Today we discussed a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar as the context for a larger discussion about identity:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask! (Original location)

I was thinking as we talked about “wearing the mask” that this sounds like Habermas’ discussion of the “ought character” (Sollgeltung) which Habermas identifies as a guiding factor in discourse. He ties Sollgeltung into the responsiblity we feel as members of the Lifeworld. (Here I feel like Lifeworld is embodying the individual and the local community of which the individual is part?). He reacts to Strawson’s evaluation of “the moral intuitions of everyday life”:

“The human commitment to participation in ordinary interpersonal relationships is…too thorough-going and deeply rooted for us to take seriously the thought that a general theoretical conviction might so change our world that…there were no longer any such things as interpersonal relationships as we normally understand them…A sustained objectivity of inter-personal attitude, and the human isolation that would entail, does not seem to be something of which human beings would be capable, even if some general truth were a theoretical ground for it” (Strawson quoted in Habermas p. 48)

But yet, isn’t that what is happening every time we conform to social norms, think about our moral obligation to what we “ought” to do? Or is it that the social norms, the what we “ought” to do is often compromised by the rationalisation and colonization of the Lifeworld by System, clouding our own moral traditions with a Systemic concept of “ought”?

(All references here are to Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 44-47)

Poor Habermas. Or poor me. In investigating ways that Habermasian theory has been applied to research, what seems to be the widest application is a language action perspective approach to online communities. In other instances, it is used as a framework to show participatory models of communication in education. However, I have not found any applications of his model to analyses of public discourse or political discourse (hence the poor me).

What is ironic in all of this is that despite the large application of Habermas’ theories to the online environment, Habermas apparently does not have a website. In this Eurozine article , Habermas’ old school attempt at revolution is thwarted by his reliance on traditional information dissemination. (I originally found this site via this blog: Language Log ).

I am contemplating my dissertation study. My adviser suggested something more contained that just “cultural attitudes” toward technology if I want to graduate in the next 20 years. His suggestion of comparing the attitudes and expectations of parents of children (in families who have recently immigrated to the United States) versus the expectations and attitudes of the school toward technology use might be a more compact study. I found a similar study that was recently conducted in Switzerland where 40 families with children in the kindergarten classroom were surveyed. The article was advocating for more computer use in kindergarten classrooms, which is not necessarily an argument I would side with at all. I am not convinced that five-year-olds are getting left behind if they aren’t computer savvy. (Of course HOW it’s being used is much more important than the fact of use. Maybe that’s something I would prefer to look at?)

I am wondering whether I have to look at families all from the same type of background (same country, language, etc) or if I could look at several very different families and look at them as case studies. It doesn’t seem in that case that it would be productive to try and draw comparisons, unless they were all families that would have come from rural areas with limited computer resources to this country. I wonder if in talking to these families, the kids have to be at a similar age group? If I work with a Spanish-speaking group, I am very worried that I would be so inept at Spanish that I would be useless as an interviewer, but requiring the families to express themselves in English also might limit the interviewing. And if I worked with families with languages that I have absolutely no knowledge in, again, how much detail could be expressed in an interview?

I wonder if I can build a heavy visual aspect into this. Like having someone put together a photo essay of their life here to compare against their life from their previous home. I have to think about that more. I’m not sure how getting consent/permissions would work, but I like the possibilities that offers in getting a lot of detail, while not having to rely solely on language, especially in the case of second language speakers of English who may not feel confident about this. Hmmmm….

There is an actual methodology based on this idea of using photography: Visual Anthropology

First, I’m not doing so well at doing my own readings and reflecting. Good thing I’m auditing a class. I want to write more, but I am dying from this ridiculous cold that started Friday and has been building up momentum slowly and it’s now Tuesday and worse than ever.

Thought it’s a good time to remind myself of several good resources to stay on track while working on PhD. The trick is to actually use the advice. That’s a little trickier. Graduate School Survival Guide
and this is my favorite: So Long and Thanks for the PhD

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. ” (John Adams)

So what are his grandkids’ kids and his great-grandkids’ kids supposed to do? Turn to sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, I suppose.

My mother is a fundamentalist religious Jew for Jesus Christian, an evangelical who spends vacation time every year handing out pamphlets to change others to her way of thinking (ideology for those of us who have spent too long in school). Her view of what is “the right way” is so narrow. Because of growing up with this, I am turned off by organized religion. I want to be clear, I am not turned off by people’s spirituality or faith or quest for knowledge outside ourselves, but only by any one institution that says they have the one answer for everybody. The world is too complex, people too different, their needs too diverse. That’s why this class is a difficult exploration and why too many people don’t talk about social justice in any meaningful way. Because what is often meant by social justice, especially by policy makers, is showing others our way (whatever that means), acting as cultural evangelists about our ideas for education, technology use, family relationships and personal independence, nutrition, etc. and then everything will be ok for them. We really mean, by social justice, easing the process of assimilation and we get very angry at cultures that resist our efforts of “goodwill.” (We’re especially aggravated at Iraq right now.) I know that theoretically, giving people the tools to hold onto their own culture and navigate the dominant culture to their own advantage, an emancipatory approach, is recommended. But how does that happen in real life?

The last post was meant to explore stereotypes, not enrage or alienate anyone. But my progression of thought since then, particularly since the whole discussion of the class was geared around community and family, has made me think about where “haves” and “have nots” in society occur. In the discussion of the “digital divide” a real or mythical division between who has access to technology and who doesn’t, has been criticized because this kind of division is just a polarization of other economic disparities.

Another student in my class had pointed to Bill Cosby’s recent comments at a speech about Brown v. Board of Education that Blacks need to take responsibility and get educated, learn to speak proper English, and stop calling their kids ethnic names (i’ll get the link up here shortly). A little bit of victimizing the victim as it were and a healthy dose of this is a meritocracy, if I could make it, so can you.

What all this has led me to think about is the importance of community and family. The real have and have nots are between those who have supportive, positive families, role models and communities–where education and aspiration are exemplified and honored. There is no way to begin to make up the difference here. If someone does not have the support of their community and if their education, knowledge and interests are not in line with the education, knowledge, and interests of their community, it will be very difficult to evoke meaningful change in a person’s life that won’t rip them away from everything they hold dear. Let’s call it the community support divide.

I am a little wary of doing this, but I am going to try posting my reaction papers for the History of Multicultural Education online, slightly modified as they are pretty personal. For the class we are reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith and I will often refer to that novel as such.

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In my class, a white student commented that being surrounded by “brownness” sounded better, more comforting than being surrounded by “whiteness.” What I thought about that comment is that we associate “brownness” with people in touch with their ethnicity, which means family-oriented, fun, social, happy, laughing, food, togetherness, a little bit of loudness. Being surrounded by “whiteness” sounds sterile, serious, soccer-momish, prim & proper, “how do you dos”– without really meaning it, self-consciousness, eating pork chops with a fork and knife. What I associate whiteness with is assimilation, a blankness about identity, being assimilated into a “civilized” world where we don’t let our identity offend others. But what we were talking about yesterday morning doesn’t have to do with skin color, it has to do with social class and how we’ve been taught to associate class with color. A “rough” neighborhood, is being called that because it’s poor, impoverished, downtrodden—but how many of us also imagine that the “rough” neighborhood also contains people of color? It’s notable that we were talking about being surrounded by brownness, instead of being surrounded by “blackness” and I have no doubt that this is intentional.

In White Teeth, Samad laments the process that has led to the merging of cultures into a massive assimilation: “I don’t know what’s happening to our children…they won’t go to mosque, they don’t pray, they speak strangely, they dress strangely, they eat all kinds of rubbish…no respect for tradition. People call it assimilation when it is nothing but corruption.” (159). But it’s also oversimplifying to say that race isn’t a part of how the assimilated are perceived. In White Teeth, the word “coconut” is used to talk about the immigrants who aren’t Muslim enough, who seem too white on the inside. Those characters are not accepted by Muslims for being too white, or mainstream British culture for being too brown. That is the ultimate question—how to assist people in understanding the ways of the mainstream, without losing touch with the community and family who connect them to their own identity.

First of all, I recommend anyone aggravated by the political word game to check out the Annenberg Political Fact Check at www.factcheck.org It’s a nice resource because their approach is simply that they are ripping through the rhetoric and word games to provide actual facts. It appears to be completely non-partisan. Although it is arguable that the position of seeking “truth” indicates a bias toward believing that there is an objective believable truth…but we have to start somewhere.

I was surprised to see that at factcheck.org, Bush has not cut funding to education: Bush Education Ad: Going Positive, Selectively . However the article also points out that the increase is not enough for schools to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements. Another perspective on the current levels of funding is here. I was shocked last semester to discover that ultimately with No Child Left Behind, if students are not passing the mandated standardized tests, funding will be cut to the school and parents can send their children elsewhere. At face value, this can sound alluring. Sure, people have choices, that’s fabulous. But this puts tremendous pressure on schools to hide “problem kids” away. Get rid of low-performing linguistic minorities or kids from rough backgrounds. Or kids with learning disabilities that aren’t “special needs” enough to be exempt from testing. Even better, parents of those children might not understand their choices to move their children.

But beyond that, how demoralizing would it be to work and learn in that kind of environment.

But this line in particular bothered me in light of the Measuring Up Report 2002, which I heard a presentation on from a professor at the University of Virginia. The tenor of the presentation as a result of the findings was that standards ARE necessary, but if we are trying to measure the progress of schools, testing every child every year (which I believe is the situation in Virginia) is not the most effective allocation of time and financial resources. If understanding how the school is doing, a randomized sample of kids should be able to effectively measure that and not put so much stress on kids.

Pres. Bush said the following:

This path begins with our youngest Americans. To build a more hopeful America, we must help our children reach as far as their vision and character can take them. Tonight, I remind every parent and every teacher, I say to every child: No matter what your circumstance, no matter where you live — your school will be the path to the promise of America.

That speaks to the other concept I took about from the presentation…the single most important indicator of a child’s chances of educational success is determined by their zip code. I have had that confirmed from a friend of mine from Lousiana who is shocked at the educational opportunities available here compared to LA.

I have put off posting to finalize my brilliant thoughts about instructional design and real world instructional design situations.

Now I am attacking formatting the style sheet of this page. If you are looking at this in Netscape….it looks worse than ever!. Doesn’t look bad in IE. Afraid to look at Opera. Such is life.

So I’ve been MIA due to trying to meet deadline to submit an article. My brain is a little tired. And then it occurred to me that on top of figuring out and focusing in on my dissertation topic…I have to think about looking for a job. Found this link about the process…for anyone interested suffering.