[Xmca-l] Re: good article attached

[Robert Lake]

Hi Julian,
I absolutely agree with you. After all it is *critical* pedagogy we are
talking about which requires personal understanding and the
personal is always political.
RL

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Julian Williams <
julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> I agree with most of this, and it seems a pretty fair account of  V.s
> view, with which I'm of course sympathetic.
>
> Yet it does seem to treat knowledge as neutral, as something to be
> acquired but in merely in need of an efficient obuchenie, whereas I think a
> critical approach requires something else, pace Bourdieu and Marx, a view
> of schooling as reproduction of class society, and as such as being in need
> of a more radical critical analysis.
>
> In such an account, a teacher may be not just more or less effective in
> development of learning, but aligns with different class interests in what
> they do, and helps in the conscientisation of learners ... Or maybe
> obscures such 'consciousness raising'.
>
> Freire thought that literacy was not just learning to read and write, but
> learning to interpret and resist authority, and what Bourdieu called the
> cultural arbitrary.
>
> I may be off on my own thing here... If so, sorry to be distracting.
>
> Julian
>
> On 9 Feb 2015, at 18:55, "Robert Lake" <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > It is interesting to note that the Cherokee viewed white people as half
> > baked in the great spirit's creation oven :-).
> >
> > And...while we are on the topic, it is important to distinguish between
> > "student centered" and "learner centered" activity in a ZPD.
> >
> >
> > Vygotsky is very clear on the role of the mentor/teacher’s role to lead
> in
> > development even though the goal is the co-construction of knowledge. In
> > this context it becomes necessary to distinguish between a “student
> > centered” approaches with a “learner centered” one.  In both approaches,
> > what the student is able to internalize is more important than a “top
> down”
> > method which is characterized by a teacher centered delivery of
> > instruction. But in a learner centered environment, the teacher or mentor
> > is able to maintain certain parameters within the target subject matter
> in
> > an environment of interaction and dialogue that enhances student voice
> and
> > personal agency.
> >
> > *Zone of Proximal Development-*The developmental space between a
> learner’s
> > actual and potential levels of, thinking, problem solving, acting and
> being.
> >
> > There are many similarities between Vygotsky’s view of learner
> > centeredness and problem solving/problem posing education and that of the
> > Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire (1921-1997) and although they obviously
> > never knew each other they were both influenced similarly by Hegel and
> > Marx. Joe Kincheloe had this to say about Freire’s approach to teaching.
> > The parallels to Vygotsky’s views are striking.
> >
> > By promoting problem posing and student research, teachers do not simply
> > relinquish their authority in the classroom. Over the last couple of
> > decades several teachers and students have misunderstood the subtlety of
> > the nature of teacher authority in a critical pedagogy. Freire in the
> last
> > years of his life was very concerned with this issue and its
> > misinterpretation by those operating in his name. Teachers, he told me,
> > cannot deny their position of authority in such a classroom. It is the
> > teacher, not the students, who evaluates student work, who is responsible
> > for the health, safety, and learning of students. To deny the role of
> > authority the teacher occupies is insincere at best, dishonest at worst.
> > Critical teachers, therefore, must admit that they are in a position of
> > authority and then demonstrate that authority [sic] in their actions in
> > support of students. One of the actions involves the ability to conduct
> > research/produce knowledge. The authority of the critical teacher is
> > *dialectical*; as teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers,
> > they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and
> > problem posing. In relation to such teacher authority, students gain
> their
> > freedom--they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings
> capable
> > of producing their own knowledge. (Kincheloe, 2008, p.17)
> >
> > This notion of the role of the teacher in the ZPD brings us to Vygotsky’s
> > use of the Russian word for education, *obuchenie *which is translated as
> > teaching but “is interchangeable for the activity of the teachers and
> > students. (Wink & Putney, 2003, p.xxiii). This means that Vygotsky viewed
> > teaching as learning and therefore confirms what we said about the role
> of
> > teachers in the progressive classroom. In the mind of Vygotsky, the zone
> of
> > proximal development is environment out of which the teacher and the
> > student co-construct and create knowledge together rather than just
> moving
> > in the “top down” approach that Freire calls the “banking model” of
> > education wherein the teacher makes “deposits” of knowledge into the
> empty
> > “account” of the student and draws the information back out on test days
> in
> > the exact form and manner in which it was deposited.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Rod Parker-Rees <
> > R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> I share your reservations, Michael.
> >>
> >> I'm sure it is possible to trace elements of racist recapitulationist
> >> thinking in the work of nineteenth and early twentieth century
> >> educationalists but I don't think it is accurate to suggest that
> >> recapitulationism was in any way at the heart of the romantic view of
> >> childhood which fuelled arguments for child-centred pedagogy. As the
> >> article points out, Rousseau put the 'noble savage' above the
> >> hyper-civilised white European male of the eighteenth century with his
> >> powdered wig, elaborate finery and obsessive concern for social
> niceties.
> >> The cultural shift from thinking of childhood as a 'savage' stage out of
> >> which children should be educated as quickly as possible to an exalted,
> >> prelapsarian state of innocence coincided with a growth of political
> >> radicalism which challenged the right of those with power to rule over
> the
> >> lives of others. The celebration of the 'inner child' by romantic poets
> at
> >> the start of the nineteenth century specifically challenged the idea
> that
> >> adulthood should supplant and displace childhood (as recapitulationism
> >> would suggest).
> >>
> >> It may be true that 'progressive' education does not miraculously repair
> >> the manifold injustice of social structures but to take this as an
> >> indication that the fault lies with progressive education seems
> wrongheaded
> >> to me.
> >>
> >> Rod
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> >> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael
> >> Sent: 09 February 2015 17:19
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: good article attached
> >>
> >> I don't know Peter.  This article strikes me as being very political.
> It
> >> fits very much into the narrative that more progressive education
> >> initiatives work against the interests of (economically, politically,
> and
> >> educationally) marginalized groups.  That's why we need KIPP type
> schools.
> >> I have just never brought into this.  I think the article is really not
> >> that fair to Dewey.  Dewey had his warts, including when it came to
> issues
> >> such as multiculturalism and he was called out on it.  But I think it's
> >> pretty clear that he did not like Hall at all or his recapitulationist
> >> ideas - this may be too simplistic but I sort of remember Hall and Dewey
> >> struggling for the soul of Franz Boas in this arena.  Dewey's desire to
> >> merge psychological factors - which were more behavior related (see
> reflect
> >> arc article) and the social I think was the opposite of embracing
> >> recapitualationism.  And the author relies mostly on recollections from
> the
> >> school and the teachers and not Dewey.
> >>
> >> Just my take.
> >>
> >> Michael
> >> ________________________________________
> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu]
> >> on behalf of Peter Smagorinsky [smago@uga.edu]
> >> Sent: Monday, February 09, 2015 11:54 AM
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,     Activity (xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu)
> >> Cc: cori jakubiak
> >> Subject: [Xmca-l]  good article attached
> >>
> >> The Savage Origins of Child-Centered Pedagogy, 1871-1913 Thomas Fallace
> >> William Paterson University of New Jersey
> >>
> >> Abstract: Child-centered pedagogy is at the ideological core of
> >> progressive education. The simple idea that the child rather than the
> >> teacher or textbook should be the major focus of the classroom is,
> perhaps,
> >> the single most enduring educational idea of the era. In this historical
> >> study, the author argues that childcentered education emerged directly
> from
> >> the theory of recapitulation, the idea that the development of the White
> >> child retraced the history of the human race. The theory of
> recapitulation
> >> was pervasive in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology
> at
> >> the turn of the 20th century, and so early progressive educators
> >> uncritically adopted the basic tenets of the theory, which served as a
> >> major rationale for child-centered instruction. The theory was
> inherently
> >> ethnocentric and racist because it pointed to the West as the
> developmental
> >> endpoint of history, thereby depicting people of color as ontologically
> >> less developed than their White counterparts.
> >>
> >> ________________________________
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> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > *Robert Lake  Ed.D.*Associate Professor
> > Social Foundations of Education
> > Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> > Georgia Southern University
> > Secretary/Treasurer-AERA- Paulo Freire Special Interest Group
> > P. O. Box 8144
> > Phone: (912) 478-0355
> > Fax: (912) 478-5382
> > Statesboro, GA  30460
>
>


-- 

*Robert Lake  Ed.D.*Associate Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
Secretary/Treasurer-AERA- Paulo Freire Special Interest Group
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-0355
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460