Re: Yrjo's challenges

Rolfe Windward (rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu)
Mon, 30 Sep 1996 10:56:13 -0700

Jay's discussion allows some reconstruction of how an ecosocial hybrid zone
-- a place where patches overlap -- can be conceptualized as a potentially
strong place of inovation. The hybrid "species" that can arise in such zones
are often more robust than the parent populations yet if one of the parent
patches is damaged in some way, the zone can simply collapse and all the
hybrids with it. I don't think there is a hard and fast rule to this though
(sometimes the hybrids survive and found a new colony). The children in
Hoeg's story, which I have yet to read, seem to have formed such a zone yet
its existence is utterly contingent upon both themselves and the place where
they are situated (as cold as the school is, they would not have been
brought together without it). The notion of a patch seems to work better
here than the notion of niche -- there are artifacts and other elements that
as yet have no link to an associated practice in the hybrid zone, that are
not yet even recognized as important or perhaps even recognized at all (but
whose presence will latter prove crucial as they are "misused").

But what was just as striking to me was, from Yrjo's description, the
opportunity this cold place opened up for romantic imagination: light or
dark, it is something without which adolescents would seem half naked. I
believe it was Kieran Egan who investigated a number of studies (both
qualitative and quantitative; N. American I think) and developed a synopsis
of what appeared to be important affective themes for children aged 8-15. I
can't remember them all but it included a ready willingness to
associate/sympathize with the transcendent or heroic, the exotic or extreme,
the awesome and the intensely human, situations in which limits could be
seen (and tested) -- all narrative types that could recursively build and
sustain a virtually inexhaustible willingness to investigate just about
anything, particularly if an injustice appeared to be involved. As Ana I
think points out, this is not separable from discovery -- it is part and
parcel of what discovery must mean. Peter did not start with a strong
"motivation" to do anything, only a little germ of an itch -- why was August
at Biehl's Academy?

Rolfe Windward [UCLA GSE&IS: Curriculum & Teaching]
e-mail: rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (Text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
70014.0646 who-is-at compuserve.com (text/binary/GIF/JPG)