Eugene
You might find the escuela school in Milwaukee interesting. My
understanding is it deals with those two movements in interesting ways. I
have 2 pdf files by Pederson (Rethinking schools) if your interested. Apple
also discusses this in Democratic Schools.
WNate
Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
schmolze@students.wisc.edu
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"Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
radically new approach
to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this
conclusion by a
special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
contrast to the view
that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we hypothesized
that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as the
child's position in society changed
in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
origin and,
consequently, social in content."
D. B. El'konin
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****************
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Matusov [mailto:ematusov@udel.edu]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:46 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: lects
Hi Jay and everybody--
Jay wrote provocatively,
> Those poor middle class kids! they do not have effective coping
> strategies
> for dealing with language diversity and communication difficulties that
> arise with it. They are culturally deprived ! In a more balanced way, we
> may say that among their many privileges, this one is missing; that one
> price they pay for their advantaged social positions is that they are
> blinded in this respect by the language uniformity of their normal social
> environments. It is just one of the many disadvantages of those
> whose lives
> are too 'sheltered' or 'filtered' from diversity, as from adversity.
>
In Santa Cruz California, many highly educated middle class parents want
their kids to attend bilingual Spanish-English schools to experience
diversity while many working class Latino parents want to put their kids in
English only schools to get better education and access to mainstream US
institutions. I wonder if these two tendency can develop something
interesting together or they can perpetuate privileges for once (i.e.,
"voluntarily dozed diversity") and misery for others of being systematic
looser in the meritocracy race.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Lemke [mailto:jllbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 10:52 PM
> To: XMCA LISTGROUP
> Subject: RE: lects
>
>
> I'm happy to share credit with Eugene for his interpretation of
> my position
> on polylectal tolerance.
>
> We certainly agree that the experience of living with language diversity,
> within and between "Languages", is a normal and healthy one. My
> take on the
> issue of 'accents' and reactions to them was basically that they become a
> resource for constructing and presenting a social position, a
> social status
> or identity. Eugene extends this in his example to note that our social
> relationships are in very basic ways produced in relation to
> issues of how
> we communicate with one another, including our accents and
> reactions to them.
>
> Where Eugene takes my position a step further is in noting that there is
> something impoverished about a purely monolectal environment in which
> everyone takes language uniformity for granted and uses this as a sort of
> emblem for the normality of transparent communication. It's a
> good example,
> to my mind, of how ideological beliefs (monolectal is good, communication
> is normally transparent) become facts of experience for those who grow up
> in privileged circumstances (or more generally for those who live in the
> social world/sector whose interests are served by an ideological belief).
>
> Those poor middle class kids! they do not have effective coping
> strategies
> for dealing with language diversity and communication difficulties that
> arise with it. They are culturally deprived ! In a more balanced way, we
> may say that among their many privileges, this one is missing; that one
> price they pay for their advantaged social positions is that they are
> blinded in this respect by the language uniformity of their normal social
> environments. It is just one of the many disadvantages of those
> whose lives
> are too 'sheltered' or 'filtered' from diversity, as from adversity.
>
> I am not so much calling for destroying the fluency of transparent
> communication as I am for the removal of the artificial conditions that
> produce the illusion, for some, that lectal uniformity is normal,
> and that
> prevent many from learning to communicate across diversity.
>
> JAY.
>
> ---------------------------
> JAY L. LEMKE
> PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
> CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
> JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
> ---------------------------
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