01 PM


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

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