tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34703214.post3303251135777895175..comments2012-02-06T17:49:27.052-05:00Comments on The Magistrates Should Be Elected By The People: System infiltratedJohn & Danahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03005092986044913040noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34703214.post-6362326271652899262007-03-05T12:01:00.000-05:002007-03-05T12:01:00.000-05:00System wide change blah blah…destroy capitalism bl...System wide change blah blah…destroy capitalism blah blah blah…Teach For America is working within the constraints of the system because it realizes that rhetoric proposing some kind of revolution is pure masturbation. Sure overturning capitalism and meritocracy would be great, but it aint gunna happen any time soon. Capitalism and meritocracy are gaining strength. Considering the circumstances, an attempt to empower urban youth within the constraints of meritocracy is pretty admirable.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34703214.post-48518389621342893102006-10-29T14:31:00.000-05:002006-10-29T14:31:00.000-05:00To a certain extent, I agree with you enthusiastic...To a certain extent, I agree with you enthusiastically. In my (rather priveleged) educational past, I feel like I have learned most in situations that encouraged and facilitated deep dialogue. Even in my school days, I had a few teachers that integrated the kinds of experiences that you describe. However, integrating them to the extent that it becomes the foundation for a kind of pedagogy causes a few more issues.<br /><br />John Dewey underscored that education serves a "social" function -- or, to put it more accurately, that the individual and society should not be dichotomized, and that school serves as an important stage of the development of the relationship between the two. Furthermore, "learning by doing" (and dialogue is included in "doing") was among the fundamental aspects of his progressive education. At some point after World War II -- probably when the US realized that technology is important in a hostile world -- most schools de-emphasized progressivism in favor of more highly knowledge/skill-based learning.<br /><br />Dewey may be back these days -- somewhat, and selectively, in the more priveleged upper-middle-class schools -- but I hesitate to embrace it entirely, and not for the same reasons as mid-century theorists. Here's what I see: I see a world dominated by media, and although I disagree with those who would censor it, I also hesitate to rescind the "secular" but comfortable aspects of education. In other words, I worry that if education is, from the beginning, entirely built around dialogue with no agenda or influence at all, then children will have no choice but to be entirely influenced by the media, the opinions of hteir parents, and the realities of their lives, which can at times be very limiting, even in triune combination.<br /><br />Now I sound like I am disagreeing with myself -- after all, didn't I advocate for education being more closely linked with a "whole" identity? -- but I am not. However, I do feel that students require a basic foundation -- not of knowledge; that's obvious and trite -- of the opinions that they are expected to tout and argue. History, literature, political theory, and the like. Certainly, these need to be applied to the "real world," but the limited real world with which students have experience needs, well, to be supplemented. A brilliant lecture of my pet author (Pullman) advocated for a "literary school of morals," which is pretty similar... check out http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=113 if you're interested.<br /><br />Debate and "politics" should start early and often, but I think at first they should be highly limited in scope and much more facilitated. As a student's understanding, experience, and familiarity increase, so should the freedom of the dialogues.<br /><br />That's my two cents, anyhow.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34703214.post-63514973275799531362006-10-28T17:57:00.000-04:002006-10-28T17:57:00.000-04:00This idea of "meaning it" is interesting in that I...This idea of "meaning it" is interesting in that I think it very successfully moves beyond the problem you identify with current educational standards. If mainstream educational practice is hampered by its concern with quanitative measures of success, then this fostering of intent, belief, and intellectual passion seems its necessary opposite. <br /><br />With this said, I've always wondered, and perhaps you could provide insight, whether a way to further erase the dichotomy between teacher and student would be the introduction of politics to education in a fundamental way? I don't know how this would work pedagogically in elementary school, but certainly as students move through middle school and into highschool I wonder if "multiculturalism" and other "liberal" notions of a polyglot society might not neutralize the ability of students to become vested passionately in their academic work. <br /><br />An analogy would be the media: in order to risk offense (i.e. in order to make the most money by catering the largest sector of the population) the Western (and especially the American) media has pursued a doctrine of neutrality. This is visible when conservatives accuse the NY Times of being a liberal rag and vice versa with liberals and Fox News. <br /><br />My feeling has always been, well who cares? If I learned nothing from my years in academia, it was that everything is, in its last instance, political. There is no speech that doesn't imply a political sentiment. Wouldn't a better goal be the recognition of these latent political charges so that we might set them at each other and have a more propery dialectical and dialogical society? (Our current society avoids confrontation and ideological warring at all costs, unless of course it takes place within the narrow context of media sensationalism).<br /><br />That said, back to education: without using political terminology like "Democrat" and "Republican", couldn't teachers found their classrooms around debate? Put race on the table, socio-economic inequalities, religious differences. Not every child will be able to talk about these things with the same sets of language, but nor should every child. Children might even say something valued by society as racist or innapropriate. But should we be afraid of these things? If the teacher merely acts as the facilitator of these conversations, doesn't every child, regardless of their intellectual accuity or background have something to say about the fundamental problems of our society?<br /><br /><br />As a student, and I know I was a privileged student in every way imaginable, I always felt that a distaste for the education process stemmed from the transparency of the coddled environment in which learning took place. <br /><br />In this political model, higher standards refer to a student's ability to think about his or her own place in the world, not their ability to succeed on a test that has been thrust upon them by the powers-at-be in a world that is relentlessly excised from the school environment. I suppose then that what I'm really curious about is what happens if, in following with Freire's disintegration of student-teacher hierarchies, we also begin to disintegrate the colloquial distinctions between school and the "real world". No longer school as a preparation for some abstract future, but school as synonymous with the "world-out-there". <br /><br /><br />Of course, this would mean teachers and parents would have to become less afraid of the directions students might lead themselves. But if our fundamental value is the perpetuation of democracy than we can't be expecting a singular ideology to emerge from our education facilities anyway.<br /><br />Anyhow, a bit scattered, but, dammit, I always wanted to debate more in school about things I knew to be going on in the world.John & Danahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03005092986044913040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34703214.post-42125789294700078832006-10-28T01:38:00.000-04:002006-10-28T01:38:00.000-04:00This is wonderful, Di. I feel the same way. Oh, yo...This is wonderful, Di. I feel the same way. Oh, you've no idea how fucking annoyed and angry when people whine whine whine - not realising that by not DOING anything, they're part of the problem.Petrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06307132218427519103noreply@blogger.com