At 09:28 AM 8/11/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Mike said: I am not sure about phlogiston, Andy, ... well it's a pretty
>convincing idea actually, much more convincing than the idea of stuff
>combining with oxygen and blowing away on the wind, while onlookers are
>heated by electromagnetic radiation.
>
>Mike said: I'll be interested in your thought on Carol's ideas.
It's 25 years since I taught school Mike, and in those days I knew
absolutely nothing. I simply couldn't grasp the fact that the ghetto kids
in London that I was trying to teach math to had no idea what I was talking
about. Pity I didn't read this article then! Pity also about the New Maths
that was fashionable in those days which really made the job impossible
anyway. But I notice that Carol places no confidence in Nature as a source
of knowledge rather than cultural artefacts such as images, narratives and
language.
I am inclined to reflect on a couple of things not squarely dealt with by
Carol: (i) the extent to which the operation of computer screens is itself
a culture-specific activity, (ii) the extent to which the physical
environment in which the learning activity is located can/ought to be
treated in the same way, (iii) the fact that urban classrooms are usually
(in Oz anyway) *multi*-cultural rather than *other*-cultural, (iv) the idea
of canonical texts vs culturally-specific texts.
(i) Carol seems to take it for granted that placing, for example, the story
of slavery in a hypertext environment takes a step forward, relative to
say, a story having its roots in colonialism being presented in a hard copy
book. I am inclined to think that this is justified (as an amateur I can
only guess). In a sense, the computer screen is becoming a kind of
"canonical text" in itself. Everyone, whether from the dominant cultural
group, from an excluded minority or in a far-flung part of the world beyond
the world wide web, needs to gain access to the talk going on through
computer screens, in exactly the same way that the old classical education
gave people access to the Greek and Roman classics, in order to be able to
participate in the dominant discourse of the day. So even where, say, a kid
may come into the classroom from a home with no computer or internet
connection, and teaching by keyboard itself poses a barrier - so would a
book most likely. The anecdotal evidence I hear is that young people know
how to use screens almost from whatever background they come from ...
because they have to. I think this is implicit in Carol's article, but I
think it is a justified assumption.
(ii) the physical environment is not touched on by Carol but partially
implicit in the use of computers, and it is the part of the picture which
is my professional area. Eugene Matusov is the only person I have heard of
(I'm sure there are others) who has tackled the issue of the cultural
preconditions to learning implicit in the classroom design. The challenge
is to kind of re-write Carol's text inserting the relevant point about
physical environment in lieu of the point about the learning artefacts.
Let's take it that enabling the use of culturally-variable artefacts are a
good thing, that such artefacts should be used in classroom interaction,
and can be facilitated by use of computers in the classroom. One could look
at the kind of interactions that are normal in different cultures and the
physical design necessary to support them. The conclusion would have to be
that if computers are going to be used, they have to be made as unobtrusive
and "optional" as possible. I don't know. This is difficult. The other
train of thought is the need to investigate how kids use computers together
when they are out of school. They too are limited by the same physical
constraints built into the computers, but how do they try to collaborate
with computers? Computers aside, I guess the implication would be to have
classrooms that resemble street corners and cafes, wouldn't it? I have
always assumed that I should try to make classrooms really, really,
attractive places, that kind of say to the kids: "We really care about your
education, so we've made your classroom as well appointed as the
principal's office". I wonder, is that correct? Some people say "This
classroom is just like the cafe down the road where you hang out". How can
the physical environment foster critical or meta-cultural thinking? Maybe
just having architectural designs which are really off-beat and in some way
give a physical/architectural expression to the learning activity being
organised in the room, encourages kids to reflect on their own activity? I
don't know.
(iii) The fact that a 30-seat classroom may contain representatives of 20
cultural backgrounds is challenging I guess for anyone. I don't know if
this is the circumstance that Carol had in mind. What is the upshot of
giving a group of Cambodian kids a text about slavery in America? Isn't
there also, though, an element of trying to get away from the unitary
definition of a single dominant culture, whereby maybe teaching Cambodian
refugees about the slave trade and its cultural impact in the US does help,
but for different reasons than those outlined by Carol?
(iv) This is the argument about whether the purpose of education is to
introduce people to critique of canonical (classical) texts, or to
introduce people to "world literature", the problem, if you like, that
Shakespeare wrote in Elizabethan English not AAEV, and even speakers of
Urdu want to study Shakespeare. I am inclined to side with Carol. People
have to first get up to the point of thinking about their own thinking
before they can begin to critique Shakespeare. Critiquing Shakespeare is
not necessarily the best route to gaining an insight to one's own
personality. I actually really liked the point in Carol's article about
what a wonderful thing it is for a kid when they, for the first time, get
an insight into the way they think themselves. This is something that is
only available to them through the literature of their own culture. After
that, access to the literature and ideas of other cultures is available to
them.
Andy
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