RE: enculturation, ethnemes, pedagogy, research

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 13:39:24 PDT


Excellent point, Jay!
> Reproduction is a powerful social process (really the emergent outcome of
a
> nexus of historically mutually supporting processes). It does not need any
> help from us. The most radical efforts we make to thwart it will be lucky
> to have any significant effect at all. But we can try ...

I wonder what the role of traditional schooling in this emergent and
effortless (?) process of reproduction is? Is this process a by-product of
the schooling, its hidden curricula, or a reaction to other, alternative,
"undesired" reproduction processes?

Let me provide an example of what I mean.

A few days ago I was approached by a middle-school boy in Latin American
Community Center who asked me to help him with his homework. My heart sank
because my previous experience with homework that LACC kids have suggested
that the best help is to do this usually meaningless and harmful homework by
myself and free the kids for more important activities such as building
computers, chatting on Internet, designing websites, playing computer games,
and so on.

I reluctantly agreed to help. As I expected the homework was "one of those"
meaningless questions on a worksheet (or workshit? pardon my Russian
pronunciation :-). A student was supposed to find a newspaper article
involving science (?) and answer on 8 questions like "What continent the
described event took place?" "List two details from the article" and
nonsense like that...

The boy (let's call him Hector) gave me the article he chosen already. The
article was about changing ecology in Antarctica...

I asked Hector how he chose the article. Hector rather eloquently explained
me that he chose it because it was the shortest science article he could
find in the local newspaper. He elaborated that the homework was boring and
he wanted to finish it as fast as possible.

Of course, I praised him for ingenuity and good prioritization. However, I
shared with him that sometimes a short article if it is boring might take
more time. We discussed that if we could find a fun article, it might not so
bad to have a long article and even spend more time if it would be fun to
do. Hector asked me where to find a fun science article.

I asked him what he was interested in. He said "in computers". I asked him
what exactly he was interested in and he said that he was interested in
"downloading music from the Internet." I open New York Times website (Hector
never heard about this newspaper) and we together put in search "pirating
music". One of the first article was about old lady (a retired teacher,
actually) who was sued by record companies for downloading music. The
language of the article was very-very difficult for 7-grade Hector, so I
read it myself and discuss unfamiliar terms and concepts. Soon, other kids
in computer room were sucked into our discussion about technical and legal
and moral issues.

The lady was "caught" by her IP address. Kids did not know what IP address
is so we experimented with computers to find them (using ipconfig command).
She had dynamic IP address but record companies assumed that it was static
IP address. We did experiments to check out if LACC has dynamic or static IP
addresses (there were all dynamic addresses, of course).

We discussed if it is good or bad to download music. The consensus was that
musicians have to be paid like professors and music has to be free. We also
discuss how to make music downloading safe so record companies can't get
you. Finally, the kids were attracted to the fact that the article mentioned
that the teacher was "dyslectic" (I explained them the concept). How can a
TEACHER have reading difficulties?!!!!

At some point of our discussion, Hector went to reply to "these dumb"
homework questions. Yesterday he told me that he got A but his new homework
assignment was also "stupid". The kids asked to create "fun homework club"
but I doubt that we can always hijack schoolish practices....

What do you think?

Eugene
PS I have to run to LACC to our "club" meeting!!! :-)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Lemke [mailto:jaylemke@umich.edu]
> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 11:21 PM
> To: XMCA LISTGROUP
> Subject: enculturation, ethnemes, pedagogy, research
>
>
> I really like the questions Juanita and Mike are raising. There is a link
> of course to Carol Lee's article in MCA as well, and I hope we'll get
> around to discussing more of those issues as well.
>
> On the pedagogy issue, I think there is a persistent tension, and maybe an
> underlying contradiction, between enculturation objectives in the sense of
> what amounts to cultural reproduction (by recruiting new members to the
> culture) vs. empowerment objectives, which seem to me to go beyond
> enculturation/reproduction only to the extent that they provide tools for
> radical critique and change in the culture (and necessarily also then in
> the social-political structures).
>
> Too often we justify reproduction on the grounds that the tools it gives
> are also useful for critique and change, but somehow it does not seem to
> work out that way very often, does it? So I suspect that just giving the
> tools is not enough. We also need to engage students affectively in some
> rage for change (which is dangerous, but how could it not be if the aim is
> radical change?), and we need to model HOW the tools can be used for
> relevant critique ... which we usually do not do. We model standard modes
> of academic critique, which are clever, but not particularly dangerous.
>
> This does have a connection to the issues of cultural
difference/diversity.
> What enculturation/reproduction aims at, the "target culture" (it should
be
> a "target" all right, but in quite a different sense!), is NOT in fact the
> whole of the host society's culture, but only the dominant subculture, so
> that it's effects are normalizing, rather than centrifugal. If we in fact
> provided students with the viewpoints of ALL fractions of society, they
> would most likely have a set of tools that would be as useful for thinking
> and performing radical change as for choosing to be "successful" in the
> dominant subculture's terms.
>
> So what is of value, in relation to agendas for change, is precisely the
> contrasts, conflicts, and contradictions among subcultural views. This of
> course includes views characteristic of different ethnic groups. If we
> educate students only WITHIN any one culture or subculture, the result is
> reproduction. (By the way I don't believe in STATIC reproduction; all
> social reproduction also includes provision for minimal changes that do
not
> alter fundamental social-political structures, ideological assumptions,
> etc.) If we present all the different cultures as one big happy family, we
> are both telling a lie and evading the generative power of conflict and
> contradiction. If we want genuinely critical thinking and impetus to
> radical change, we have to help the students confront the contradictions
> and conflicts in such a way as to both undermine their primary
> enculturations in their own subcultures (by class, gender, etc. as well as
> ethnic traditions) and then help them find ways to use the whole system of
> conflicting subcultures as a resource to imagine and strategize for
change.
>
> I entirely agree that it is reproductionist, and not a little ethnocentric
> (or hegemonic), to compare all other cultures/subcultures to the dominant
> one. It also gets us nowhere in terms of understanding the total system of
> subcultures. On the other hand, merely examining variation and
> characteristics WITHIN single subcultures is not, I think, going to lead
> anywhere except to reproduction. Maybe assisting the reproduction of the
> subaltern cultures is morally superior to assisting that of the dominant
> culture, but the result is still going to be the same system of relations
> among the cultures.
>
> Obviously I don't think a progressive future means all the different
> cultures reproducing themselves and living in harmony. I think that
"ideal"
> is the current misdirection generated out of dominant interests. What is
> needed is something like a grand generalization of the post-colonialist
> insight often associated with Edward Said (may his spirit have some reason
> to rest in peace, eventually!): each of the constituent cultures of the
> global system (as of our national system, to the extent there is still
such
> a thing separately) defines itself through its relations to the others,
> real and imaginary. (Of course there are power differences which mediate
> the asymmetrical relations in this system.) Each is corrupted by its
> "intercourse" (forgive me St. Sigmund!) with the others (and the
> non-dominant ones particularly by the dominant one, but the dominant one
> not just within itself, but also by what it becomes in the process of
> trying to dominate the others).
>
> Reproduction is a powerful social process (really the emergent outcome of
a
> nexus of historically mutually supporting processes). It does not need any
> help from us. The most radical efforts we make to thwart it will be lucky
> to have any significant effect at all. But we can try ...
>
> JAY.
>
>
> Jay Lemke
> Professor
> University of Michigan
> School of Education
> 610 East University
> Ann Arbor, MI 48104
>
> Tel. 734-763-9276
> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
> Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Nov 01 2003 - 01:00:07 PST