Jay's "provocative" take on dominant culture's problems with respecting children
actually signal his question of WHY and, historically, HOW? -
that is, as we know, "childhood" is a twentieth century phenomenon.
As human beings go, certainly there is as much barbarism today as there was
in the Dark Ages and earlier: there is no reason, actually, to suppose that
all
adults are prepared or able to nurture children; given the history, I
mean, and the cyclical effects of cultural practices which reinforce a
"hatred" of children ("children should be seen & not heard"/"spare the rod
spoil the child") -
the "discovery" of childhood and the structures of education intermingle,
of course, in deeply historicized and structural ways.
Tragically, thus, children are the lowest class in an already savagely
serrated class system.
*We were all children*, and I do think this ought to be explicitly
informing the ways we think about rewriting typically authoritarian
practices. This, I think, is supported by other references to
Lave, for example, and the relations between the individual and the
context; and also, what I wrote
earlier, about the emotional content of our constructions of a
self-in-time: I would emphasize here that what THEORIES of learning do
need to account for
are individuals, identities, and
a language for articulating compassion in our understandings of these.
I would place a theory & language of compassion first on the list of what
will contribute to a useful theory for learning/teaching in educative
contexts; however
I think this is tricky as hell, because "compassion" is rather weakly
conceptualized in university discourses, let alone classroom contexts.
diane
At 2:05 PM 12/28/97, Jay Lemke wrote:
>
>So let me be provocative as usual and add a very dangerous hypothesis. The
>status of teachers may depend primarily on the status and value and general
>adult attitude toward children in a society. I have long suspected that
>many US adult cultures, and at least some European ones, actually fear and
>resent 'children' and younger adults (specifically those in roughly the age
>8-18+ range), despite loud protestations to the contrary. Once children
>cease to be household 'toys' or 'pets', especially dominant adult males in
>these cultures tend to find them either a burden or a threat. Schools
>become in effect daytime concentration camps, or youth ghettos,
>resource-deprived; and those who teach and ward in them have a status that
>depends on the status of their charges. Teachers of the young, oppressed,
>and miscreant have the lowest status; teachers of adults and of future
>power-wielders have the highest status. But the average esteem of teachers
>is a function of the average level of esteem for, and indeed of liking of,
>the young in general in various cultures.
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca