Rachel wrote,
> Another example could be the taboo on touching students which is now
> accepted even in kindergarten, although touch is one of the most powerful
> forms of interpersonal communication, particularly for younger,
> less-verbal children. If there's the least possibility that the teacher
> might do something to get the institution in trouble the blanket
> prohibition is put into effect.
I saw in Delaware public elementary schools black boys are often punished
for "touching" other students. My colleague from Spain Pilar Lacasa
recently visited Delaware classrooms with me and was very surprised with
this "no touching" policy. I think it is especially difficult for Latin and
African-American cultures.
Also we found that it is a much bigger issue for male preservice teachers
(very few that we have). "No touching" policy is much less severe for
female teachers than for male.
I absolutely agree with Rachel that young kids even from white middle-class
mainstream communities ask for teacher's close contact and expect it from
the teacher. Child abuse paranoia the US gets it toll on human
communication.
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rachel Heckert [mailto:heckertkrs@juno.com]
> Sent: Monday, May 31, 1999 4:30 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: Expert and novice: Tales for 5th Dim
>
>
> >I observed some seasoned students in our Le Red Magica project in
> Delaware,
> >when sensitive guidance meant to wait until a child asks for help. I
> know it is confusing >but the most generalizing statement about how to
> help kids involving in afterschool >activities is "it depends."
>
> I think Eugene is getting to the heart of one of the problems of our
> current "education" - the need to find the one, correct, idiot-proof
> answer/solution after which the teacher (or anyone else) can simply stop
> thinking, ignore the context, and proceed on auto-pilot with guaranteed
> results.
>
> There seems to be a basic distrust of the individual and his/her judgment
> underlying a lot of our current thought about methodology. The use of
> the significance level in psychological experiments as a judge of whether
> the findings are worth bothering with or not is another symptom of this.
> The use of a cut-off, formula, script or other "closed" way of making a
> supposedly fool-proof choice is one of the sources of our current
> impasse. Witness the mindless use of the IQ score. Toulmin explores
> some of the historical roots of this in "Cosmopolis" but it seems to me
> that another source of its current dominance is the need to make
> criticism-proof administrative (and class-room) decisions. If you follow
> the script, then your mistakes aren't "yours," but the fault of the one
> who wrote the script. (Whether the kid learns or not - but who cares
> about the kid? He/She will be replaced by another identical unit next
> year anyway.)
>
> Another example could be the taboo on touching students which is now
> accepted even in kindergarten, although touch is one of the most powerful
> forms of interpersonal communication, particularly for younger,
> less-verbal children. If there's the least possibility that the teacher
> might do something to get the institution in trouble the blanket
> prohibition is put into effect.
>
> This may be the land of individualism, but as Francis L.K. Hsu pointed
> out many years ago, the most extreme forms of individualism paradoxically
> lead to the most extreme forms of conformity.
>
> Rachel Heckert
>