[Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"

Wed May 27 14:11:55 PDT 2020

Spinoza says that passions (in the sense of something you undergo, c.f.
"the passion of the Christ") are feelings that increase or decrease the
capacity of the body for action or the idea of the feeling (!). And, alas,
I just gave you a pretty good example
As Mike points out, there are ways of dealing with the unfair attacks on
Bernstein's legacy that increase the capacity for action many times. These
tend to be based on the idea of the feeling, and you can find a lot of them
in the LCHC autobiography and elsewhere. I think you cannot find them in
the attached article, because I am still undergoing some passion over this:
for me it is hopelessly inter-twined-and-woven with attacks on Ruqaiya
Hasan's legacy and the legacy of Halliday with which I am intellectually
and even emotionally inter-twined and -woven. Sometimes (e.g. my last post)
it much diminises the capacity of my body, of which my feelings are not
always the best functioning part, for action. For which I apologize to the
whole list.

Here in Korea, schools are reopening and classes are going off line again.
This has been a gradual process, both because different grades have
different levels of urgency (high schoolers who are entering college are
considered urgent) and because different ages have different levels of risk
(again, older kids given to clubbing and courier jobs--the sources of two
recent spikes--are at greater risk). But yesterday we started second grade
classes, which means that our Vygotsky Community, which is overwhelmingly
composed of elementary school teachers, is now back in the classroom.

You can see from this order that one thing that was not discussed was the
different levels of teacher presence that kids emotionally need. This is
something teachers themselves are quite sensitive too--it is why
second-grade teachers are usually motherly women with school age children
of their own, and sixth-grade teachers tend to look like that physical
education trainer you were so terrified of in sixth grade. But varying
levels of need for teacher presence has not really been a factor in public
health planning at all, nor am I sure it should be. At some point
(adolescence?), children really do need to differentiate their emotional
attachment to a subject matter from their emotional attachment to a
teacher, not just because study has to become self-sustaining to go
anywhere but because teachers are passionate bodies and this can greatly
increase but also greatly decrease their capacity for action. In China in
the eighties, for example, young professors did date their students at
university level but nobody dated anybody before that. I think that
here--helping us distinguish passion for the subject matter from passion
for the instructor--Zoom can also play an important role, the same kind of
positive role that those goofy parasol-hats they put on Chinese
preschoolers to enforce social distancing have played.

(By the way, our Vygotsky Community has more than doubled in size since the
crisis began and we went on-line. Believe me--it's the subject matter!)

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WBIKx_PGWy9c_5V3mDvDNJVVxbZ8MEjkHhRS-OIGQmR1hzERRuRQ9FPV6IgP2zuUMhn5OA$ 
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WBIKx_PGWy9c_5V3mDvDNJVVxbZ8MEjkHhRS-OIGQmR1hzERRuRQ9FPV6IgP2zuw1k_7AA$ 

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 1:36 AM Tom Richardson <
tom.richardson3@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hi David
> Fortunately I was listening to this thread, so "I hear you!". I shall dig
> to see what I find about Spinoza in LSV.
> Big thank you.
> Tom
>         BoWen
>
>
> On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 22:43, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rob--
>>
>> Thanks--my link works okay, but it's probably because I'm already logged
>> in. So I replaced the link with yours.
>>
>> For a fine example of witless misunderstanding justified with willfull
>> misrepresentation that was used to drive  Bernstein's work out of the
>> academy, see the work of Peter Jones, referenced in my article.
>>
>> Peter E. Jones (2013) Bernstein's ‘codes’ and the linguistics of
>> ‘deficit’, Language and Education, 27:2, 161-179, DOI:
>> 10.1080/09500782.2012.760587
>>
>> Notice the scare quotes around "code" (which Bernstein did
>> use) and likewise the term "deficit" (which Bernstein explicitly
>> repudiated). Clever, huh?
>>
>> But Jones doesn't make this stuff up. He mostly just borrows from the
>> long liberal anti-Marxist American tradition of this kind of attack, going
>> back to William Labov. For example, the "linguist" Jones cites against
>> Halliday is actually a historian of psychology (Jonathan Edwards) who
>> argues that some cultures can have completely degenerate moral codes but
>> very advanced languages, such as cannibal savages!
>>
>> A few years ago we were discussing an article here on xmca by Marilyn
>> Fleer and I asked her if she was a Bernsteinian. I have always considered
>> myself one, and I was genuinely curious to find others of a similar
>> persuasion; Bernstein's name was not so blackened in Australia as it was in
>> America, and Ruqaiya Hasan, who taught in Sydney, was always proud to
>> acknowledge Bernstein as her colleague and mentor. Marilyn was a little
>> indignant.
>>
>> Michael--
>>
>> Here in Korea the main way of giving on-line classes is just uploading
>> audio file which the student then listen to when they have time and giving
>> lots of homework. Curiously, some of the kids prefer this. ALL of my
>> students dislike using the camera. I am not sure what to make of this...
>>
>> Every crisis is a turning point. Education has gleefully saddled three
>> cash cows: foreign students, college sports, and diploma mills, and all
>> three of these are now hamburger. On the one hand, Zoom classes and audio
>> classes allow us to provide universal college education for almost
>> nothing--if we can solve the mediational problems. On the other, pinkspace
>> classes can easily be social-distanced--if we can just make undergraduate
>> classes the size of graduate seminars (with more classes outside in good
>> weather). But both solutions--universal online tertiary education and
>> extending the graduate seminar experience to undergraduates--will
>> inevitably hinge on the outcome of the struggle to make education an
>> intellectual public institution instead of a semi-intellectual luxury
>> brand,  and this in turn will hinge on the struggle for preventive medicine
>> based on foresight instead of astonishment.
>>
>> Oi, Tom! (Way over on the other thread, so I have to shout!)
>>
>> Vygotsky writes a LOT about Spinoza; his sister was doing her PhD on the
>> guy when he was still in high school and he went to stay with her at Moscow
>> University and caught the bug. He was working on a vast tome on how
>> Spinoza's work could be retooled to give us a Marxist (materialist, monist,
>> but dialectical) theory of higher emotions when he died. We are translating
>> it all into Korean, and I am trying to write a preface. Spinoza believed in
>> sentient meat: "Deus, Sive Natura" ("God, that is to say, Nature...") Above
>> all, though, Spinoza believed that emotions are anything that increases or
>> decreases our ability to do things. The interesting thing, which I am still
>> trying to wrap my head around, is that one of those things that does this
>> is the idea of the emotion itself--the perezhivanie.
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>> Outlines, Spring 2020
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WBIKx_PGWy9c_5V3mDvDNJVVxbZ8MEjkHhRS-OIGQmR1hzERRuRQ9FPV6IgP2zuUMhn5OA$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Xxc_XhqDwcRNNskS29_qkEvlYqR1a1UszU0k6dB-USF8PCH3fnJ5OcvuWgTKCF-MUhfj1A$>
>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
>> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WBIKx_PGWy9c_5V3mDvDNJVVxbZ8MEjkHhRS-OIGQmR1hzERRuRQ9FPV6IgP2zuw1k_7AA$ 
>>
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xxc_XhqDwcRNNskS29_qkEvlYqR1a1UszU0k6dB-USF8PCH3fnJ5OcvuWgTKCF94i4Ox7A$>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 10:51 PM Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello David, Elizabeth, Annalisa, Rob, others,
>>>
>>> Well social presence and teacher presence are two completely different
>>> lines of research and thinking even though they sound alike. Teacher
>>> presence comes from localized classroom research while social presence
>>> comes from the communication field I believe sometime in the 1960s.  Lately
>>> I have begun to think of teacher presence as similar to Bourdeiu's cultural
>>> capital. Our education system teaches certain groups of children how to
>>> read and get in sync with teachers from their more subtle physical signs so
>>> that they become more successful later in their school careers and in life.
>>> Many of the more successful children also get practice in reading these
>>> different signs at home. It is the old adage, don't listen to what I say,
>>> watch what I do. Social presence on the other hand is more related to our
>>> own understanding of our own communications and the value of those
>>> communications. We have a sense of what we are doing from those who are
>>> watching us (in the broad sense), and this sense changes as our sense of
>>> those who are watching us changes not only how we act but the investment we
>>> make in what we do changes accordingly. I see it all the time in teachers,
>>> who they are changes completely when they get up in from of a room of
>>> students. Just a mind experiment. The next time you read an XMCA post see
>>> if you can imagine a few of the members standing over your should observing
>>> you are you are reading with the expectation of some response. See how this
>>> might change your behavior.
>>>
>>> As for Zoom. I just think it is not a good tool for education and the
>>> reason we use it is illusory (because it recreates a place-based experience
>>> so we are more comfortable with it?).  Zoom's purpose is not education in
>>> the sense of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. Its proximal purpose
>>> I believe was to sell to corporations and such for meetings so they would
>>> not have to spend as much on travel. Its distal purpose, meeting platforms
>>> in general, was so individuals could engage in multiple activities related
>>> to the topic but not focused on the topic. I mean it is kind of cool, you
>>> can have a meeting where you wear a tie on top and boxer shorts below. And
>>> we are sometimes a talking head culture. But it is by nature very
>>> unilateral and expert oriented. Do we have to develop a whole new cultural
>>> capital oeuvre for Zoom meetings. We must make sure that those who are
>>> ahead stay ahead. Annalisa in answer to your question no education or Zoom,
>>> I worry about binary choices such as this. Maybe we should be asking
>>> ourselves how we got here in the first place. Why are these our only two
>>> choices right now, and many attempts using Meeting platforms are failing as
>>> they seem to be, how do we move forward from here. Why aren't we asking
>>> more questions, trying to understand how our great digital experiment is
>>> failing education. And speaking to Rob's poignant use of the term pink
>>> space, why is the lack of universal broadband dominating discussions. I
>>> think about the whole one to one movement and I really question why we
>>> leaped ahead to this without a reckoning over the need to have every corner
>>> of our society equitably wired (spoiler alert: because instead of
>>> corporations making oodles of money our society will have to spend oodles
>>> of money). So Annalisa I got back to your question, is it better to have no
>>> education or Zoom and I ask if you stepped on a nail would it be better to
>>> put on a band-aid to stop the bleeding or to figure our how to save your
>>> life (I know the answer will be both but where do I prioritize).
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> On Behalf Of robsub@ariadne.org.uk
>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 4:53 AM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Teacher Distancing and "Social Distancing"
>>>
>>> Just a couple of very quick observations. (I find regularly that by the
>>> time I have formulated my response to something, the conversation has moved
>>> on by several degrees, so I'm getting in quickly.)
>>>
>>> Firstly the link to your article on Ruqaiya didn't resolve, David. But I
>>> found it here:
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d7Wrm3_kaKqODPVr-UtouXiIa-kw$
>>> . Thank you for that, though - looks well worth reading.
>>>
>>> Secondly, I always had the impression that Bernstein was resisted not
>>> because of his work on codes specifically, but because he was too prone to
>>> allowing his work to be used to justify class differentials, almost to the
>>> level of the poor keep themselves poor by deliberately restricting the
>>> language their children learn.
>>>
>>> Thirdly, meatspace. Hmmm. I'm toying with the idea of pinkspace. Less
>>> physically vulgar than meatspace and reflects the reality that the physical
>>> world, just like the online world, is dominated by those of us who are
>>> pink. Just a thought. Needs developing though.
>>>
>>> Rob
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2020-05-26 03:08, David Kellogg wrote:
>>> > Michael, Anthony, Elizabeth--and (of course) Annalisa:
>>> >
>>> > I apologize for changing the threadline title AGAIN. I feel like the
>>> > five-year-old who is always unscrewing the back of the TV set to see
>>> > the little people inside; I was very dissatisfied withe the abstract
>>> > theory on the other line, according to which everything is everything
>>> > and mediation and unmediation are equally both and I wanted a way of
>>> > finding the people inside it. I thought the term "meatspace", which
>>> > Annalisa has heard before, captured that feeling pretty well (and
>>> > there are also some echoes of a corruscating book review I once read
>>> > in MCA titled something like "Yer askin' me to believe in sentient
>>> > MEAT????")
>>> >
>>> > Let's use Michael's categories of "teacher presence" and "social
>>> > presence" instead, so long as we keep in mind the point that Michael
>>> > made at the end, that is, the teacher is always present even when the
>>> > teacher is not present (as when the child is doing homework alone) and
>>> > the additional point that teacher presence is one kind of social
>>> > presence. But because presence and absence are (like mediated and
>>> > unmediated) equally both ungradeable categories, I would prefer to
>>> > talk about teacher distancing and social distancing. Michael Osterholm
>>> > has objected to the term social distancing for the same reasons I
>>> > raised earlier--it's a physical, mechanical distancing that actually
>>> > creates a higher form of solidarity (and that is why the elements of
>>> > society which oppose higher forms of solidarity oppose it). So I put
>>> > "social distancing" in scare quotes. But the teacher distancing is
>>> > real enough.
>>> >
>>> > Real but not by itself of developmental significance. What worries me
>>> > is the possibility that we are adding to the kinds of inequalitiees
>>> > that Annalisa, Henry and Tom are talking about on the other thread. It
>>> > seems to me that teacher distancing differentially hurts some
>>> > populations. I disagree that Koreans are more homogeneous than other
>>> > cultures (in class terms significantly  less so) and I also think that
>>> > if you were to sit through a lecture in the Korean language without
>>> > understanding Korean you would not agree that language is the least
>>> > important aspect of teacher presence. But (to bring these two
>>> > together) I think that students who are able to focus on language, and
>>> > on particular kinds of language, are disproportionately enabled in
>>> > conditions of teacher distancing. This is the issue that dare not
>>> > speak its name, for when Bernstein tried to raise it he was, as
>>> > Halliday noted, "driven out of the field".  One of the reasons I wrote
>>> > the article linked below is that Ruqaiya Hasan was not.
>>> >
>>> > David Kellogg
>>> >
>>> > Sangmyung University
>>> >
>>> > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>>> > Outlines, Spring 2020
>>> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/vie
>>> > w/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d
>>> > 7Wrm3_kaKqODPVr-Utot_Yz0eEQ$  [1]
>>> >
>>> > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: _L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
>>> > Works_ _Volume One: Foundations of Pedology_"
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978981150
>>> > 5270__;!!Mih3wA!XdBjusDTRI2ze6diFPoONbkpS5qFdLZworNTRS5-z-d7Wrm3_kaKqO
>>> > DPVr-UtotPljj6rQ$  [2]
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Links:
>>> > ------
>>> > [1]
>>> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/vie
>>> > w/116238/167607__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zc
>>> > e9P2I5M_FZBJKElhGyP20UejX0w$
>>> > [2]
>>> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/978981150
>>> > 5270__;!!Mih3wA!VO48fELJW7sniTLYfb-jdmrQdoIXI216JGBeW6N8-Zce9P2I5M_FZB
>>> > JKElhGyP026P9-1A$
>>>
>>>
>>>
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