As of yesterday morning I have collected about 80 single spaced pages of notes from
xmca just for the previous 5 days and of course there is more today. To the best of my ability I
hae been following the interwoven discussions on ideal forms, IRE sequences, culture in the
classroom, carnival, and agonistic/cooperation-oriented analysis, theories in/of practice, and .....
1. Concerning culture in the classroom. Clearly the entire range of topics brought up in this
period is relevant. I initiated my query on this topic because LCHC is undertaking to write a
chapter for the next Handbook of Teaching with this as the assigned theme. It has been several
years since I have actively worried about CinC, my own work having taken me into the
peripheral (to school) community institutions that worry about development between home and
school. I am grateful for all the suggestions people made, some familiar to me, others not. As the
new year progress, I hope to be able to repay the help with feedback as we work our way through
the task of summarizing current knowledge.
2. Concerning IRE sequences. The dynamics of the discussion, which pushed toward the
multiple, context-dependent functions of this discourse form, fit my prejudices, but also
left me a lot better educated. I had not recalled Gordon's talk in Madrid and was surprised to hear
Newman, Griffin and Cole being cited as advocates of IRE sequences and the classroom
practices they typically support/embody. Your summary of the paper, Gordon, made a lot of
good sense to me. Eugene and Eva's comments helped my thinking a lot too.
3. Carnival. This is one of the Bakhtinian ideas that has proven an invaluable practical tool for
me over the past decade. Because we deliberately mix play and education in our afterschool
activities, and because we are quite concerned with diffusing power, we have created various
"secondary artifacts" including a collectivity of wizards (volshebniks, magas, golems, and the
like) which we find invaluable. As Ellice notes, introduction of carnival into the classroom
is a risky business. I would like to see more concrete examples of its deliberate usage.
4. Philosophies in/of practice. Over recent years I find myself more and more gravitating toward
participation in the afterschool activities as an essential moment in theorizing, although my peers
seem to perceive me as become more and more involved in practice. A hearty YES to those who
resist rigid bifurcation of these polarities. Those who profess pure theorizing are engaged in
practice no less than those who profess to be atheoretical practitioners... for better and for worse
in both cases. I hope that many who are assigned the social role of practitioners-cum-teachers-in-classrooms will respond to Judy's queries on this topic. A lot of us, I believe, are interested in
what we can learn from the experience of others in this domain. If it seems appropriate, I can (a
number of us can) talk about how to bring this topic to bear on post-secondary classrooms where
even getting to an IRE sequence in a class of 200 would be a liberating move.
5. Agonistic/cooperative... This is a theme I would like to write a lot more about. Thanks so
much Chuck, Jay, Angel, and others for your wonderful notes on the topic. I am afraid (Jay) that
I know to little of Bourdieu to be able to enter the conversation about his ideas. I resonate
strongly, however, to Chuck's point, that as teachers the cooperative mode seems important for
actually working in a positive way, as opposed to offering distanced critiques. Irony has its
places. E-mail and the classroom are not two of them, as a rule. It is not an accident that I find it
so rewarding to spend time in our afterschool activities to which children come
VOLUNTARILY and in which a culture of collaborative learning is the ideal.
6. Speaking of ideals. I am very thankful to Isaak and Galina for raising this issue and the names
of Daniel Borisovich and Boris Danilovitch Elkonin. At first, Isaak, I completely misunderstood
the topic in question because I assimilated your reference to the ideal to many discussions on
XLCHC/XMCA about ideality and materiality in a cultural-historical activity approach to mind,
where, for example, the ideas of Evald Ilynekov,. Marx Wartofsky, and David Bakhurst have
been prominent. I was abashed when Galina pointed to Boris' articles in JREEP because, of
course, I had edited those articles which Boris gave me during the Madrid meetings. Thanks
here, too, to Michael Glassman for his terrific, albeit brief, summary. He asked if Isaak and
Galina would expand on the topic and so far they havn't. But it is well worth everyone looking in
to. As a reminder, here is what Michael wrote in summary:
The idea revolves around the notion (and Isaak and Galina correct me if I am wrong)
that there is a crisis in child development (I read it as being around the time of adolescence)
when the child needs to recognize that continued development might lead to ideal adulthood.
Initially learn our activities according to ritual, as a way of delimiting boundaries between
activities. And that this process is important in development (there is a really rich
description of how, through their relationships with objects children embody the actions
of others as they are in turnembodies in the objects of the social cooperative, and the children
use the embodiment of these objects/actions to organize their own behavior) But childhood
reaches this point of crisis where the child must have an ideal to contrast against the
real. The child must feel that through projective planning he or she can usurp the
real and pursue the ideal. It is this dynamic interaction that is central to the education
process. And it does not matter so much what the content of the ideal is, simply that
the child is made to recognize that there is an ideal. This is where the ideas of
juxaposition and contrastsof real objects come from, and this is also where we
find creativity.
Where does this ideal come from (and remember this is a dynamic,
so it makes no difference whether the ideal exists, simply that
we get the child to contrast the real with the ideal)? That, I
think is probably the most interesting part of this idea. It is
the teacher who must act as a mediating force between the real
world and the ideal world. The teacher then must, in some way,
be representative of this ideal, be able to point towards it,
and say there, that is what you aspire to, now look at the real
world around you and see how you can pursue this (it is interesting
that in popular culture this is so often the description of the
"great" teacher). The ideal is not a thing, or even a cultural
form, but an event in the child's life brought about by the
mediating force of the teacher. If I read El'Konin right he
is saying that the more corrupt and/or cynical our society the
less of a chance for this ideal adulthood. The child remains
in crisis. We can develop all the techniques we want, but if
there is no event representing the ideal for the child, the child
is trapped in this ritual world. There is no reform of education
in a corrupt and/or cynical society. And every time an educator
acceded to a corrupt or cynical demand it is, by association,
another nail in the coffin of education (sorry for the hyperbole).
Isaak and Galina suggest that we all ought to read more of the work
of the Elkonins. Gladly. I suggested to Boris 3 years ago that we do
a special issue of JREEP on the work of his father, but he has apparently
been too busy to make the selections. Perhaps, Isaak or Galina, you could
help? We can finance the translation and publication, but I do not feel
competent to pick the selections.
I will stop here, not because I have adequately responded to the generous comments
made by various xmca-ites (many more than I have noted here), but because I have
already seriously violated the norms of email interchange by the length of these
notes.
It is already the new year in Tokyo, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, Hamburg, Nottingham,
Copenhagen, and it soon will be in Toronto, Havana, New York, St. Louis, Puebla,
and all the myriad modem-lairs of xmca that lay to the West of the Mississippi.
Best Wishes for a peaceful, productive, and Happy New Year... many thanks for being there.