Thanks for a very interesting discussion. I'm trying to make sense of
different approaches expressed on the list. So far, I could abstracted
three. I want to apologize for possible distortion of participants'
views -- my intention is not to caricature people's view to win a dispute
but to honestly make sense so feel free to correct me. In my view, in our
discussion we have a clash or particularities and universalities in dealing
with unfortunate events involving our colleague Mary Daly.
1. "Market, libertarian" approach. This is how I'd characterize Jay's
eloquently expressed approach prioritizing rights and interactions of the
instructor and student.
>There were two traditional academic freedoms in the German
>universities from which our notions of these matters ultimately derive:
>Lernfreiheit and Lehrfreiheit. The first was the right of students to take
>the courses they pleased, to avoid professors they disliked or did not
>respect. The second was the right of the teaching faculty to teach anything
>they chose and do so in any manner they chose, no matter how bizarre. The
>two freedoms were in balance. Some lecturers had virtually no students;
>some students attended virtually no lectures.
I found myself very sympathetic with this approach because particularities
of instructor-student interaction is often ignored by educational
institutions running as big organizational machines. Jay describes a desired
state of the instructor-student relations as a voluntary contract. What
instructor and student would reject the situation when the student
voluntarily chose to be in class and the instructor voluntarily chose to
teach this student?! It is also very good for development of teaching
mastery in instructors. My observations in an innovative school in Utah
showed that it is extremely important for new inexperienced parent
volunteers to have right to choose to work with cooperative children and
avoid engaging in adversarial relations with kids with whom they can't work.
With time, successful working with cooperative kids makes parents more and
more skillful and comfortable to work with other kids.
I called this approach "market" because it is contract-based between the
teacher and the student like on "free market" between the consumer and the
producer. Like in any "market" approach, dyad as the unit of analysis can
produce a negative, undesired global pattern. For example, a friend of mine
who is a freelance music teacher for young children told me recently that
many "serious" music teachers who prepare kids for professional music
carrier prefer to work with Chinese kids who are known for their diligence
and industry and whose parents are very supportive to the teacher's
directions. She told that the tendency is so strong that it becomes
difficult to find a "serious" music teacher for a musically gifted
non-Chinese child in some areas of the country.
2. "Give oppressed groups extra favor, leftist" approach. This is how I'
describe Mary B.'s approach prioritizing access to a socially valuable
practice for formerly/currently oppressed social groups,
>My notion of a-a [Affirmative Action -- EM] is that an
>institution chooses to do something "special" and maybe ordinarily against
>the law for one group - on the basis of that group's established history of
>oppression. qua
>Mary Daly's pedagogy for women only is just such a strategy - to elect a
>context within which (research shows) girls and women learn better, that
>is, without males.
Yesterday on NPR, I have heard news that in South Africa there have been
ordered to have hiring quotes for black athletes in some areas of sport to
break historical cycles of exclusivity. As one (white) football (soccer?)
coach said in an interview, hiring quotes are bad but racial exclusivity is
even worse. It is clear that sometimes cycles of oppression can be broken
only by breaking some rules and principles that otherwise should not be
broken. Temporary and small scale violence and injustice can be sometimes
necessary to stop bigger violence and injustice.
Although I'm very sympathetic with the approach and agree that sometimes it
is the best one, I see at least two related issues with it. First, it can
easily ignore, neglect, and even sacrify human particularity for the sake of
abstract group historical justice. Second, it is left unbalanced: we have to
decide when "necessary" evil becomes just evil. Moreover, the problem is how
to make this decisions locally. Oppression is not only history but emergent
process.
3. "The same rights as guarantee of equality, Enlightenment" approach. I
refer this approach to Paul who wrote,
>Dr. Mary Bryson's message implied that the BC action occurred in an
>"anti-affirmative action" climate, that BC seized upon this climate to
carry
>out pest control. I'm confused. Mary Daly was engaged in an
>anti-affirmative action teaching practice by definition and law. The only
>difference being that the persons being discriminated against in this case
>happened to be male and not the other way around. But the definition
>doesn't specify equal access for females or any other particular group; to
>the contrary, it specifies that no particular group shall be the basis for
>exclusion.
>
>The law specifically doesn't protect the rights of any -ism but rather
>groups of individuals defined on the basis of a variety of cultural and
>genetic properties.
>
>Isn't the logic of claiming that BC's action partakes of (an by inference
>thereby is a part of) an anti-affirmative action climate a prime example of
>what George Orwell termed "double-think"?
This approach prioritizes having the same rights under law for all people.
This is a blueprint for an ideal just society -- having the same rights
would preclude from discrimination, exclusivity, and injustice. There is
also belief that justice is rooted in institutionalized relations regulated
by the law. If these relations are bended even locally, then a cancer of
injustice will soon spread over the whole society.
Despite its attractiveness because of its appeal to an ideal society, this
approach ignores history of injustice and particularity of human relations.
The same rights, as applied to local and specific conditions, may mean
different institutional relations. The same may mean different may mean the
same under some local and/or historical circumstances. Forced mixing all
social groups together may have different meaning and consequences for the
groups and their participants and may not led to justice but to different
type of oppression.
4. "Freedom with regulations, typical liberal" approach. As you may guess I
found sympathy to all the described approaches but can't subscribe to any of
them. Here is my own approach for your judgment. I'd prioritize access to
socially valuable practices to all the participants (formerly/currently
oppressed and not oppressed). Here I treat "access" not as a law or a right
for social group but as a meaningful way for participation captured in Jay's
approach. I agree with Jay that both students and instructors should have
right to choose with whom they want to work. However, these rights should
be limited by concerns of access. For example, in case of Mary Daly, I
think that if the male student had an opportunity to take a class on Women's
Studies from another professor or in some other way (e.g., as Mary Daly
suggested, to teach him one-on-one) then I do not see any problem with Mary
D. having all-women class (or anybody else having all-white males class).
As Mary B. eloquently explained, there is very good pedagogical reasons for
having all-women classes. However, the problem might have arisen if the male
student had not had an opportunity to study Women's Study because of the
all-women class arrangement (which was not the case). Thus, I don't believe
in "one size fits all" organizational approaches but in a regulated
contextual negotiation of local meanings. Of course, my approach has
probably many unforeseen negative consequences (e.g., it is complex), but so
far I can't find better one. I think we should promote pedagogical
diversification and experimentation in higher education (and not only
higher) while taking care about access to education for all students (which
I believe was in the case of Mary Daly).
I have read about the Mary Daly's case in the Chronicle of Higher Education
and was "back-and-forward" about my own position on the event. Thanks to
the XMCA discussion, I found a position that, at least now, I feel
comfortable. Thanks all the participants. I believe that all the
participants of the discussion strive for social justice and expressed very
real concerns even if we may passionately disagree with each other.
What do you think?
Eugene
----------------------
Eugene Matusov
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Office (302) 831-1266
Fax (302) 831-4445
email ematusov who-is-at udel.edu
Website http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/
-------------------------