Re: Re(2): ad hominum/womanum
Dr. PedroR. Portes (prport01 who-is-at athena.louisville.edu)
Mon, 09 Aug 1999 17:58:09 -0400
There is a real fiery discussion happening over the Daly (feminist)
untenuring story you may find interesting, if interested it is on the xmca
web page....and in part below
the flick was disconcerting, must be debriefed..
also, what was the name of that great recommended book?, i promised myself
i was going to take time to read a good novel finally..
p.
At 02:47 AM 8/9/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Phillip writes:
>
>>i find my self return to Karen Gallas's work "Sometimes I can be
>>anything: power, gender and identity in a primary classroom". in this
>>research on first and second graders, she quickly notes the multiple
>>practices of classroom domination practiced by boys - privileged,
>>middleclass, white boys - who gain domination through various public
>>disruptions. it is Gallas' theory that these boys are practicing ways of
>>asserting dominance that is appreciated by other privileged boys within
>>the classroom. she ironically labels these boys "bad boys", for indeed,
>>within the culture of elementary school teachers this is a common label
>>for such boys.
>
>I feel a sense of imbalance arising by Phillip's comments, but one
>which proves helpful in understanding some of the comments posted
>here. I am specifically responding to the reference to Karen Gallas'
>research in first and second grade classrooms about "bad boys" and
>its application to college and university settings. How is it that
>this is a helpful linkage? There has been a background strain within
>some of the postings on the Daly case in which educational settings
>and levels are dealt with as if they were all perfectly
>interchangeable. I feel very uncomfortable with that. Unless, of
>course, we are not actually looking at the findings of studies, but
>using them metaphorically such that boorish 6 year old boys serve as
>the archetypes of boorish 21 year old males.
>
>> my guess is that Daly has had to deal with the bad boys of
>>our culture -
>> their methodical disruptions intended to discredit partial truths that
>>may in fact conflict with their Truths. Daly's book Gyn-Ecology is
>>certainly such an effort, i believe. and perhaps she learned that the
>>price is to big to pay, having to deal with the bad boys.
>
>What does the descriptor "methodical disruptions" mean? Phillip, are
>you using a metaphor here in comparing the interactions of all(?),
>some(?), a few(?), a tiny few(?)18-22 year old (or older) male
>college students with the sorts of activities in class which Gallas
>found among some 6 and 7 year old boys? Or, do you guess that they
>are more or less the same behaviors -- just carried out at different
>ages? I have been teaching college-level students for almost a
>decade, and had taught secondary school students for a decade before
>that. I can't say that I have frequently experienced an identity of
>classroom behavior between these older students and what I understand
>would be that of younger boys.
>
>> Paul mentioned the case of Brown vs. Board of education - and while
>>laws legitimizing segregation were certainly struck down, other unexpected
>>consequences occured - the high rate of black students relegated to
>>special education classes, tracked into low skill remediation classes, and
>>high rates of suspensions and explusions. some black have lamented the
>>passing of all black schools, noting that while those schools did suffer
>>from a lack of resources, at least the life story of the children was
>>honored. Ogbu's work demonstrating the demoralizing effects of belonging
>>to a despised class of people within systems controlled by
>>self-privileging groups certainly gives one pause to consider that laws
>>espousing equality don't always lead to equality. in truth, many blacks
>>did not benefit from the ruling that desegrated schools.
>
>I am struck by the absence of any sense that the Brown decision was,
>on balance, one of the great moral epiphanies in US history. From it
>and so much of the work of the 50s-70s flowed incredibly positive
>changes in very concrete ways of life for African Americans and
>others including majority Whites. And, while Ogbu's insights demand
>some sophisticated consideration, the conclusion that many blacks did
>not benefit from the decision seems to me to mistake the part for the
>whole, that is, that it was not desegregation which was faulty, but
>the extraordinary tenacity of racist economic and social systems
>which mobilized to cripple the move toward equality.
>
>It seems to me that the separatist rhetoric of some feminist
>theorists and ethnic/racial minority spokespeople which seems to
>re-ghettoize entire populations is self-crippling in its overall
>effect. When I first started teaching counseling and psychotherapy to
>undergraduates eight years ago, I spent some time searching through
>available textbooks. I was looking for a volume which would give more
>than cursory attention to gender, class, ethnic and racial matters as
>crucial factors in the helping encounter. It was shocking to discover
>how little the mainstream texts regarded these issues. I was pleased,
>though, to find Allen Ivey's work and have used it subsequently.
>Within those classes, I regularly confront my students and myself
>with the question of "what now?" What is it that we ought to be
>engaged in as a group of learners? Is there, indeed, any purpose for
>my (predominantly) White middle-class students and myself who share
>their majority identity to move beyond ourselves toward others who
>are different? Is it possible to do so? And, in support of what
>values and what goals? So much of separatist sentiment seems to me
>to be a counsel of futility on human communication.
>
>We have a nation which is rent by powerful forces -- of oppression,
>of hatred, of socioeconomic advantage triumphant on the backs of the
>poor. Women experience continued sexual and gender harassment and its
>kin by men. Racial and ethnic minorities still live under the blight
>of four centuries of socially-accepted oppression. And, an awful lot
>of comfortable academics protected by tenure fail to address their
>own (our own?) issues of class bigotry. But, what are we to do in
>response? I ask this because, in the Daly instance, we are dealing
>with a university setting--not a nursery for 4-year-olds, or a
>kindergarten for 5-year-olds, or an elementary school for 6- and 7-
>and 8-year olds. And, it seems to me that, unless higher education
>strives towards creating an arena filled with equality and respect
>and a courageous pursuit of truth -- one in which we resist
>separatisms ferociously -- then the future beckons with dire
>prospects. I believe that the university's role may be so central to
>the national commonweal that breaches of equality must be so rare and
>so obviously warranted that dissent on those cases is marginal. If
>people (women, African Americans, etc.) are kept separate as
>children, and then as adolescents, and then again as young adults,
>when will we ever emerge from that separatism?
>
>>just as all women have not benefited from the title ix laws - and i
>>think that Daly recognizes this truth, and so did attempt to provide a
>>safe place for women. and men who understand the value of a safe place
>>for women would not attempt to invade that place, is my guess.
>
>I think you're probably right on every one of those points. Why,
>though, would one expect a law to benefit everyone? And, her attempt
>was, at least on the face of it, illegal as you seem to acknowledge
>in your discussion of Antigone's choice. If so, could her university
>be asked to collaborate in the illegality?
>
>>and i think the story of Mary Daly is too a tragedy - perhaps not on
>>the scale of Antigone - but certainly a tragedy - as mary bryson
>>pointed out, was the intention of the university to support Daly and help
>>her work out this difficulty, or was it to confront her with an either /
>>or choice and the Law? Daly knows, as many of us do, the importance for
>>women to have a safe place away from bad boys - and sometimes that means
>>that even we good boys can't play.
>
>Yet, nothing in the situation denied her the opportunity as a
>feminist and a caring human person to provide a safe place for the
>discussion and review of these matters away from good or bad boys.
>Why didn't she provide a safe place outside the context of a
>coeducational university which turned its back on single-sex
>education more than a quarter century ago? Why not forego a salary
>and the protections of tenure (both fruits of that same structure
>which rejected her pedagogy) and set up an independent discussion
>group at her own home which would provide complete safety from "bad
>boys"?
>
>I find myself thinking about my experience with a boy named Johnny
>P. on the streets of New York when I was 11. He had a great bat and
>a real baseball which the rest of us didn't have (broom sticks and
>Spaldeens seemed the most we could manage). He also had a significant
>temper. Those times we played, it became clear that Johnny P. felt
>himself exempted from the rules of the game because it was his bat
>and his ball we were playing with. For the rest of us, all throughout
>the afternoon we'd argue about the rules and, I guess, learn
>something about accommodation and social agreement in the ways some
>researchers claim that games teach 11 year old boys. But, when it
>came to an interpretation of the rules with Johnny P., he didn't want
>to argue or discuss fine points or to change what he didn't like in
>the rules. When he claimed that a point was non-negotiable, we
>discovered he was absolutely true to his word. We must have played
>for a week with Johnny P's bat and baseball. And, every one of those
>games -- every one of them -- ended prematurely when Johnny P.
>refused to argue about the rules. He would just get angry and pick up
>his bat and grab his baseball and walk off. I recall we all felt bad
>about that and, somehow, even guilty. So, the next day, we'd start up
>the game again and Johnny P. would end it in the same fashion. This
>went on for one summer week. But, after that week, we decided we'd
>forego his offer. And, I don't think we ever played with his bat and
>baseball again.
>
>[Am I Johnny P. for saying Title IX is non-negotiable? Is Mary Daly
>for saying she'd only teach women if the safe place to do so was
>within her university? Or, should I search for another story?]
>
>Vinny Hevern
>Le Moyne College
>Syracuse, NY
>
>
Pedro R. Portes,
Professor of Educational %
Counseling Psychology
310 School of Education
University of Louisville
Fax 502-852-0629
Office 502-852-0630
Web at www.makingkidssmarter.com (under construction)