nate:
>I think very few educators see or take this resistance as a type of
critique of current practice.
No quarrel there!
>I have mixed feelings about this Judy. In many ways I fitted one of
Willis' children very well, so give it some value.
I was one, but not in class terms. My resistance was to forgetting my
mother, who was dead; refusing to act as if she & the world of my childhood
were dead. The family narrative is long & complex & sad & all that, but the
point is that my identity issues were not class issues EXCEPT IN THAT my
step mother was markedly more materialistic than my maternal relatives
would ever want to be. So there was a social values conflict embedded in my
rejection of a reconstituted family. The materialism reflected my step
mother's interests, and it came to mean the denial of my mother's values.
My choices, wh. seemed clear then, raise all sorts of questions about what
counts as legitimate resistance, not to mention what counts as choice
nate
>Where I disagree I guess is that the resistance itself is the cause of
failure. The system (drill and kill) no matter what its intentions breeds
failure, kills the spirit. Resistance, unproductive as it may be, has an
element of pleasure - giving it to the man so to speak.
hear hear!
>I guess mainly what I am speaking at is the dialectic of not only
transforming, but having the willingness to be transformed. Thinking
seriously of how schools are organized to force kids to make a false
choice. Something as simple as I'm not going to sit in a classroom that is
full of jocks and preps.
>I just think that there are issues of identity at stake that can be very
strong, and the normal educational response is home, friends, class etc is
denying individual A the opportunity of educational success, rather than
being confronted with how schools themselves facilitate these resistances.
Having the willingness to be transformed pertains to the more powerfully
positioned. Identity issues certainly ARE at stake, especially for the less
powerful. How do we reckon with positioning? How do we calculate relative
position in any instance of politics -- i.e., what counts as capital in an
immediate activity system vis a vis dominant culture? how do
race/class/institutional status/cultural privilege/ intersect in such a
calculation? Is all resistance 'legitimate' if it's pitted against the more
powerfully positioned? On what criteria do we decide?
nate:
>The price to not resist is sometimes greater - one loses their soul, or as
the son in the movie, The River Niger, that I watched recently yelled to
his officers "LET GO OF MY TOE".
Amen to that. But the soul is at risk anyway....
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