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Re: [xmca] Rudolph Steiner



Thanks a lot.
Tentatively, from what folks have contributed to this important thread, it
seems that forms of formal education are not related forms of state
political organization.

Is this a correct conclusion? I am finding it hard to get this issue out of
my head
as I wander between obligatory day to day requirements.

So far as I can tell, Jay/Andy et al., a state sponsored formal school
system cannot prepare new generations to be critical thinkers, unless we
narrow the definition of critical drastically. I hope I am wrong and would
really like paths
to look for evidence of conditions under which such a form of formal
education
has been, or is currently, in existence.

Very roughly, it seems to me that up to the point where state-sponsored
education has trained enough people to replicate its modes  of power,
transmission education wins. ONLY if/when one has a system of higher
education as a form of "institutionalized critical intelligence" is there
hope for the kind of education Jay is pointing to. And even that has to be
fought for, day in day out. And when times are tough, like they are in
California today, the outcome is anything but certain.

So, on our reading stacks we have people like Bakhtin, who lived in a  state
where critical thinking out in public was suicidal, and who (like many
feminist theorists, post-colonial theorists, among others) tried to theorize
the resources of the weak for the externalization of critical thought that
could both get under the radar and have a memory.

Off to order up the books that Tony has suggested.
mike



On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, mike cole wrote:
>
>  Any brief access point, tony?
>>
>
> For education, there's:
> Entwistle, Harold. Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Radical
> Politics. London: Routledge, 1979.
>
> This includes Croce and Gentile as well as Gramsci.
> Entwistle makes an argument that has been taken up by E.D. Hirsch to
> support his "Cultural Literacy" (a/k/a "Core Knowledge) program:
> He argues that progressive education was advocated by Gentile (Mussolini's
> Education minister), while Gramsci -- to the contrary -- advocated
> non-progressive education for the sake of progressive political purposes
> (Hirsch likes posing as the Gramsci of our day).
>
> For more general social theory, there's:
> Bellamy, Richard. Modern Italian Social Theory: Ideology and Politics from
> Pareto to the Present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.
>
> This book includes three chapters focusing on each of Croce, Gentile, and
> Gramsci. All three were influenced in different ways by Hegel and by Marx.
>
>  On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, mike cole wrote:
>>> ***
>>>
>>>  So laid back, artsy, democratic education can be the developmental
>>>
>>>> precursor
>>>> of vicious rascist fascism. Now there is a thought to contemplate.
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>>  The trajectory from Croce to Gentile (Mussolinit's Minister of
>>>> Education)
>>>>
>>> may be worth considering in this regard.
>>>
>>>
>>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK  DE  19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
>  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>
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