To respond to Jay and Mike:
(1) I agree with Jay Lemke's reminding us that we should try to
understand other people's perspective: i.e., why does "back to basics"
have such a growing appeal in North America now? (That's why I said
earlier that Edouard's reply is to the point, but perhaps too pessimistic
and not responding to practical questions...sorry Ed, but I do understand your
feelings about many people's "conception of learning", which you find so
frustrating; so do I...)
In Toronto, we're constantly bombarded by discourses in the media such as
these: e.g., look at the math/science skills of children in Japan, Hong
Kong, Korea... they're far ahead of our national standards!
Well, the thrust behind this "looking to the East" is, I suspect, due to
the growing economic prosperity and development in the Pacific these
days, and the relative economic stagnation in N. America...
(2) As someone having gone through the whole educational system in Hong
Kong (from kindergarten to graduate school), and as someone coming from
the "grass roots" (the working class), I know only too well what it means
to have a labor-market-driven curriculum...
Yes, I believe education should respond to practical life needs: to help
the child to enter society, to at least to be able to get a job, to
survive, if not to have socio-economic advancement!
But Jay, I must say, you're too idealistic: no, the labor market very often
doesn't want all children to have "equal chances" of becoming executives,
managers, white collar middle class salary-earners, not to mention artists,
writers, poets, philosophers, physicists, educators...
No, most often than not, the capitalist labor market wants CHEAP,
EFFICIENT, OBEDIENT, EASY-TO-CONTROL, TECHNICAL, workers with
literacy of the "basics", so to speak...
This is the labor force Hong Kong's economic success is built on, this is
where the capitalist business lords' power has come from and will
continue to want to reproduce through the educational system: to produce
just that kind of labor force who knows the "basics" and nothing more...
And then of course, they have a small no. of elite middle and upper class
schools where all the non-basics, all the beautiful liberal educational
activity-approaches, inquiry-approaches are used and the results: beautiful:
great students conversant in langauges, in math, science, and they are
capable of much much more than the basics...
(3) Well, all I'm trying to say is it's difficult to get behind the
beautiful discourses of "back-to-the-basics": superficially they mean
helping the working class/ the minorities to get the capital to survive
in society; but I suspect that behind all these beautiful discourses is
the labor market/or the need for the reproduction of different
kinds of labor force for different sectors of the economy.
(4) So, to really want to help the working class, one would go beyond
the "back-to-the-basics" discourses and to explore what every human being
is entitled to: an education that helps one to survive in this cold,
practical world, and yet also an education to help one to find her/his own
worth not in the "money", the "job" one can get in the labor market, but in
one's personal, cultural, historical potential to help build a better
society, a fairer, a more humane, less materialistic society where one's
worth is not measured in terms of your income or your occupation status...
(5) I'm not saying the current progressive models are without problems,
either; they tend to serve those with the initial capital to benefit from
those approaches; but that doesn't mean "back-to-the-basics" is the
solution, either...
(6) So, what're we left with? Oh, well, that's the greatest challenge!
isn't it? It's easy to go to one camp; it's always difficult to steer a
sober middler course?
Alright, don't call me an idealist, folks... I'm not; no one from Hong
Kong can afford to be an idealist... you'll be starved to death sooner
than you realize! I'm just trying to stay human in a world of deadening
materialistic/capitalist-labor-market-driven values!
Sorry for the long message...
Angel
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Angel M.Y. Lin
Doctoral Candidate
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
E-Mail: MYLIN who-is-at OISE.ON.CA
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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When ... we stand face to face in the cyber space? ...
--Adapted from: The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
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