Like Phil G., i feel a bit uncomfortable with both my own baggage (partly
functionalist, positivist) as well as with the new critiques/rhetoric.
Help me here or try to comment;
You wrote
>On the moral side, accepting responsibility for our participation also
>seems safe, but I have always thought that the moral condition for more
>active agency (i.e. pursuing an agenda) is at least vulnerability to the
>consequences of our actions.
When we seek to act so that "it" or "the
>other" is changed, but we are not, we are both deluded (because we cannot
>act on something/one but only act within some system/relation that joins us
>together), and also morally ill-intending because we seek to escape
>vulnerability and therefore to come to a position of being able to control
>without limit, without risk or hindrance by consequences ... i.e. to
>achieve an absolute position of power which corrupts absolutely.
>
>Perhaps in some such terms as these we can re-examine not only the various
>versions (in context) of what Marx, Levin, Dewey, Vygotsky, or Mao said and
>did, but what we ourselves do ... as educators, as researchers, as social
>activists, as parents, etc ....
>
>JAY.
My concern deals with an ethical dilemma previously discussed on the list
which is related to the above second paragraph. Bringing it to praxis, when
we attempt to deal with the massive inequality that dooms certain groups of
children (via changing the ways they are cultured, both in and out of their
immediate contexts), I think we are aware that we seek a bilateral change.
I think we are past the old let's change/fix them attitude now.
Eliminating the inequality in access and dev. of key literacy tools seems
to be one of the few ways available in diminishing the transmission of
poverty-related effects in a capitalist context where a small group owns
most of the wealth anyway. In so doing, are we really deluded in thinking
that success in such goals won't change us or the system/relations? I think
we do know it will change the us/them relations over time and that is
precisely what the goal is (a meritocracy but only after dev. of the
cultural line is made more even).
I think the progressivist social scientist intends that change, with one of
the consequences being increased competition for the latter's offspring in
the future, as caste-like barriers (forged by literacy differentials) are
removed.
So, like Phil, I feel this discussion to be leading to a sort "let's not do
x because it implies a y stance etc. and a sort of let's beware of trying
to change a social condition lest we fall prey to the Ugly intervening
American syndrome etc.
Jay's statement above would suggest that as long as we are not deluded that
we are not changed or affected in changing "it", we may resume some modern
progressivism.Maybe that is just my interpretation. Perhaps a way to deal
with the problem here is to get past the delusion of us/them..
To intervene or not to intervene? to act or not to act? I constructed
Mike's stance last Spring (AERA)as an " act locally (with your own us),
think globally" stance. That is one way. It seems to me that we are acting
anyway, even when we do not admit to changing it, we are acting not to
change it. What do you think?
pedro
Pedro R. Portes,
Professor of Educational %
Counseling Psychology
310 School of Education
University of Louisville
Fax 502-852-0629
Office 502-852-0630
Web at louisville/~prport01 (under construction)