RE: [xmca] Sumerian school pic

2 things in response to this thread:
1. Mike says/asks: What school of education in the world studies schooling
starting from the empirical fact that formal schooling since its origins ...
have been modes of state domination, class exacerbation and exploitation and
most crucially, that FAILURE IS A FUNDAMENTAL SYSTEMIC PROPERTY OF FORMAL
SCHOOLING.... No school of ed i know of starts from this germ cell.

I teach in a large College of Ed. Given the diverse range of interests in
our faculty (plus the fact that we're distributed across 3 widely dispersed
buildings), there is no single germ cell that could conceivably serve as the
starting point for our thinking. We come from all manner of backgrounds
across the epistemological spectrum. I think this is a healthy environment
given that students may engage with many different perspectives on teaching
and learning. So Mike, even though I agree with you on many things, I
disagree that it's either possible to, or advisable to have any single
assumption drive the whole COE's activity. I do think that individuals
within our COE start from that assumption, but certainly not all, and having
different points of origin and different intellectual trajectories helps to
invigorate the environment.

2. I disagree with Paul's assertion that "the necessity of social
transformation [is] a prerequisite for realizing the
promise of the Vytogtsky/AT/CHAT tradition." I don't read LSV as having such
an activist agenda. I think that LSV (and I don't pretend to speak on behalf
of AT or CHAT) can be employed descriptively to account for the why of human
development rather than to take a political perspective on how things ought
to be. I always worry that the agenda of activist research overtakes any
effort to derive an empirical perspective on human activity; that if you set
out to find something, you will, no matter what other possibilities evidence
might substantiate. So even if you believe that social transformation is
necessary, who is to say that your vision is "right" for all and why is your
own transformation the one that realizes LSV's promise?

I'm thinking about current discussions about whom Obama will pick as
secretary of education. Even thoughtful conservatives like David Brooks of
the NY Times are spinning Linda Darling-Hammond as the "union" pick and NCLB
supporters as "reformers." So to Brooks and most conservatives, NCLB
represents reform and those who oppose it represent the status quo--even
though NCLB seems to me to institutionalize and legitimize the educational
tradition represented in the Sumerian classroom of many millennia ago.

So they too are seeking social transformation and think they're right. How
do you KNOW that you are?

Peter Smagorinsky
The University of Georgia
125 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
smago@uga.edu/phone:706-542-4507
http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Mike Cole
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 11:27 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Fwd: [xmca] Sumerian school pic

Ooops, paul sent his message only to me by mistake and i replied only to him
by mistake.
see below.
mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 8:25 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Sumerian school pic
To: phd_crit_think@yahoo.com

Yes, Paul. I think the historical evidence says that schooling is a product
of societies which aggregrate into large units and need new mediational
means and practices to stay coordinated is pretty firm. Whatever the
combination of forces driving the reproduction of this form of
enculturation/socialization (and plenty of domination in THAT process,
altough the bastards generally die before you do, and you might even weep
at their passing) they have incredible reproductive power.

Can things change? Change is the constant. But what changes might change
the inequality generating
power of formal schooling?

And note, higher levels does not make a country "Lake Wobegone" (the
mythical town, for non-Americans,
of Garrison Keilor radio program where all the children are above average).
The US, it turns out, has jumped way up in the TIMMS ratings (but not
others) for math. So what? A large proportion of poor people of color in San
Diego either drop out or are kicked out of school before they graduate.

I am 100% in favor of more humane and genually, liberatorily, educational
institutions. But so far
I do not see plausible alternatives. Which is NOT a reason to fail to keep
on keeping on, for
reasons given in earlier message.

mike the proctor in a classroom right out of sumeria.

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 7:42 AM, Paul Dillon
<phd_crit_think@yahoo.com>wrote:

> mike,
>
> don't your observations about formal schooling support my claims about the
> necessity of social transformation as a prerequisite for realizing the
> promise of the Vytogtsky/AT/CHAT tradition? Will changing classroom
design
> accomplish that?
>
> Of course it's another question as to how that social change towards what
> Engestrom called "humanistic" in LBE will come about. Perhaps this first
> truly global crisis of the capitalist system will lead toward the kind of
> transformation Marx envisioned as happening within capitalist nations
where
> the effect of the economic crises was always mitigated through those
> nations' imperialist relations to 3rd world countries.
>
> This morning I heard a news story on BBC about a new UNICEF report
> evaluating early child development and welfare. Using 10 indicators they
> evaluated "developed" countries. It turns out that the countries with the
> highest taxes (all Scandinavian countries but also France) scored the
> highest -- . The conclusion I draw, thinking of the recent presidential
> campaign, is "Yes, paying higher taxes is patriotic." Mike Moore's moie
> "Sicko" made this very clear as well.
>
> I looked on the UNICEF website but couldn't find the referenced document
so
> I can't say where Cuba or the US came out on these indicators, but I will
> keep looking.
>
> Paul
>
> --- On *Thu, 12/11/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Sumerian school pic
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, December 11, 2008, 6:38 AM
>
> Its important to note that ideology of
> schooling/virtue/intelligence/class
> that went with the first schools are ALSO
> still with us today.
>
> What school of education in the world studies schooling starting from the
> empirical fact that formal schooling since its
>
>
> origins (in the West at least, perhaps David K can fill us in on China,
> Korea, ....) have been modes of state domination,
> class exacerbation and exploitation and most crucially, that FAILURE IS A
> FUNDAMENTAL SYSTEMIC PROPERTY OF
>
>
> FORMAL SCHOOLING.... it is not a mistake, negligence, etc.
>
> The, and only then, can a disucssion of school "re-form" that
> includes state
> re-form and political economic re-form have
> a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. No school of ed i know of
starts
>
>
> from this germ cell.
>
> mikd
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:35 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > Great stuff Andy, thanks for sharing. I used the attached picture from
> my
> > Aunt Alice's Brooklyn elementary school classroom on the cover of The
> > Discourse of Character Education. From the early 1920s.
> >
> > Peter, when I worked as Teaching Space Coordinator at
>
>
> > Melbourne University, I collected the following set:
> > http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/tss/archive/history.html
> > from Sumeria to 1979, and for now:
>
>
> > http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/tss/archive/cls2.html
> > Andy
> > Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> > > I first saw Mike use the Sumerian classroom slide a few years ago at
>
>
> a
> > > conference in Miami, and he has been kind enough to share it.
> I've used
> > it
> > > several times to make the point that Mike originally made: that the
> > > traditions of schooling run very deep. I used it at ISCAR, and the
>
>
> text
> > for
> > > the talk included the observation that while desks are no longer made
> of
> > >
> stone and rarely are bolted to the floor anymore, they still tend to
> sit
> > in
> > > the same formation as they did 6,000 years ago. The irony: In the
> USCD
> > > classroom in which I gave the talk, the seats were indeed bolted to
>
>
> the
> > > floor.
> > >
> > > To give a sense of just how old the Sumerian classroom is, I put
> together
> > > the following. It still boggles my mind:
> > >
> > > In his consideration of the developmental consequences of education,
>
>
> Cole
> > > (2005) takes a cross-cultural and historical perspective that leads
> him
> > back
> > > to the earliest classrooms of Indo-European civilization. Based on
> the
> > > arrangement of a Sumerian classroom from roughly 4,000 BCE, he
>
>
> surmises
> > that
> > > the last 6,000 years have seen great continuity in educational
> practice
> > in
> > a
> > > number of
> regards (see Figure 1.1; reprinted from Cole, 2005, p.
> 200). As
> > > the photograph reveals, students sat in rows-here, fixed in
> > stone-possibly
> > > chiseling notes in a proto-cuneiform script and undoubtedly facing
>
>
> the
> > > teacher. This template, in spite of other developments in teaching
> > practice,
> > > has served to guide instruction in most Western educational settings
> from
> > > (at least) the Uruk period of Sumerian civilization through the
>
>
> present.
> > > ________________________
> > > Place Figure 1.1 about here
> > > ________________________
> > > This classroom was built toward the end of the Stone Age, as the
> > Neolithic
>
>
> > > Period was about to give way to the Bronze Age. Students occupied its
> > seats
> > > 1,400 years before the legendary King Gilgamesh is believed to have
> ruled
> > > the land; 2,300 years
> before Hammurabi founded the city of Babylon
> and
> > wrote
> > > the first code of law; and 3,400 years before Nebuchadnezzar II is
> > believed
> > > to have built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is as old as the
>
>
> idea of
> > > formal teaching and learning in the history of human social life.
> > >
> > > (this is from the first draft of a book chapter I'm developing,
> so please
> > > reference to this message if you borrow the phrasing)
>
>
> > >
> > > Sorry I forgot to attach this to message in response to Paul.
> > > The earliest known classroom in the "western" world.
> > > mike
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
>
>
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
> > >
> >
> > --
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>+61 3 9380 9435
>
> > Skype andy.blunden
> > Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> > http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>
> >
>
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>
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Received on Thu Dec 11 09:01:23 2008