Re: Authenticity in education
Katherine Brown (kbrown who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Fri, 21 May 1999 09:47:03 -0700 (PDT)
I don't know if its a question of activities being authentic or not, they
are just configurations. Its a question of motives. If the motive for
the activity is not clear, shared, or breaking apart, then you have a
situation of pseudo-objects or truncated goals where there should be some
compelling force pulling people toward iteself.
Maybe if school children are motivated to go to school to see their friends
and adults want kids to go to school to learn how to comply with instructions
and authority, you're always going to have mixed motives. I alwys wondered
about the part of FOucault where he said we become our own jailers when we
internalize authroity or believe we are being scrutinized, compared with
the definition of development in Vygotskian theory about how the novice
is seen taking over more responsibility for the management of a task or
problem solving situation, regulating one's own behavior, orienting to
thigs that had to be pointed out, increasing sense of what is expected of
one (what the right answer is when talking to adults) vs. what you really
thing or really do....It seems to me that school is a place where children and
adults are swimming in a sea of mixed motives, and that its hard to imaging
everyone being on the same page in some idyllic authentic activity....
Half baked and maybe not going to rise...
Katherine bRown