nate eugene, and others,
I have been reading this chain of thought, and it was nate's mention of
the reference to the stupid teachers than spurred this all, that first
stupid and ignorant are different - ignorance is willful; stupidity is a
lack of depth, a contentedness with appearances and surfaces - not bad or
good - but different.
and there are stupid teachers and stupid students with way high GPAs,
and there all kinds of einsteins on the street bumming quarters; stupidity
is satisfaction with what seems to be. seems to be straight A's. GPA Rules.
...of course, a GPA means they are good students -
just as teachers can get good GPAs and still be stupid.
these are not epistemological evaluations, so it isn't actually about stupidity.
frankly, something as structural like syllabi, contained in the same space
as the imprecision of sponteneity are like atoms smashing in the
accelerator - i mean, that could be brilliant or stupid, depending on what
is valuable to the folks who are looking.
as far as smarts and stupids and education, thought, isn't it time to admit it?
the romance is over and the relations have changed...?
Rousseau is dead; Sophie is a physicist; Emile is a drag-Queen
And really, really, Democracy is a tyranny of mediocrity that thrives in
its own reproductive banality and
wretches in its own excess.
and _that's_ the stupidity. how do you make calculus matter when entire
genocide doesn't matter? there is no value to human life: what could
possibly matter anywhere, when there is no ethic of acting as human beings
with each other?
Maybe i will differentiate what's stupid
and what's ignorant?
Shoshana Felman (1987)_Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight:
Psychoanalysis and comtemporary culture_ (Harvard Univ. Press)
Felman
writes two invaluable chapters for educators,
(and Felman writes intelligible and readable text:)
Ch. 3: "What difference does psychoanalysis make? Or, the Originality of
Freud;"
and Ch. 4: Psychoanalysis and Education."
In the latter, Felman makes a compelling case to support the sociocultural
implications of ontology and epistemology collapsing (e.g., identity is
knowledge = we are Who by What we Know, which is what we recall, remember,
revive, renew, and by constantly letting go of old knowledge so that
learning is always happening, she said thinking she might puke with the
sappines).
So: "...ignorance is linked to what will not be remembered, what will not
be memorized...[which is] tied up with
repression, the imperative to forget..."
- this alludes to more than "how-to" make this idea/concept stick;
but asks instead: what associations make it necessary to forget?
Lacan goes on, "Ignorance is not a passive state of absence, a simple lack
of information: it is an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of
information." (Felman, 79)
In a relation that cuddles up nicely with Foucault's power/knowledge
traces, Lacan (ya he was demented, sure, but not without his moments of
insight) also writes that the
phenomenon of transference, (where a person transfers her relational issues
to the person/object with whom she is confiding/interacting) is inseparable
from a transference with
knowledge:
that is, knowing provides the same function as psychoanalytic transference,
which is the opportunity to interpret one's own language and symbols,
where knowledge provides responses, metaphors, options, allegories,
history, fiction, characters, scenarios, ... visceral/organic relations
with historical Others who wrote/write - all with the desire/need to
understand.
so, the transference is to the object/and(or/author of knowledge; it is
sought for understanding, it is sought with the intuitive need for a
relation with an other in order to understand; and without understanding,
one cannot move on...
wittgenstein, i believe, also who claimed no one could move
forward without understanding - and understanding took place in a kind of
linguistic crisis, or turning point where meanings are potentially open to
the instant of the need for that word; essential and terrifying; but as one
moves to understand, it remains possible to move on
Lacan writes that as he sees the need to "...to support the idea of
transference, as indistinguishable from love, with the formula of the
subject presumed to know [e.g., the client with repressed unconscious
knowledge/student who refuses to learn], I cannot fail to underline the new
resonance with which this notion of knowledge is involved. The person in
whom i presume knowledge to exist thereby acquires my love...transference
is love... it is love directed towards, addressed to, knowledge." (In
Felman: 86)
there are many bright/brilliant/transcendently visionary/life-changing
educators out there; and there aren't; there are also people who have no
idea
what schooling is about, and refuse/ignore the issues that children/youth
must contend with.
(A young would-be teacher asks me what to do about homophobia if she
doesn't believe in homosexuality...and all i can think is she isn't even
thinking about what she is asking - she isn't thinking. Teacher? NOT.Will
she be? YA!! Blond haired, blue-eyed Christian girl, sweet as all get out -
Stupidity: it is a looking that does not see, eyes skim the surface of
things already seen and remembered; it is the teacher who ignores the kid
who just growled "fag!" at the hall monitor;
it seems like all we know is that to teach is not to reverse the inverted
trajectory of how to learn.
but we are guessing about learning, so -
just thinking aloud, as usual.
gracias,
diane,
p.s. i'm sure i've told y'all the joke about the speed of stupid.
ha ha.
""""""""""""""""""""""" """""""""""""""""""""""""""""
When she walks,
the revolution's coming.
In her hips, there's revolution.
When she talks, I hear revolution.
In her kiss, I taste the revolution.
(by Kathleen Hanna: Riot Grrl)
******************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia
faculty of graduate studies,
centre for the study of curriculum and instruction,
vancouver, british columbia, canada
email: dchodges who-is-at interchnage.ubc.ca