Welcome to the World...

of smart phones. Just kidding, although I do enjoy my first one. A recent purchase.

"Welcome" to the world of GRADES.

I began giving my students exams today. I give an oral interview speaking exam to each of my students. It's a somewhat painful process. I try to project reassurance and friendliness and I keep telling my students it's OK to be nervous. They are, of course.

I'm not sure how important the grade I give my students is to them. Some students tell me it's very important, others that it's not, it seems to depend on the particular needs of each student, but in general it seems to be very important for their future. It's a big responsibility for me and I struggle to grade as fairly and perceptively as I can. I use a marking rubric and I digitally record each interview so that I can check each exam to refine the initial grade. I expect myself to be easily swayed by a nice smile or pretty face.

I try to be very friendly with my students but I'm not their friend.

I said that to each class the week before the exams start (with a smile). I have to be careful not to show favoritism, I have to give everyone a grade. Perhaps my thinking is a little rigid in this regard, but I hold power over all of my students and both I and my students know that. It seems to me true friendship isn't possible without a free exchange of power between interlocutors and that just isn't possible between a 'Professor' who gives grades to students. That's a responsibility I have. It's a test of my character.

In last weeks class one of the questions was 'What is character?' and one answer that's come to me is that character is responsibility, and then in turn it's also awareness (of what we are responsible for). Responsibility seems like so many things...an awareness of my desires and how their satisfaction might be at the expense of others...an awareness of my actions and my choices...an awareness of the kinds of power I have over others.

I don't expect my students to truly be themselves around me because of this power over them. Likewise, I don't expect them to show me the absolute best of what they're capable of. I have power over whom can speak and what about. Power to punish. I hate it when I have that feeling just as I hate the feeling of someone having power over me. I get to challenge my students but they don't get to challenge me, I get to ask the questions, I get to determine how OK it is for students to ask me questions.

And I'm flattered by the attention from those seeking to impress me. I enjoy compliments I probably wouldn't get if it weren't for this situation.

And I want to seek a dis empowering role, where students feel free to express opinions they suspect I might not like. I want to strip the reward system of activators and separate it from the learning opportunities. But I don't think I can do this completely, I'm not at all sure how much I can do that at all. I guess the more I can engage students in their own learning, in the topics and approaches they want, the more I can distract them from what hangs over us.

One of my first yoga teachers told me that in an ideal teaching relationship eventually the balance of power stabilizes and the roles begin to shift. That's not going to happen in this job.

I wish I didn't have to give grades at all. But I find it hard to imagine a system that does away with them altogether. How else can we determine who gets more authority? Whose voice carries more weight? Is that something we need?

"The upward mobility has put our schools far too much at the service of what we have been over confidently calling, our economy...education has increasingly been reduced to job training" (Wendell Berry).

Maybe grades are the root of the 'upward mobility' problem Wendell Berry talks about, or maybe they're just another symptom? Our job options stand or fall by our grades (for most of us). In Berry's commencement speech he says that not only are the graduates in need of change, so are the institutions, and it's the graduates who need to help the institutions change. Could there be learning institutions without grades? If yes, would that mean there were no teachers? If we do away with job training wouldn't we need to do away with jobs? Pff...what fairy tale nonsense?

Wendell Berry ‘A Remarkable Man’ [from What are People For?]

Wendell Berry ‘A Remarkable Man’ [from What are People For?]

Discussion questions:

page 23: ‘If Shaw’s language is never far from experience, it is also never far from judgment, another of his qualities that will make him useless to propagandists’

Could it be argued that Berry is himself using Shaw as propaganda for his own agenda?

What is Berry’s agenda?

Are we given enough of Shaw’s dialogue to accept Berry’s interpretations of Shaw at face value?

If Shaw’s words are so powerful, why does Berry feel a need to interpret them for us?

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page 19: ‘When he speaks of “correspondin” a girl or says that his son “got stout enough to accomplish a place,” we have no trouble understanding what he says, and we are also aware that his words convey insight beyond the reach of conventional usage’

Do you agree that we have ‘no trouble understanding’? Whom do you think Berry is talking to when he uses the word we? (the top of page 26 gives ‘college bred’ as a possible answer, do we belong to this category?)

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page 19: Berry mentions the importance of differences between blacks and whites in America. He uses the phrase ‘an etiquette of ignoring differences’. Do you think there is such etiquette here in Korea, between Korean culture(s) and English culture(s)? What cultural differences would you be willing to list? In what way might some differences be useful or necessary for each other?

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page 22: Do you think it possible that science can save humanity from its self destruction? Do you think humanity is self destructing? If humanity is self destructing, is it worth saving?

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page 24: ‘A powerful superstition of modern life is that people and conditions are improved inevitably by education’

Can we assert that well educated people are better than uneducated people?

Have you ever met someone like Shaw?

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page 25: ‘The purpose of education has been to prepare people to “take their places” in an industrial society, the assumption being that small economic units are obsolete. And the superstition of education assumes that this “place in society” is “up.” “Up” is the direction from small to big. Education is the way up. The popular aim of education is to put everybody “on top” ’

Wendell Berry quotes his friend West Jackson in a commencement speech:

‘Our system of education until now, has had, in effect, only one major, upward mobility, now, West says, a second major needs to be added, and the name of this major, will be homecoming’

What is ‘home’ (or perhaps ‘local’) to you? Can you share some of your reasons for taking this master’s tesol course? What other reasons apart from job training?

Do you feel as though you are experiencing or expect to experience ‘expert servitude to the corporations?’

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page 26: ‘Of course, it is preposterous to suppose that character could be cultivated by any sort of public program. Persons of character are not public products. They are made by local cultures, local responsibilities’ What is character?

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‘We have tried, or tried again, the experiment of building urban prosperity by the impoverishment of the countryside and its people, and inevitably we have failed, the result has been impoverishment that is both rural and urban’

How true might this statement be for your own country?

Subjectivity

In one of our classes we touched on the the idea of subjectivity and I've wanted to explore my own ideas about the term in relation to what was discussed.

(I was very tired in class, so I may muddle things up here quite a bit...I recall that at the time I was uncertain as to whether I should concentrate on taking notes or on listening for better comprehension. I ended up doing a bit of both, neither particularly well)

Judith Butler was one thinker Curtis referenced and her idea of subjectivity:

'The subject is the linguistic occasion of the self':
'The subject is the linguistic occasion for the individual to achieve and reproduce intelligibility, the linguistic condition of its existence and agency' (Judith Butler, 1997, p11)

In the 'hey you!' moment where an individual turns in response to the utterance, they become a subjective entity. They become determined momentarily, their subjectivity is not fixed, it occurs as a moment in time, as a body, as a linguistic occasion, and more...they are robbed of personal agency...subjective forces push down and through the individual...whether the individual is aware of them or not and the individual's free will becomes questionable.

Apparently this perspective was depressing for Foucault: everything we express is just power/subjectivity through the individual...we just express power...until his idea that the subjective forces expressing through the individual represented an opportunity/power to influence these forces.

Queer Theory example: the degree to which I am subjected/read as an intellectual is the degree to which I can subvert this, the degree to which I can shift meanings.
__________________________

Something that struck me was how different these ideas of subjectivity were to ideas of subjectivity I have inherited from the Alexander Technique, Hatha Yoga and the Breath Meditation traditions I have experienced.

I felt myself agree with the idea that subjective forces push down upon us and express through us, and that it is in their expression that we are given an opportunity to subvert them. However, I'm skeptical as to whether we really are powerless to resist subjective forces acting upon us. If I recall correctly, the 'hey you!' is an example of how the individual is irresistibly drawn into the subjective web in the moment of responding and turning. But...I consider it possible to achieve a degree of subjective control enabling no response to the 'hey you' or rather a delayed or inhibited response. Here I'm indirectly referring to the Alexander technique (F.M. Alexander 1869-1955) and his idea of inhibition:

‘All those who wish to change something in themselves must learn... to inhibit their immediate reaction to any stimulus to gain a desired end' [and in order to stop falling back] 'upon the familiar sensory experiences of their old habitual use in order to gain it, they must continue this inhibition whilst they employ the new direction of their use' (The Use of the Self, p. 115).

Inhibition in this sense should not be associated with an idea of emotional repression or suppression. The idea is that instead of reacting to an external force, we momentarily inhibit that reaction and then either restrain it or allow it depending on the outcome of an immediate questioning judgement. I consider this idea similar to experiences I've had in practicing 'breath meditation' where through a singular focus I attempt to inhibit my mind's habit of thinking.

Some meditation practitioners I have talked to have described the process of learning 1-pointedness as a process of allowing thoughts, accepting them, not engaging with them and through a process of releasing them eventually quietening the mind to complete focus and then stillness/silence. This is not complete silence/stillness because that only occurs when the brain is dead.

In my experience, this doesn't work. When I accept my thoughts, when I allow them, I just get more of them. My rationalized concept of what I am doing in a breath meditation is that I am inhibiting my brain/mind's inclination to think, to move. I am mindfully stopping thoughts (albeit with limited success).

Perhaps I am confused, but for me, the very act of thinking, of ideas, of a search for meaning, is a search for objectivity, for an objective reality. An inevitable and valuable search for truth, for connections, for a recognition of causes and effects, a necessary conflict from which my identity slurps into existence, but not subjectivity, not the true inner self. For me, subjectivity can only occur when my mind's fixative eye becomes truly mine, when it becomes silent, when it becomes still. I liken the mind to a light beam (Sauron's Eye :D). It flickers to and fro, always looking outwards, always responding to what it encounters. It can move at different speeds, it can look afar or near, it can be diffusely focused or it can be a narrow beam, it (almost) never stops moving. In the act of breath meditation (focus) the light beam fixes onto a single thing, a single point...eventually, the light beam will wink out as the sustained focus dissolves into a withdrawal of the mind from the external world, from the senses of the body, into itself...a complete inhibition.

As a Zen Buddhist might say, the idea cannot be grasped, it can only be experienced: "it's not this!" (I think it likely a Zen Buddhist would be calmly horrified at this subjective mixture of conjecture, half baked ideas, and unreferenced confusion). To my mind, the experience cannot be grasped because that is the objective urge to understand, to project, to critically reflect, not the subjective capacity to just reflect, to just experience. To me this is the 'beginner's mind' the Zen Buddhist seeks, where within any activity a mind and body are only engaged in that activity. When you cook, just cook...when you eat, just eat...a steady light beam.

These terms subjectivity and objectivity are troublesome, in particular objectivity. A mind independent truth is unavailable. An apt analogy for the conundrum is a quote from the Greek mathematician Archimedes “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. But of course, he/we are incapable of leaving the world to place that lever. We cannot leave our subjectivity.

Lesson Plan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkxaBKd8SwA&feature=related

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 all right

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'

_______________________________________

“Kapa o Pango"

Kapa o Pango kia whakawhenua au i ahau!

(All Blacks, let me become one with the land!)

Hī aue, hī!

Ko Aotearoa e ngunguru nei! (This is our land that rumbles)

Au, au, aue hā! (It’s my time! It’s my moment!)

Ko Kapa o Pango e ngunguru nei! (This defines us as the All Blacks)

Au, au, aue hā! (It’s my time! It’s my moment!)

I āhahā!

Ka tū te ihiihi (Our dominance)

Ka tū te wanawana (Our supremacy will triumph)

Ki runga ki te rangi e tū iho nei, tū iho nei, hī! (And be placed on high)

Ponga rā! (Silver fern!)

Kapa o Pango, aue hī! (All Blacks!)

Ponga rā! (Silver fern!)

Kapa o Pango, aue hī, hā! (All Blacks!)

_______________________________________

The "Kapa o Pango" haka created controversy when the gesture of a thumb drawn down the throat was interpreted by many observers as implying throat slitting. The All Blacks and Māori interpreted it as drawing the breath of life into the heart and lungs ("hauora"). This led to calls for it to be banned, although a poll conducted in July 2006 showed 60 percent support in New Zealand.

_______________________________________

Lesson Plan – ‘School’ Poem Reading

The students: Ss are mostly freshmen or sophomore. They are volunteer Ss in a ‘Global Zone Conversation’ class. If Ss complete 32 hours over 1 semester they’re given an automatic A grade. However the number of credits offered is small. Class sizes vary a lot; they can be as small as 2-3 and as large as 10-15.

Some Ss are quite capable of conversation, many fumble and pause a lot and some are rather inept at both understanding and responding.

Materials: There will be two materials available. The first item will be a short video introducing the New Zealand haka and New Zealand rugby, in the form of a traditional Maori dance performed by the New Zealand National Rugby team ‘the All Blacks’ (see link above). The second item will be an A4 sheet for each Ss with a translation of the haka on one side and the poem on the other.

Lesson Goal/Rationale:

The primary goal is to create a ‘critical’ atmosphere in which Ss are encouraged to share their own readings of the poem and the ways in which they might relate to the content and tone of the poem. ‘School’ is oppositional in tone and intent; hopefully it can elicit an emotional response from Ss and a comparison between the poems’ culture and their own. Korea has a long history of protesting to and of responding to education. It's possible Ss have high school experiences of their own they can share/compare. ‘School’ is a poem that criticizes the culture from which it speaks and so one of the goals in using this poem is to share how criticizing one’s own culture is something that people do and that it is ok to do so.

There are no specific target language functions or structures. That would be an undesirable limitation of what Ss may potentially have to say. The ideal lesson is one in which the Ss explore the meanings of the poem with minimal input from the teacher.

Potential problems/obstacles:

Ss inexperience with poetry and an unwillingness to commit to sharing their ideas. Language/cultural/confidence barriers.

Activities:

The class could function as one large group, or perhaps Ss could be separated into smaller groups (if separated, groups of 2, 3, or 4 are suggested).

1)Share the video.

It is recommended that the teacher tell the Ss that while the haka they see is a war dance performed by men, it can also be performed by mixed groups, and women and children. It can be a war dance but it can also be done for amusement, as a way of welcoming guests and a way to celebrate great accomplishments or occasions.

2)Share the translation of the haka. Invite discussion and questions. Perhaps ask Ss if there is anything similar in their culture.

3)Share the poem. Explain that the poem is talking about a traditional single sex high school in New Zealand.

If Ss seem to be having difficulty visualizing what is happening in some of the stanzas, it might be a good idea to ask Ss to cover up the poem with a blank sheet of paper and then uncover a stanza at a time. Before inviting discussion of the second and third stanzas, the teacher could offer a brief description of what is happening:

Stanza 2: an assembly of young boys all of the same age group are practicing their school haka in an auditorium. The seats at the back are higher up than those at the front. The school’s rugby team is angrily leading the haka, facing the younger boys as they demonstrate.

Stanza 3: a boy is trapped next to a tree near the middle of the school grounds. His tie is knotted around his neck and the trunk of the tree.

A way to encourage discussion might be for the teacher to ask questions in an attempt to lead Ss towards asking questions of their own. The more Ss engage in dialogue together the better. Please refer to the next page of the handout in which potential questions and potential readings of lines are offered. Use these at your own discretion.

NB: This poem was written by me. Because of the personal nature of the poem and because I don’t want to inhibit Ss in their responses, I wouldn’t tell them who wrote the poem. Instead I would describe the author as a friend of mine. That would bolster the credibility of my relating of the events of each stanza. If another teacher were to use this poem they should feel free to reference this lesson plan as their source of information and myself as its author.

_______________________________________

'School' Potential Discussion Questions/Line Readings

(the poem should be read with mini pauses between each line)

'Remember, boys

we are the school

on top of the hill'

Who is speaking? From what authority? Who is the (ideal) audience?

A teacher speaking to students? School director/rector? A boy (student speaking to students) or a man (ex- student speaking to ex-students)? Boys = innocence/youth; Is the audience ‘boys now’ or ‘boys then', or society as a whole? Patriarchy? Single sex school: Korean parallel? Is the ‘hill’ literal or figurative?(both). A message about the role of education in society? Hegemony / Where is power coming from? How is it maintained?

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

Why practiced? How is culture replicating itself? ‘haka’ juxtaposed with ‘Assembly’? Two cultures mixing? Positive or negative or neither? What is ‘right’? What is ‘manly’?

Girl’s game? ‘like a girl’ shameful? Gender scorn? Pack mentality? Sexual image? Masturbation? An all boys school feminizing some boys? What does that mean about our concept of masculine and feminine, how constructed is the separation? Why is the boy isolated? Failure to be the same as everyone else results in being ostracized. A tragedy: forcing yourself to do something not right for you. A tragedy of not being quite normal enough.

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

The first line builds context: space and time relationship. More than one teacher / a school is a complex/complete system. What age is a third former? (approximately 13 years old). A third former is in their first year of high school. A NZ high school goes for 5 years. What is the stanza's image? Ask Ss to draw it? Who is going to class? What has happened here?

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

‘You’ who is being addressed? Reader? Speaker to himself? No one in particular? Ex-students? Ambiguous audience? ‘think’ irony? A mockery of violent culture? Of humanity? A lack of thought? What is the impact of this line? Violence: a sucker punch to the belly. Why a small i? Deliberate? Boy image?

'Remember, boys

we are the school

on top of the hill'

Why is the stanza repeated? Is this the same speaker as the first stanza? Things don’t change? The student becomes the teacher...‘Remember’: a reminder that it is our memories that help the system self replicate/sustain itself… The poem is an admonition? A cry out for change, or is that a too positive interpretation?

Are all the stanzas about the same boy? Is he the speaker ‘i’ we meet in the 4th stanza? (the 2nd and 3rd stanza are both about different boys) Can we tell from just a reading of the poem?

Who is speaking? From what authority? Who is the (ideal) audience? What kinds of people are described? What feelings is the poem trying to conjure? What is the poems purpose? The individual narrative as part of a larger resistance movement?

"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?
___________________________________

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..."