Andy,
I find your response to the exchange very unexpected. "after leaving a program what happens next is up to the person who was in the program??? How could one ever establish the effectiveness of the program to achieve a social impact on the basis of what the participants felt abouit the program.? Since I began working in ed research (1989) longitudinal studies are the only effective basis for establishing program effectiveness. Why should it be different in this case.
The fact that you continue struggling for social justice doesn't show anything about your formal education, and I'm sure you'd admit that this orientation required you to reject much of what you learned in school . What percentage of your childhood classmates are actively pursuing social justice today?
Paul
Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
This exchange about a really important topic is in danger of misfiring I think.
Could I put it this way: if I were to evaluate my own education I could
give it a score of 100% because at the age of 60 I am still working for
social justice as well as anyone I know. But given that I still live in the
same unjust capitalist society, I could give it 0%.
The ultimate aim of an educator is social change, but only _mediately_,
through the learners who have to do the actual social changing. Lois can
only measure the effectiveness of her work by the extent to which her
students have acquired a capacity for communicatively mediated
self-determination. The rest is up to them.
Andy
At 12:05 AM 19/02/2008 -0800, you wrote:
>Lois,
>
> I think any grade school teacher who helps a child expand his or her
> abilities does positive work in some senses but usually also helps
> reproduce the world-devouring capitalist systrem in other senses if by
> nothing more than encouraging the child to succeed in the terms of the
> system itself. . I don't believe that developing an
> individual's talents or abilitites, per se, leads to social change,
> social change comes from social agents, not individual. for me real
> transformation/develpment, at the individual and social levels, has to do
> with the social agent within the individual; that's my point about
> Freire's "situation limits" and Vygotsky's ZPD. I think, Martin's point
> about the lack of a class dimension in Vygotsky's analyses and theories
> needs serious consideration, if for nothing more than being somewhat
> realistic with oneself about what's being achieved through the
> applications of Vygotsky's theories in a society where class divisions
> (economic and
> political) have only increased since the late 70s.
>
> As far as you work I dont really have an opinion. Have you done any
> long term tracking studies, say 10 or 15 year followups,of the people who
> have passed through your programs . With thirty years of experience with
> these approavhes, you should have some good longitudinal material on
> which to evaluate what their contribution has been to society or even
> where they ended up individually. That's what I'd need to see to form an
> opinion.
>
> Paul
>
> Lois Holzman wrote:
> Thanks, Paul, for expanding on what you were thinking.
>How did we get to this moment in the conversation and what are we
>doing in having it?
>One place I'm coming from is that I do believe that the 30 years of
>work I've been involved with with inner city US kids has had a
>positive impact and that it is a variant of what Newman and I
>developed therapeutically, which is itself a variant on Vygotsky. Some
>people see it and agree and others don't. No problem. Maybe you are
>saying that whatever I and others are doing i(for example, the All
>Stars work with young people n the US that Dot mentioned I introduced
>her to, or what Volker mentioned in Serbia) doesn't or cannot count
>for you as transforming commodification or as development (because
>that can't happen in a capitalist country/a country becoming
>capitalist). Or maybe you're saying that it might, but it can't count
>as within the CHAT tradition. Or maybe you're saying that whatever it
>is, it's not something you are interested in talking about. Or maybe....
>It seems like you have some outside criteria for what counts as
>development and/or transformation and I don't. It's probably good to
>agree to disagree about that!
>Lois
>
>On Feb 14, 2008, at 3:36 PM, Paul Dillon wrote:
>
> > Lois,
> >
> > This response has been several days in gestation and since I
> > started it other posts have been made on the thread that I have't
> > read yet. But to finish . .
> >
> > Yes, you correctly identify the direction from which my comment
> > was made The phrase I used , "commodification of cuture" cocould be
> > simply reduced to "commodification" if we define culture as the
> > totality of artefacts as has been suggested recently on the list. I
> > agree with "most people" that the only the attempts to stop
> > commodification involve the development of socialist institutions,
> > but I disagree that socialism has failed. There are millions of
> > people throughout the world who still actively pursue the
> > construction of socialism, although not in the most privileged
> > country of the global capitalist system. There are four countries
> > in the Western Hemisphere whose governments (all democratically
> > elected) are actively pursuing the construction of socialist
> > societies. At the same time, the capitalist societies increasingly
> > face crises whose resolution isn't clear to anyone. Socialism, far
> > from having failed, is daily proving its viability: according to UN
> > statistics, Venezuela has reduced the percentage of those living in
> > poverty by 30% in the past 5 years. There is no other country in
> > the world that has ever achieved such a drastic reduction and it is
> > still in process.
> >
> > I think this is relevant to the discussion about "learning" and
> > "structure" in two senses:
> >
> > (1) Commodification, turning all artefacts into commodities, that
> > very special kind of artefact (a widget) whose goal is to generate
> > the greatest profit when exchanged in the market), necessarily
> > generates exploitation of humans and the natural environment,
> > perhaps for the simple reason that nothing qualitative of the human
> > or the environment remains reflected in the numbers on the stock
> > exchange that guide the way the capitalist society's labor and
> > resources are brought together in the day-to-day reproduction of the
> > society as a whole. I think that the fetishization/alienation
> > inherent in these social relations exists within every member of the
> > society and if not confronted, subordinate all individual
> > development within a logic of exploitation.
> >
> > (2) For me Vygotsky's concept of ZPD is related to Paolo
> > Freire's (following Jaspers) notion of "situation limits"; those
> > frontiers whose transcendence awakens the very person who learns,
> > awakens the learner. For Freire these situation limits are
> > precisely those in which the structures of exploitation are
> > confronted. In the countries that have been subordinated and
> > dominated to those countries in which capitalism emerged, the
> > political dimension of leanring, e.g., becoming literate, and the
> > social dimension of "development" are much closer to the surface
> > than in the central countries of the global system, especially the
> > USA. It's not comfortable to internalize that ones own entire
> > world depends on systematic exploitationd
> >
> > Development necesarrily involves a moral dimension that is socially
> > defined -- insofar as the morality (the norms) of the society
> > presupposes exploitation -- well, what exactly is being develooped?
> > For me the idea that individuals can be the authors of social
> > transformation simply has no empirical or theoretical basis. Wind
> > waves don't affect tides.
> >
> > AlthoughI am not really satisfied with this response to your post,
> > I'm sending it off, hopefully it's not totally incoherent.
> >
> >
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> > Lois Holzman wrote:
> > I think we're talking about different things, Paul, but I'll try
> > incorporating what I think is your topic into mine and see what gets
> > created.
> > The commodification of culture that is inherent in capitalism has been
> > going on for some centuries. Attempt to transform it (most attempts
> > people call socialism) failed, although some people think that it
> > slowed it down some. So on that level I can't point to anyone(s).
> > However, commodification is a process as well as a product, and from
> > that perspective, I think masses of people are, in different ways,
> > transforming the commodification of culture every day. I could give
> > instances, as I'm sure others here could, but I rather wait to see if
> > Im even coming close to addressing what you are raising.
> >
> > Lois
> >
> >
> > Lois Holzman, Director
> > East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
> > 920 Broadway, 14th floor
> > New York NY 10010
> > tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
> > fax 212.941.0511
> > lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
> > www.eastsideinstitute.org
> > www.performingtheworld.org
> > www.loisholzman.net
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Feb 11, 2008, at 8:44 PM, Paul Dillon wrote:
> >
> >> Lois,
> >>
> >> Please point out to me anyone who has transformed the
> >> commodification of culture or even slowed it down.
> >>
> >> Paul
> >>
> >> Lois Holzman wrote:
> >> Doesn't this "leave out" that determined as we are, we qualitatively
> >> transform that which determines us? And that includes the
> >> transformation of "the old" rather than a leaving behind?
> >> Lois
> >>
> >> On Feb 9, 2008, at 2:15 AM, Paul Dillon wrote:
> >>
> >>> The child's socio-historical context, made up of the specific set
> >>> of activity systems (fields) in which she or he will increasingly
> >>> participate, determines which sets of emotional, social, cognitive,
> >>> and motor competencies allow fuller, more central participation.
> >>> The assumption of new roles and leaving behind the old ones
> >>> certainly also requires all kinds of new emotional and social
> >>> skills.
> >>
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Received on Tue Feb 19 19:38 PST 2008
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