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| | A Response to _Pedagogy of Hope_ by Paulo Freire | | | Wednesday, June 11, 2008 (1:10 AM)
(I'm feeling hopeful) | | I'm feeling a bit more hopeful today after reading the first chapter of Freire's _Pedagogy of Hope_ (appropriately enough!).
Reading this and realizing the effect that the book had on me (as Freire's writing always has on me) to think about why there is such a sharp difference between the writing of Freire in comparison to other writings that I have found powerfully informative. I think that the key element is that mentioned in the very title: hope.
There is an ever-rising emphasis on being "objective" in writing. Our society has come to feel that, regardless of what slant, what spin, what position you are coming to your writing with, it will be more compelling if this is hidden, veiled. I think the idea is to appeal to the lofty position presently held by science in our society with its accompanying emphasis on objectivity, which has come to almost characterize what science is in the public eye. This doesn't remove the fact that the choice and arrangement of information in a book or article can, and is, used to influence the impression left behind by that writing, but the hidden appeal to the authority of "objectivity" is used to lend the writer's position (which is rarely, if ever, objective!) greater impact.
By contrast, in Freire's writings, which are generally focussed on the art of teaching, what you are presented with isn't "This is how to be a good teacher," but rather "This is an attitude/approach that will help you to grow into being a good teacher, and this why I think it will help." The absence of an appeal to expertise/authority in the latter is also quite striking, considering that information and methodology are usually presented as given, any questions about validity or alternatives being excluded (precluded) from discussion.
So how does this make such a big difference?
One difference is that the absence of an appeal to authority is to give the reader greater agency in grappling with the text. Asking questions about the text, whetherin an attempt to reach greater understanding or in an attempt to refute the text, is no longer framed as being an implicit challenge to figures of authority (and thus to be considered "subversive") but rather it is welcomed, understanding of being prioritized over agreement with the text.
The more common, and perhaps more important, difference is in how objectivity, with the accompanying absence of hope (hope is a subjective feeling, after all), impacts the reader. With notions of journalistic integrity being linked to objectivity, the rather than openly revealing a position, a journalist is more likely to use arrangements of raw information to influence people when he/she sees something he/she considers objectionable, counting on the information presented to provoke moral indignation and, thereby, action. However, such matters as are being reported are often national, even global, issues, and the reader, recognizing that he/she is only a single individual, is often led to despair, the problem being much greater than any single individual.
A concrete example of this is the impact of the information on global warming in the last few years. In the last several years, various parties have made concentrated efforts to inform society about global warming and impress upon the American public that this is a real (not imagined) problem. A poll was conducted a year or so ago (or at least that's when I heard about it) to gauge the feelings of the public on global warming. What they discovered is that _most_ Americans believe that global warming is a real, serious issue, but the impact of the information was such that majority felt powerless, that it is hopeless to try to stop/mitigate the effects of global warming. (A number of the effects, some of them very serious, are already here, by the way.) Since that time, the media blitz surrounding global warming (on the "liberal" side, at least) has shifted away from simply providing raw information toward getting people to think about the ways they can act to help, providing a somewhat more hopeful tone. (Personally, I feel like we might already be in that handbasket, but we should still do what we can to lessen the problem.)
Ultimately, I think it is better not to simply veil your position or attempt to persuade in your writing, but rather to be open about your position while providing such information as will allow your audience to decide for themselves. (This approach is also far less condescending.) It is more important to recognize and acknowledge the ways your position affect your writing, for your own sake as well as for others', rather than to attempt to be (or appear) "objective". This seems particularly true given that much reading that I have done over the past year suggests that "objectivity" is essentially impossible: any information/text coming from a person is colored by the subjective self of that person, the accumulated personality, opinions, and experiences which can never be fully divorced from ourselves, such divorce being necessary for genuine objectivity. (And heaven forbid we should want to! We would make poor human beings if we ever managed to do such a thing.) | | | 79 Views | 2  Thumbs Up | 1 Comment |  |
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| | Calculus and Class Warfare | | | Sunday, April 20, 2008 (5:45 AM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | One of my issues with ``the Academy" is the blindness towards the economic impacts of some of their every day policies. Among the particular instances of this that have come to irk me concerns grading policies.
One of the fashionable topics of concern in academia at present is grade inflation. Administrators have become concerned that the average grades assigned have become too high, devaluing the real worth of a good grade. Around the country a widespread effort has arisen to lower the mean grade of classes, the idea being that a high grade will have greater value once this is done. I have found this effort here at the University of Michigan, as well, driving the mean in the calculus classes to the C level.
However, as these policies have changed, other policies concerning how grades are viewed have remained static, much to the detriment of students. Various professors and administrators have blindly pursued the notion that they have a duty to provide a more ``honest'' and ``valuable'' assessment of the students without recognizing the full reality of the consequences of these policies. One of the results of the shift of the mean to a C in the calculus sequence is that as much as 20-25% of the students receive a failing grade (a D or F). Far from being a benign chastisement of the student to expend more effort learning calculus, such grades can have quite serious consequences. One of the most obvious possibilities is the possibility of losing the status of a student in good standing. When I was an undergraduate, to fail a course led to academic probation, and if a student were similarly unlucky to receive such a grade again in the following term, the student could be kicked out.
On the surface, it might not seem such a terrible policy to remove those students who are doing so poorly, but what now if you have such a high probability of receiving a failing grade in a course? I do not know if the grading policies are similar in other courses, but if they were, it would not be at all difficult to find yourself in this kind of difficult position. (I have heard it suggested that calculus is a ``weeder'' course here at Michigan, so this may be unlikely.) To give you some idea, if grades were assigned entirely randomly with such a failure rate, a person would have better than a 25% chance of getting a failing grade two terms in a row, which would suffice for the person to ``flunk out'', at least in my own undergraduate experience. Things may be rosier than this in reality, but with enough courses with such failure rates around, the situation becomes quite disturbing.
There are yet further, economic, dimensions to this problem. One of these is that financial aid policies have not been altered to reflect the change in the grading scales. Students receiving financial aid are required to maintain a certain grade point average to continue receiving aid, so a failing grade in calculus stands to jeopardize a student's ability to pay for college. In the two terms I have been teaching calculus at U of M, this has frequently been mentioned by panicked students who are doing poorly or by students withdrawing from the course late in the term out of concern for their financial aid. With the cost of higher education has been skyrocketing in recent years, this seems particularly egregious. Under such circumstances, these grading policies stand to deny social and economic advancement to those with lesser monetary means. Given that the educational system is already biased to the advantage of wealthier students, such a policy can quickly come to represent a systematic bias toward excluding those less well-off financially. In recent years, the job market in the U.S. has also become more rigid, with a greater and greater proportion of jobs requiring a college degree rather than providing the possibility of on-the-job training. Windows of opportunity for the lower classes are thereby being shut in the modern job market, for most of the lower classes cannot afford a college education. Coupled with such grading policies and the attendant bias against the economically disadvantaged, we stand to face a system in which the rich become richer while the poor become poorer. (Some statistics suggest that we are already in this situation, something I will likely discuss at some later date, but this begins to remove even the illusion that one can start off poor and be financially successful.) This grading system therefore creates a two-fold threat to the poorer elements of the population, helping to deny them chances for improving their economic situation.
To make matters worse, I have found that most of the people (professors, graduate students) are far from sympathetic towards the students. In the midterm grading sessions, I have found that a kind of elitism is prevalent. Most people take the approach that the students are complete idiots, lending to an attitude of ``guilty until proven innocent'' when it comes to grading. Aside from the clear bias, this attitude results in those grading being less likely to pay close attention to the work of the students, with the result that I have seen alternative (correct!) methods marked as incorrect when they did not follow closely the expectations of the person doing the grading.
But what about the consequences of these actions? These grading sessions, performed so casually, even contemptuously, by so many, taken with the structure of the economy, stand to damage the quality of people's livings for their whole lives! Can such a policy, exacted with such attitudes, really be considered ethical? Yet those determining the grades are blind to the true consequences of their actions, any guilt being removed from sight by administrative sleight of hand, veiled by the doors of an administration building hidden in some remote corner of the campus. With any responsibility removed for such outcomes safely removed from view, those teaching calculus are free to administer their far-reaching punishments with back-handed contempt or, at best, a self-righteous feeling for a job well done and a blow well-delivered in the battle against grade inflation.
To add to my frustration, I have no control, no influence over this system, being too junior to have any sway. Left to myself, I would not hand out failing grades so haphazardly, but the sections of calculus are coordinated quite rigidly. My movements are watched; I cannot deviate from the specified course without correction to the change of course being delivered from above. The structure of the course is prescribed to such an extent that the even order in which the material is taught, even to the extent of the day-by-day coverage of topics, is set in stone, so that to deviate would result, ultimately, in the students being punished once the midterms arrived. I thus find myself conscripted into service for class warfare, but on the wrong side! (So it feels to me.) Given my own economic background, I would be more inclined to help the disadvantaged students, but instead I am pressed into service to dismantle the dreams and ambitions of what could easily be younger versions of myself.
I find this maddening, and it certainly adds to my bitterness towards the Academy. | | | | 81 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | Response to Brianne | | | Sunday, April 6, 2008 (9:02 AM)
(I'm feeling irritated) | | One of the flaws of the blog feature. . . it doesn't seem that you can respond to comments on your blog. . .
I just wanted to respond to anotherbrianne's comment on my previous blog; I suspect I have enough to say on this issue to comprise a full blog in any case.
I don't feel that you (Brianne) should have to worry about your First Nations background being by upbringing rather than by blood. In the old days (pre-Columbus, say), membership in a nation was not always determined by blood. There were various ways that people could be adopted, even after reaching their majority, and after that adoption, they were treated as being as much a part of the community as anyone who was part of that community by blood. I heard tale that this was what happened to those who mysteriously disappeared at the Roanoke island colony--they were absorbed into the Lumbee tribe. Many people who were viewed as "captives" of Indians by colonists became so attached to their new families that they declined to rejoin their previous families when given the chance, or left tearfully, compelled only by the threat of death and war against their new families unless they returned to their old families. This seems to me to speak volumes about the level of acceptance and absorption of new people into a "tribe"/nation who might not be related by blood. In any case, since First Nations people were originally, as the name suggests, nations, they naturally had a right to their own naturalization process, accepting new people as "citizens" of their nations.
I think that most attempts to deny you a First Nations identity stem from defensiveness of various sorts. Among native peoples one sometimes sees this kind of denial of others' native identities, and I have come to believe that this stems from their own defensiveness in the face of societal pressures towards the erosion of indigenous identities. The dominant society tries to dictate to us what it means to be Native American; characterizations in film and so on leave us struggling to define ourselves without succumbing to the current of popular imagery; and so many people (at least here in the US) don't even realize that Indians still exist. The impression people are left with from school is that American Indians disappeared at the end of the 19th century, and when faced with a real native person they find it difficult (in my experience) to overcome their doublethink and acknowledge to themselves that native people are still around. Given how small a minority we are, this makes for trying to swim against a strong current, and people are left with these knee-jerk reactions which can be rather counterproductive--the notion of identity by blood is something acquired from the European invaders, after all.
Among non-natives, one of the biggest obstacles is the cultivated ignorance that I have already mentioned. Coupled with this is the difficulty of accepting what would have to be faced with recognizing the continued existence of First Nations peoples--there is a sort of guilt that these people feel and don't want to face stemming from the fact that their ancestors participated in the genocide of native peoples. To acknowledge our existence would mean that this is not something safely in the past, to be comfortably forgotten, but rather something that still has real consequences in the world today (though I would say that it would still have implications important to them even there weren't any of us left). Our very existence is uncomfortable, flying in the face of triumphalist and patriotic images of the conquest of the wilderness and frontier as it does, the implication being that the frontier was no empty, barren wilderness but a place inhabited by other nations. The death and destruction involved in "Manifest Destiny" stands in uncomfortable contrast to notions of their moral superiority stemming from nationalism (though such nationalist sentiments are probably more pronounced here in the US than in Canada). Our very existence is a political act, challenging as it does their very notion of what they are as a people, a nation. It can be a difficult thing for people to swallow, and many avoid it if they can. The most conenient way of avoiding this, of course, is to deny others their identities. If you don't exist, then your existence is no challenge to them. Effectively this is someone someone putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "la-la-la, I can't here you." Fool themselves as they will, it does not really provide any answer to the issue at hand.
I have mentioned in my previous blog the fact that I am still struggling to regain my voice in the face of such oppositional currents, so my ability to discuss what happens when I speak out is limited (though growing). I can, however, mention some comments of my elder sister on her own experiences. She has faced the irony of both sides of this denial: when speaking to White folk on the issues, she is quickly branded as an "angry Indian" as you have, but if what she says is uncomfortable to native people she talks to, the Indians too are quick to brand her as just being some white person (she is light-skinned, as I am), dismissing her claims to a Cherokee identity. A case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't". . . there are just so many complicated issues which can be so uncomfortable to face up to in the native community, I guess. . . .
One thing I can say out of my own experience. . . I find that those who are struggling to regain their voice, to struggle out of the disempowerment of oppression, are sometimes quick to silence others' voices, though they be the voices of those in the same struggle to regain their voice. Their confidence is still too fragile, and they move to silence others before they themselves can be silenced. This becomes a bit of a habit, leaving them silencing voices that could stand with them in opposition to many of the issues they struggle against, a terrible irony.
This certainly turned out to be longer than I expected. . . I have another blog in mind which I may post later, as well, as well as a vlog or two that I hope to put out. Things have been terribly busy for me lately, otherwise I may have gotten to some of these things earlier. | | | | 92 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | Breaking the Silence | | | Friday, March 21, 2008 (11:49 AM)
(I'm feeling tense) | | A private message I got recently caused me to reflect more on my goals for this channel. I had thought to blog on this already, but this has spurred me on.
I first learned of LV rather near its inception, and first created a channel in November of 2006. I wasn't really doing anything with it, though, and I ended up deleting that channel in early 2007 or something, around the same time I deleted my MySpace and Facebook accounts (I wasn't really doing anything meaningful with those accounts either). The person who had originally introduced me to LV wasn't so happy with that though, and protested. My affection for that person being what it was, I was willing to reconsider.
While I was reconsidering, I wandered around on LV watching a few videos to see what it was I would really be returning for. The videos I had been watching up until that time had really been little more than idle amusements. Unlike my friend, I had not kept track of the growth of the vloggerhood here up until that time. Now, though, I encountered a couple of people, vloggers, which caused me to reflect a bit more, people who had things to say that made me feel as though I might want to leave a comment (CaveMan, mercofspeech). When I eventually made the decision to return to LV, my focus centered more on the human aspect than on idle amusements: the vloggers, the social commentary, and so on.
All of this was going on during a time when I was trying to grapple with various issues, some of them being those mentioned in the previous blog surrounding my graduate school experience, but also with issues of my Native American identity and the causes and consequences of the social ostracism that I have experienced for most of my life. Not having many friends and so on meant that my opinions were not valued by (nearly) anyone. Looking white as I do, society would tend to claim that I am simply white, denying my indentity as a Cherokee person. I think that I assumed that people would deny me any claims to an Indian identity based on my appearance, silencing any claims to this important part of my identity, something which had impacted how I was raised, the values I was taught. This contributed to me not really revealing this aspcet of my identity for a long time (there were other contributing reasons, which I'll discuss in another blog). It is hard to tell how much of this was present at a conscious level now. . . I'm not sure I didn't end up slipping into some kind of wierd doublethink. In addition to this, portrayals of American Indians in movies, and certainly in history classes (which tend to run over the colonial period over and over again beginning from the second grade or so), tend to leave the suggestion that Indians are something that simply no longer exist, whether taking the "noble savage" approach of the lamentable disappearance of a noble people (notice the lack of an "s" on the word people in this depiction, which has some significance) in the face of progress or taking the view that Indians were violent and savage that needed to be exterminated for the safety of society. Implicitly, then, society teaches you that Native Americans no longer exist, as well as that this is good and necessary, and these teaching begin at a rather early age. This places psychological pressure on native children rather early to devalue, even deny, their identity. Moreover, these being the words of authority (teachers, for example), the words of "experts" (historians and anthropologists), any objections are silenced.
The combination of all these things had left me feeling silenced. To try to speak my true thoughts, my true feelings, would leave me feeling vulnerable, as though I could expect my opinions to be assaulted if revealed, as they had been assaulted, if covertly, much of my life. Even among people I could expect to understand, people I thought I could trust, I found that there was a terrible psychic pressure against giving my thoughts voice. I kind of fear would grip me. . . the message from society is that I am not even supposed to be, that "my kind", as it were, is extinct.
Part of my goal in returning to LiveVideo, in creating a new channel, became to use this space to help me regain my own voice. Here I would have the combination of putting my voice out in public, yet (as I knew) few people would see, and certainly noone would be able to stop my expression: by the time anyone sees a video, the words have already been spoken. My goal was also to educate, in my own way, to point out the flaws in society that perpetuate oppression, and to lessen the invisibility of the people and problems of the Native American community.
Looking at the incredibly slow rate at which I create videos, I would have to say my success thus far in reaching these goals has been mixed. Nevertheless, I have improved.
These blogs are somewhat ironic in a way, for they reflect to some extent my difficulties with speaking with my own voice, reducing my means of expression to words on a page. Will I ever come to be able to express myself this way in video? To be fair, when I try to say something orally, it often comes out a bit discombobulated, a random rambling, whereas I am much more concise and organized in writing, but even this may represent my lack of practice of giving my thoughts voice. | | | | 89 Views | 6 Thumbs Up | 3 Comments | |
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| | Campus Lockdown conference, Big Life Decisions | | | Saturday, March 15, 2008 (5:48 PM)
(I'm feeling inspired, yet frustrated) | | I went to the conference Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex today. The conference was organized by a number of students as a form of protest against the denial of tenure for Andrea (Andy) Smith (Cherokee). From what I understand, her record is quite stellar, raising serious questions about the reasoning behind denying tenure. As for myself, the more I learn of her activism and ideological position, the more I come to admire her. It is unfortunate that she is so infernally busy, for I would like to be able to get to know her better than it appears that I will be able.
What people had to say there was quite inspiring, an expression of solidarity and encouragement in the face of the targetting of themselves and others for discrimination. (I have by now accumulated quite a number of stories of such targeting, both at the conference and elsewhere.) It is nevertheless very frustrating to see the evidence of the continued entrenchment of racism and discrimination.
Attending the conference also caused me to reflect on my own difficulties with the Academy (as if I hadn't been thinking about that enough already!), leading me to a decision that I have probably been sliding towards for some time. The organizers (graduate students here at the University of Michigan) prepared a newletter of sorts explaining the issues at the University of Michigan. One person had performed interviews of 28 women of color at UM as part of her Ph.D. thesis project, and in the newsletter was the following quote from one of these interviews: "Being isolated in any situation is never fun, but in academia it is so hard because there is so much to do that if you are doing it all alone, not only are you not getting synergy and not getting help and assistance, but you are also not going to be successful." This quote resonated strongly with my own feelings of isolation and alienation. At brunch with Haunani-Kay Trask, one of the invited panelists, she made a comment to the effect that she was glad that her own department (which now has its own building after much effort and organizing on her part) was so far away from the anthropology department, due to her antipathy towards them. (Besides her own personal struggles with anthropologists, you might look at the chapter of Vine Deloria's Custer Died For Your Sins entitled "Anthropologists and Other Friends", or the book Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith to get a better understanding of the bitterness that lies there.) For me, though, the arrangement of space at the University of Michigan works in the opposite direction, isolating me from such company as might sustain me socially, namely the Native American faculty here.
When I was about to come here to the university, I saw on the website of one of the faculty of the mathematics department (this being my own subject) that he was Native American, and a description of his efforts in the community, which was underscored by the statement that there were fewer than a dozen American Indians who had received a Ph.D. in mathematics. (Sadly, with his new appointment as a dean at the university, I have had little contact with him.) From my own experience, I think I begin to understand why. In my own stuggle to obtain that Ph.D., I found the atmosphere of the Academy quite hostile generally, but discriminating especially on the basis of race, of class, and of gender. These being the people that I was able to relate to there, throughout my time there I found my friends falling around me. . . some managed to go elsewhere, but some simply dropped out, while many of those who remained seemed to lower their expectations, lower their goals, in the face of such opposition. Having strong talent in math, I managed to make it through, but it cost me a great deal, psychologically, spiritually. There were a number of times when I thought of leaving, thinking "is it really worth this?" I found it particularly hard to maintain the necessary social support to keep myself going when so many of the people I could get such support from kept falling to the wayside in the face of the onslaught. I spent considerable effort to help people get through, helping them in my own subject of expertise (analysis) so that they could negotiate the system a little easier, something I got many thanks for from various people, but this only did so much to alleviate the situation. Looking back, I have to wonder: if not for the fact that I look White (a mixed blessing, at best) would I have been more of a target? Would have I made it through if my skin had been darker?
Later, a young woman entered the program who, though perhaps not as strong or focussed as some, was ever ready to fight against the system. This helped provide me with new hope, and under her influence I came to think of trying to help people in the department in a different way, by organization at a broader level, negotiating more directly for change with the department. At one point, however, she went to the vice chair for graduate studies of the time and brought up the issue of expending a little more effort on the recruitment of women, citing the feelings of social alienation felt by the women in the department. His response? While I don't know all that was said, the item reported that stuck with me was his expressing the sentiment that if they were so stupid as to need this, then they shouldn't be there. Taken with a couple of other things that I heard, the message that I got from it was, "We don't care," and/or, "This is just the way we want it." For me this was the straw that broke the camel's back; it was hope betrayed. Rather than being ignorant of how things were being run in a discriminatory fashion, movable towards rectifying the situation once it was revealed, the people of the department (some of them, at least) were quite satisfied with the status quo. I must say that if my thesis advisor had also been among such people, I would certainly never have made it through. As it is, I am fortunate that he was among those closer to the other end of the spectrum in the department.
Though I struggled through to the end (it had already cost me too much for me not to finish), ever since I have come to question whether I should stay a mathematician. If I stayed, would I find myself co-opted, giving into and even adopting similar sentiments to alleviate my isolation? What I have decided after the conference is that I cannot prioritize a career in mathematics at the cost of maintaining such isolation. Rather, I will do what I must to retain ties to the community, to continue to try to help the community, though the cost in time lost for research is likely to mean that I will not get another mathematical position once this one is over. As our local scholar-activist might say, being assistant professor of mathematics will be how I keep access to the resources to get by while continuing the fight against global opression. The personal cost of doing otherwise is simply too high. After having worked so long and having paid so much to reach this point, it was very hard to decide that I should be so ready to simply give it up, but hopefully it will be easier to move forward now that I have come to this decision.
I will probably write more on this here, but I think this is quite long enough for now, both for me and for you, the reader (for such few as will read this, anyway).
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| | Blog intro | | | Monday, February 25, 2008 (7:48 PM)
(I'm feeling agitated) | | I'll be starting a blog, this being the first entry. As with my vlogs, the goal will be to touch on thought-provoking topics concerning society. Also as with my vlogs, I have no idea how often I will post something, but hopefully between the two the paucity(<--word of the day! ) of new material in one will be made up for by the occasional posting in the other.
At the moment I have three or four videos in mind to make, so I don't really have much excuse for not posting vlogs more often. It's spring break here at the University of Michigan, though, so with the lower teaching duties stemming from that I hope to get caught up a bit on my posts.
I actually made the outline for the next video in the Native American Issues series this evening, but I find some of the information involved rather upsetting (hence the agitation), so I'm basically chickening out on doing the vlog tonight, despite my intentions. Hopefully, I will do that video tomorrow morning. | | | | 123 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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