Rachel, I think you are right that some philosophy statement can help
clarify what xmca try not to be. Your sad message reminds me again how much
mainstream educational institutions in the US (and in many other places) are
oppressive. I feel very sorry. I want to try to learn how to avoid harming
my students. Your message is very helpful for this.
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rachel Heckert [mailto:heckertkrs@juno.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 5:22 AM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: Re(2): Discourse structures & Confused in California
>
>
> Diane and list:
>
>
> >what would constitute a "failure" in posting to this list? I mean, it
> >seems like you are suggesting that a fear of failure is what prevents
> >lurkers from posting. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding...?
> >
> You got it! That's exactly what I'm saying. Evaluation anxiety, fear of
> looking foolish - "what if someone who winds up on my dissertation
> committee reads this and thinks I'm an idiot." "Failure" has as many
> definitions as there are people - times the number of situations in which
> each person feels they can be critically evaluated. And how our society
> has set up education so that the fear of failing is so constantly
> grinning over the student's shoulder!
>
> I'm pretty weird for a grad student, being past the half century mark
> and older than some of my professors, but I can hear a lot of this coming
> from my under-thirty fellow students, who are looking at life-times made
> or marred by a bad committee, a dissertation topic which turns out (after
> two years) to be unresearchable, and just general free-floating dread.
> For me being in school is a shot at a second life, no one in my
> department but me has ever heard of xmca (only one has heard of Mike
> Cole) and I can give my middle-western informality free rein. But what
> about all those for whom the stakes are too high to risk?
>
> >Do you mean suggestions about content, or are you asking if there is
> >an
> >implicit protocol in the discussions?
>
> There are always implicit protocols - some stricter, some more
> permissive. (I get the feeling that xmca has one of the more permissive
> ones.) Some guidance as to what people are already doing in terms of
> protocols (NOT content) could give a lot of lurkers the courage to take
> the jump. Once in, it becomes easier to experiment and innovate/create.
>
> An additional possibility: some lurkers may lurk because they have
> expressed creative/nonconforming thoughts in the past and been punished
> for it. An assurance that xmca is lurker-friendly could bring them -
> with some very worth-while ideas - out from behind the bushes.
>
> Rachel
>