xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
Phillip Capper scrobe:
>The point is, Eric, that 'current fashions' in assessment
>practices are not idiosyncratic, but are a response grounded in whatever
>set
>of values and assumptions is currently in the ascendancy in the eternal
>debate about the roles and responsibilities of the state in respect of
>those
>whose mental condition or circumstances renders them temporarily or
>permanently incapable in meeting the demands of community membership.
>
>The whole environment in which an individual functions (or fails to) is
>something that can only be assessed by the careful professional judgements
>of field professionals given the resources to make such assessments. In
>America your incredibly dangerous litigation environment makes it
>difficult
>for health professionals to be willing to expose themselves in that way.
>Here we don't have that excuse, but we are doing exactly the same things
>in
>the name of 'accountability'.
what you write, Phillip C., resonates deeply with my own experience as a
classroom teacher, where there are multiple demands that all students
perform at specific standardized test levels, _or_ explain the student's
failure to do so using multiple special education assessments in which the
problem is situated inside the child. eric sounds kind of scary to me,
the sort of mental health worker who works from theory and mind, rather
than from wisdom and heart. and, of course, wisdom and heart cannot be
measured. yet they seem to me to be the site not only of healing but of
learning as well.
i am set to think about the new zealand flick, "broken english" i just
saw a year ago, or so. the excruciating cultural conflict between a
maori, part of the first people, and recent croatian immigrants. the
tyrannical croatian father was all about accountability and blame, which,
for him, moved into violence to support his views. no heart, no wisdom.
no acceptance that much in the world simply is unfair, that eye-for-eying
simply perpetuates violence, it does nothing to create justice. there is
very little justice in the world, i think. changes occurred only when the
daughter and mother were willing to act out of heart and wisdom, where the
accountability was to self, to heart, not to a system.
as a classroom teacher i always ended up failing to be with the child's
needs as well as my own needs whenever i attempted to resolve differences
- academic, intellectually, culturally, emotionally (to name but a few
sites of classroom conflict) - according to systemic structures.
phillip
>
>
* * * * * * * *
* *
The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
"identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
"idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
it means.
from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
Mendelsohn.
phillip white
doctoral student http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~hacms_lab/index.html
scrambling a dissertation
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:20 PDT