Rachel wrote,
> Hi Eugene and list,
>
> The problem doesn't even reside in the teacher. The question is, who is
> actually defining the task?
I agree with your question that defines agency and, thus, responsibility
of/for actions.
>In most cases it isn't the teacher but the
> administrator. The administrator is defining it in terms of some other
> criterion, usually what will cause the students to get higher grades on
> standardized educational tests, and thus get the administrator a
> promotion, or at least keep him/her from getting fired.
Thus, it is not administrator either. The agency is distributed. After
Bruno Latour I like to think about this community of distributed agency for
actions as a network. The fascinating, but sad, feature of such a network
is that each individual member of network may hate the practice he or she
contributes as a part of the agency.
>And why a
> standardized test in the first place?
I think this is a very interesting question that requires historical and
ecological analysis. Like Phillip, I 'd like to know how "really school
work" without even taking assumption that schools are something to do with
education. It's a somewhat Latour's approach who decided to study science
as a "Martian anthropologist."
> Eugene, what do you see as being the "source metaphor" for Russian
> society? Maybe the "collectif?" Or something else?
>
Maybe, "community"?
Eugene