"Not Safe": how can teachers make oppositional readings safe for students?

Oppositional readings: understandings outside the text.

1)Explicitly say to the class that it is a safe environment for airing oppositional or contentious or argumentative perspectives.

2)Lead by example: be bold and present an oppositional reading first. Never criticize and be wary of constructive criticism.

3)Agitate the students' emotions (carefully). Potential for reward and potential for back fire.

4)Use groups to help with shyness/reticence. Experiment with different group arrangements. 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2.

5)Use debate tasks: give one student a 'dominant' agenda, another an 'oppositional' agenda.

6)Consider the sensitivity of issues: are there ways to make them more safe as they are presented?

7)Use encouragement: when a student ventures an oppositional reading give praise to validate and encourage further critical engagement with a topic or text.

8)Use a text that is oppositional in tone to facilitate oppositional thinking.

9)Present a procedure: something like the four questions we can ask:

1)Who is speaking? 2)From what authority? 3)Who is the (ideal) audience? 4)What kinds of people are described?
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Here's a poem I wrote for an undergraduate poetry class reflecting on my High school experiences (NB: the poem should be read with mini pauses between each line).

School

'Remember, boys
we are the school
on top of the hill'

When we practiced the haka
in assembly, one boy couldn't
do it right, he wasn't manly
enough, kept slapping his hands
like a girl, so the leader of
the rugby team pulled him out
front and made him do it
alone

In later years
one of the teachers
passing a third former
tied to a tree with his tie
asked if the boy was alright
on his way to class

You would think
the first punch
would surprise you
more than hurt you
but that wasn't the case
it hurt so much
i couldn't breathe

'Remember, boys
we are the school
on top of the hill'

Oppressed woman on airplane: responding to Curtis' blog

http://criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/2011/04/woman-on-airplane.html

First off, I want to say that this post got me buzzing to find my own response to it. It's taken me awhile to post because I've had to wrangle with this a bit. I'm hoping that I haven't misunderstood Curtis' point, and that I'm presenting something of an addendum or an alternative to his perspective on how we are constructing power relations in an ongoing act of performance. If I fall into the pit of "the correct way to understand gender, class, or race (or other) oppression" so be it, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yes, it is a pit, full of slimy snakes and mud and other assorted ugh.

I want to respond to Curtis' post and explore how interpretations of the Asian woman in the advertisement might change if we consider the woman as real and the situation itself as real. I'm imagining myself sitting in the plane several seats down watching this advertisement play out (NB: I've never tried business class and I have no intention of trying it).

I think that if the woman is real then 'NOT YES' is questionable. I would say that she is oppressed, but not by an oppressor, rather by her situation.

From this perspective it could be included that the man himself is oppressed by the situation: like the woman he is constricted by Gee's "interested" socialized discourse (presumably he would be unaware of it), and I think there is validity to this p.o.v (echoes of Paulo Friere and the need to include and free the 'oppressors' as well as the 'oppressed'), but that isn't what I mean at all. I would say that the "sexual overtones, the patriarchal alpha male, the submissive Asian woman ready to please him" do represent a situation in which the (real) woman has no real power to resist, no real power to express her voice. I would say that her "interested" socialized discourse is to deny her own discourse (and here I really am labeling the situation and her, I know, but I can hardly back out now can I? But how can we avoid labels? Whether we're aware of them or not, don't they just introduce more competing voices to the equation? Curtis used words like "defense mechanism" "flirting" "sexuality defense" "passivity" and to me they seem like solid jabs and hooks in a never ending boxing match for reality).

I don't accept that the (real) situation presents any meaningful way for her to resist being labeled. She is constrained by her need to behave successfully: if she fulfills the role expected of her she keeps her job and increases her chances of achieving success (Whoa! what is this thing success? Too big a question for this post). Completely powerless, no, quite powerless, yes...

This is a judgment I am making without access to most of the facts. I don't know what the particular circumstances of the woman are. I don't have any way to know for sure anything about why she responds the way she does. But I am making a judgment call because I think this is unavoidable and because it can be powerful.

In saying "yes, her situation is oppressive" I am hopefully conscious of the fact that not only am I reflecting "power relations in society" I am also trying "to create them as well". I'm not saying that it should be this way, I hope I'm saying it could be this way, and I think that's part of my responsibility as an entity responding to, informing and informed by, a struggle towards freedom. Likewise, it's a responsibility to resist the status quo by expressing an understanding of and opposition to the literacy/school myth.

If I were to share my interpretation with the Asian woman and she resented me for it, good! If she wants to resist my authoritarianism she has to use her own voice to dis-empower it. Power shift may not be static but it can be pretty darn slow. Power is voice: I think its the strongest medium through which an individual asserts their reality into/at/around others, it is p.o.v., it is inherently authoritarian. I remember saying something like this in last weeks class: "If you want power (for you) then you have speak" (I was mostly addressing the Korean students who I felt at the time, weren't taking as active and engaged a role as they should be). So power is always at play and we all want it... but do we know we want it? Not everyone is being productive.

Here I'm trying to confront Gee's/Plato's dilemma (Literacy and the Literacy Myth, p31): "if all interpretations (re-sayings) count, then none do, as the text then says everything and therefore nothing" (relativism)...vs. "if they cannot all count then someone has to say who does and who does not have the necessary credentials to interpret" (authoritarianism).

I'm trying to avoid the "normative" pit by acknowledging that I am making uninformed judgments, that all things are relative, but not equal, and here's my take on it. The act of performing is an act of judgment. Anyone pretending to have no claim to power is just hiding it (and/or hiding from it). Gee slips up when he uses the phrase "a genuine disinterested search for truth" (p 29). We're all interested in trying to shift reality somewhere. Where there is desire, there is a will to power to obtain satisfaction for that desire, and we all have heaps of desire (another over-generalization...groan...I can't seem to avoid them).

This war of interpretation belongs in any class room and it's the teacher that can let it happen. I guess going into battle for your interpretations is the easy part, encouraging a mental space that allows others to go into battle for theirs is the hard part.

Too neat...too primitive? I don't feel at all sure either way...maybe it is just a war of performances in which sometimes one side maybe knows a little more of whats at stake.
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*Literacy historically used to solidify social hierarchy, empower elites, and ensure that people lower on the hierarchy accept the values, norms, and beliefs of the elites (Gee, p36)

*Plato: attractive and hideous: His critique of writing: deterioration of human memory, no longer internalized, we know only what we can reflectively defend in face-to-face dialogue with someone else (Gee, p 27) but...authoritarian Utopian state: higher places in society based on in-born characteristics and various tests, wanting to restrict access and interpretation of his writing.

Incoherent Ramblings

Not incoherent in the sense that I don't know what I'm writing as I write it, rather incoherent in the sense that I have no particular idea where this post is going and that's the way I want it. So what's that about? It's about not needing a point, or rather finding a point through expression. That's relevant to education, that's relevant towards resisting education. As products of schooling we become docile creatures of habit. Do it this way! Use this form, that format, don't make that mistake. Conditioned ants scurrying from corridor to corridor. I resent it, I resent my schooling, I resent classes, I resent grading and I resent the idea that it's necessary. I remember how frustrating my High School experiences were. In my Math Calculus classes the teacher constantly fed us formulas/equations to practice with. Plug in the variables then calculate? But why? What are the variables, what are they doing? What are these rules for? No explanation was offered. I've been Scientifically Managed and I'm pissed off about it. What was the point? To get the job, get the money, raise 2.5 kids...pillar of the community...drive a nice car...contribute to society...I say screw society, its not on my side, I'm not on its.

Scope...to address the forces at "play", to buy that brand with a suitable sense of irony, to contribute meaningfully to the decisions of others, to inform your own decisions, layers within layers, to have real power, to meet challenges, to be more free, to rip knowledge to pieces like a rabid dog then toddle off to the kennel with the parts that tasted good, lining for the nest.

I applaud this Critical Pedagogies class precisely because there is more freedom. So well done to Curtis for slipping it through the system... it certainly is a deviation from the class norm. I fear for its survival because it is different, I hope it survives. I hope all of us in the class appreciate the opportunity it represents to freely express opinion. Weird, fresh and good.

"People are crazy, times are strange, I'm locked in tight, I'm outta range, I used to care, but...things have changed..."

Relflections on Reflecting

Can a person reflect too much? Or is this question a misunderstanding of what reflection is? Will reflection always aid action or can it be a hindrance?

A thought I had after last night's class: the learning process for an individual occurs in a cyclic rebounding back and forth between inner reflection (a self awareness of thought processing) with a receptivity to the information received from the world via the senses.

As I know it, my learning reality goes something like this: when I'm having a conversation with someone (or reading someone) I listen to them, I seek to understand their language and through it their ideas (reception), then I attempt to reconfigure what I've understood in relation to what I already understand (reflection). This process rebounds back and forth several times sometimes very quickly. The pace seems to depend on how complex the received information is. The more complex the information the more necessary it becomes to slow down the pace to make sure that enough information has been received to make ensuing reflection meaningful.

Maybe this process is a bit like the "binary oppositions" mentioned in the Frankfurt School article. The act of reflecting in opposition to the act of receiving? Or perhaps the act of reflecting in opposition to action?

As I understand Curtis' (our Professor) explanation, each idea has its opposite, the negative of that idea. They synthesize, resulting in a new idea, which in turn synthesizes with its opposite. This process drives progress, it becomes inevitable, and so: capitalism will "ultimately...create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself" (A Benjamin quote in the Frankfurt School article).

Yesterday's class covered a lot of material and Curtis introduced us to a lot of ideas that were new to me. I enjoyed it a lot. A lot of names were mentioned: Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, Hegel, Andy Warhol, Ardono and Benjamin to name most of them. Some of these names are familiar to me but most of their ideas are not. Something that occurred to me was how much reading I need to do to become more informed within the field of critical theory.

The quantity of potential material seems a little intimidating. Looking up Hegel online (dubious Wikipedia) led me to Plato and Aristotle's 'Ontology' which in turn led me to 'Realism Vs. Nominalism' which in turn...

I believe Curtis mentioned that the focus of the class was meant to be 'Critical Practice' and not 'Critical Theory', but surely one informs the other. How much reflection will be too much? This is an important question because I am a teacher and it is my responsibility to take action within a class room so that my students take action with their learning.

Simpsons - No Education

I've chosen two Simpsons clips as examples of "Popular Culture". The first clip juxtaposes Pink Floyd's "We Don't Need No Education" with the Simpsons. A sort of anti establishment/anti government/anti society song with the iconic American sitcom. The Simpsons is popular culture, but not without subversive or counter culture aspects. I think its humor often expresses a self reflective critique of the American mainstream culture it represents.

The second clip "Electronic Voting" interests me mostly because of Homer's line: "This doesn't happen in America, maybe Ohio, but not America". On one hand this is an American hegemonic assumption: the democratic process is only subverted in other countries, never the homeland of democracy itself; On the other, the fact that it is happening to Homer introduces elements of farce, cultural critique and societal admonition.

"Do Nothing Teaching" Reflections

I enjoyed reading through Kevin Giddens' "Do Nothing Teaching" blog last night.

http://kevingiddens.posterous.com/

His article "Reflection: Rigorous Practice or Joyful Play' resonated with me particularly. I found myself questioning the extent to which I have allowed or enabled 'joyful play' in my classes. I've been working at the same University for a second year now and I suspect I have settled into an unfavorable routine. I think my teaching methods haven't changed enough and I'm recycling many of the same materials and lessons.

I'm worried that a lot of my students would simply prefer me to stick to the text book provided and the teacher manual instructions for each lesson. One of the more senior professors in my department advised it because the students "just feel more comfortable with that". If students expect me to be the lecturer it's a challenge to not fulfill that expectation. To keep my job, I need good evaluations. It seems logical that I'm more likely to get these if students enjoy my classes and feel like they're learning. To do that I need to take classes out of their comfort zone. The more motivated and involved students seem receptive to self directed activities but they are a minority in many of my classes.

I want to make my lessons more playful for my students and I want them to construct their own learning practices more but is this really possible? How much divergence from a traditional class room can I get away with? How can I reconcile what is effective and enjoyable with the expectations of the students and the administration I work for? How can I reconcile the conflicting expectations of my students?