Despite a richly diverse sample (Johnson would be pleased), each of whom in interviews, "Spoke of a personal commitment to challenging bias in the classroom" (20), and an admission that, "...school culture is much more likely to determine and support what it is that students, teachers, and others say and do than is the formal management system," (17) Meyer ultimately concludes that the safe, positive learning environments for which she and her subjects advocate are inconceivable without the advocacy and involvement of, "school leaders" who "initiate a whole-school process that would transform the formal and informal structures of the school" (21).
After the cacophonous din from non-training complaints, bullying-plan-implementation professional development seminars, and CYA speeches has subsided, teachers are still left to wrestle with this issue of how best to meister their own burgers in the face of hurtful teenage ignorance. And, in the case of her six subjects, to do so with little or no (actual or perceived) administrative support. Because it is brought up during a dark time in the paper, the telling line she writes on page 12 in reference to just how much power one of the aforementioned "school leaders" can have on building climate, seems foreboding. But, when she avers that, "A Principal's priorities and attitudes towards issues permeate the school and shape the culture," she is really writing toward hope. And, when taken in tandem with the final line of the article, the two make for a powerful call to action for those looking for the so what now...? in this week's reading. We can be forgiven for missing it, however.
So,
Fact: teachers need to be everything to everybody, and still get all the paperwork in on time (9).
Fact: teachers care deeply about combating the hegemony of heteronormative patriarchy.
Fact: "...sexual and homophobic harassment are accepted parts of of school culture" (2).
Fact: teachers who intervene are led primarily by their own sense of justice based on self-experience (17).
Fact: school culture reflects the attitudes of those in power.
Fact: administrators are not the only "school leaders."
Fact: should faculty challenge the school stance, they will be subjected to punitive scheduling consequences.
Fact: if teachers, "...addressed the macro structures of the school," things might change (10).
Fact: teachers feel vulnerable & powerless when addressing these issues, even inside their classrooms (17).
So...
Fact: teachers do what they can, where they can, with what they can.
Because...
Fact: teachers need to be everything to everybody, and still get all the paperwork in on time (9).
But, if it's possible to act without impunity to influence the school leaders, then, to use Meyer's word, this kind of sagacity has the power to "transform" our schools into places of understanding. Possibly, even, to push them beyond the kind of grade-acquisition institutions against which Michael Wesch railed last week.
A little Nas to help us keep our chins up - all of us. "I Can."
Also: ran across this. Would be interested to hear from anyone who's seen the show...
Students do not value their education because the way it is transmitted is arcane and ineffectual.
Though Wesch does not specifically state that use of emerging technologies, specifically those that enable collaborative communication, will enhance and possibly save education, he means it. Through a video that exhibits the disengagement of a lecture hall's-worth of anthropology students, Professor Wesch illustrates the kind of prescriptive education his article holds up as Jurassic.
The synopsis of Neil Postman's ideas from The End of Education on page 6 are particularly interesting to me. Ultimately, he says, the stories people tell themselves about why they must learn, do not sustain the learning. The center of interest will not hold when the religious, cultural, and national narratives that had heretofore explained the importance of the process, are upended and devalidified. He seems to be forwarding the idea that education should firstly be in service of those it educates, rather than in service of an intangible abstract notion. Sort of a radical idea, I think. Instead of learning toward a goal, learning itself is the goal. Either that, or he is just substituting his doctrine of interconnectedness in for the crumbling golden calves of religion, nationality, and culture. In any case, the professor says that it is teaching's fault that millions of students are, right now, engaged in grade acquisition instead of learning. ("As teachers, we have created and maintain an education system that inevitably produces [what-do-we-have-to-know-for-the-test? questions.])
Not only does he think the education system creates students who devalue their learning, he assigns blame to the very architecture of the classroom. One of the opening shots of his video asks, "What are supposed to learn from sitting here?" And the article, in an extension of Marshal McLuhan's pith, intensifies the point: "The physical structure of the classrooms in which I work simply does not inspire dialogue and critical thinking." He goes on, "They are physical manifestations of the pervasive narrow and naive assumption that learning is simple information gathering," (6). This is something we ourselves have experienced during week three's meeting in the lecture hall. There is something about the environs of a large space that depersonalizes the experience of "adventure" for those involved, and it is true outside the classroom, as well. Think of the last stadium concert you saw (you probably had more fun with your five friends in the parking lot).
On page 5, Mr. Wesch says, "Learning is what makes us human." And though Skinnerians may disagree on technical grounds, he is probably right. At the core of what the Professor is suggesting, however, is something deeper. Something more radical that encouraging students to bring their electronics to class and use them co-creatively. More radical than handing out final exam bluebooks to be filled with an answer to a single question. More radical than rebranding anthropology as studies in "Digital Ethnography." As near as I can tell, the most radical thing he is doing is allowing himself to be vulnerable. He sort of puts this into words near the end of the piece on page 7, "I am in the wonderful but awkward position of not knowing exactly what I am doing but blissfully learning along the way." If the best learning does indeed take place outside of the classroom, it is not for the teacher's physical absence, but for the absence of the limiting pedagogical ideology that privileges the knowledge and experience of one (the instructor) over that of the whole.
If nothing else, human history may be the story of humans searching for, creating, worshiping, and eventually destroying the narratives that help explain our purposes. What Wesch hopes to convey in the article is that the story of us is the story of our collective us-ness Everyone is written into the script, and how many hypertextual lines we each have depends on our degree of participation in the digital dialogue.
A link to a Radiolab show about identity called Who Am I? wherein co-host Robert Krulwich makes the point that a human is merely a collection of stories it tells itself.
I am guilty of that which I am about to point out, but there are too many words being used.
At the conclusion of this week's reading, my one thought was that there is too much talk. I have no doubt that somebody more talented and transcendent than me (Nietzsche, The Buddha, Muhammad, Patti Smith, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, The Dalai Lama, your grandmother, John Cage, Winnie The Pooh) could say something knee-bucklingly captivating, ethereally pithy, and totally countercultural on this and everybody would just flip. They probably already have, but they got droned out as us regular people tend to overtalk on the important stuff. I've already admitted to it, but let me once again acknowledge the groaner irony of using too many words to make a point about using too many words. So...
From where she stands on Delpit's shoulders, Carter sees beyond her colleague's claim about extant dominant culture codes. From there, she leads us to a question that has not been specifically asked, namely: what other options exist besides learning those codes? And more specifically, what happens when people willingly cling to their own non-dominant codes? For Carter, whose ultimate goal is for schools to "...acknowledge and affirm the multiple capitals that exist" (76), the results speak plainly: to assimilate is wise and probably dangerous, but "Noncompliant believers require some guidance on how to maintain multiple cultural competencies in order to facilitate cross-cultural interactions" (76). In light of that, her research has uncovered that those favoring non-dominant codes are setting themselves up to live in a repetitive pattern - chasing and maintaining authenticity in terms of non-productive code acquisition.
As she presents it, the eponymous "keepin' it real" is at best a misguided behavior pattern aimed at securing identity and belonging in the black community. At its worst, it's a passive, non-participatory way for blacks to allow the propagation of stereotype and their own continued ghettoization. Early on, the author presents her thesis: instead of non-dominant blacks using their capital (cultural cache) "...for long-term economic gain, they use cultural capital to maintain group identity and distinctive cultural boundaries" (49). In other words, poorly. In the pages that follow, she quotes from interviews with high-school aged blacks, some of whom are focused on this process and reveal (self-consciously or not) that neither "acting" nor "being" black has any cultural cache because it means ascribing to non-powerful codes. Adrienne Ingram, a young student struggling against this vortex, even equates black vernacular with stupidity (58). In not so many words (ha), to keep it real means to voluntarily participate in cyclic self-hegemony.
She does, at one point on page 53, equate the behaviors patterns of keeping it real with, um, the revolutionary ideals on which the USA was founded. Which is also probably true and dangerous. Her research uncovered that authenticity is partly looking the part and mostly acting the part (54), and vaguely suggested that people who speak black vernacular and standard English are bilingual. Not surprisingly, however, fluency in black vernacular does not impart the kind of weighty significance on a person's character that speaking an additional language normally does. In fact, she returns to her metaphor when claiming that that blacks' deficiencies in school are due to their capital being undervalued (65). Almost like getting ripped off by a moneychanger.
In response to her section on cultural capital in context (60), I felt that others should do the talking. In the Eric B. and Rakim song "In the Ghetto," the 2nd verse hones in on his point: "I come correct and I won't look back/cuz it ain't where ya from, it's where ya at. I learn to relax in my room and escape from New York/and return through the the womb of the world as a thought." As does this line from the 3rd: "Rhymes I make give me real estate for me to own/wherever I bless a microphone." Similarly, on his excellent 1999 record, Mos Def visits the issue of metaphysical community in the song "Habitat." "We all got to have a place where we come from/that place where we come from is called home/And even though we may love this place on the map/It ain't where ya from it's where ya at." Each of these talented emcees is raising the idea that how one defines oneself ought to have much more to do with things spiritual and universal than things mundane and jejune (like labels and definitions). In that vein, I present the Nikki Giovanni poem "Ego Tripping (There May be a Reason Why)" set to music by the Sacramento hip-hop duo Blackalicious featuring Erinn Anova's voice.
In an segment of his television miniseries AmericaBeyond the Color Line, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.asks Reginald Hudlin, the director of Boomerang and House Party when black folks will be in a position to greenlight films. Mr. Hudlin says that it's difficult for 2 reasons: 1, that to be a studio executive (and therefore be in a position to greenlight) one must be possessed of a skillset that incorporates "drinking," "whitewater rafting," and otherwise schmoozing with the other execs. Add to this "assimilation" a degree of industry tenacity "aggressiveness" to get the job done. The trouble is that when aggressiveness is put into play by a black person, it comes off as scary to white folks. And 2, even though the industry is driven by what the last major success was, when that success is a black film, it doesn't generate the same kind of greenlighting buzz at the Monday morning executives meeting. In other words, it is an "invisible success." Some are none too happy with his journalism, however.
Some things I could use help with:
1. What would Carter say about other instances of non-dominant code acquisition (comics, horror movies, model building)?
2. The way Carter served up dominant culture markers rubbed me the wrong way. To me, she insinuated that Eliot, Plath, Beethoven, and the MFA are musty. It's lazy, if everything is white, she could have used use less stereotyped examples. Reach a little.
Blackalicious - "Ego Trip by Nikki Giovanni"
And follow this link to hear Nikki Giovanni read her poem in her own words...
Eric B and Rakim - "In The Ghetto" - wait a while for the vocal to come in
I think much of this will be exploratory, which, given the nature of the material, the author's first metaphor, and the titular men atop this post, seems appropriate.
As I read the August excerpts this week, I sat her down with Ms. Delpit in my mind and listened in on their conversation. Specifically, I was interested in what they would have to say to each other re: explicitness and The World As It Is versus The World As They Wish It To Be.
Pleasantries exchanged and coffee poured, I hear both women agree that to be explicit in one's instruction is necessary, incumbent upon those in positions of power, and ultimately a subversive act.
1. Necessary: Familial paradigms have evolved, not acknowledging this is erroneous. The author dedicates seventy percent of Chapter Six: Designed Dialogicality to Mr. Lerner's intentional attempts to "bend and stretch" the understanding of his kindergartners. She shows both his successes and his struggles as his efforts alternatively elicit instances of nascent comprehension as well as snickering.
To teach a lesson on the differences in the students' constituent families such as Zeke does is common to kindergartens across the country, as August points out. But his specific inclusion of nontraditional "constellations" (such as on pages 189 & 191) taps gently on each student's glass, as it were. His deliberate emphasis on dialogicality allows for all the childrens' voices "to be woven into a verbal tapestry of family life" (195). That Cody was reticent to share a story about his family (made up of 2 moms) despite the social space his teacher created surprised August, who later postulated that he was not yet ready to "come out" (198). She also acknowledges a deeper point on page 195, namely, "Designed dialogicality, although planned and executed for its transformative potential, is not formulaic. And emancipatory pedagogy doesn't necessarily set everyone free."
It is here that Delpit would agree. And though she would celebrate Zeke's classroom methodology, she would contend that Cody did not share readily because he perceived that his story would run contrary to the established codes of heteronormality. Lerner works hard to provide a safe space for all his students, but there is little retrograde work he can do to un-form whatever non-inclusive socialization they have brought to his classroom. Even still, he, Delpit, and August would all argue that a thorough explication of the myriad geometry of contemporary families is of irreplaceable importance, and the sooner the better.
To not teach towards this end is irresponsible for August. I imagine her equating the omission of texts like Who's In A Family from curricula with teaching 2011 geography from a Khrushchev-era map. Her personal struggles aside, it seems that the imperative is less moral than evolutionary. Times have changed people have changed times, and it falls to the teachers to articulate that cycle to their charges. To resist, I suppose, is to willfully choose the negative side of the "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" equation.
2. Incumbent: If not teachers, with whom students spend critical time, then who?
It is precisely Zeke Lerner's role as The Most Powerful Person In The Room to develop situational lessons aimed at teaching inclusion, and do his best to correct his students' learned myopia. Chances are good that school children receive enough reinforcement of societal norms without any professional or formal schooling whatever. It is therefore the job of the educator to guide the class' understanding toward a greater and more inclusive perspective.
3. Subversive: "A family can just be"
Digital Underground emcee Shock G leads off his outfit's most successful track with a line aimed at dismantling conventional images of rappers in the late 80s and early 90s: "All right, stop whatcha doin', cuz Imma bout to ruin the image and the style thatcha used to."
Popular culture is rife with examples such as this, both stated and simply acted out. Shock G tells us what he's going to do, but many others have just gone about their business, not necessarily setting out to, but nonetheless challenging the establishment in the process. Steve Reich's minimalism, Bjork's phrasing and vocalizations, and David Lynch's nonlinear narratives come to mind. Each of these artists were doing work that needed to be done firstly, and as a result, tapped on the glass secondly. The result is that their work has inspired countless people to do their own work, ad infinitum.
Though this kind of boundary expansion is lauded in the artistic realm, when the results have perceived negative effects on children, people get defensive. Jazz in the Twenties, rock and roll in the Fifties, and gangsta rap in the Nineties each garnered congressional attention at the vociferous demand of an enraged section of the public believing themselves acting in the best interest of the nation's children. And now, these genres are being taught in universities as lenses through which to view the human experience. One has even received the ultimate legitimizing tribute: a PBS memorialization at the hands of America's favorite documentarian, Ken Burns.
Though the pattern is familiar and unbroken, this remains a lesson we'd rather not learn, it seems. At the risk of sounding fatalistic, I offer that leaderless movements cannot be stopped, and that reconstituted understandings of legal, contractual relationships will happen. And the families that these relationships grow will eventually be just that, families. Free to "just be" (204). August provides a memorable example of a step taken by traditionalists to arrest just such progress when, on page 184, she recalls the pressure same-sex marriage opponents levied on the federal legislature to provide parents with the chance to demand their childrens' exemption from classroom activities in which the intent is , "...to have children accept the validity of, embrace, affirm, or celebrate views of human sexuality, gender identity, and marriage constructs." Traditional or otherwise, I suppose.
Perspective: Abstract expressionism, sheets of sound, and Argus.
Both John Coltrane and Pablo Picasso were men of Brobdingnagian appetites, and the Twentieth Century has benefited greatly from their indulgences. Each were totally obsessed with two things: a commitment to their craft, (often alienating sects of their audience) and the desire to drive their art beyond its confining borders.
Owing much to Duchamp early on, the Spaniard took the idea of illustrating multiple perspectives simultaneously and produced some of the most confoundingly original paintings of the last century. Similarly, while playing with giants in the Fifties, Coltrane developed his own sound and boldly pushed it into the next decade. Like Picasso, he wanted the audience to experience multiple perspectives at once, and played like it. His solos were flurries of notes, chords really, that he stacked upon one another, until all possible permutations were simultaneously achieved.
The results were very often beyond description, and so were summarily dismissed as decadent, self-important, or worse. As for me, I began thinking of their work the minute I began reading August, as their work's most enduring quality is the one most celebrated by the author: adventure. The European poet R.M. Rilke wrote that being in front of certain paintings helped him "stand more seeingly." This is the goal of the best of anything - teaching emphatically included. If "La Guernica" and "Giant Steps" can help us understand our world and our selves better by their challenge, their adventure, then teaching too can be artful in the same way and toward the same result.
When the epic hero Odysseus finally lands in Ithaca after twenty long years of thwarted returns home, he is greeted by Argus, his loyal dog - now long neglected by the sophomoric suitors who have overrun his palace in his absence. Though he has been disguised by Athena, the animal described as laying half-destroyed by flies upon a dung pile, recognizes his master's voice and manages a muzzle lift and a tail wag before giving up the ghost - satisfied to have seen Odysseus one last time.
I include this anecdote to illustrate August's use of "adventure" as basis for education. I agree with her. Being in the mindset of adventure is a wonderful place from which to begin learning. Since, to an adventurer, good fortune and bad fortune are the same - the goal is the journey. But no matter the beauty along the way, we are all in some way gripped and guided by nostos - homecoming. We long for what has not changed, what has remained in the face of time's passage. Normally, the nostos is the hero's ultimate goal, the reward for the journey, but perhaps it could be re-understood as benefiting those to which the hero is returning, as well. The hero returns not only with stories of battle, but simply of what else there is. And if the hero remains responsibly engaged with the stories, they will function just the same way as sharing time in the ZK.
Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance"
"Giant Steps" 1960
Coltrane's version of "Summertime" from the following year. His solo style is prevalent throughout, but if you literally only have a minute, listen to 1:00-2:00.
Watching the speech, reading the transcript, and blogging at once. Mostly.
Stan Karp, toward the end of his introduction, seems to be positing Waiting for Superman as an endorsement vehicle of the prepackaged, business-model "Success for All" programs dismantled as ineffectual in last week's Kozol piece. Karp says, "What is really new and alarming—and what makes a film like WfS so insidious—are the large strides that those promoting business models and market reforms as the key to solving educational problems have made in attaching their agenda to the urgent need of poor communities who have, in too many cases, been badly served by the current system." I'm 17'13" in (just after the Fox news quip). Stan Karp appears to say that NCLB, managerial-style administration, and privatization, despite their employ as response tools to low test scores and lowered global rankings, have in fact left American education the worse for wear. And further, should power continue to be taken away from teachers and given to politicos and managers, he suggests the education system will fail in spectacular fashion not unlike the housing market and healthcare: "Today a deepening corporate/foundation/political alliance is using this same test-based accountability to drill down further into the fabric of public education to close schools, transform the teaching profession, and increase the authority of mayors and managers while decreasing the power of educators. What we’re facing is a policy environment where bad ideas nurtured for years in conservative think tanks and private foundations have taken root in Congress, the White House and the federal education department, and are now aligned with powerful national and state campaigns fueled with unprecedented amounts of both public and private dollars. Unless we change direction, the combined impact of these proposals will do for public schooling what market reform has done for housing, health care and the economy: produce fabulous profits for a few and unequal access & outcomes for the many." This is where my confusion is beginning, because it seems that limited-government Republicans (presumably the group most vocally supportive of a businesslike model of public education) would never acquiesce to taking on the responsibility of writing and implementing countrywide curricula. Not to mention providing the funds for such an endeavor. And with the mightily flawed checks-and-balances system that failed to protect millions of Americans from the ramifications of the market collapse. At 20 minutes in, I see that Mr. Karp's point is that the movie seems to point an accusatory finger at "bad teachers," citing that group as responsible for poor test scores and dropout rates while simultaneously gladhanding the "good teachers" who can turn around failing students and help everyone reach the benchmarks. In actuality, he says, much more has to do with inherited inequality: But when it comes to student achievement—and especially the narrow kind of culturally-slanted, pseudo-achievement captured by standardized test scores—there is no evidence that the test score gaps you read about constantly in the papers can be traced to bad teaching, and there is overwhelming evidence that they closely reflect the inequalities of race, class, and opportunity that follow students to school. Perhaps the movie itself is not making the point that bad teachers are to blame, but based on what I hear Karp saying, it really doesn't matter. If people THINK teachers are to blame, then they ARE to blame. For Karp, this is a McSolution. It's hastily arrived-at, indicative of narrow environmental consideration, and lacking in foresight. But it will probably work RIGHT NOW. He says that oftentimes teachers who finish on top of performance lists one year will be at the bottom the next, and that the reverse is true, as well: "The National Academy of Sciences found 20–30% error rates in value-added teacher ratings systems based on their own dubious premises. Teachers in the bottom group one year were often in the top group the next and vice versa. The same teachers measured by two different standardized tests produced completely inconsistent results."
Speech is over now.
It may be a flaw, but I just think good teachers make sense make sense when they speak. I'm even at the point where I wanted to believe Stan Karp because of the way he looked - casual and wise, learned and convinced, experienced yet still hungry. He looks like good teachers I've had, and he looks like people I have learned to trust. While watching him speak and reading his words, I had the feeling I was watching someone who was articulating something I feel but hadn't yet found the cause or means to say aloud. I am looking forward to watching the film this week, and just now I am of two minds about it. I feel firstly that this film has probably made people pay more attention to public schools than they were five years ago (any maybe publicity is good publicity), but I am also very skeptical that what I've imagined the movie to be about (based on the Karp speech, and this week's research) is anywhere close to the truth. In my travels I found a couple of videos from the rally that Karp mentions. The first features Matt Damon and his mother, a lifelong educator and public school activist. The longer version is below, and an abbreviated clip with a transcript can be found by following this link.
Also of interest was this clip, where Mr. Damon offers a well-reasoned rebuttal of an interviewer's myopic (or baiting) question. There is also a strange splicing moment...
Evidently, reason.tv sent the above reporter to the rally. Parts of her various conversations, including one with Jonathan Kozol, are included in a short reel here. The Matt Damon one is also partly included. To close, in the Michael Azzerad book about independent music in the 1980s,Our Band Could Be Your Life, I remember reading something to the effect that the creative underground always flourishes richly in times when the political climate is most oppressive. The following piece from slam poet Taylor Mali, written in 1999, is one of my favorite poems about the job I do. I think it's fitting to include here as an example of the kind of fire-and-brimstone conviction that ignorant capitalists can inspire in the heart of a true educator. It's called "What Teachers Make."
