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Re: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act and 2 challenges
I like the idea of collecting narratives that have some chance of going viral, or of becoming part of the evolving folk wisdom of a community (or whatever an over-scale network like the USA is).
Some of these may be generic narratives: that formal schooling keeps dumbing down standards (not one that serves our purposes, alas, as it presupposes that standards are desirable, and standards means test results, not quality). Some may indeed be personal narratives of how we came to a habitus of critical thinking.
I was appalled a few years ago when some influential faculty colleagues protested at the inclusion of the word "critical" in the title of a new PhD subprogram. Their most pragmatic argument was that it would make us unpopular in (then Republican) Washington, but in fact they also just felt viscerally that "critical" implied some sort of anti-American agenda. I thought I'd slipped through a time rift back to the 1950s. And this was in a university that prides itself on its liberal progressive heritage and support for minorities and social justice in higher education.
I asked whether they were against critical thinking, and they said of course not, but the word "critical" implied a political agenda. (Of course, university programs, in public universities, could not be overtly political -- according to nearly all my colleagues, even the genuinely liberal ones.) I felt like offering a course on the educational theories of Chairman Mao, just to see what would happen! I didn't, but I found my phd students quite receptive to critical views of the educational establishment and even of basic educational assumptions in many other courses. In another university where I've taught, with colleagues a bit more to the left, the phd students were very left-critical, while the undergrads and MA students were much more conservative.
I offer these anecdotes as a reminder of the difficulty of promoting a discourse that espouses "critical" anything as a goal of education. It is not so long ago in the US that "developing patriotism" was an explicit educational goal, morphed post-Vietnam into "good citizenship", but with more or less the same meaning.
My own story is that home was a place where I was simply encouraged to think for myself, and my primary introduction to critical thinking came because my parents were of different religions and I was encouraged to sample various ones and choose for myself. At quite a young age. I decided that some were nicer than others, but none of them made much sense. I was a matter-of-fact atheist until I got as far as the eastern "religions" and realized things were a lot more complicated than what the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition sees. In any case I got to do a lot of critiquing of religious belief, which made me seem quite odd at school. I believe this was the early, developmental foundation of my critical habitus.
My high school had someone with a PhD who taught odd elective courses in sociology and the like, and was sponsor of the Philosophy Club. We actually discussed Marx in the club meetings (along with many others), and he asked us not to mention this outside the club. We were not being indoctrinated, just exposed and had some prevailing folk- discourses about communism (early 60s) corrected. And hardly anyone in the club was pro-Marx, but at least people were questioning what he actually said, rather than the myths about what communism was. I myself was not pro-Marx until a few years later.
My point in these stories is that critical and Left are far from synonymous. There are many grounds on which to critique social beliefs and social institutions. Once you get in the habit of doing so, you are, I think, more likely to wind up agreeing with a lot of Marxist analysis, at least of capitalism and the history of how we got the political economy we have and what some of its basic flaws are. But I think the fundamental outcome I would be looking for is just a widespread dissatisfaction with basic institutions and the beliefs that legitimate them. That is of course very dangerous socially and politically, and conservatives are not entirely wrong in being fearful of it. It leads quite as easily to HItler as to Lenin.
My own analysis, for what it's worth is this: it is nearly impossible to foment radical cultural change in any predictable fashion on a timescale of decades, but it is possible to marginally increase the normal rate of cultural and social-institutional change well past the point at which conservatives start screaming about "anarchy" while still having a quite functional social system. I also believe that fundamental change is not incremental, but saltatory (qualitative jumps); it's just that the jumps are not all that big. (There are, very rare, exceptions.)
So what's a small, realistic jump in the right (left?) direction for our educational goals? I, too, would like to hear narratives, either generic arguments, or personal stories, of how to move towards a goal for education of fostering critical habitus and away from one of cumulating testable knowledge. 

JAY.



Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093






On Dec 17, 2009, at 10:34 PM, Larry Purss wrote:


Andy
I was making a casual comment, but your response does speak to the personal biases we all have when we talk about more general, abstract theory. I wonder how unique each of our paths are to how we start to question our assumptions. I don't think I can personally credit my family directly and I certainly reacted to the meaningless of school, quitting school in grade 10 (in the 60's). However, I still think I credit school with learning how to read, and enjoying fantasy and science fiction in elementary school. I would also credit living in the 60's counter culture as formative. I also agree that for many, school closed off exploration and stigmatized them (the whole culture of disability) However I still think my schooling (even in reaction to it) was formative and helped me personally become literate. My family narrative was my grandparents were coal miners from Scotland who immigrated to Canada in 1914. Therefore when I think of how I live today and what I value which is very different from my parents and grandparents my personal narrative credits schooling (and my disillusionment with schooling) as a formative part of my upbringing. The question I ask is must the institutional structures of schooling be blown up and we start over, or is it possible for schools to evolve? I recognize either position can be defended but I guess I still idealistically am acting AS IF schooling can be transformed. I see schools as a reflection of the dominant cultural values and if we are attempting to change cultural practises then schools are as good a place as any other to engage in that project. But I do agree with Jay that the people in power who make decisions are not thinking about learning theory. However, the question still is do we at least make an effort to transform schools or say it is an impossible task. I wonder if my personal narrative and how I think about my schooling (looking back, projecting into the future, and acting in the present) colours the position I take on this debate. Since I choose to act within that system I must believe it can be changed. At least I think this on good days. 
Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Thursday, December 17, 2009 8:28 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act and 2 challenges
Cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>


Larry, speaking for myself, it was more likely my parents,
both members of the CPA, but certainly not the MacCarthyite
education I got at school, who taught me to critique my own
society ... though school gave me plenty of early target
practice. And I think the point Mike, Jay and others have
made (along with Bourdieu whom I referred to) is that people
mostly learn critique at home. Alternatively, their home
becomes the first target of their normal adolescent
critique. But not school.

Andy

Larry Purss wrote:

Andy
I agree that the forces of inertia are daunting but there is

always an

alternative story.
The question I ask is if the system is so monolithic how did

all the

people engaged in CHAT learn to critique their own culture

because I'm

assuming you think that is happening on this website.

I'm making

another assumption that many or most of us went through that

school

system.  You might say that we are the exception to the

rule but my

answer is if we are the exception how did that happen.
To me the bigger puzzle is how people who inhabit CHAT are

changing the

world?  I will introduce another metaphor that I think

can capture the

imagination. It is how we re-establish the "commons".
A place where people with their differences gather and

interact to find

common ground.  This speaks to the book "Habits of the

Heart" which was

popular many years ago. That book saw the loss of the commons

as central

to our loss of shared purpose.
In summary, reflecting and critiquing one's own culture as an

individual

pursuit of cognition can leave us inhabiting ivory towers but

leave the

structures in place.

I know this is common sense on this site but Andy's post

generated the

reverie.

Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Thursday, December 17, 2009 3:55 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act and 2 challenges
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>


When I was first exposed to the idea that formal schooling
is a machine for producing failure (via the MCA

article for

discussion) I recoiled in disbelief, but have come to accept
it as an obvious truth, despite the efforts of almost
everyone involved in the system to make it otherwise.

Still, could I throw another question at this idea? During
the 70s and 80s in Britain, there was a folk belief

that the

school system did everything it could to ensure that a kid
*never* failed. If a child, for example, was doing

poorly in

maths, they would be moved into a "stream" where the

bar was

set so low that no-one could fail. When kids come out the
other end of the system (and according to legend) their
parents believed from school reports which have shown "pass"
all the way through, that their child has successfully
"graduated" only to discover that they can't read or do
basic arithmetic, and cannot get any job they would want.

I think my interpretation of this story is that this

does go

on, and it is just another way of producing failure, proving
that it happens despite teachers' efforts. Is that right?

And Greg, I think I agree with what I took to be Jay's
vision of the kind of education we need: training in the
ability to critique one's own culture. And this is

what is

absolutely ruled out.

And Bourdieu shows how the dominant social classes deftly
move the goal posts every generation so that no amount of
educational efforts at upward mobility are widely

successful.>  >

Andy


Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:

I was intrigued by Jay's post. It seems to cut to

the core in

a very straightforward manner.

In response, I wanted to pose two challenges:

First, I wonder if there might be ways to present the
alternative to thinking of education merely in terms of
testable knowledge/skills? It seems that there are

circulating>  > > discourses that could be picked up on
(troped upon?) and which

would help to shed some light on an alternative to

this. For

example, the common cynicism of people of all political
persuasions about testable knowledge.

It would seem like an important part of this project

will be

to couch it in terms that aren't so left-ist and

exclusionary.>  > > I know this may seem like "selling-out"
to some, but in the

world of policy pragmatism, it is hard to see any

other way to

make this change happen (short of revolution - and

since I

haven't heard this word spoken on this listserve

(except with

regard to ontogenetic development) I will assume a deep
pragmatism resides here).

To give an example, I recall a story that one of my

mentors,>  > > Frank Margonis, used to tell about Dewey's
way of

characterizing testing. It went something like this:

(actually>  > > this is taken from the only place I could
find it, a 1959

School Review article - anyone have a better

description?).>  > >

"Dewey once remarked to a younger colleague in the

department>  > > of philosophy at Columbia University that
the techniques of

"intelligence" tests reminded him of the methods

used in

Vermont during his boyhood to weigh pigs. A thick

plank was

laid across a stone wall and then stones of a

predetermined>  > > weight were piled on one end until the
pig at the other end

was brought to balance."

Here is a rhetorically powerful way of criticizing
intelligence testing - but, of course, it is one

that wouldn't

carry much weight today because it is far from most folks'
experience. So, what kinds of pithy stories can we

tell today

that would point out the problems with the testable
knowledge/skills paradigm?

I don't know if this listserve is the place to share such
stories, but I just wanted to put it on people's

minds. But if

anyone has a brief narrative to share, I'd be

interested in

helping to make it "go viral" (as they say today -

or maybe

someone could make a 2 minute Youtube video?).

Oh, and I promised two challenges at the outset but I've
already mentioned the second: how do we make this

agenda not

simply a "leftist" agenda? I would think that

Dewey's notion

of "democratic education" might be useful (if only

it could be

purged of its apparent political affiliations). Or maybe
"citizenship education" (although i suspect those on

the left

would feel that this is not sufficiently

pluralistic). Would

there be a way to dovetail this with some type of Ethics
education that would appeal to those on the right

who get all

excited about "character education"?

Dewey is said to have learned from Jane Addams (in

what must

have been a somewhat "antagonistic" moment of

debate) that

antagonisms are "unreal". Addams believed that

antagonism was

always unnecessary and never arose from real objective
differences. Rather it was simply due to the

injection of the

personal attitude and reaction, thus delaying and

distorting>  > > the recognition of meaning. Dewey says
that he realized that

he had been interpreting the [Hegelian] dialectic

"wrong end

up" - he had seen the unity as the reconciliation of
opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its

growth.

I wonder if there might be some truth to this in all this
political bickering about what is best, educationally
speaking, for our children? (and btw, kudos to the

folks on

this listserve for avoiding simple politicizations

of the

problem, as we often see around us: "we're
right/good/intelligent and they're wrong/bad/stupid").

Whether with this administration or others, it seems like
there might be hope (!?) to move beyond the testable

knowledge>  > > view of things, and, more importantly,
beyond a view of

antagonisms between people as inherent to human

nature (wasn't

this at the heart of Marx's vision of communism?).

But my

analysis thus far is simply interpreting the world

in various

ways, as someone once said, the point is to change it.

-greg

p.s. Having read Marx in some detail this quarter, I

wanted to

add a critique of "pscyhologism" ("individualism" in the
translation of Marx that we read) to Jay's critique

of the

dominant view of education, but I fear that it will take
nothing short of a Revolution to allow us to see

ourselves as

anything but self-determining psychological

individuals (or

rather, psychological realizations of our genetic
individuality). But in the event that anyone has any pithy
narratives that capture the absurdity of this rather

hegemonic>  > > belief, please do share. I've got a career
ahead of me in

which I hope to develop this critique, but there is

no time

like the present for developing such a database of

narratives.>  > >

Message: 7
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:37:58 -0800
From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Obama's Learn Act
To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture,

Activity">  > >>  <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

Message-ID: <C1BF12E2-5893-4BB5-AE8C-

3D721BF8D958@umich.edu>>  > >> Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed;

delsp=yes


Let me sound a slightly skeptical note, though with the

greatest

admiration for the efforts of Kris and other

sophisticated>  > > educators

to influence policy in Washington. Maybe some of

these points

may also

be informative for the non-US xmca-ers.

I don't really think that US educational policy is about

learning. It

is a branch of SOCIAL policy. It is, for

politicians and many

voters,

about equity, justice, moral values, quality of the labor

force.

Conservatives by and large won the battle from the

1970s-90s

over the

definition of educational quality: it means

knowledge and

skills, as

assessed by simple, mass-administered tests. They

succeeded>  > > because

what they proposed was very close to common folk-wisdom

about

schooling. They proposed what they did to prevent

education>  > > from

becoming about learning how to critique and change

the status

quo.

Within the framework they established, the liberal left

looked to see

how they (we?) could still use education as an tool for

social

justice. The answer basically, from Head Start to

NCLB (the

Bush-era

policy) was to try to insure that children from

poor families

got

enough extra programs to help them compete with

middle-class

kids in

the world of testable knowledge/skills. I think

that is the

course

that Obama is still on. It seems likely to me that his

personal

experience would be telling him that kids in under-

resourced

communities go to school relatively unprepared for its

demands, and so

pre-school programs should be targeted to diagnostically

specific

needs relative to predictable school demands. That

how the

language of

the proposed bill sounds to me.

Politicians, senators, and even higher level staff people

probably

don't know much about learning theory and don't

have the time

to

learn. If it is theory or models that use

unfamiliar ideas,

all the

less likely to be able to persuade or communicate.

Neuroscience

evidence for early social learning or artifact-hybridity

in

development may as well be discourse from Mars in their

world.

National political policy I think cannot be realistically

expected to

embody advanced learning theories. That discourse

should have

its

practical effects far more locally, in terms of

what teachers

get

taught about good practice in schools, and maybe

what others

who are

trying to innovate new approaches to education that

go beyond

the

classroom-only paradigm take into account.

Apart from trying to avoid overly narrow language (and

more

importantly, administrative interpretation of

language) about

what

kinds of programs can get federal funding, I think

the core

issues at

the national policy level ought to be more about

goals. Equal

learning

opportunity in practice is a widely shared goal;

the means to

it are

much debated. What is less addressed, I think, is whether

knowledge

and skills acquisition should be in itself the primary

educational

goal. So long as that conservative principle is

maintained,>  > > social

equity goals will lead to bad educational practice

for all,

and

especially for those most in need.

Reading, for example, is NOT "fundamental". It is a

diversion>  > > from

serious educational thinking. (R.I.F. was a slogan long

supported by

the right, though not only by them.) Reading is a

tool, to be

learned

and used as part of larger inquiries and activities with

goals that

mean something to the learners. Those could be play

goals, or

self-

empowerment goals, or altruistic goals. So long as what

schools will

demand of kids on arrival is that they be prepared to

learn

decontextualized de-coding skills (i.e. "reading"),

and do

well on

tests of these that are even more isolated from

anything with

larger

meaning, then all pre-school preparation programs

will be

targeted at

preparing students for mindlessness. And social

equity and

social

justice agendas in social policy will support this.

It's not about the means. It's about the goals.

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093


---------------------------------------
Greg Thompson
Ph.D. Candidate
The Department of Comparative Human Development
The University of Chicago
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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +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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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
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http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
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http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca




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xmca mailing list
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