Nate wrote:
>I mean if the task is simply to make the boys and girls less resistible
that does NOT seem to take us far. It seems what would be needed is not the
lack of resistance but its expansion into something different that does not
promote failure for the individual but also changes the system somewhat.
This of course is easy to say but not easy to make happen, given the
intricacies of a real activity system, as Phillip acknowledges when he
advises resisting individuals to go someplace else.
Nate, yr examples (below) are impressive. How are B & G the newest
capitalists? I understand how Willis can be accused of supporting
capitalism by valuing the lads' agency as resistors -- agency complicit
with the system. You say they
have no choice, anyway. Why do you suggest that B & G's focus on the
system itself supports the system....? (forgive me if i've mushed your
point here)
>As far as the ruling class is concerned I am not at all convinced by the
assertion they do not control schools. Some local examples
>
>1) An lower working class school had to wait two extra years to get school
windows replaced, so middle / upper middleclass schools could get the
newest computers in their classrooms.
>
>2) A lower working class African American community advocated a new
elementary school in their community. Although 2/3 of the students came
from this community the school was instead put in an upper middle class
community in which 2/3 of the students would be bussed everyday. One would
wonder how one could have community / parental involvement when children
are bussed 2 plus miles a day.
>
>3) An middle/upper class (where the professors kids go) school concerned
with test scores fights to lessen desegregation policies, so current
working class and minority students can be bussed to other schools. This
school later became nationally recognized as a community of learners school".
>
>4) As part of a prevention / intervention strategy most schools with a
substantial working class population had 4 year old kindergartens. A parent
from an upper middleclass school threatened to sue the district so next
year 4 year old kindergarten will exist no more.
>
>I guess I would be interested in others reading of B&G (our newest
capitalists) and how it relates to class interests.
>
>Nate
>
>At 09:03 PM 6/18/01, you wrote:
>
>Somehow, Martin, it would seem as if Willis' work does not counter the claims
>by B&G. The bottom line -- that the working class 'lads' fail -- seems
>consistent with what B&G claim are the experiences of success and failure
that
>become the internalized seives through which classes separate from each
other.
>That the boys actively participate -- themselves making the decision to
fail --
>is perhaps one the details of the processes through which people enact and
>constitute society.
>
>It's also not to say that these patterns are deterministic -- they are not
>without exception. The exceptions are throughout us.
>
>Perhaps B&G take us part way to a better understanding -- it's not as
though a
>"ruling class" controls curriculum and runs schools -- I did not read that
into
>SCA at all -- but that everyone makes it happen, and in the processes of
>separation, what happens benefits some much more than others. This gives the
>former additional resources which, in turn, feed back to support and sustain
>the processes of inequality.
>
>
>
>I have noted a curious twist with the Raymond study, however. I think it has
>to do with a small town and a real practice and ideology of being a
community,
>plus government funding.
>
>
>=====
>"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
>[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
>
>__________________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
>Nate Schmolze
>http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
>schmolze1@home.com
>
>
>*****************************************************************************
>Albert Camus (1957):
>An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the
privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death
a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization
which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death.
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no
criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an
equivalency, the death penalty would have
>to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he
would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had
confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in
private life.
>*****************************************************************************
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 01 2001 - 01:01:34 PDT