Here I try to elaborate on the theme that Francoise, Judy, and Betty
recently raised and addressed. I think that the question of institutional
education without coercion is one of the most important. In my view, this
is another manifestation of the US contemporary agenda of cultural and
ideological diversity in within (not just between). I consider this issue
as sociocultural and historical because I know many countries where this
issue is not among "the most important" ones and also, in the US, it seems
to become urgent rather recently.
I see several issues related to ideology of painless learning and teaching
in institutional contexts (previously I used the term "open community" but
it seems to be to vague) that are promoted by emerging sociocultural
participatory approaches in social sciences:
1. Issue of the teleology of painless education. Since I got convinced by
several writers working in sociocultural frameworks that we should reject
reification of semiotic mediation and acknowledge that knowledge does not
exist separately from people actively engaged in sociocultural practices,
the issue of what is the goal (or goals, or directions) of education become
very important. If the goal is painless engagement children (or people in
general) in some sociocultural practices than teacher's focus should be on
student's comfort of engagement. From focus on whether children can read
(alone), it should become whether they enjoy diverse literacy practices (not
necessarily reading alone but including storytelling, discussions, pragmatic
working with texts, and so on). In such classrooms (do we need
classrooms?), increase in students' zone of comfort of engagement in
targeted (by whom?) sociocultural practices is the evidence of learning
progress: what new does a student begin like to do?
2. Issue of agency of painless education. Another implication of
considering the purpose of education in person-in-sociocultural-practices
rather than knowledge disassociated from people is that the teacher is the
final agency for his or her own teaching and the student is the final agency
for his or her own learning. Neither teachers are conductors of state- or
local community- defined curricula nor students are receptacles of such
curriculum. Painless education is possible only when teacher's zone of
comfort mutually supports students' zone of comfort who support each other.
It is interesting that for providing mutual support of each other's zones of
comfort people should not need to think similarly or value the same things.
Those from state or local community who want to shape teaching curriculum
should engage in relationship with the teacher based on mutual support and
interest similar that should exist in the classrooms (if we need classrooms).
3. Issue of philosophical and ideological diversity. If we assume that the
student is the final agency for his or her own learning it means that the
teacher can't control (and should not try to control) the content of
learning curriculum (see Lave, 1992). What is learned from the teaching
curriculum is up to the student. The teacher's role is to share is his or
her own interests and concern with the student, to facilitate and support
learning experiences and promoting student's zones of comfortable engagement
into sociocultural practices (the zones have different levels as well as
different contextual and time scales). The issue of diversity emerges when
zones of comfort of several participants go in conflict with each other
especially when they are based on different (and even antagonistic) value
systems. Sociocultural approach guides us that there can't be universal
solution of such situation. However, our hope is based on the fact that
zones of comfort do not require unanimity or sameness in views but instead
they require what I'd like to call ecology (i.e., mutual support like in
"natural" ecologies).
4. Issue of recourses for painless education. What kind of material,
economic, and cultural resources requires for painless education, can be or
start locally, if so who we be first to be involved (what about others)?
5. Issue of institutional change. How institution should transition to
painless education? This is relatively easy question, I think, because
points 1, 2, 3 address the issues of personal and institutional learning.
What I like in the current approach is that is not "missionary" one: it does
not make some dreamy design how things should be so someone (usually less
powerful) have to "implement."
6. Issue of problems with painless education. Because I believe that any
solution is a transformation of problems, the question becomes whether we
(all) become more comfortable with new problems we will face if we try to
follow the direction of painless education?
What do you think?
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
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Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz