mike writes:
>
>Diane--
>
>I am curious about your comment on "in this faux-interdisciplinary age of
>academia."
>
>Is this a logically necessary condition? A particularly
prevalent
> condition
>today in contrast with.....[ ]. Any counter examples?
>
>(signed)
>DowntrodenburdenedwithXYdiseaseandwellgrowingdownwardallthetimeinsoutherncal
yeessss. i figured i'd be called on that "faux" remark. i' m terrible for
generalizing and my oooh!!! outrageous claims. it's a personal thing, i
reckon. i mean, being in Education for so long - Early Childhood
Education, Educational Psychology, Curriculum and Instruction, Teacher
Education, - all of it seems to me to involve a whole mess of thinking
from a whole arena of thinkings - not just Education, but sociology, queer
theory, feminism, philosophy, anti-philosophy, histories, critical
histories, political theories, all of it seems to me to be inseparable
from Education,
but in Education, and indeed in the doctoral programs of such disciplines,
a specialization is required. So, if a person is inter-disciplinary, and
is expected to be "mastering" a specialization, it's kinda contradictory,
isn't it? how can a person do both? so, we get stuff like "science
curriculum and technology" as an interdisciplinary study, but it's about
Education, so it isn't about the critical histories of Science written by,
say, Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding, but about the journals of
science-Education, and it isn't about technology as an historical
extension of masculinization, instead we get talk about software and how a
certain kind of group used it, and what they learned.
it isn't about how Education uses "technology" when they mean " computers"
and "software"; it isn't about gender, it's about a science curriculum and
a particular computer software.
i suppose it's interdisciplinary, but technology is a huge part of
Education, ya? so it isn't really reaching into an other set of
disciplines, but just extending Education in a way that can absorb
"Technology" into education discourse.
i guess those are what i see as faux-interdisciplinary. there's lots of
that going on of course.
to me, interdisciplinary means a broader perspective of society in an
historical/political/gendered context, from within which one can look at
something like Writing. Not "Literacy" but adult writing in the
universities, say, (like oops! gee! like my dissertation! ha ha ha ha) -
i understand interdisciplinary to be more complex than what i've
witnessed, and contradictory to the demands for specialization.
so, that's what i was thinking of when i wrote faux-interdisciplinary.
i shoulda been more clear about 'dat.
diane -
p.s. mike, try adding some essential oils in your bath. a little
sea-breeze, cedar scents, and maybe some Chopin...? :)
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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