The sense of despair of your new year's wish brings to mind for me an old
dilemma concerning the political nature of what we do. Your new year's
wish positions the academy as a player, albeit not a particularly powerful
one, in the politics of education.
>If life has to be swollowed like
>this, why bother about scholarship and intellectual matters? Why bother
>about publishing research articles or books? Yet, of course, I believe we
>still have to persist in doing whatever little things we think we could do
>to help make things a little bit different, a bit more human (or perpas it
>is precisely human to reproduce social injustice and inequalities?).
I know that many scholars of today, especially of XMCA, also interpret
their work in political terms. Yet I see the influence of the academy in
starkly different terms. Through our conversations we develop new ways of
experiencing the familiar. And as our discourses merge with broader social
discourses possibilities emerge for others to experience the familiar
differently. While, perhaps, such new forms of experience also permit new
forms of action, I see the usage of our discourses as beyond my role and
function as an academic. My political activism (such as it is) is sharply
segregated from my academic work.
I wonder if others struggle with such issues.
David Kirshner
Louisiana State University
dkirsh who-is-at lsu.edu
ENANGEL who-is-at cityu.edu.hk on 01/02/99 01:16:05 AM
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu@internet
cc:
Subject: Re: New Year's Re-solutions/New Year's Wish
Mike,
It's a very thoughtful note you wrote. Being situated in a different space
and time (and culture and social structure) and being constrained by
different circumstances, I find myself at the 1999 new year holding a very
different stance to xmca postings from when I was doing my phd studies at
OISE, Toronto, Canada 3 years ago (the 1996 new year). Many practical
concerns/challenges and practical routines of the day-to-day life of a
young female academic in the cut-throat competitive Hong Kong context have
made xmca discussions a luxury to me, or something like angels discussing
celestial matters in the sky--no irony, just a good-willed feeling.
New Year Wish:
If only teachers in my society (Hong Kong) can have a greater say in the
design of the curriculum, in school policies, in things determining their
teaching and students' learning environment. Large class sizes, heavy
workload, rigid school admin. hierarchy, exhausting resistance from
cynical, marginalized students; little autonomy in shaping the
curriculum--it's not surprising to see so many school teachers demoralized.
Few teacher union activities are allowed; many teachers are exhausted,
burnt-out, or have acquired a sense of learned helplessness.
University academics are equally helpless in shaping any important
education policies or in helping to change the school structures. (Not to
mention the pressure of "publish or perish" imposed from above). High
schools in HK are classified into 5 bands, the band 1/2 schools are the
upper/middle class ones, the band 4/5 schools are the inner city ones
situated in poor areas. Students in low banding schools know what their
deal/future is and act like the young people described in Paul Willis's
book; yet, this resistance only further sinks them in their socioeconomic
disadvantage. I suppose things like these exist everywhere in the world;
just like the pessismistic picture painted by Bourdieu--the reproduction of
social stratification through schooling. If life has to be swollowed like
this, why bother about scholarship and intellectual matters? Why bother
about publishing research articles or books? Yet, of course, I believe we
still have to persist in doing whatever little things we think we could do
to help make things a little bit different, a bit more human (or perpas it
is precisely human to reproduce social injustice and inequalities?). It's
not possible to discuss these matters with your colleagues--who would want
to enter into such discussions about our social structures which by all
standards can only induce pessimisms?
Angel L.
At 09:38 AM 12/28/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Dear XMCA-ites;
>
> It turns out that once one gets into thinking about mediation, things
start appearing in
>threes. So here is a third and final note in this year-end splurge before
turning back to textbook
>writing and baby care.
>
> I wonder if it would be possible for members of XMCA, lurkers,
chatters, deleters, and
>all, to write a brief "New Year's wish" for a topic they would like to see
discussed. I get my wish
>early because I am very interested in the question of identity formation,
and we will be having
>our lab seminar devoted to the topic of culture and identity formation for
the first 10 weeks of the
>year and there are some folks on xmca who have asked that we post
summaries for discussion.
>But there are SO MANY issues that strike me as of pressing relevance and
my intuition is that
>the same is true of everyone on the list.
> Usually initiatives such as this fall flat, so if the past predicts
the future (said he,
>casting a glance backwards, and reaching out to feel behind him for the
future while
>chatting with his neighbors), this note will be greeted by silence. But it
others were to chip
>in, we might open up some new topics of great concern to our multiple
sub-constituencies,
>and get the illusion that the pile of new stuff at our feet wasn't
entirely garbage after all.
>
> Warmest greetings for the new year.
>Mike
>
>