Re: Re(2): depth and breadth: The Calculus

dkirsh who-is-at lsu.edu
Tue, 18 May 1999 19:19:39 -0500

Hi Kathie,
My point, in a previous post (but relevant here), is that having
schooling in a public space makes possible the sorts of
complaints you raise about your own schooling and that of
your kids. Once education moves to the private sphere,
there is no longer any place for public discourse: If you don't
like it, just pick up and move to a more compatible school.
Listserves like this that (often) lament the state of education and
seek to influence it will lapse into a metadiscourse about
the political location of schooling in the social (re)construction
of our society. (At least politics--and hence political commentary--
will still remain in the public sphere.) But concerns about the
nature of school experience for kids will move out of the public
domain, evaporating into nothingness like a shallow puddle in
a hot sun.
David Kirshner

Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu (Katherine Goff) on 05/18/99 02:24:23 PM

Please respond to xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu



To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu

cc: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu(bcc: David H
Kirshner/dkirsh/LSU)



Subject: Re(2): depth and breadth: The Calculus

David writes:
>Whereas I surely wouldn't recommend any particular calculus
>course, the calculus itself is an exquisite analysis of the
>complementarity of the local pattern of change within a system
>with the global accumulation of that system. The heart of the
>modern treatment is to capture the dynamic instant in a
>triple nesting of conditional existences (the limit concept).
>In earlier time, Newton addressed the same dynamic through
>a coordination of infinitessimal quantities. Either version is
>a remarkably intricate and beautiful intellectual creation.

i took calculus in high school and remember studying it as an
undergraduate.
what i learned was nothing like what you describe!
revealing the intricacy and beauty of any artifact (knowledge included)
is not what public education is about.
i don't think there is any one answer to diane's question
"what are school's for?"
but, assuming you could get 10 people to agree on what learning is,
those activities identified as "learning"
are not often allowed, and even more rarely encouraged
in School.
(so says one who has attended public and private schools and whose
children attend a charter school. and dissatisfied with all of them!)

perhaps school is the interface,
or something like eugene's boundary object,
between Family and State.
so much educational practice simulates or draws on (middle class anglo)
parenting and family practices.
so much educational structure similates or draws on beaurocracy, the
military, capitalism, and forms of governance from tyranny to democracy.

just a quick impression.

kathie

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
start all over.
start all over.
we need to make new symbols,
make new signs,
make a new language,
with these we'll redefine the world
and start all over.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^tracy chapman:new beginning
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html