Re: [xmca] Taking culture into account/Doing harm?

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 28 July 2012 04:00, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Fascinating article on the first city in North America:
>
> <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/cahokia/hodges-text>
>
>
Interesting dialectic of permeating the consciousness of
political/commercial america and the permeating of the site with the
highways.

Huw


> Martin
>
> On Jul 26, 2012, at 10:57 AM, White, Phillip wrote:
>
> > Huw, i do agree with what you write:
> >
> > "My reading of colonization in this context was of an enforced mediation,
> > e.g. railroads, television, computing, money & consumerism, of which the
> > only defence is conscious organization, e.g. intracultural agreement to
> > sustain the means of production in which values are education/practice
> are
> > inherent."
> >
> > and the article that Andy attached - Scribner's take of Vygotsky's uses
> of history, unwittingly supports Richardson's as well as your contentions.
> >
> > Scribner writes on page 122:
> >
> > "One of their (Marx and Engels) kernel ideas was that the human species
> differs from all others because, through its manipulation of nature, it
> frees itself from biological determinism and begins to fashion its own
> nature.  Productive activities (generically 'labor') change in the course
> of history as new resources and new forms of society come into being.  This
> history is material because it establishes the material activities of
> people and their intercourse with one another as the source of ideas and
> mental life (Marx and Engels, 1846)."
> >
> > further on she states:
> >
> > "Changes in social activities that occur in history have directionality:
> hand-powered tools precede machines; number systems come into use before
> algebra.  This movement is expressed in the concept of historical
> development in contrast to the generic concept of historic change, and its
> reflection in human mental life is expressed as mental development."
> >
> > both of these epistemologies Richardson are not epistemologies shared by
> indigenous epistemologies.  these are european based epistemologies.
> >
> > later on in this chapter that Scribner writes, she recounts the
> experiences of the Oksapmin people of Papua New Guinea that used "a
> rudimentary number system" and are now beginning to use pocket calculators.
>  noting the shift in the use of number systems Scribner moves into
> reflection, page 142:
> >
> > "One might ask how adult-child dyadic learning relationships are
> affected when both members of the dyad are novices and are acquiring new
> number facts and computational skills together.  Or we might want to
> inquire into the development of 'binumeracy' (drawing an analogy with
> biliteracy) among adults and children and investigate how uses of one of
> another number system are influenced by the characteristics of the
> particular arithmetic tasks that Oksapmin now encounter in their
> communities.  We might be concerned to document whether social pressures
> are being generated for conversion to a modern number system at a faster
> rate than some adults are prepared to accept  and what consequences such a
> situation might have for their children's learning progress."
> >
> > i suggest that here, Scribner assumes that the conversion to a modern
> number system is a given, whether or not some adults are prepared to accept
> it.
> >
> > and there is clearly no indication that the original, "rudimentary"
> number system of the Oksapmin is connected to any epistemology, though of
> course all number systems have epistemologies.
> >
> > so, yes, Huw, i'd say that "colonization in this context was of an
> enforced mediation", buttressed with the assumption that modern is
> superior, and clearly it can unwittingly play out in the uses of CHAT
> epistemologies.
> >
> > to quote Foucault: "People know what they do; frequently they know why
> they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does."
> >
> > it's a mighty big freight train!
> >
> > p
> >
> >
> > Phillip White, PhD
> > Urban Community Teacher Education Program
> > School of Education & Human Development
> > University of Colorado Denver
> > phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
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