[Xmca-l] Re: Critical Early Learning

["Dr. Paul C. Mocombe" <pmocombe@mocombeian.com>]

Mike that is a brilliant question that I have been struggling with since the earthquake that hit my country of haiti since 2010.  I have come to question everything about my academic bourgeois training, and the psychological violence by which the west forged my identity since I was 6 years old. Fortunately,  the brutality of my Western training, which looked down upon my culture and people, was counterbalanced by the vodou ethic and spirit of communism of my illiterate grandmother who upon me entering grad school told me, "no matter what you learn in those white schools...remember that you are haitian and who and what you will become comes from bondye and will be in the service of black people." 

Contemporarily, the haitian government is pushing education as the solution to haiti's problems.  I disagree.  For me it is part of the problem.  It is the violent means by which we are brought into the dialectic of the capitalist world-system, which begs the question is there a liberating educational pedagogy?  I disagree with Paulo Freire by the way.


Dr. Paul C. Mocombe
President
The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc.
www.mocombeian.com 
www.readingroomcurriculum.com 

-------- Original message --------
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> 
Date: 11/28/2013  2:04 PM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> 
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Critical Early Learning 
 
This question is way late.... interest in discussing Paul and colleagues'
paper appears to have died out.

Martin sent us a paper that I take to be part of his "changing classes"
book project. In it he makes the following comment (the whole paper was
interesting to me).

*The developmental processes in school involve ontological change--change
in the kind of person a child becomes--and increasing this is becoming a
“relationalist ontology” as rationalization [of schooling] has its effect.*

I am still early in the process of learning to get with the "ontological
turn"
in Anthropology that Latour discussed at the Anthro meetings recently.
So mostly I am full of questions and uncertainties.

Here is one.  It has been fashionable for some time to talk about identity
formation in relation to ontogenetic development. In that way of talking,
I would translate the phenomenon "change in the kind of person a child
becomes" as "change in the child's identity as function of schooling" or
some such phrase.

What violence does such a translation create? Identities are "kinds of
people" and "kinds of entities in the world" is, I think, what ontology is
about.

mike

PS-- I recommend the article!



On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:

> Looking back through old files I found a chapter I wrote over 10 years ago
> exploring some of these issues. In case some of you have nothing better to
> do on a three-day weekend I'm attaching it.
>
> Martin
>