[Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

[John Cripps Clark]

Alfredo

Your email reminds me of another issue. When I was doing my doctorate, I came across the writing of the remarkable South African mathematics educator, Renuka Vithal. She pointed out the assumption of continuity is an assumption of wealth (or the North as she phrases it – it always seems jarring in Australia). Disruption is in fact the norm and this is not a recent phenomenon. The need for “care, money, coping support” was always there but hidden. In disruption we can see through the cracks what is below the surface. This is also what good theory does so we should be doubly powerful.

John


Vithal, R. (1998). Disruptions and data: The politics of doing mathematics research in South Africa. Paper presented at the Sixth annual meeting of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, University of South Africa.

Valero, P., & Vithal, R. (1998). Research methods of "north" revisited from the "south". Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Twenty-second Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Stellenbosch, South Africa.


From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>
Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 8 April 2020 at 9:28 am
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

John,

The list you just started about how we, as a relatively privileged community of scholars, can contribute seems to me like one right thing to do, here and elsewhere. Let me copy it here just to amplify and for anyone to expand on it:


  1.  Supporting our colleagues – we have unprecedently powerful communication technologies at our disposal – use them for good rather than evil. This is especially important in Africa and South America where the tidal wave (and I use this term advisedly recalling the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami<https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/24607>) is about to hit.
  2.  Considering the influence of culture (it is in our title) on the worldwide response to Covid-19. David has already flagged the work unit as a unit of social organisation in China.
  3.  We need to prepare for the post-Covid-19 bounceback once we have a vaccine. The existential crisis (and again I use the word with trepidation after the disastrous record of a former Prime Minister’s use of the adjective<https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/24607>) we have is climate change and we can use the present crisis to delay or accelerate action. I have heard a frequent cry of “It will be different from now on” and history tells us that this is will not be true unless we make it so. There are powerful conservative forces (in Australia, U.S.A., Brazil etc.) who will try and use this crisis to increase the mining and use of hydrocarbons. As Martin said we are living in the Anthropocene and our success in rapidly reducing the production and sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide that will determine our future far more than our confused response to Covid-19 (and future communicable diseases).
  4.  ....

Just today, we were (and still are) drafting an editorial calling authors/scholars for submissions as to what they think we can contribute; at the immediate timescale of the pandemic crisis, but also at the larger timescale of the decades of climate crisis that we have ahead. I’ll share the text as soon as ready.

One thing we’ve been discussing is how in exceptional situations (which begin to be the norm) our roles and functions change (of course!). So that, for example (as our colleague Beth Ferholt was reflecting upon in a conversation), a teacher at a school at an underresourced community, when the school is closed and the community is suffering, reconfigures her role to cater for what she can (even if not being good at or trained for it) with regards to what is needed (whether this is care, money, coping support…). If we think ahead of the present and future crises, how can we rethink our role as academics, as educators, or the place and function of a journal like MCA? I think a list of things we can do is a very concrete way to at least partly address these questions. Thanks!

Alfredo
From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of John Cripps Clark <john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au>
Reply to: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 8 April 2020 at 00:43
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

Dear Helena and David

Here in Australia we have (after a shaky start with returning travellers not taking self-isolation seriously<https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/throw-the-book-at-them-health-minister-addresses-aspen-controversy-20200331-p54frd.html> and not quarantining cruise ship passengers) we seem to be following South Korea in containing the virus. The outcry over cruise ships has been revealing. There is a police investigation<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-05/ruby-princess-cruise-coronavirus-deaths-investigated-nsw-police/12123212> into one of them (it did lead to over 600 new cases and a few deaths). The hysteria recalls Australia’s experience in the nineteenth century of epidemics<https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/epidemics> and isolating ourselves from plague ships<https://shop.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/products/hellshipthetruestoryoftheplagueshipticonderoga>.

As always it is the poor and disadvantaged that are suffering. We have tried to isolate the most vulnerable such as remote aboriginal  communities<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/coronavirus-concerns-as-remote-indigenous-testing-for-covid19/12115974> and it remains to see whether we will provide the resources necessary for these communities. Past experience is not encouraging since these communities would not be in the present state if we were serious about combatting disadvantage and poverty<https://theconversation.com/fly-in-fly-out-heath-care-fails-remote-aboriginal-communities-7948>.

On a more parochial level, with extended shutdown and the universities under financial stress (partly this is our own fault by becoming dependent on overseas student fees<https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/the-unis-with-30-per-cent-plus-international-students/> to supplement the steady erosion of government funding) we also need to support families with children who are cooped up together trying to juggle work, with childcare, with online education over the next two to ten months.

I think there are three ways in which we as, a relatively privileged, community of scholars can contribute:


  1.  Supporting our colleagues – we have unprecedently powerful communication technologies at our disposal – use them for good rather than evil. This is especially important in Africa and South America where the tidal wave (and I use this term advisedly recalling the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami<https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/24607>) is about to hit.
  2.  Considering the influence of culture (it is in our title) on the worldwide response to Covid-19. David has already flagged the work unit as a unit of social organisation in China.
  3.  We need to prepare for the post-Covid-19 bounceback once we have a vaccine. The existential crisis (and again I use the word with trepidation after the disastrous record of a former Prime Minister’s use of the adjective<https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/24607>) we have is climate change and we can use the present crisis to delay or accelerate action. I have heard a frequent cry of “It will be different from now on” and history tells us that this is will not be true unless we make it so. There are powerful conservative forces (in Australia, U.S.A., Brazil etc.) who will try and use this crisis to increase the mining and use of hydrocarbons. As Martin said we are living in the Anthropocene and our success in rapidly reducing the production and sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide that will determine our future far more than our confused response to Covid-19 (and future communicable diseases).
John

From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 8 April 2020 at 7:09 am
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

Helena--

Situation in China, courtesy my sister-in-law: life in Beijing is pretty much back to normal at least on the face of it. People are going out to their work units (but there is more work from home than before the crisis). Classes still largely taught from ZOOM. My nephew is in Shanghai, where the situation is somewhat tighter (proximity to Wuhan). Wuhan opened up for real yesterday--people can leave (I lived there for two years in the mid-eighties, but I can barely recognize what I see on the news now....) I have students in Chengdu (who attend my class via ZOOM). People are mostly shopping on line with delivery to the gate of the housing unit rather than to their flat (as we do here in Korea). Air quality better than it's been in decades.

Situation here in South Korea: We just extended our lockdown for another two weeks. This is in response to a few days of new infections over a hundred, but the infections are mostly (80%) Koreans from the US and Europe who want to live in a place where the medical system has not broken down or is not in the process of breaking down. There are still some "hotspots" of community transmission, but these are almost all connected with churches or PC cafes. Schools reopen on the 16th, but only online. We have elections in a week, and there is a lot of campaigning going on, including the usual street based campaigning (the right wing opposition campaigns around the curious notion that the government has done absolutely nothing, and the government ignores everybody who is not an actual virus). People shop in stores, and there is no panic buying or disruption of supply chains. The main changes in economic life seem to have to do with transport, and it seems like this too will be permanent (electric scooters are everywhere now). Bowing instead of shaking hands is really not a bad idea, and coffee-shops always were over-rated and over-priced....

But what about you, Helena? (One of the things I have learned on this list is that you get more or less what you give--people tend to use what you write as a model for writing back!) Are you still in Vietnam? Your address says Berkeley and your email says Illinois--those are three very different venues for the virus and the economy. Can you give us a brief account of the situation in each?

Stay safe, wherever you are!

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of Critical Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and  educational action research
in Mind Culture and Activity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270



On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 4:30 AM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net<mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
Hi Helena,

I share your concerns. And, despite its challenges, this situation seems a great opportunity to apply our distributed expertise(s). I tried to get some discussion going in a group concerned with the Anthropocene, but people seemed disinclined.

Martin

Here’s the first message that I sent…

The current situation is producing important evidence about the probable consequences of the strategies proposed to mitigate climate change. Satellites are showing significant reductions in pollution:
https://www.space.com/italy-coronavirus-outbreak-response-reduces-emissions-satellite-images.html
Experts are suggesting that as a result the coronavirus may save more lives than it takes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2020/03/11/coronavirus-lockdown-may-save-more-lives-from-pollution-and-climate-than-from-virus/#4a39bb3c5764
So when skeptics ask “How can you know that reducing air travel will help with climate change?” there is now clear evidence with which to answer them.

Also in China:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/811019032/why-chinas-air-has-been-cleaner-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak

At the same time, I am starting to wonder whether the current health guidelines regarding coronvirus are culturally biased. Can they work in ‘collectivist’ cultures (to use the shorthand)? The CDC guidelines, for example, include the recommendations to “Stay home when you are sick,” but also that other members of the household should “Avoid close contact with people who are sick” and should “Choose a room in your home that can be used to separate sick household members from those who are healthy. Identify a separate bathroom for the sick person to use, if possible.”
This advice is simply not practicable for many households in Colombia. There are not enough rooms; there is no second bathroom. In addition, many infants and young children here are cared for by grandparents, or even great-grandparents (many women here have a baby when young, so an infant may have a grandmother who is in her late 30s and a great-grandmother in her late 50s). The evidence shows that children don’t become very ill, but they do get infected and they can infect other people, among whom elderly caregivers will be the most at risk.
So I don’t think social distance and auto-quarantine will work in Colombia. Consider what the Chinese did: they went door-to-door to identify infected family members and removed them to massive collective quarantine setttings. People in the West considered this to be draconian, even cruel. But it made sense: much more cross-infection occurred in Chinese homes than in places like restaurants.
Unless the authorities can come up with strategies that are more appropriate to local circumstances and practices, there is likely to be a rapid and elevated peak of infections in Latin American countries.

And I see there is a related point here, on ageism:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200313155256.htm









On Apr 7, 2020, at 1:56 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com<mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hello, XMCA-ers -

I don’t remember ever having read that this list was going to shut down or even be allowed to fade away. So now I’m writing, as if in the dark, to the whole list.  We’ve now got a major — maybe “the” major crisis of the anthropocene on our hands and the distant but connected network represented by the conversations on this list seem to me to be a treasure more precious than gold - and I’m not speaking metaphorically.

I am concerned about some of the people who have been pillars and resources on his list, people whom I have reached out to over the years and heard back from with information and perspectives that I would never have been able to access on my own. Where are you now? What are you doing? Are you safe and healthy? Do you have information about friends who are unable to read or respond to this request?

I hope to hear some responses to this message.

Take care of yourselves, please —

Helena


Helena Worthen
hworthen@illinois.edu<mailto:hworthen@illinois.edu>
21 San Mateo Road, Berkeley, CA 94707





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