Yes Diane of course, what concerns us is the cultural-historical formation
of the psyche, and what I am pointing to is not significant to the same
degree or in the same way in every social strata. Nevertheless, it is today
extremely ubiquitous and increasingly so!
You show a particular concern about the loss of childhood and those kids
who find themselves to be commodities before they ever get a chance to be a
consumer.
Not all children come across money from the same direction. Some grow up
knowing money as something that reflects their own inherited power; others
get a measure of their worth by how much of it they get for busting their
gut for a day; others find their lack of it the image of their
powerlessness. Money is like a magic mirror that shows the person their own
image in the eyes of the community. Not a pretty sight, in some cases.
Andy
At 05:03 PM 12/01/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Andy writes
>>However, the young person's real relation to the real world is a mediated
>>one, and the study of theories, of the mediated approach to reality, is
>>taken into the real world of work predominately not in the practice of
>>manual or even technical skill, but increasingly in the form of
>>collaborating with other people in the production process, and this system
>>of relations is, even within enterprises, a relation mediated by value.
>>The
>>use of tools has been increasingly replaced by the use of commerce.
>>Nowadays young workers are taught to budget, to organise their own time,
>>to
>>have regard for customer demand, etc., etc. In other words, the economic
>>aspect of work so penetrates the labour process nowadays that production
>>and commerce are inseparable.
>
>re-reading your post, again, i see the relations as you describe them and
>there is something to be said for the pervasive/invasive structure of
>money and values,
>the collusion of labour and ethics, capital and meritocracies -
>
>there are, of course, countless studies on infant cognition that support
>ideas about
>a predisposition to learning, novelty, adaptability, concentration, and so
>on, concepts that form a ground of physics, mathematics, and so on, so
>understanding the calculations of money does not seem especially
>brilliant,
>contrary to what many curriculum propose, as you note -
>and yes, the conflicts of a value-system are exacerbated by the
>assumption that youth are "incomplete" and merely in-waiting to be adults
>-
>it's sad, really, that childhood was only recently
>"invented" and is now, a 100 yrs later, being disposed of in favour of the
>consumer model.
>
>by the same token, there are cultures where childhood still does not exist
>and where labour is itself a fact of life, not a choice - so i wonder,
>still, if this view isn't
>a privileged one,
>and in what ways can this - if it can - help us understand the social
>consciousness of
>child labour, slaves, children in the sex trades, and
>other forms of 'capital' activity. i mean, if money is the sign that forms
>a structural center that determines the whole,
>how does this help us to understand the different relations of labour and
>children,
>such as in slavery and so on?
>i can be such a terrible poop! can't i?
>diane
>
>
>
> **********************************************************************
> :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
>
>Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu
>
>
>
>
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| "It has been said that the very essence of civilisation consists of |
| purposely building monuments so as not to forget". L S Vygotsky 1930 |
~ Spirit, Money & Modernity, Melbourne Uni Summer School 23/24 Feb '01 ~
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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