Knowing ourselves as instructors

One thing I liked about this text is that it raises problems I can identify with and gives practical advices to deal with certain situations:

• I have been ashamed and embarrassed byt the attitude or behavior of members of my social groups (p. 465)

• I have been made aware of certain biaises of mine (for instance, re: french-canadian accent), but I realize that it is very difficult to even identify one's own biais independently (p. 467): "Greater self-knowledge...can give us more options when responding in thoughtful ways when conflicts arise"

• I am troubled and concerned about the idea of responding to biaised comments in the classroom (pp 468-469) . I noticed that biais is often expressed in a humorous way and I believe this negative humor may mean to relieve tension and nervousness when certain topics are alluded to. How can you be clear enough to identify it and decide wether addressing it or not (sometimes making a big deal out of something only brings negative attention to the "perpetrator"), assertive enough to address it if needed, flexible enough to have some impact on the "perpetrator," and not turn them off to the whole thing: their contribution matters and they deserve our full interest: "An appreciation for the process people go through in developing awareness about oppression." And most importantly, the point about: "Why am I so annoyed at this person?" (p. 469). Isn't it hard to not show your feelings? The article refers to the "challenge" of maintaining "openness to both our own internal process and to what maybe going on for our students," (p. 470), but also advices to "disclose my own uncertainties to students," but what if I am just really p.o?

• Thus, I really like the "time out (for all) idea, with written response (p. 473)

• My favorite part in the text: "We are in many ways texts for our students... In some respects, we are both the messenger and the message...Self-disclosure is an important part of this process and one of the most powerful ways of teaching is through modeling the behavior we hope to encourage in others" (p. 474). This reminds of b. hooks' comment about Freire's immediate positive response to her femininist criticism at the conference, and how just this point transformed her understanding of him. I, too, feel that the way I present myself, address students, issues, respond or not, everything is part of my message as a teacher.
  

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Ellsworth short bio

I forgot to post this bio from the faculty directory at The New School, NYC, where it seems that Ellsworth is now teaching. Interestingly, a comment at the end confirms Jane's comment about time and space (bold).

Elizabeth Ellsworth Core Faculty, Department of Media Studies and Film

(Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) Research and teaching areas include film and media theory and criticism, history and criticism of documentary film, film and social change, uses of media to teach about and across social and cultural difference. Formerly Professor of Educational Communications Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; she also has taught as Visiting Professor in the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Programs at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has published extensively, producing five books including Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address (Teachers College Press, 1997). Her current work draws from architecture and media studies to address issues of time, space, and place in mediated learning environments. As a consultant to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and the Illinois Institute of Design, she has worked as a pedagogical designer and user experience researcher.

Some interesting sites:
www.genderwatchers.org/Women'sPubs.htm: lists a number of feminist/gender journals & magazines
www.womenandperformance.org is a journal of feminist theory which features aritcles on performance from interdisciplinary perspectives
www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/Development+Support/pedagogy-biblio.html, a bibliography of feminist pedagogy
www.library.ucsb.edu/subjects/blackfeminism/ed_phil.html#top, a bibliography of black American feminists

The Struggle for Pedagogies- Jennifer Gore
- Gore's classification and comparative study of critical and feminist pedagogues is helpful, and especially the small diagram p. 48. She differentiates critical pedagogues (Freire and Shor) from critial pedagogues (Giroux and McLaren), and feminist pedagogues (Women's studies strand interested in "how and what to teach," p. 20) from feminist pedagogues (Education scholars interested in "how gendered knowledge and experience are produced," p. 26)
Gore really keeps CP and men, and FP and women separated (p. 47)
- Gore introduces the term of radical pedagogy. I would like to know how radical pedagogy differs from critical pedagogy. This website: http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/RED_FEATHER/radped/026RadPedBib.htm has a bibliography of RP that includes Freire...
- Gore criticizes CP and provides a review of Ellsworth's (pp. 34-35) own criticism of CP.

Why doesn't this feel empowering?- Elizabteh Ellsworth
As I understand, her main argument to deconstruct CP is its rationalism. Ellsworth explains that CP is based on rationalist assumptions (pp. 303-304): The critical pedagogue hopes and expects students to "arrive logically at the universally valid proposition (that all people have a right to freedom of oppression...)" Yet, according to Ellsworth, the ideas of an ideal rational person and a universal proposition ARE oppressive precisely to those students that are marginalized and whom critical pedagogues attempt to address: "non-European, white (which she always capitalizes), male, middle-class, Christian, able-bodied, thin, heterosexual", p. 304 (sounds like another version of SCWAMP). Thus critical pedagogues are "always implicated in the very structures they are trying to change" (p. 310), and by failing "to examine the implications of the gendered, raced, and classed teacher and student (...), they reproduce, by default, the category of generic "critical teacher," which she claims is "not generic at all."
Ellsworth presents femininist post-structularism as a better alternative for "explaining the intersections and interactions among relations of racism, colonialism, sexism..." (p.304)
I like her term: "students and professor of difference" (p. 310) to define professors and students who belong to the marginalized, subcultural groups (across race, class, gender and other, p. 311)

Interesting point: "What got said- and how- in our class..., was a product of highly complex strategizing for the visibility that speech gives without giving up the safety of silence...a highly complex negotiating of the politics of knowing and being known." (p. 313): The importance of trust, risk, fear and desire around issues of identity and politics int he classroom for students and also teachers. Ellsworth says: "Acting as if our classroom were a safe space in which democratic dialogue is possible an dhappening did not make it so." (p. 315). She advocates creating opportunities for meetings and social encounters of students and teachers outside of the classroom, and emphasizing the natural formation of affinity groups among students:, "friendship" (pp. 316-317), as "classroom practice."
Last sentence by Ellsworth: I wand to know how this looks and sounds...Examples?

Kincheloe: CP strikes back at the Empire

This article is very dense. Does this mean CP is too? I found the article fascinating. CP reaches every aspect of everything. My summary:

• Education "is" always already' within dominant ideology

• The age of science rules educational policy

• Education is one tool for the American Empire to reproduce itself indefinitely

But CCP can help:

• create awareness of the dominant ideology among its subjects (counter indoctrination since "Education simply can't be neutral" p. 11),
  

• recognize ALL students of ALL groups ("Here critical teachers make use of this knowledge not to "save" marginalized students-"poor, non-English as first language, gay, lesbian, and bisexual, physically challenged, nonathletic, non-white, overweight, shy, and short" p. 24- but to provide a safe space for them and to learn with them about personal empowerment, the cultivation of the intellect, and the larger pursuit of social justice." (p. 25), with as central concern the "alleviation of human suffering" (p. 12)
  

• offer a message and tools of resistance (" Such resistance is accomplished not only by speaking in gender terms about race, class, sexual, and colonial opporession. The curriculum of CP "names names." p. 35
  

• understand and redefine the concept of knowledge constructed and based on teacher research (action research)
  

My thoughts:
-Kinchloe talks about teachers developing a pedagogy and "constructing a political vision" (p. 9) but he rarely uses the term philosophy. His view is definitely political, but aren't the values we base our praxis on also philosophical and spiritual, deeper than political?

I need examples for:
- the teacher researcher who "studies students as living texts to be deciphered" (p. 20)
- such teachers..."build deep relationships with local communities... (p. 33) -on their free time?-
- "Complex critical scholars and cultural workers maintain that we must possess and be able to deploy multiple methods of producing knowledge of the world" (p. 37)

I agree with kincheloe and I am sold to the idea of transformative action and cultivation of the intellect as a goal of education AND I want to know how Kincheloe suggest we can engage not just the individuals who are marginalized and exploited to be empowered, but also the privileged ones to participate "in a rigorous empowering education" and in a "more equitable distribution of wealth (theirs)" (p. 34) ?

I see the beginning of a response to Lesley's question about banking being ever an option with this citaton of Freire: " No teacher is worth her (wow!) salt who is not able to confront students with a rigorous body of knowledge" (p. 21).

Lastly, if time I would like translation of the last paragraph, 1st column p. 36 (deterministic)
And oh yes, I really LIKED the glossary.

Pedagogy of the oppressed, Freire and bh

Freire's:
I liked reading a different part of Freire's Pedagogy o. t. Oppresses, that gives a detailed description of the both the banking and problem posing education systems.
Keywords: oppression, alienation, passive, reactionary, individualism & isolation/consciousness, emancipation, active, liberation, humanization, revolutionary, fellowship and solidatity
Strangely, (in relation to bh's reference to it, this work IS based on a binary.
My favorite themes:
1- the idea of consciousness of consciousness of consciousness (reminds me of a larger version of mnetacognition) p. 63.
2- The marxist foundation of haves-haves not in relationship to being (men only, though!) p. 67
3- "The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination (Patriot's Act?) and repression (Guantanamo Bay?), carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (Irak war?)" p. 62. How can this not "hail" us in our 2006 american reality?
bell hooks: Teaching to transgress:
I noted right from the beginning of Freire's reading (p.58) the absence of "women:" Ex: (end of 1st paragraph) ... hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world" and I gringed.
Little did I know that most of bh's interview with GW was all about that!
As I said in a comment to Jane's blog, I admire bh for being able to embrace PF's theory in spite of his exclusion of "women" as oppressed, from his discourse, although at the end of the interview I can see how spending such rewarding personal time with him may have helped.
Interesting: comment on early feminism begin a prerogative of "white bourgeois sensibility" (p. 52)
My favorite part: (p. 55, 2nd column, 2nd half of bh's answer): "Truthfully, I loved him at this moment for exemplifying by his actions the principles of his work. So much would have changed for me had he tried to silence or belittle a feminist critique." For me that is THE representation of meaningful praxis (as I understand both bh and PF envisage it). I believe that it is this moment that helped bh accept PF within her feminist resistant struggle: his whole response. How can we apply this to our praxis: As educators, our "RESPONSES (in the classroom, hallways, streets) are CRUCIAL and critical, whether verbal or not. And of course, I liked the metaphor of the teacher as candle, although I found it a bit narcissistic (p. 56), probably because I also am a fan of T. N.H.
My least favorite part: the reference to Cornel West (bottom of p. 57), who I heard say some nonsense during the French suburb crisis last fall. but I guess I need to use a buddhist self-control approach here, and try to arrive where bh is with PF's sexism!
My favorite line, a citation of PF's about death: (p. 58), "I am going to die with an immense longing for life, since this is the way I have been living." I guess, coming to a Xing of my life, I have been thinking more about death, and this touches me. This is about what we can do as humans, what we can contribute. For PF, as I read it, the contribution starts with a passionate and intense love of life.

BOURDIEU: "THIS REGIME OF TRUTH IS A GREAT BIG LIE"
"Academic success is based on merit and YOUR way to social mobility and success:"
Well, Bourdieu says this regime of truth is one big lie.
1- Education does not guarantee "success"
2- Education is an agent of social reproduction (sounds like Althusser's ISA)
3- Economic capital seems to come with social capital and supercede cultural capital on the path to economic power and successful career

Bourdieu is quite offensive (warlike?) when it comes to depicting the "ruse" (trick):
The educational system contributes to the structure of class relations "by concealing, by an apparently neutral attitude, the fact that it fills this function" ( p. 046)
"Those who are miraculously (yes, it takes a miracle!) elected, may experience an exceptional destiny which is the best testimony of academic democracy" (p 050): This reminds me of Rothenberg's myth of meritocracy argument.
And in the end, even if some of the underprivileged reach full academic success, it does not really matter, since they will never reach the positions and the salaries that those emanating from the always already owners or heirs of economic capital, which usually comes with social capital (manners, language, relationships as in Delpit's) will, with or without the diploma.

So all of us whether dominated or dominant are subjects of this ideology but.....as educators, parents, and always already subjects, we can still practice as spiritually and organically inspired intellectuals in our schools, let's talk about Bourdieu's practice in the trenches of Sociology as a combat sport."
OK, so it's 11:19 and this is what I got (Am i beginning to sound weird?). Anyway, I would like to talk about habitus, and explore more definitions of culture. Also, need translation of the 1st top left paragraph of page 049 (which really starts on p 050), he lost me there. God, he does write so much like a French, with 25 lines sentences & hardly any punctuation!

This is the site where the article about Bourdieu I mentioned yesterday can be found:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990503/shusterman

FOUCAULT: TRUTH AND POWER
Michel Foucault is probably a genius. The overarching concept that most interests me is the concept of "metapower" (p. 122). The way I see it every discourse (science, for instance) is based on the regime of power "presently acceptable" and changing over time. Therefore, there are "not simply new discoveries, there is a whole new regime in discourse and forms of knowledge" (p.112) Through his research and theory of discourse of power, Foucault reaches ever discipline in the tradition of earlier philosophers such as Descartes, but in a revolutionary way. I think he "hails"us to see the arriere-plan underlying all disciplines:
history (I would like to spend some time on his theory of discontinuity and his new way of looking at history-pp 112, 114, 117- , I am not sure I quite get it. ), science, psychology and psychiatry, antrhopology, political economy, politics, every facet of society is affected by this vision of knowledge and power.
For me this means that the approach of everything I do must be holistic, incl. and especially as as an educator.
Truth and Ideology: They way I understand it, it does not matter what is true or false (is there an absolute truth for something is not a relevant question), because what matters is what is "talked about" (discourse) as being true (p. 118), and "whom this discourse serves" (p. 115).
Power and repression: I would like ot spend some time on hte repression of sexuality and especially the discourse of sexuality in the USA, through the lens of Foucault. (p. 119-120, & 125)
Lastly, I find connection between Foucault's definition of the "intellectual," both the specific one and the universal both borrwo something from Gramsci's organic intellectual, especially exciting the time period thet F. refers to (1968), when workers, students, union leaders, AND intellectuals (academics) such as Sartre, Foucault, Althusser were walking hand in hand amnd standing against the police walls yelling (CRS, SS).

Louis Althusser, Ideology and the State 1970
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser: this site provides a complete biography of Althusser.
http://www.lexingtonbooks.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0739
This one gives review of a book by William Lewis: Althusser and the traditions of French Marxism, which replaces Althusser ins the socio-historical context of his writing: desillusion of the french intelligentsia facing the ruin and failure of the communist political practice of Marxism (former USSR, etc)
http://home.earthlink.net/~potterama/Michele/projects/hyper/structuralism.html:
This one gives definition of marxist criticism, lieterary criticism and structuralism as well as belongers of these movements.
It was frustrating to keep bumping into sites where membership was needed to retrieve articles (Jstore and its likes)it. It is a nice review of basic marxist principles and terminology (infrastructure/superstructure, class struggle, state apparatus (RSA, & ISA), means/conditions of production, & reproduction of relations of production (labour and relations), capital (minimum w wage, surplus value), moving into Althusser's own definition of ideology/history/imagination
Limitations: I noticed how "French" some of the positions and definitions sound:
- the "Church" is The R. C Church, therefore, for instance, the only definition offered for a religious rep is "Priests ".
- The socio-historical culture depicted is "the" socio-historical culture of France: monarchy, clergy, aristocracy, bourgoisie.
- Again: Absence of race and quasi absence of gender (but for a small comment p. 176).
Yet, it provides a great foundation for Bourdieu (school as an agent of social reproduction), and the multiple references to other philosophers and school of p. forces me to do more review (not finished yet: Pascal, Spinoza, Nietzsche-nnot mentioned but present!, Jansenism,): the richness is undeniable. What the heck, I am bringing my Cambridge dictionary of philosophy tomorrow.