Dear xmca people:
I want to respond here to Eric and Mike.
Eric, first of all -- regarding your previous message. I didn't
understand what you meant by:
"You point to problems with minority people but I am unaware of what
this problem provides to specific individual difficulties. The systems
analysis is on target! How is it possible to extrapolate group
parameters onto individual failings if the initial assumptions do not
support such an analysis?"
I wasn't sure what "initial assumptions" you were referring to. If you
were referring to my initial assumptions -- well, one of my initial
assumptions was that there were some problems that could be said to be
the responsibiity of individual students (like not being able to read
well enough to stay in the program) but others that were simply out of
any individual's control -- like not having reliable transporation to
the suburbs, or not being able to go 11 weeks without a paycheck.
Problems that getting a good job would help solve were the same problems
that make it hard to get this particular job.
I am aware that this list has noted the difficulty AT has in "resolving
at the individual level." (I think this was a comment made by Vera
John-Steiner some months ago.) This is not a problem for me; seems to
me there are a lot of theories and practices out there that address
individuals, and not enough that address collective experience in a
qualitative way (yes, I'm in the middle of reading Carl Ratner's new
book -- he's a little sniffy about activity theory, but makes a strong
case for the weakness of quantitative approaches to psycological
phenomena.) I need a theoretical framework that can lay out collective
psychological phenomena -- learning, for example, or activism or fear.
But your comment seems to ovelap with Mike's comment,
"The narrative of your paper lays out the challenge, barriers, and
contradictions
very clearly at a general level and it includes some really compelling
specific quotes.
I came away uncertain about how much AT served as a heuristic lens and
how
much it served as a close-up analytic lens.... But you do not pause long
enough
on any one activity system, the class for example, to provide us with a
full
analysis of it and its history(ies) the need for which you lay out so
eloquently in the prior paper, and its internal contradictions."
... I read this comment as partly about the paper's floating at a
general level (that is, not settling long enough on any one sctivity
system to tell us what is really going on there). I agree. For
submission to Labor Studies Journal it had to be 25-30 pages and to get
people's attention, and to bring in AT like a Trojan Horse, it had to
cover the whole project. But clearly the next thing to do would be to
drop down a level and work on one of the activity systems. The class is
the most vulnerable, being done entirely by volunteers who don't have
any of the other types of pay offs -- union organzers get paid to
organize, churches get people coming into their buidlings, students get
jobs, etc.
Mike, with regard to your final paragraph -- and I hope people have read
this far --
" I have a sort of low down, practical quesetion. For the class "itself"
which
appears the be the primary face to face locus of your daily work, you
indicate
that you are very short of basic necessities. Do you think that
providing
material, perhaps moral, and perhaps distance connections, would be
helpful
to you and your students? If so, might xmca be a place to organize that?
mike"
Material and moral connections would make a huge difference. We have a
board meeting today, down at the Carpenter's Apprenticeship Hall (in
about an hour and a half). We have a possibility of a new class opening
up at St. Elizabeth's on the South Side, near a huge public housing
project (Robert Taylor Homes, of wide fame -- that's where the boy who
got shot in Cincinatti last summer and started that mayhem came from --
his family went to Cincinatti to BE SAFER!!!). Robert Tayor Homes is
being torn down -- if we had a class near there, we could produce
graduates who would get into apprenticeship programs who could then get
jobs rebuidling the housing, a multi-million dollar project. But the
priest at St. Elizabeth's says that the teachers have to get a stipend
-- not a silly demand. Also, the teacher at Cabrini-Green, a good guy
and friend, has just burned out so we don't have a teacher up there.
Down at St. Kevins' on the far South Side (in a neighborhood surrounded
by steel mills, some defunct, called "Slag Valley" or, to use a name
famous from the old segregation days, South Deering) the teacher has
quit -- but it looks like we do have another one lined up.
What do we need? Money would be great -- anything that recognizes the
honorable work these teachers are doing. They're the only group in the
system that isn't getting something personally out of this (I'm getting
ALL KINDS of goodies, for example -- for me, getting published in a
journal means that I have a better chance of getting tenure. Plus, I can
do all this on the clock -- AND when I get a publication, my value goes
up in my department and I get funding for a research assistant!!!! Ye
gods -- unto those who have it shall be given, for sure!) We just got
turned dwn from the Frye foundation because we don't produce enough
successful placements (the project officer said that she tried to
explain, but was unsuccessful). So suggestions for places to get $ to
pay the teachers would be really great. Or suggestions about people who
would be willing to do it as part of their other work (like me). Also,
we need things like paper, pencils, scratch paper, blackboards -- and
WOW, textbooks!! Can you imagine how much it would help if each student
actually had a book to take home at night? There is a good one, put out
by CISCO, but it costs $30 each.
Distance connections are tougher. We convened an organizing committee on
Tuesday (May 21) and at the end I tried to collect emails -- even the
organizers -- who are supposed to be the ultimate communcations folks --
said thingns that revealed that they do not actually KNOW their own
emails. "My wife handles the computer," said one Carpenter organizer, a
man whom you'd say was phenomenally competent in all other wordly ways.
Well, this is longer than I intended. I'll stopp and see what happens
next.
Thanks for the attention.
I sat in on one class by Steven Jay Gould once when I was visitng
someone in Cambridge, and was dazzled. I was shocked to hear of his
death, although I knew he was sick. His work has been of enormous moral
and well as scientific use to people who work in the field of community
medicine, for example.
Helena
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