The Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative inquiry and practice. Peter Reason, & Hilary Bradbury, (Eds.). Second Edition, 2008. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, and Singapore: Sage.
This is a completely rewritten text from the first edition. 49 new chapters in all across 720 pages, a very full statement of where action research is at the moment. I note Kay Yang's helpful summary of key chapters, and other related reading about action research at http://researchthatmatters.blogspot.com/2010/11/sage-handbook-of-action-research.html. I focus on some thoughts for student researchers. Action research is, it declares, an orientation rather than a 'method'. The orientation is to creatively strive for improvement through rigorous use of any appropriate method. 1st person projects involve personal reflection-action-reflection cycles, 2nd person involves others, whilst 3rd person projects 'do it' to others. Ideally, aspects of all three are present: the word 'participatory' occurs frequently, that is, action research best describes a group working together. Terms like 'critical' and 'emancipatory' are often used: these show AR to be critical of power structures and status quo which keeps traditional unemancipated practice 'frozen' and unchangeable. Arrangements which benefit those in power are most difficult to change. I use this term 'frozen' to bring discussion back to Kurt Lewin, the originator of action research. Having escaped from Nazi hegemony, he was greatly interested in how people are designated 'other' and how research can assist them. He was especially interested in how organisations can improve themselves. He distinguished between task and process, focusing on the whole system to make fundamental changes. This required general participation, seeking to win hearts and minds. Lewin became interested in group dynamics, that is, how the individual is affected by the group. Self-reflection, examining our assumptions and presuppositions, is an essential ingredient. Reflective selves within a team.
AR in educational assignments is often caricatured as 'plan an intervention, carry it out, and evaluate it'. First, where is the vision of the whole organisation (be it the school or the whole education service)? What are the views of all involved, including the pupils? Where is the participation? Second, how will this intervention 'improve' things? What is mean by improve? Where is the critical slant and emancipation? Will it free the system from unfairness? How will it critique power and democratise the activity? Thirdly, does it encourage a broader vision about the community and global relationships? Fourthly, does it ask interesting questions of the change process that draws from interdisciplinary literature? One example is how 'the theatre of the oppressed' in Bangladesh drew on the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal in engaging street cleaners with emancipating role playing.
It is clear from this collection of projects that AR is ethics in practice (chap. 13 explores this). It is described as activist research - research implying that wrongs are righted. It has elements of the spiritual - Peter Reason and others point to Buddhist parallels, and it is generally involved with generating better, more fulfilling knowledge. It is about transformation, vision and the transpersonal. Several writers comment that action research is the way you live your whole life, not just a methodological choice for a short-term project. In a sense then, understanding AR helps to understand research itself holistically: are multiple perspectives fairly drawn on? Does the research create a better world? Is it just? Is it liberating? Does it challenge readers to see the world differently?
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Elloitt W. Eisner - Reimagining Schools
I am re-reading a number of Eisner articles from the past 20 years in this 'selected works of' volume. Eisner is an art educationalist from Stanford University, USA. A 'reimagined school' is one where imagination and creativity is encouraged, so it is a place of excitement and wonder - and not dominated by tedious drill and exercises. I remember well his description of expertise in education as connoisseurship rather than mastery. Since education is about people and both complex and subtle, he felt it better described through the metaphor of the connoisseur of fine wine than mastery of a skill. The skillful teacher/educator has to look for small signs of success and quality and get know the good from the very good, as a matter of instinct. Connoisseurship is this an art rather than a science, a key to most of his writings. Evaluation of education, in his view, is not a matter of raw scores, results, performance indicators and such sort, but a matter of relationships between students and teachers. A successful school enthuses, motivates, excites, and causes learners to thirst for more. Moreover, he argued, learning is very broad. We praise ability in literacy and maths, privilege it, but are less likely to praise ability in art or music. A page of successful maths scores more than writing a symphony, or drawing a brilliant picture. This is wrong: we should recognize "multiple literacies". (This was before Gardner made 'multiple intelligences' popular). The arts are a way into human experience and consciousness. Art (including literature and music) images feeling, which otherwise are sidelined and education becomes only a matter of remembering stuff, not experiencing and feeling.
Throughout the period of these articles the English curriculum has become increasing stuck in the rut of assessment, testing and accountability, marginalising those aspects of the curriculum which emphasise experience, appreciation, joy and celebration. There is no longer much to celebrate. A chapter on 'the celebration of thinking' hints that education could more resemble celebration than the sort of drill that improves SATs results, but discourages children from finding education interesting.
Throughout the period of these articles the English curriculum has become increasing stuck in the rut of assessment, testing and accountability, marginalising those aspects of the curriculum which emphasise experience, appreciation, joy and celebration. There is no longer much to celebrate. A chapter on 'the celebration of thinking' hints that education could more resemble celebration than the sort of drill that improves SATs results, but discourages children from finding education interesting.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist often cited in educational research literature. His major interest was in class and its implications. His Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Theory, Culture and Society Series), Sage, 1977, with Jean-Claude Passeron (in French: La Reproduction. Éléments pour une théorie du système d'enseignement, Minuit, 1970) explores how class attitudes reproduce themselves, helpfully and unhelpfully, though he was also interested in social mobility (breaking away from one's birth class). He speaks of habitus, the habitual, unchallenged social assumptions; conatus, striving towards; field (social setting); capital (social, cultural - the metaphorical class wealth). Reproduction is repressive, restricting personal choices and aspirations. He calls this social violence. He argues that class has a stranglehold over social power. A work of the 1960s, which included the 1968 student protests in Paris, we wonder how times have changed over the last four decades. Class, wealth and power do not go hand in hand now, since celebrity and high bonus jobs like banking have emerged as a major source of wealth,
The poor however still exist, the unemployed, the unqualified, the weak and sick, carers. Some strive to move out of this, others do not have the confidence or determination to do so. Engaging this difficult group in education has long been a government aspiration, but few projects have been made much difference except at the margins. Class may or may not still be with us; poverty and low aspirations most certainly are.
What causes low aspirations? Feeling powerless comes from being told you are powerless. Confidence needs to be encouraged and nurtured. This is the meaning of reproduction. Low aspirations fuel low aspirations in one's children, high aspirations likewise fuel ambition. They 'reproduce'. A high aspirational family builds up 'capital' - the evidence of social and cultural achievement. Qualifications, property, possessions. They provide the 'right' educational opportunities for their children to succeed. Poorly educated parents are content with low achieving schools.
There are exceptions. Ethnic minority families in general value education, so that their children do better than their parents. They have high status careers in mind, in law and medicine. They might not of course find their ideal in education easy to achieve.
Bourdieu headed a group of researchers interviewing the have-nots. The Weight of the World is subtitled Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. His researchers interviewed many people who qualified in some way for the label 'social suffering'. He wanted the case studies to illustrate his theory, although this book is not theory dense. The transcriptions have many examples of people finding it hard to escape from the situation they find themselves in. He described the interview as a spiritual experience, an opening up of personal agendas in ways which help to construct meaning. The interview should be a relationship, a non-violent relationship. He refers to good sympathetic interview technique (based on relationship) which attempts to get into their shoes. He contrasts this with tired questions which stem from the sociologist's project rather than from real life. He uses the phrase "induced and accompanied self-analysis" (p.615). In this style of interviewing, the interviewee is not the 'object' of the research. He adds: "True submission to the data requires an act of construction based on practical mastery of the social logic by which these data are constructed" (p.617), which involves "the uncovering of immanent structures" which reveal ideosyncrasy and complexity. Conversation analysis should look for "the invisible structures that organise it", whether these be social, or academic, or other. Research constructs something new, by asking the right questions based on a deep understanding of social processes. He calls this "realist construction" (p.618). He regards transcription of interviews (p.622) as a rewriting, an interpretation based on only a selection of audio and visual events and set out to be readable by others. Sociologists look for patterns, structures and processes which make society predictable. Reproduction/replication of class or status is one, power is another. Understanding these allows us, and those who suffer from the consequences, to be more politically aware and in a better situation to find different routes forward.
The poor however still exist, the unemployed, the unqualified, the weak and sick, carers. Some strive to move out of this, others do not have the confidence or determination to do so. Engaging this difficult group in education has long been a government aspiration, but few projects have been made much difference except at the margins. Class may or may not still be with us; poverty and low aspirations most certainly are.
What causes low aspirations? Feeling powerless comes from being told you are powerless. Confidence needs to be encouraged and nurtured. This is the meaning of reproduction. Low aspirations fuel low aspirations in one's children, high aspirations likewise fuel ambition. They 'reproduce'. A high aspirational family builds up 'capital' - the evidence of social and cultural achievement. Qualifications, property, possessions. They provide the 'right' educational opportunities for their children to succeed. Poorly educated parents are content with low achieving schools.
There are exceptions. Ethnic minority families in general value education, so that their children do better than their parents. They have high status careers in mind, in law and medicine. They might not of course find their ideal in education easy to achieve.
Bourdieu headed a group of researchers interviewing the have-nots. The Weight of the World is subtitled Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. His researchers interviewed many people who qualified in some way for the label 'social suffering'. He wanted the case studies to illustrate his theory, although this book is not theory dense. The transcriptions have many examples of people finding it hard to escape from the situation they find themselves in. He described the interview as a spiritual experience, an opening up of personal agendas in ways which help to construct meaning. The interview should be a relationship, a non-violent relationship. He refers to good sympathetic interview technique (based on relationship) which attempts to get into their shoes. He contrasts this with tired questions which stem from the sociologist's project rather than from real life. He uses the phrase "induced and accompanied self-analysis" (p.615). In this style of interviewing, the interviewee is not the 'object' of the research. He adds: "True submission to the data requires an act of construction based on practical mastery of the social logic by which these data are constructed" (p.617), which involves "the uncovering of immanent structures" which reveal ideosyncrasy and complexity. Conversation analysis should look for "the invisible structures that organise it", whether these be social, or academic, or other. Research constructs something new, by asking the right questions based on a deep understanding of social processes. He calls this "realist construction" (p.618). He regards transcription of interviews (p.622) as a rewriting, an interpretation based on only a selection of audio and visual events and set out to be readable by others. Sociologists look for patterns, structures and processes which make society predictable. Reproduction/replication of class or status is one, power is another. Understanding these allows us, and those who suffer from the consequences, to be more politically aware and in a better situation to find different routes forward.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur was a French philosopher who sought to find positive integrations to opposites. This process of synthesis had been well-known since Hegel but binary opposites had become a base doctrine of structuralism within postmodernism, and Ricoeur found this too simplistic and wanted ways of resolving opposites. He also wanted a way out of scepticism, since if we believe nothing, life loses its point. A key word is dialectics, the discussion and debate between opposites or different points of view. He was interested in self understanding, memory and forgetting, use of language (his original job was as translator), and religion.
This is to follow up my review of Alison Scott-Baumann's Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutic of Suspicion with a link to an interview with her by Theory, Culture and Society at http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/interview-with-alison-scott-baumann-on.html. The site http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com is itself well worth visiting.
My review will soon be on http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/1071. An edited version is on http://learnlivethrive.blogspot.com/2010/03/paul-ricoeur-and-hermeneutics-of.html
This is to follow up my review of Alison Scott-Baumann's Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutic of Suspicion with a link to an interview with her by Theory, Culture and Society at http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/interview-with-alison-scott-baumann-on.html. The site http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com is itself well worth visiting.
My review will soon be on http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/1071. An edited version is on http://learnlivethrive.blogspot.com/2010/03/paul-ricoeur-and-hermeneutics-of.html
Saturday, 23 October 2010
What About God?
A comment (for which, thanks) on my last blog On Becoming a Person queries my views on religion and God.
I wondered there whether my teenage developing views were rational or a reaction against the fundamentalist regime of my upbringing. That certainly made me a critic of detail, since religious belief (across the religions) requires belief in miracles, magic, and the irrational generally. In the Old Testament, the sun stood still to give Joshua military victory, Lot's wife becomes a pillar of salt, the waters of the Red Sea pile up. The New Testament presents us with a virgin birth, a physical ascention to heaven, and numerous medical miracles. None of these is a problem if we can read them as folklore.
Today we have a vociferous evangelical atheist movement pursuing the demolition of myth and folklore, and denying the relevance of a concept of God. Religions need to respond by redefining themselves after such demythologising, so that belief in God does not ride on the irrational. Rudolph Bultmann applied demythologisation to the life of Jesus. Paul Tillich appealed to depth psychology to find God in (or as) the depth of personal being. This is not unlike philosophical Hinduism.The collection of articles by active Christians, called The Myth of God Incarnate was an unexpected but understandable best seller. That the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, are problematic historical documents is saying no more than that we should approach them as critically as we do Josephus, Tacitus or Suetonius. That the books were written to have an authoritative use should put us on our guard more, for that makes them socio-political propaganda, documents for contemporary people to accept without question and act on, and if required give up their lives for. All people in power try to write (and rewrite) history and it was no different in the early church. The Old Testament consists of foundation books for the origins of Judaism, written to promote the interests of a particular power group. Some off-text sections have survived which makes the archaeology of the text particularly interesting.
Religions mostly base themselves on stories of one or more deities. Theravada Buddhism alone presents their founder as human and not divine, which did not translate to Tibet, China and Japan, where deities abound in Mahayana Buddhism. People then as now varied from concrete/pictorial to philosophical. The common folk needed pictures, whether in words or icons; the more thoughtful could see beyond them to deeper principles. It is what God means in these deeper principles that concern us here.
God is pictured (described through a picture) even in the Hebrew Bible where creating images of God was forbidden. 'He' walked in the garden, was a shepherd and king, and so on. I describe this process in some detail in the chapter on symbolism in my Creating the Old Testament (1989). A picture can be demythologised. God is not really a shepherd but an aspect of care and protection is shepherd-like (the argument would go). Of course the same God who protects also destroys when in a different mood. The prophet Jeremiah focused on political disaster as a divine punishment for sin. Hindu deities are iconic (presented in the form of icons or images). Saraswati goddess of wisdom is a lady, dressed in white, crowned, with a Sitar, rosary and book. I asked children what wisdom is, and one said, "a wise person is someone who knows a lot about a lot of thiongs, but is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help others". So this is what Saraswati means. This deep inner wisdom is part of what we mean by God. This is one of many images of God that Hindus use and all can be deconstructed similarly. Ganesh, with elephant head, is the remover of obstacles: what better than an elephant to knock a wall down; but Ganesh has an untied bond (meaning to remove inhibition), a cake (meaning to maintain strength), a goad (meaning to make maximum effort) and a broken tusk (meaning to take risks). Obstacles are only overcome thus, with inner strength and conviction. Inside each of us is a reservoir of inner strength, which we need to learn to draw on. God therefore refers to these inner strengths. But again, what is created comes from the destruction of what went before. Siva is creator, but also destroyer, reminding people of the procdess of change and entropy.
Religion can make us either dependent or independent. Fatalism is to say that God has it all planned and we can do nothing. If we do nothing, disaster will happen and we will say it is God's will. Blaming God for disaster is as old as religion. Praying for help might unlock inner strengths that will succeed.
Prayer is another interesting topic. In a sense, we pray within ourselves to no external person; but the inner dialogue may be helpful. By externalising the vision (that is, thinking of an objective God) we might focus ourselves to succeed instead of fail. We all need an inner reflexive dialogue to clarify our thoughts and motivations. Contemplation is a monologue, but prayer is a dialogue. Artificial maybe, but effective. Prayer is an internal discipline which is more helpful than unhelpful.
If I think about ethics, I can visualise the apogy of ethics: perfect, positive communitarian behaviour. This is part of the conceptual cluster I call God. Similarly with justice, there is a core concept of perfect justice. And virtue, and goodness, and altruism, and fidelity, and empowerment. All these give God substance, and I cherish them, the highest of all positive values.
I wondered there whether my teenage developing views were rational or a reaction against the fundamentalist regime of my upbringing. That certainly made me a critic of detail, since religious belief (across the religions) requires belief in miracles, magic, and the irrational generally. In the Old Testament, the sun stood still to give Joshua military victory, Lot's wife becomes a pillar of salt, the waters of the Red Sea pile up. The New Testament presents us with a virgin birth, a physical ascention to heaven, and numerous medical miracles. None of these is a problem if we can read them as folklore.
Today we have a vociferous evangelical atheist movement pursuing the demolition of myth and folklore, and denying the relevance of a concept of God. Religions need to respond by redefining themselves after such demythologising, so that belief in God does not ride on the irrational. Rudolph Bultmann applied demythologisation to the life of Jesus. Paul Tillich appealed to depth psychology to find God in (or as) the depth of personal being. This is not unlike philosophical Hinduism.The collection of articles by active Christians, called The Myth of God Incarnate was an unexpected but understandable best seller. That the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, are problematic historical documents is saying no more than that we should approach them as critically as we do Josephus, Tacitus or Suetonius. That the books were written to have an authoritative use should put us on our guard more, for that makes them socio-political propaganda, documents for contemporary people to accept without question and act on, and if required give up their lives for. All people in power try to write (and rewrite) history and it was no different in the early church. The Old Testament consists of foundation books for the origins of Judaism, written to promote the interests of a particular power group. Some off-text sections have survived which makes the archaeology of the text particularly interesting.
Religions mostly base themselves on stories of one or more deities. Theravada Buddhism alone presents their founder as human and not divine, which did not translate to Tibet, China and Japan, where deities abound in Mahayana Buddhism. People then as now varied from concrete/pictorial to philosophical. The common folk needed pictures, whether in words or icons; the more thoughtful could see beyond them to deeper principles. It is what God means in these deeper principles that concern us here.
God is pictured (described through a picture) even in the Hebrew Bible where creating images of God was forbidden. 'He' walked in the garden, was a shepherd and king, and so on. I describe this process in some detail in the chapter on symbolism in my Creating the Old Testament (1989). A picture can be demythologised. God is not really a shepherd but an aspect of care and protection is shepherd-like (the argument would go). Of course the same God who protects also destroys when in a different mood. The prophet Jeremiah focused on political disaster as a divine punishment for sin. Hindu deities are iconic (presented in the form of icons or images). Saraswati goddess of wisdom is a lady, dressed in white, crowned, with a Sitar, rosary and book. I asked children what wisdom is, and one said, "a wise person is someone who knows a lot about a lot of thiongs, but is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help others". So this is what Saraswati means. This deep inner wisdom is part of what we mean by God. This is one of many images of God that Hindus use and all can be deconstructed similarly. Ganesh, with elephant head, is the remover of obstacles: what better than an elephant to knock a wall down; but Ganesh has an untied bond (meaning to remove inhibition), a cake (meaning to maintain strength), a goad (meaning to make maximum effort) and a broken tusk (meaning to take risks). Obstacles are only overcome thus, with inner strength and conviction. Inside each of us is a reservoir of inner strength, which we need to learn to draw on. God therefore refers to these inner strengths. But again, what is created comes from the destruction of what went before. Siva is creator, but also destroyer, reminding people of the procdess of change and entropy.
Religion can make us either dependent or independent. Fatalism is to say that God has it all planned and we can do nothing. If we do nothing, disaster will happen and we will say it is God's will. Blaming God for disaster is as old as religion. Praying for help might unlock inner strengths that will succeed.
Prayer is another interesting topic. In a sense, we pray within ourselves to no external person; but the inner dialogue may be helpful. By externalising the vision (that is, thinking of an objective God) we might focus ourselves to succeed instead of fail. We all need an inner reflexive dialogue to clarify our thoughts and motivations. Contemplation is a monologue, but prayer is a dialogue. Artificial maybe, but effective. Prayer is an internal discipline which is more helpful than unhelpful.
If I think about ethics, I can visualise the apogy of ethics: perfect, positive communitarian behaviour. This is part of the conceptual cluster I call God. Similarly with justice, there is a core concept of perfect justice. And virtue, and goodness, and altruism, and fidelity, and empowerment. All these give God substance, and I cherish them, the highest of all positive values.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
On Becoming a Person
Carl R Rogers, in On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, poses two challenging questions: how have I come to think the thoughts I do? and How have I come to be the person I am? From that, he leads into a descriptive autobiography, but I will try to be more focused.
Day 1.
I have studied religion in various forms most of my life - indeed it was my first specialism. Brought up in evangelical certainties, my father taught me to question and not be afraid of standing out against the crowd. The religious community, the Brethren, were repressive in the sense that I was hauled over the coals from time to time for asking the wrong questions - for example about women's role in worship, about literal inspiration. Looking back, I was nicely hounded, but learnt to cope with it. Believing or thinking something just because everyone else does is a form of intellectual idleness. I lost detailed dogmatic beliefs as soon as I started studying. My Professor at University, FF Bruce, was also from the Brethren, but I was relieved to find that his mind was very open. Other University teachers had a range of beliefs - Sam Brandon, about Jesus being an active Zealot, John Allegro about sacred mushrooms, James Barr about the wickedness of fundamentalism. I study religion as an outsider, interested in the power of metaphor, why people express themselves in such self-deceiving ways when taking metaphor literally, but also not blind to personality gains that this provides for them. Having a conscience, for whatever reason, is socially very helpful.
Having a conscience brings me to my interest in justice, good works, and being a helpful citizen. Being helpful to others is a bit of an obsession without which my life would be simpler. Intellectually, I ask questions about social justice, implicit corruption to achieve benefit, and the unfairness of life generally. Those that achieve wealth, fame and fortune seems to do so for the wrong reasons in a society in which something deep down is rotten, where self, greed, ambition and power are drivers esteemed by gatekeepers. My politics are therefore left of centre, although I do not feel or give loyalty to political parties.
As to what sort of person I am, I leave to others ultimately. I love my own company, but also treasure the company of people I care about. I try to empower rather than disempower, give credit where credit is due, and take blame if blame is due. This is what I think I do - others may see me differently. I write with others for practical purposes, and learn much from others - but I prefer to write by myself. I also enjoy physical exercise - I could have had a career in athletics and sport generally, and now, once gardening find it hard to stop. I find pointless exercise irritating - and would much rather fit exercise into my everyday life and tasks. Although I like music, it is not important to me and a silent desert island holds no fears. Wall to wall potted music in shops drives me to distraction. I probably don't move to music either - since it has never been tested, I don't know.
Equally I don't need conversation, though enjoy it when the time is right. I communicate in writing, which means utterances are considered rather than spontaneous. Friends will probably say that this is not true, and they may be right, I may understand myself wrongly. I am probably intolerably self confident, but this hides a certain self-consciousness. Probably no one gets crosser at me than myself, and I have no illusions about my faults and failings.
If I were to write my own obituary, what would I say? Someone who has dabbled in a lot but not become known for any one field of endeavour? But I don't see breadth as a disadvantage or a failing. Someone who constantly swims against the tide? Again, not in my book a failing. I hope I am remembered as someone who has touched many people's lives in positive ways and who has not hurt too many - I wonder.
Day 2.
I am not really comfortable talking about myself. Do I think the thoughts I do as a reaction against upbringing, or do I have the freedom to think freely because I have escaped from the restrictions instilled through childhood? Is it common or rare for a person to break loose from nurture? It is sometimes said that loss of belief creates a hole that needs to be filled. In my case belief was never deep rooted, and through schooling was not something I could explain to others. Finding that it had no substance when examined was perhaps inevitable, though I note that others do not find it so, or at least take longer to find dogma wanting. So there never was a void to be filled; secular ethical standards and aspirations remained as a demythologised core reality. This is acting choicefully. The Buddhist notion of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, contemplation (the Noble Eightfold Path) is a powerful menu for personal development and integrity. Whatever we think and do, there are right choices and wrong choices. Wrong choices lead to bad faith, which has consequences (karma) and when accumulated globally adds up to dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. Buddha's vision was that unsatisfactoriness is the result of wrong thinking, so instead of complaining about life and the world, we simply get on with putting our heads right. I am not a Buddhist, but this speaks to me.
Much of my work is in educational research. I have said in the past (and not so past) that many schools are not fit for purpose. Their purpose should be education, which means learning, participation, motivation, and intellectual excitement. My own schooling did not offer me that; nor did the first two secondary schools of my teaching career in the 1970s. They were about control. In teacher training, my experience of primary schools was better, with better relationships and more freedom - sometimes. But often unchallenging. The excitement of learning from experience was well articulated by John Dewey and served primary education well until the National Curriculum replaced education with assessment, but that is another story. There is much to improve, especially in the relationship between teachers and pupils, who really should be partners learning together.
I am not a great fan of fiction, though I have read professionally a great deal of fiction for children, and write some occasionally. There seems to be a modern fetish for magic, ghosts, wizards, and horrific monsters in children's literature and anything other seems hopelessly old fashioned. Why this obsession for the supernatural, and what will this do to children's thinking? Children are confused about the nature of reality, and I am always surprised at how long belief in Father Christmas persists as one who rumbled the great man when I was 3. Should we be teaching them about battles in parallel worlds, or worlds through wardrobes, of a magic hidden world alongside our own? Or can the word 'pretend' help their development? Anything non-rational is pretend - magic, father Christmas, God, monsters, heaven, hell, paradise. That would reduce nightmares anyway. Perhaps I will write a children's book called Let's Pretend and throttle all these monsters (the myths, not the children).
Day 3.
I am a human. Am I not therefore self-centred, self-serving, and self-aggrandising? Is not self-esteem my ambition? and self-reward? Do we have any ways of handling self so that community takes over from greed, and altruism from power? Or are humans bound to be what humans are - an ultra-aggressive animal capable of killing without compassion or conscience? Aggressors create victims, so this too is a natural human state, visible in anxiety and depression. Rogers first defined 'person-centred counselling', though he didn't invent it. This has to allow for the dark as well as the light. The dark pulls more powerfully than the light. Anger, despair, hostility, prejudice can simply take over. But we are thinking beings and can challenge the dark, and find a way back to the light. With help.
Day 1.
I have studied religion in various forms most of my life - indeed it was my first specialism. Brought up in evangelical certainties, my father taught me to question and not be afraid of standing out against the crowd. The religious community, the Brethren, were repressive in the sense that I was hauled over the coals from time to time for asking the wrong questions - for example about women's role in worship, about literal inspiration. Looking back, I was nicely hounded, but learnt to cope with it. Believing or thinking something just because everyone else does is a form of intellectual idleness. I lost detailed dogmatic beliefs as soon as I started studying. My Professor at University, FF Bruce, was also from the Brethren, but I was relieved to find that his mind was very open. Other University teachers had a range of beliefs - Sam Brandon, about Jesus being an active Zealot, John Allegro about sacred mushrooms, James Barr about the wickedness of fundamentalism. I study religion as an outsider, interested in the power of metaphor, why people express themselves in such self-deceiving ways when taking metaphor literally, but also not blind to personality gains that this provides for them. Having a conscience, for whatever reason, is socially very helpful.
Having a conscience brings me to my interest in justice, good works, and being a helpful citizen. Being helpful to others is a bit of an obsession without which my life would be simpler. Intellectually, I ask questions about social justice, implicit corruption to achieve benefit, and the unfairness of life generally. Those that achieve wealth, fame and fortune seems to do so for the wrong reasons in a society in which something deep down is rotten, where self, greed, ambition and power are drivers esteemed by gatekeepers. My politics are therefore left of centre, although I do not feel or give loyalty to political parties.
As to what sort of person I am, I leave to others ultimately. I love my own company, but also treasure the company of people I care about. I try to empower rather than disempower, give credit where credit is due, and take blame if blame is due. This is what I think I do - others may see me differently. I write with others for practical purposes, and learn much from others - but I prefer to write by myself. I also enjoy physical exercise - I could have had a career in athletics and sport generally, and now, once gardening find it hard to stop. I find pointless exercise irritating - and would much rather fit exercise into my everyday life and tasks. Although I like music, it is not important to me and a silent desert island holds no fears. Wall to wall potted music in shops drives me to distraction. I probably don't move to music either - since it has never been tested, I don't know.
Equally I don't need conversation, though enjoy it when the time is right. I communicate in writing, which means utterances are considered rather than spontaneous. Friends will probably say that this is not true, and they may be right, I may understand myself wrongly. I am probably intolerably self confident, but this hides a certain self-consciousness. Probably no one gets crosser at me than myself, and I have no illusions about my faults and failings.
If I were to write my own obituary, what would I say? Someone who has dabbled in a lot but not become known for any one field of endeavour? But I don't see breadth as a disadvantage or a failing. Someone who constantly swims against the tide? Again, not in my book a failing. I hope I am remembered as someone who has touched many people's lives in positive ways and who has not hurt too many - I wonder.
Day 2.
"First-person research/practice skills and methods address the ability of the researcher to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life, to act awarely and choicefully, and to assess effects on the outside world while acting."Reason PB and Torbert, W 'The action turn: a further look at the scientific merits of action research, Concepts and Transformations, 6(1):1-37, 2001:23
I am not really comfortable talking about myself. Do I think the thoughts I do as a reaction against upbringing, or do I have the freedom to think freely because I have escaped from the restrictions instilled through childhood? Is it common or rare for a person to break loose from nurture? It is sometimes said that loss of belief creates a hole that needs to be filled. In my case belief was never deep rooted, and through schooling was not something I could explain to others. Finding that it had no substance when examined was perhaps inevitable, though I note that others do not find it so, or at least take longer to find dogma wanting. So there never was a void to be filled; secular ethical standards and aspirations remained as a demythologised core reality. This is acting choicefully. The Buddhist notion of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, contemplation (the Noble Eightfold Path) is a powerful menu for personal development and integrity. Whatever we think and do, there are right choices and wrong choices. Wrong choices lead to bad faith, which has consequences (karma) and when accumulated globally adds up to dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. Buddha's vision was that unsatisfactoriness is the result of wrong thinking, so instead of complaining about life and the world, we simply get on with putting our heads right. I am not a Buddhist, but this speaks to me.
Much of my work is in educational research. I have said in the past (and not so past) that many schools are not fit for purpose. Their purpose should be education, which means learning, participation, motivation, and intellectual excitement. My own schooling did not offer me that; nor did the first two secondary schools of my teaching career in the 1970s. They were about control. In teacher training, my experience of primary schools was better, with better relationships and more freedom - sometimes. But often unchallenging. The excitement of learning from experience was well articulated by John Dewey and served primary education well until the National Curriculum replaced education with assessment, but that is another story. There is much to improve, especially in the relationship between teachers and pupils, who really should be partners learning together.
I am not a great fan of fiction, though I have read professionally a great deal of fiction for children, and write some occasionally. There seems to be a modern fetish for magic, ghosts, wizards, and horrific monsters in children's literature and anything other seems hopelessly old fashioned. Why this obsession for the supernatural, and what will this do to children's thinking? Children are confused about the nature of reality, and I am always surprised at how long belief in Father Christmas persists as one who rumbled the great man when I was 3. Should we be teaching them about battles in parallel worlds, or worlds through wardrobes, of a magic hidden world alongside our own? Or can the word 'pretend' help their development? Anything non-rational is pretend - magic, father Christmas, God, monsters, heaven, hell, paradise. That would reduce nightmares anyway. Perhaps I will write a children's book called Let's Pretend and throttle all these monsters (the myths, not the children).
Day 3.
I am a human. Am I not therefore self-centred, self-serving, and self-aggrandising? Is not self-esteem my ambition? and self-reward? Do we have any ways of handling self so that community takes over from greed, and altruism from power? Or are humans bound to be what humans are - an ultra-aggressive animal capable of killing without compassion or conscience? Aggressors create victims, so this too is a natural human state, visible in anxiety and depression. Rogers first defined 'person-centred counselling', though he didn't invent it. This has to allow for the dark as well as the light. The dark pulls more powerfully than the light. Anger, despair, hostility, prejudice can simply take over. But we are thinking beings and can challenge the dark, and find a way back to the light. With help.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Ancestry
Since the last post, we have toured west Scotland around Mull and Skye. This leads me to reflect on ancestry. My mother's family from Nottinghamshire mining stock I will write about later. My father came to England from Dublin in 1936 and joined the RAF. Of the Protestant persuasion, his parents came originally from Scotland. Any connections between the name Bigger and the town of Biggar in Scotland I doubt, having visited Biggar last year and talked with a local historian. But he certainly came from the Glasgow area. There were several Biggers in Ireland, including a medical family, Sir Hugh Bigger as Officer of Health for Dublin early in the 20th century, and Prof. Joseph Warwick Bigger who wrote the first Bigger's Handbook of Bacteriology, the standard text throughout the 20th century, Man Against Microbe in the 1930s, and reports such as that into diseases in Jordon just before world war 2. An Irish MP called Bigger was active in the call for home rule in the late Victorian age. Francis Joseph Bigger was a local historian and author in Northern Ireland.
My particular interest is in my father's mother, grandma Macmillan, who died probably around 1917 having born 13 children, 12 of which survived childhood. She either came from Canada, or Scotland via Canada to meet grandfather and settle in Dublin. I discovered Macmillans in Arran (the publisher and prime minister's family) but the more regular ones were in the west near Fort William. In many cases, 'were' is the right word. The Macmillans were harassed by their landlords, the Camerons in the period of Highland Clearances. Many Macmillans were cleared off lands their families had worked for centuries. Landowners in Scotland had a legal but not moral claim for land ownership, as royalty gifted lands to supporters, turning the traditional population into tenants who could be turfed out without redress. Many historic land claims today in the Highlands are based on the same inequity. By 1800 the Cameron laird thought himself as a landlord rather than a chief, and wished to create a stately home and estate, requiring him to raise funds, including rents, and clearing away unprofitable crofts and villages. In 1802, with evictions beginning, Archibald and Allan Macmillan left the Lochaber district with 450 people to make new lives, sailing in three ships, Jane, Helen and Friends. Where they settled became Glengarry County. (My thanks to James Hunter, A Dance Called America: the Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada, 1994).
My grandmother was somehow related to the Canadian Macmillans, meeting and marrying grandfather sometime in the 1880s.
In Fort William, I looked at the statue of the Cameron chief two generations later without celebration.
My particular interest is in my father's mother, grandma Macmillan, who died probably around 1917 having born 13 children, 12 of which survived childhood. She either came from Canada, or Scotland via Canada to meet grandfather and settle in Dublin. I discovered Macmillans in Arran (the publisher and prime minister's family) but the more regular ones were in the west near Fort William. In many cases, 'were' is the right word. The Macmillans were harassed by their landlords, the Camerons in the period of Highland Clearances. Many Macmillans were cleared off lands their families had worked for centuries. Landowners in Scotland had a legal but not moral claim for land ownership, as royalty gifted lands to supporters, turning the traditional population into tenants who could be turfed out without redress. Many historic land claims today in the Highlands are based on the same inequity. By 1800 the Cameron laird thought himself as a landlord rather than a chief, and wished to create a stately home and estate, requiring him to raise funds, including rents, and clearing away unprofitable crofts and villages. In 1802, with evictions beginning, Archibald and Allan Macmillan left the Lochaber district with 450 people to make new lives, sailing in three ships, Jane, Helen and Friends. Where they settled became Glengarry County. (My thanks to James Hunter, A Dance Called America: the Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada, 1994).
My grandmother was somehow related to the Canadian Macmillans, meeting and marrying grandfather sometime in the 1880s.
In Fort William, I looked at the statue of the Cameron chief two generations later without celebration.
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Jimmy Reid
Today was the funeral of Jimmy Reid, leader of the work-in on the Clyde in 1971. He was a great believer in human potential, arguing that the inequalities of society would ensure that such potential is not realised. He fought to save the Clyde shipbuilders. Here is the rat-race speech.
"Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?".
"Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?".
Saturday, 7 August 2010
The Bible, a Troubling Text
SUGIRTHARAJAH, R.S., Troublesome Texts: The Bible in Colonial and Contemporary Culture (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).
The Bible IS a troublesome text. Its interpretation has been over the centuries the cause of major conflict. It has been used to promote slavery and patriarchalism. It has been the cutural symbol of empire, the basis of education systems in non-Christian developing regions. From it identity is claimed, and land disputes are fomented. Missionaries, by translating God as Ancestor, replaced tribal histories with an over-arching Biblicist ‘history’ in which Adam and Abraham are common ancestors, so biblical violence becomes an acceptable political model, and patriarchy-with-polygamy a legitimate social means of repressing women.
This thought-provoking collection of conference papers asks uncomfortable questions about Biblical hermeneutics. In ‘Gautama and the Galilean’, Sugirtharajah uses his Sri Lankan background to explore how and why Victorian theologians constructed lives of Buddha and Jesus, revealing rampant racism. There is however another side to this: enough ‘Orientalists’ took the task seriously enough to contribute to the preservation of texts which has turned Buddhism from a local cult to a respected global world religion.
Buddhism was encountered as an indigenous religion separately in Nepal and in Sri Lanka, and gradually the similarities and differences between the two observed and the conclusion reached that these were two traditions of a single religion, which came to be named Hinayana (lesser vehicle) and Mahayana (greater vehicle). Hinayana (also referred to as Theravada) was regarded as purer than Mahayana, which was considered syncretistic with local pagan deities and spirits. Today, Mahayana belief and ritual would be treated philosophically and symbolically. The Dalai Lama (leader of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) is globally known and respected for his spiritual wisdom. Sugirtharajah notes that the reason for the study of Buddhism was to discredit it, and finds many quotations to support this. There is another side to the story and academic study of Pali texts began, albeit slowly. Lives of Jesus have abounded over the past two centuries, are mostly devotional in intent (some thrive on being controversial), and tell us more about the writer than about the historical Jesus. My view is that even the canonical gospels are fictional hagiography which owe more to the need to demonstrate fulfilment of scripture than to historical recollections. Unfortunately, fewer sayings of Jesus have survived than words of the Buddha.
Chapter 2 is on ‘Subjecting the Johannine Letters to Postcolonial Criticism’, concluding that the letters have a dogmatic, imperialistic tone demanding compliance, but that the new message being promulgated owes some informal debt to Buddhism. To ‘walk in the truth’ and ‘walk in love’ is likened to the Buddhism requirement to ‘walk by dhamma’, a praxis-centred practical religion by which ‘everyone who does justice is born again’ and ‘everyone who loves is born of God’ (3 Jn 4, 2 Jn 4-6, I Jn 2.29, 1 Jn 4.7). For the writer, actions not words indicate a person’s faith, salvation by works contrasting with Paul’s salvation by faith and God’s grace. Unfortunately, this worthy ideal is presented as a demand to be obeyed and not an aspiration to be taken to heart. Chapter 3 focuses on the Sermon on the Mount read in India as a basis for ethical spirituality, for example by Gandhi and Roy. He notes that after independence it was replaced by Leviticus 19-26, a ‘roadmap’ for state building, John’s Gospel (mystical), liberation theology and identity hermeneutics. Chapter 4 looks toward next steps: these are for interpreters to explore power-knowledge relevantly. It challenges the dominant hermeneutic by demanding emphases are shifted and silences are vocalised. Chapter 5 explores ideas of God after the tsunami of boxing day 2004, where images of all-powerful and compassionate deity is exploded. Chapter 6 focuses on the link between Bible interpretation and conflict, even violent conflict. Those who study and interpret the Bible from outside the powered elite risk scorn and gagging, even lynching. For Sri Lanka, this is a call for open and honest multi-faith dialogue. Chapter 7 looks at the Bible industry as a form of cultural imperialism, for repression towards a dominant view instead of being a sea of challenging and exploratory stories. Chapter 8, ‘Future Imperfect” calls for attitudes of exclusivity towards the Bible as word of God is replaced by a recognition that the Bible itself was (and is) a site of ideological battle, and has to sit beside the scriptures of other faiths as together charting the spiritual questings of humankind. Chapter 9 ends the compilation autobiographically of the writer’s journey and motivation, calling for creative and imaginative scholarship.
The Bible IS a troublesome text. Its interpretation has been over the centuries the cause of major conflict. It has been used to promote slavery and patriarchalism. It has been the cutural symbol of empire, the basis of education systems in non-Christian developing regions. From it identity is claimed, and land disputes are fomented. Missionaries, by translating God as Ancestor, replaced tribal histories with an over-arching Biblicist ‘history’ in which Adam and Abraham are common ancestors, so biblical violence becomes an acceptable political model, and patriarchy-with-polygamy a legitimate social means of repressing women.
This thought-provoking collection of conference papers asks uncomfortable questions about Biblical hermeneutics. In ‘Gautama and the Galilean’, Sugirtharajah uses his Sri Lankan background to explore how and why Victorian theologians constructed lives of Buddha and Jesus, revealing rampant racism. There is however another side to this: enough ‘Orientalists’ took the task seriously enough to contribute to the preservation of texts which has turned Buddhism from a local cult to a respected global world religion.
Buddhism was encountered as an indigenous religion separately in Nepal and in Sri Lanka, and gradually the similarities and differences between the two observed and the conclusion reached that these were two traditions of a single religion, which came to be named Hinayana (lesser vehicle) and Mahayana (greater vehicle). Hinayana (also referred to as Theravada) was regarded as purer than Mahayana, which was considered syncretistic with local pagan deities and spirits. Today, Mahayana belief and ritual would be treated philosophically and symbolically. The Dalai Lama (leader of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) is globally known and respected for his spiritual wisdom. Sugirtharajah notes that the reason for the study of Buddhism was to discredit it, and finds many quotations to support this. There is another side to the story and academic study of Pali texts began, albeit slowly. Lives of Jesus have abounded over the past two centuries, are mostly devotional in intent (some thrive on being controversial), and tell us more about the writer than about the historical Jesus. My view is that even the canonical gospels are fictional hagiography which owe more to the need to demonstrate fulfilment of scripture than to historical recollections. Unfortunately, fewer sayings of Jesus have survived than words of the Buddha.
Chapter 2 is on ‘Subjecting the Johannine Letters to Postcolonial Criticism’, concluding that the letters have a dogmatic, imperialistic tone demanding compliance, but that the new message being promulgated owes some informal debt to Buddhism. To ‘walk in the truth’ and ‘walk in love’ is likened to the Buddhism requirement to ‘walk by dhamma’, a praxis-centred practical religion by which ‘everyone who does justice is born again’ and ‘everyone who loves is born of God’ (3 Jn 4, 2 Jn 4-6, I Jn 2.29, 1 Jn 4.7). For the writer, actions not words indicate a person’s faith, salvation by works contrasting with Paul’s salvation by faith and God’s grace. Unfortunately, this worthy ideal is presented as a demand to be obeyed and not an aspiration to be taken to heart. Chapter 3 focuses on the Sermon on the Mount read in India as a basis for ethical spirituality, for example by Gandhi and Roy. He notes that after independence it was replaced by Leviticus 19-26, a ‘roadmap’ for state building, John’s Gospel (mystical), liberation theology and identity hermeneutics. Chapter 4 looks toward next steps: these are for interpreters to explore power-knowledge relevantly. It challenges the dominant hermeneutic by demanding emphases are shifted and silences are vocalised. Chapter 5 explores ideas of God after the tsunami of boxing day 2004, where images of all-powerful and compassionate deity is exploded. Chapter 6 focuses on the link between Bible interpretation and conflict, even violent conflict. Those who study and interpret the Bible from outside the powered elite risk scorn and gagging, even lynching. For Sri Lanka, this is a call for open and honest multi-faith dialogue. Chapter 7 looks at the Bible industry as a form of cultural imperialism, for repression towards a dominant view instead of being a sea of challenging and exploratory stories. Chapter 8, ‘Future Imperfect” calls for attitudes of exclusivity towards the Bible as word of God is replaced by a recognition that the Bible itself was (and is) a site of ideological battle, and has to sit beside the scriptures of other faiths as together charting the spiritual questings of humankind. Chapter 9 ends the compilation autobiographically of the writer’s journey and motivation, calling for creative and imaginative scholarship.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Take Five
Five recent posts in my blog, about literature relating directly to the second world war, as a taster ... enjoy http://1930-1960.blogspot.com
- Flying Officer X (HE Bates) - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/08/flying-officer-x.html
- Josephine Blackstock- http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/11/malta-and-greece-josephine-blackstock.html
- John Pudney - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2009/09/john-pudney-war-poet.html
- Major Charles Gilson - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/major-charles-gilson-1878-1943.html
- Jack Heming and Eileen Marsh - http://1930-1960.blogspot.com/2010/07/heming-and-marsh-again.html
Critical Religious Education.
It seems to me that the issue of religious education rather than religious instruction has never been resolved. Ninian Smart's team in Scool Council Working Paper 36 talked of critical study of religion alongside phenomenology and I think he paired these correctly. We have developed phenomenological awareness of believers' points of view, trying to see the religion through the eyes of the worshipper; but we have not cracked the issue of criticality. Examples of religious education syllabuses remind me of Sunday School. They take for granted that Jesus was/is God (I don't), that the Gospels are accurate biography (I don't), that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven (I don't), that we go to heaven on death (I don't) and that belief is more positive than disbelief/scepticism (again, I don't). I am not a Christian, but Christians vary considerably on their understanding of this particular list. RE should not oversimplify, or claim certainties that have to be overturned later.
Criticality suggests that religious education asks about what Christians mean when they call Jesus divine, whether this is rational and coherent, and what its implications are for personal understanding and social practice. Why do people believe what they believe? Why do they find argument difficult? We should make no assumptions that this is a right belief, just that it is a belief. Over history, Christian practices/beliefs have had good consequences and bad. Oxfam and the inquisition. Religious exclusivity/inclusivity is a pertinent topic for school. Diversity is important. Topic study could include population control and birth control. Christians have views on the environment, some of which campaign against sustainability, a world created for humans to use as the dominant species. Where religious be;ief is irrational or non-rational, it should be discussed. Children and young people need to understand the nature of religious belief in all its diversity, whether it is a belief they are inside of, or exterior to. They need to see the positive as well as the negative, and conversely the negative as well as the positive. RE has mainly stressed the positive, whilst the media emphasise negatives. Atheism is a strident point of view (pov) at the moment, and pupils need to know where this is coming from.
John Dewey emphasised the importance of experience and multiple perspective, building up knowledge from personal experiences. If we add up personal experiences of suffering, bullying, fear, family, affection etc, it adds up to a balanced view of life and of moral responsibilities, but not particularly of religion or Christianity. What extra does the myths and rituals of religion add? And why the need to accept them literally?
Non-literal interpretation of metaphorical language is a step forward - is there something in Paul Tillich's theology of depth which language is struggling to illustrate facets of? Or is doctrine a socially repressive instrument to prevent thinking? I argued this in some detail in Creating the Old Testament. If we look for figurative meaning, we escape from naivity.
From this you will see that my vision of what RE ought to be doing is not what it is doing. Nor do I have any confidence that current staffing/training could provide a workforce to could teach this curriculum. A movement stressing thinking skills in RE could be a way forward.
Criticality suggests that religious education asks about what Christians mean when they call Jesus divine, whether this is rational and coherent, and what its implications are for personal understanding and social practice. Why do people believe what they believe? Why do they find argument difficult? We should make no assumptions that this is a right belief, just that it is a belief. Over history, Christian practices/beliefs have had good consequences and bad. Oxfam and the inquisition. Religious exclusivity/inclusivity is a pertinent topic for school. Diversity is important. Topic study could include population control and birth control. Christians have views on the environment, some of which campaign against sustainability, a world created for humans to use as the dominant species. Where religious be;ief is irrational or non-rational, it should be discussed. Children and young people need to understand the nature of religious belief in all its diversity, whether it is a belief they are inside of, or exterior to. They need to see the positive as well as the negative, and conversely the negative as well as the positive. RE has mainly stressed the positive, whilst the media emphasise negatives. Atheism is a strident point of view (pov) at the moment, and pupils need to know where this is coming from.
John Dewey emphasised the importance of experience and multiple perspective, building up knowledge from personal experiences. If we add up personal experiences of suffering, bullying, fear, family, affection etc, it adds up to a balanced view of life and of moral responsibilities, but not particularly of religion or Christianity. What extra does the myths and rituals of religion add? And why the need to accept them literally?
Non-literal interpretation of metaphorical language is a step forward - is there something in Paul Tillich's theology of depth which language is struggling to illustrate facets of? Or is doctrine a socially repressive instrument to prevent thinking? I argued this in some detail in Creating the Old Testament. If we look for figurative meaning, we escape from naivity.
From this you will see that my vision of what RE ought to be doing is not what it is doing. Nor do I have any confidence that current staffing/training could provide a workforce to could teach this curriculum. A movement stressing thinking skills in RE could be a way forward.
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Education for responsibility
The issue, What is schooling for? is narrower than the question What is education for? More education takes place outside of schools than inside, over a lifetime and not just during years of compulsory schooling. There are different models, such as
In the UK, being responsible is a thing in itself and not just a preparation for being responsible later as adults. At first, responsibility was seen as coming from religion-based morality (specifically from Christianity). The rise of secularism transmuted this in the 1960s into moral education, though early forms of this retained their Christian ring. By the 1970s this had again been transformed into pastoral care and personal and social education: pastoral care offered pupils adult mentors to guide their social and moral choices, with some staff paid extra to do this, and others being form/class tutors or teachers. Personal and social education became a taught curriculum subject at the same time, and was called ‘Preparation for Adult Life’ in one school I taught at (Wiltshire,UK, 1970s). By the 1990s, the fashion was for Citizenship Education, exploring not only democracy but also how to be a good citizen – social and political responsibility.
The NC was organised under subjects such as history, geography and English, so these other topics had to be additional, cross curricular. One cross-curriculum theme was Economic and Industrial Understanding, which amongst other things was a preparation for adult life and work.
In the UK, education for personal responsibility has been a stable educational aim, for which many strategies have been tried. Teachers generally would pay lip service to its importance. However, the structural pressures on schooling and the curriculum have emphasised curriculum subjects, which use up the majority of school time available; very little time has been available for pastoral subjects such as personal, moral and social education, or religious education. Teachers are not trained to plan or deliver pastoral subjects. To a small extent, education for responsibility permeates curriculum subjects such as English, if the teacher wishes it to. The lack of structural time in the timetable has meant that other topics such as responsibility, morality, enterprise and understanding of work are covered in special events rather than in the daily timetable. This suggests that these topics are marginal, although sometimes special events are more memorable and enjoyable than daily grind.
Education for responsibility needs to be better planned, through special programmes and permeation throughout the subject curriculum. Every subject could develop lessons applying the subject to life. My colleagues and I suggested ways to do this, subject by subject, a decade ago in Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education, edited by Stephen Bigger and Erica Brown.
- The transmission of valued knowledge (raising questions of who values it)
- The inculcation of a moral viewpoint
- The inculcation of ideology (and the prohibition of banned ideologies)
- Motivation to learn (pupil-centred approaches).
In the UK, being responsible is a thing in itself and not just a preparation for being responsible later as adults. At first, responsibility was seen as coming from religion-based morality (specifically from Christianity). The rise of secularism transmuted this in the 1960s into moral education, though early forms of this retained their Christian ring. By the 1970s this had again been transformed into pastoral care and personal and social education: pastoral care offered pupils adult mentors to guide their social and moral choices, with some staff paid extra to do this, and others being form/class tutors or teachers. Personal and social education became a taught curriculum subject at the same time, and was called ‘Preparation for Adult Life’ in one school I taught at (Wiltshire,UK, 1970s). By the 1990s, the fashion was for Citizenship Education, exploring not only democracy but also how to be a good citizen – social and political responsibility.
The NC was organised under subjects such as history, geography and English, so these other topics had to be additional, cross curricular. One cross-curriculum theme was Economic and Industrial Understanding, which amongst other things was a preparation for adult life and work.
In the UK, education for personal responsibility has been a stable educational aim, for which many strategies have been tried. Teachers generally would pay lip service to its importance. However, the structural pressures on schooling and the curriculum have emphasised curriculum subjects, which use up the majority of school time available; very little time has been available for pastoral subjects such as personal, moral and social education, or religious education. Teachers are not trained to plan or deliver pastoral subjects. To a small extent, education for responsibility permeates curriculum subjects such as English, if the teacher wishes it to. The lack of structural time in the timetable has meant that other topics such as responsibility, morality, enterprise and understanding of work are covered in special events rather than in the daily timetable. This suggests that these topics are marginal, although sometimes special events are more memorable and enjoyable than daily grind.
Education for responsibility needs to be better planned, through special programmes and permeation throughout the subject curriculum. Every subject could develop lessons applying the subject to life. My colleagues and I suggested ways to do this, subject by subject, a decade ago in Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education, edited by Stephen Bigger and Erica Brown.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
International Primary Curriculum
In 1988, the Conservative Minister of Education Ken Baker launched Primary Schools into a mind-numbing and stultifying two decades of facts facts facts and tests tests tests. Those of us who expected Labour to reverse such stupidity were disappointed. Pupils have been turned off and demotivated by irrelevant material. Teachers have been overloaded, because when this error was pointed out, they were tasked to deliver in addition moral education, citizenship education, environmental education, economic and industrial understanding and anything else that hit the tabloids.
The International Primary Curriculum (http://www.internationalprimarycurriculum.com) was developed for international schools abroad with funding from Shell. A friend, a primary teacher in Pakistan, is totally enthusiastic. Whilst covering National Curriculum subjects, it organises its termly work around topics which interest young children and offer opportunities for active creative endeavour. She had just finished 'Airports'. Rainforest, Mission to Mars and Beyond, Chocolate, Fit for Life, The Olympics and Making the Newsare also available. The teacher receives a pack with information and activities which cover the different curriculum areas. The school has to plan ahead for curriculum balance. A team of advisers guide and approve the school plan. A number of English primary schools are also finding IPC useful. Primary teachers and teacher trainers from the 1970s and 1980s are chuckling. As my friend said, "Its great. This was the way I was taught."
The International Primary Curriculum (http://www.internationalprimarycurriculum.com) was developed for international schools abroad with funding from Shell. A friend, a primary teacher in Pakistan, is totally enthusiastic. Whilst covering National Curriculum subjects, it organises its termly work around topics which interest young children and offer opportunities for active creative endeavour. She had just finished 'Airports'. Rainforest, Mission to Mars and Beyond, Chocolate, Fit for Life, The Olympics and Making the Newsare also available. The teacher receives a pack with information and activities which cover the different curriculum areas. The school has to plan ahead for curriculum balance. A team of advisers guide and approve the school plan. A number of English primary schools are also finding IPC useful. Primary teachers and teacher trainers from the 1970s and 1980s are chuckling. As my friend said, "Its great. This was the way I was taught."
Friday, 9 July 2010
Interviews
Mark Twain once wrote about interviews, interviewing and being interviewed. This will eventually become available on http://www.marktwainproject.org. (My source: BBC Radio 4 today). There are lessons for the unwary researcher, and for those interviewed. Twain condemns the interview as an intrusion into personal life which can do damage, psychologically and socially. The interviewer has his/her own agenda, explicit or implicit, in which the welfare of the interviewee has no secure place. The interviewee is faced with a range of questions, most of which are hard to grapple with simply. The interviewer wants a soundbite answer that can be easily quoted. The interviewer moves from question to question, and before thoughts can be marshaled, has moved on to the next topic. The interview therefore ends up being unsatisfactory in human terms and unreliable in research terms. The interviewer at last finds an area of interest that the interviewee can get his/her teeth into. It is relevant, appropriate, authentic... Sorry, the interviewer says, its not on my schedule, can we move on?
There are lessons here for the qualitative researcher. Interviews are not the magic answer to data collection. The interviewee might be open and honest, and might not be. The interviewee might have a grip of the questions, and might not. The real insight offered by the interviewee might be missed by the questions asked. I have been interviewed by researchers. Once, I was misquoted (the words were on the tape but quoted without the contextual meaning). Once, the questions allowed no reflection and required soundbite answers. Interviews are only as good as the skills of the interviewer.
Interviews need to be flexible and semi-structured. A first interview may be necessary to identify areas of particular relevance that a second interview can then focus on. Informal contacts, even emails, could help to determine what an interviewee is and is not interested in. An interviewee may not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I would not, for this requires a depth of trust that will be hard to achieve. The interview would emphasise how the interviewee would like history to be written. The interviewer needs not to be a passive receiver of information, but an interrogator of it. "Yes, but, why did you do that? Is that ethical? is it fair?". A line of questioning that would inhibit the interviewer to open up. The interview is therefore a problematic data collection method. That is not to say it should be avoided - it may be an only way of eliciting information - but that it should be used with caution.
There are lessons here for the qualitative researcher. Interviews are not the magic answer to data collection. The interviewee might be open and honest, and might not be. The interviewee might have a grip of the questions, and might not. The real insight offered by the interviewee might be missed by the questions asked. I have been interviewed by researchers. Once, I was misquoted (the words were on the tape but quoted without the contextual meaning). Once, the questions allowed no reflection and required soundbite answers. Interviews are only as good as the skills of the interviewer.
Interviews need to be flexible and semi-structured. A first interview may be necessary to identify areas of particular relevance that a second interview can then focus on. Informal contacts, even emails, could help to determine what an interviewee is and is not interested in. An interviewee may not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I would not, for this requires a depth of trust that will be hard to achieve. The interview would emphasise how the interviewee would like history to be written. The interviewer needs not to be a passive receiver of information, but an interrogator of it. "Yes, but, why did you do that? Is that ethical? is it fair?". A line of questioning that would inhibit the interviewer to open up. The interview is therefore a problematic data collection method. That is not to say it should be avoided - it may be an only way of eliciting information - but that it should be used with caution.
Monday, 21 June 2010
Values we live by.
A challenging question posed by Jack Whitehead, who came over for lunch. What are the values that underpin my academic life? This post may be some time being constructed, as it is complex. My academic work ranges from Biblical studies (my PhD), the secular study of religion, engagement within education, equal opportunities, and children's literature. Other interests include growing plants, social history and heritage railways.Is all this coherent or is it the product of a butterfly mind?
First let us examine the idea of 'butterfly mind'. A standard academic career chooses a narrow topic around which a person can become a world expert for ever. In my original field of Old Testament Studies, one might do a PhD on Amos chapter 3 and study nothing but that for the next 50 years. Pretty boring, an example of a pointless life. My PhD was on Hebrew Marriage and Family, a broad field, my first book was on the whole of the Old Testament. So looking at the whole must be part of my psyche. For the secular study of religion, I look at all religions everywhere. A recent paper is on the San bushmen of the Kalahari. For inclusion and engagement within education, I am interested in the holistic question of what (in practical terms) it means to educate and be educated. We can look at the whole through many spotlights, which for someone not knowing the overall picture, might seem to be alighting on disparate subjects.
On religion, if you dig there is a layer deep down which most religious people would agree with, whatever their faith label. That is where I want to be, engaging with it as a secularist to see if this spiritual core speaks to my non-supernaturalist assumptions. The mythic and legendary elements are still interesting, but I would look for possible motives of this material. This raises the question of whether a secular (non-supernaturalist) person can be considered spiritual. This is concerned with the core values of humanity and feeds into concepts of spiritual education. My interest in multicultural education is, in addition to promoting understanding across cultures, is about building relationships at a personal level between people across the world.
On education, my chief concern is what 'proper' education is. This invites (with Ivan Illich) us drawing a distinction between education and 'schooling', schooling being about what schools do, good or bad. If schooling is (or is not) education, we want to understand what that means and implies. When in charge of research activity across the Faculty of Education, I used the strap-line 'motivating learning', assuming that education involves facilitating active learning rather than acquiescing with passive sequences and memorisation. I make a further underlying assumption that education should change lives, including the lives of the marginalised and vulnerable. Alas, the history of schooling has not done this. Professional development for teachers needs therefore to address the underlying concept of education rather than remaining compliant to a political hegemony.
Children - and people - learn in informal ways perhaps more than through the formal curriculum so my study of children's literature is interested in what children learn when reading fiction. This work has also included writing experimental children's fiction.
The world needs some serious new approaches to learning if today's children are to become the responsible and effective citizens of tomorrow. This is not within the existing school and university curricula - mostly these are barriers to real learning, somebody's empire. Encouraging teachers and pupils to be critical is a starting point - challenging all items of so-called-knowledge and exploring a varied range of ways of describing life experience. Through scepticism lies understanding and empowerment. The process is supremely important, not the recollection of so-called knowledge.
This brings me back full circle to Biblical Studies, which I explore on http://4004BCE.blogspot.com. Some will recognise 4004BCE as the date once given (and the date taught to me as a child) for the creation of the world - or more precisely, on the evening of September 23rd 4004. Most of what we think of the Bible is wrong, and sentimental. All books were political documents, with a political purpose. Most stories combine legend with fiction, much as TV series of Robin Hood do. To draw out the truth about the Bible and the religions based on it, scepticism offers new understandings of how these troubled people came to terms with their world.
So, motivated learning, sceptical learning, critical learning, problem solving all help to free people from delusion, illusion and false knowledge. Education first is about crap detection; and second about how to recycle that crap in ways that stimulate understanding and personal growth.
First let us examine the idea of 'butterfly mind'. A standard academic career chooses a narrow topic around which a person can become a world expert for ever. In my original field of Old Testament Studies, one might do a PhD on Amos chapter 3 and study nothing but that for the next 50 years. Pretty boring, an example of a pointless life. My PhD was on Hebrew Marriage and Family, a broad field, my first book was on the whole of the Old Testament. So looking at the whole must be part of my psyche. For the secular study of religion, I look at all religions everywhere. A recent paper is on the San bushmen of the Kalahari. For inclusion and engagement within education, I am interested in the holistic question of what (in practical terms) it means to educate and be educated. We can look at the whole through many spotlights, which for someone not knowing the overall picture, might seem to be alighting on disparate subjects.
On religion, if you dig there is a layer deep down which most religious people would agree with, whatever their faith label. That is where I want to be, engaging with it as a secularist to see if this spiritual core speaks to my non-supernaturalist assumptions. The mythic and legendary elements are still interesting, but I would look for possible motives of this material. This raises the question of whether a secular (non-supernaturalist) person can be considered spiritual. This is concerned with the core values of humanity and feeds into concepts of spiritual education. My interest in multicultural education is, in addition to promoting understanding across cultures, is about building relationships at a personal level between people across the world.
On education, my chief concern is what 'proper' education is. This invites (with Ivan Illich) us drawing a distinction between education and 'schooling', schooling being about what schools do, good or bad. If schooling is (or is not) education, we want to understand what that means and implies. When in charge of research activity across the Faculty of Education, I used the strap-line 'motivating learning', assuming that education involves facilitating active learning rather than acquiescing with passive sequences and memorisation. I make a further underlying assumption that education should change lives, including the lives of the marginalised and vulnerable. Alas, the history of schooling has not done this. Professional development for teachers needs therefore to address the underlying concept of education rather than remaining compliant to a political hegemony.
Children - and people - learn in informal ways perhaps more than through the formal curriculum so my study of children's literature is interested in what children learn when reading fiction. This work has also included writing experimental children's fiction.
The world needs some serious new approaches to learning if today's children are to become the responsible and effective citizens of tomorrow. This is not within the existing school and university curricula - mostly these are barriers to real learning, somebody's empire. Encouraging teachers and pupils to be critical is a starting point - challenging all items of so-called-knowledge and exploring a varied range of ways of describing life experience. Through scepticism lies understanding and empowerment. The process is supremely important, not the recollection of so-called knowledge.
This brings me back full circle to Biblical Studies, which I explore on http://4004BCE.blogspot.com. Some will recognise 4004BCE as the date once given (and the date taught to me as a child) for the creation of the world - or more precisely, on the evening of September 23rd 4004. Most of what we think of the Bible is wrong, and sentimental. All books were political documents, with a political purpose. Most stories combine legend with fiction, much as TV series of Robin Hood do. To draw out the truth about the Bible and the religions based on it, scepticism offers new understandings of how these troubled people came to terms with their world.
So, motivated learning, sceptical learning, critical learning, problem solving all help to free people from delusion, illusion and false knowledge. Education first is about crap detection; and second about how to recycle that crap in ways that stimulate understanding and personal growth.
Friday, 26 March 2010
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.
Young teenage girl Susie Salmon is murdered and her body cut in bits and only her elbow found. The readership know who did it because the girl's spirit/ghost remains closely and tells us so. We know that the same man has killed many other girls and occasionally women. Susie speaks to some of them in heaven. The police make no progress even though the girls father points the finger at the right chap. The girl's sister is more proactive and she becomes a new target. The police investigator is having sex with Susie's mother and allows the murderer to escape. He kills again, and is never caught - he dies in a freak accident trying it with another girl. Susie has appeared to her friend Ruth (and to her brother) and briefly changes places with Ruth so she can have sex with her former boyfriend Ray (now Ruth's boyfriend). They all live happily ever after (Ruth and Ray anyway, Susie finds a more distant heaven). Good grief. What ambition.
http://fiction4children.blogspot.com/2010/03/those-lovely-bones-alice-sebold.html
http://fiction4children.blogspot.com/2010/03/those-lovely-bones-alice-sebold.html
Friday, 19 March 2010
Children's stories as helpful sedition
Bigger, Stephen and Webb, Jean (2010) Developing Environmental Agency and Engagement Through Young People’s Fiction. Environmental Education Research . ISSN 1469-5871 (electronic) 1350-4622 (paper) http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/788
Bigger, Stephen (2010) Literature For Learning: Can Stories Enhance Children’s Education? Almas , Vol. 11 . ISSN 1818-9296 http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/793
The first paper explores how 20th century children's stories encourage social (and environmental) action, active participation in changing and protecting the world rather than passive acceptance of adult policies. They are therefore (in a positive way) seditious, encouraging children thinking for themselves and taking action. We argue that this can be a role model for children growing up, for whom real life is anything but this.
The second paper is for a Pakistani journal, promoting informal education through story.
In children's stories, adults often lack the wisdom that children have, leaving the child characters to battle through in opposition to achieve good over evil. This is the opposite to real life in which children have to accept adult decisions as final and are taught to be dependent by the education system.
Encouraging reasoned and values driven independence of thought and action should be a priority of upbringing. This means encouraging children to be social critics, media critics and literary critics. If this sounds negative, criticism should promote appropriate counter-action - so encouraging children to be social activists, responsible media producers, and thought-provoking writers for the next generation.
Bigger, Stephen (2010) Literature For Learning: Can Stories Enhance Children’s Education? Almas , Vol. 11 . ISSN 1818-9296 http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/793
The first paper explores how 20th century children's stories encourage social (and environmental) action, active participation in changing and protecting the world rather than passive acceptance of adult policies. They are therefore (in a positive way) seditious, encouraging children thinking for themselves and taking action. We argue that this can be a role model for children growing up, for whom real life is anything but this.
The second paper is for a Pakistani journal, promoting informal education through story.
In children's stories, adults often lack the wisdom that children have, leaving the child characters to battle through in opposition to achieve good over evil. This is the opposite to real life in which children have to accept adult decisions as final and are taught to be dependent by the education system.
Encouraging reasoned and values driven independence of thought and action should be a priority of upbringing. This means encouraging children to be social critics, media critics and literary critics. If this sounds negative, criticism should promote appropriate counter-action - so encouraging children to be social activists, responsible media producers, and thought-provoking writers for the next generation.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
The Infant Brain
Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time today is on The Infact Brain - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r2cn4 (time limited, copy below).
My take on it: The current position is a combination of Piaget's constructivism, Chomski's hard wired, and brain neuro-science. Children even at 1 or 2 years old are logical, but have insufficient knowledge to tackle problems as an adult would. The solution is that we need to give them more knowledge/information quicker so that they can work things out. The worst thing we can do is to give them misinformation which will delay their rationality because falsehoods are presented to them as truth. Adult talk to children is always about fairies, father christmas and other irrational beings which will get in the way of developing rationality. Children need accurate knowledge and information from the beginning if they are to develop rationally. They do not need childish language or ideas, and lies (however good the cause) are a form of abuse. So goodbye Santa Claus.
Programme blurb (copyright BBC):
Melvyn Bragg and guests Usha Goswami, Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Denis Mareschal discuss what new research reveals about the infant brain.
For obvious reasons, what happens in the minds of very young, pre-verbal children is elusive. But over the last century, the psychology of early childhood has become a major subject of study.
Some scientists and researchers have argued that children develop skills only gradually, others that many of our mental attributes are innate.
Sigmund Freud concluded that infants didn't differentiate themselves from their environment.
The pioneering Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget thought babies' perception of the world began as a 'blooming, buzzing confusion' of colour, light and sound, before they developed a more sophisticated worldview, first through the senses and later through symbol.
More recent scholars such as the leading American theoretical linguist Noam Chomsky have argued that the fundamentals of language are there from birth. Chomsky has famously argued that all humans have an innate, universally applicable grammar.
Over the last ten to twenty years, new research has shed fresh light on important aspects of the infant brain which have long been shrouded in mystery or mired in dispute, from the way we start to learn to speak to the earliest understanding that other people have their own minds.
With:
Usha Goswami, Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and Director of its Centre for Neuroscience in Education
Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London
Denis Mareschal, Professor of Psychology at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck College, University of London.
FURTHER READING
Gliga, T., Mareschal, D. & Johnson, M. H., ‘Ten-month-olds' selective use of visual dimensions in category learning’, in ‘Infant Behavior and Development’, 31, 287-293, (2008)
Goswami, U., ‘The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development: 2nd Edition’, ‘Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology’ (Oxford: Blackwell, August 2010)
Goswami, U., ‘Cognitive Development: The Learning Brain’ in ‘Psychology Press’ (Taylor & Francis, 2008)
Goswami, U.,‘Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002 & 2004)
Johnson, Mark H., ‘Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience’ (Oxford, Uk: Blackwells Publishers, 2004)
Karmiloff, K. & Karmiloff-Smith, A., ‘Pathways to language: From foetus to adolescent’ in ‘Developing Child Series’ (Harvard University Press, 2001)
Karmiloff-Smith, A., ‘Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science’ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1992, reprinted 1995).
Karmiloff, K. & Karmiloff-Smith, A., ‘Everything your baby would ask if only he/she could talk’ (London: Cassell/Ward Lock, 1998)
Mareschal, Denis, Quinn, Paul C. and Lea, Stephen E. G., ‘The Making of Human Concepts’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2010)
Mareschal, D. Johnson, M. H., Sirois, S., Spratling, M., Thomas, M. & Westermann, G., ‘Neuroconstuctivism Vol. 1: How the brain constructs cognition’ (Oxford UK: OUP, 2007)
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, by Alison Scott-Baumann, Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy, 2009. x + 327 pages, price: £65.00.
The works of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) have become more accessible recently thanks to reasonably priced reprints by theUniversity of Chicago Press Algeria , and opposed the rigid secularism in France
The works of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) have become more accessible recently thanks to reasonably priced reprints by the
Scott-Baumann starts by way of introduction with Cartesian doubt. Then, in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics I, covers the archaeology of suspicion, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, the “masters of suspicion”, ending with the use and abuse of the phrase “hermeneutics of suspicion”. Its abuse by other writers led Ricoeur to stop using the phrase as it had become ambiguous, whilst still focusing on the twin ideas of hermeneutics and suspicion. In Ricoeur’s hermeneutics II, Scott-Baumann covers the theory of interpretation, linguistic analysis, methodological dialectics and philosophical anthropology. Finally Ricoeur’s hermeneutics III deals with recovery, interesting not least for linking Ricoeur’s positivity with the journalism of Robert Fisk, seeking a balance between justice and forgiveness to prevent the paralysis of negativity.
This is an important book by a writer in full control of her material and with a clear and readable writing style, on a topic that is significant for both education and religious studies. It goes to the heart of Ricoeur’s thinking, the need for suspicion so that our understanding and knowledge is not subject to other people’s honest or dishonest persuasiveness. However, if that suspicion is total, its negativity will be paralysing and we are left only with despair and absence of meaning. Ricoeur sees this as a symptom of post-modernity, and argues that the only route out of this is by giving a fair place to love and justice. That he allows religion, and Christianity in particular as it is his tradition, to be part of this mix does not make him a Christian apologist. Here too, the principle of suspicion gives him a critical edge, and his theology is far from naive. In a sense he lines up with the humanistic
Monday, 22 February 2010
International Perspectives on Education.
Other contributions to the book referred to in the previous post. Most, described here, discuss holistic education and the importance of emotional engagement (care).
Colleen McLaughlin: 'Reforming the Connections: the personal, social and cognitive in learning and young people's lives'.
We need to repair and reconnect the links between personal, social and cognitive learning - that is develop holistic strategies. Teachers' own learning about their practice has to be central in this. "It will involve us in taking seriously our relationships and the messages we send to students about themselves and the learning process" (p.39).
Kristjan Kristjansson: 'Self-esteem, self-confidence and individualized education'.
Self-esteem has been wrongly over-emphasised. Feeling good about ourselves can be counter productive and self deceptive. Self-confidence is more important and should be the teacher's goal.
John P. Miller: 'The Thinking Heart: educating for wisdom and compassion'.
Advocates holistic education with inspiration from Buddhism.
Trevor Kerry: 'The art and science of effective teaching'.
Forget skills and competence. Teaching is about being an effective communicator of an accurate message which has roots in art and science.
George Jacobs: 'Making thinking audible and visible via cooperative learning.'
The importance of building cooperation into class strategies.
Alan J Bishop and Wee Tiong Seah: 'Educating values: possibilities and challenges through mathematics teaching'.
Maths teaching should be rooted in values, and various projects are discussed to develop aspects of this.
Michalinos Zembylas: 'Practising an ethic of caring in teacing: challenges and possibilities'.
Teaching should involve caring. This is an emotional labour. The argument is rooted in the work of L. Goldstein, Reclaiming Caring in Teaching and Teacher Education (2002).
Colleen McLaughlin: 'Reforming the Connections: the personal, social and cognitive in learning and young people's lives'.
We need to repair and reconnect the links between personal, social and cognitive learning - that is develop holistic strategies. Teachers' own learning about their practice has to be central in this. "It will involve us in taking seriously our relationships and the messages we send to students about themselves and the learning process" (p.39).
Kristjan Kristjansson: 'Self-esteem, self-confidence and individualized education'.
Self-esteem has been wrongly over-emphasised. Feeling good about ourselves can be counter productive and self deceptive. Self-confidence is more important and should be the teacher's goal.
John P. Miller: 'The Thinking Heart: educating for wisdom and compassion'.
Advocates holistic education with inspiration from Buddhism.
Trevor Kerry: 'The art and science of effective teaching'.
Forget skills and competence. Teaching is about being an effective communicator of an accurate message which has roots in art and science.
George Jacobs: 'Making thinking audible and visible via cooperative learning.'
The importance of building cooperation into class strategies.
Alan J Bishop and Wee Tiong Seah: 'Educating values: possibilities and challenges through mathematics teaching'.
Maths teaching should be rooted in values, and various projects are discussed to develop aspects of this.
Michalinos Zembylas: 'Practising an ethic of caring in teacing: challenges and possibilities'.
Teaching should involve caring. This is an emotional labour. The argument is rooted in the work of L. Goldstein, Reclaiming Caring in Teaching and Teacher Education (2002).
Howard Gardner.
This is to share some thoughts on Howard Gardner from his recent paper 'Multiple lenses on the mind' in International Perspectives on Education, edited by Chau Meng Huat and Trevor Kerry (Continuum). He summarised his multiple intelligences as 8 (or 9 - his words, the ninth being existential/spiritual. The eight are: linguistic, logical mathematical, musical, spacial, bodily kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist. This model is to recognise diversity and to escape from the IQ test model of an umbrella intelligence.
On 'Changing Minds' (and see the book of that name), he lists seven levers of mind changing: reason,
He ends with Margaret Mead's dictum, "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has."
On 'Changing Minds' (and see the book of that name), he lists seven levers of mind changing: reason,
research,On 'Five Minds for the Future', he lists
resonance,
redescription,
rewards and resources,
real world events, and
resistances overcome.
the disciplined mindThe final two of these he suggests are of greatest value.
the synthesizing mind
the creative mind
the respectful mind and
the ethical mind.
He ends with Margaret Mead's dictum, "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has."
Saturday, 20 February 2010
William Golding
Readers of Lord of the Flies or viewers of the film, will remember the twins. They were real kids in Golding's class in Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury. One is my neighbour; the other's funeral took place on Friday. Rest in peace and love to the family.
See also http://learnlivethrive.blogspot.com/2009/11/tony-brown-and-william-golding.html
See also http://learnlivethrive.blogspot.com/2009/11/tony-brown-and-william-golding.html
Friday, 19 February 2010
Kurt Lewin, Action Research and Changing Culture.
Resolving Social Conflicts* was a collection of papers published together in 1948. The long tradition of action research dates from this time. Lewin was interested in social relations and conflict between national and racial groups. A German Jewish refugee in America, these cultures interested him most. And what interested him most was the possibility o and mechanisms for change. He conducted what he called experiments in social space, including a comparison between a democratic and autocratic ethos in a class, finding that much more hostility and negative reactions could be found in the autocratic class. He cites Lippitt, in whose experiments people reacting against authoritarianism did not react against the leader but against some scapegoat who they could bully with impunity. He concluded that authoritarian produces a hostile society without fellow feeling or altruism. Lewin comments, "The social climate in which a child lives is for the child as important as the air he breathes" (p.66). People are shaped by the cultures they grow up in.
His paper 'Action Research and Minority Problems' (1946) describes an experiment he made to encourage change. People were organised in groups and came to a workshop in which they discussed desired changes, planned to implement the changes, and met regularly to evaluate progress. He collected data from the three groups to plot out the processes involved. The spirit was democratic. In order to evaluate progress, the group has to know what progress might look like, or " lack of standards by which to measure progress" (p.143). He argued that new approaches were needed to study processes - interviews and surveys just could not catch the subtleties. An experiment was needed. For the research process, he gave the example of a bombing raid of a German factory. The information had to be collected through reconnaissance; a detailed plan put in place, considering all aspects and intricasies; when the mission was accomplieshed, feedback was needed, to give teeth to the evaluation. This structure was given to an experiment in inter-cultural relations.
Action Research has been used widely since then, and this workshop model is no longer a common one; but there is great value for action research to return to its roots, and seek solutions by getting practitioners to work together with stakeholders to find solutions to difficulties and differences of vision, mission and practice. Such an an action research group consisting of a teacher and the pupils could have a great impact on behaviour, achievement and ethos. Open-minded groups of politicians, practitioners and stakeholders might have made better education policy than the failed efforts of the past 22 years.
Note * published together with Field Theory in Social Science in 1951, and reprinted from 1997 onwards by the American Psychological Association.
His paper 'Action Research and Minority Problems' (1946) describes an experiment he made to encourage change. People were organised in groups and came to a workshop in which they discussed desired changes, planned to implement the changes, and met regularly to evaluate progress. He collected data from the three groups to plot out the processes involved. The spirit was democratic. In order to evaluate progress, the group has to know what progress might look like, or " lack of standards by which to measure progress" (p.143). He argued that new approaches were needed to study processes - interviews and surveys just could not catch the subtleties. An experiment was needed. For the research process, he gave the example of a bombing raid of a German factory. The information had to be collected through reconnaissance; a detailed plan put in place, considering all aspects and intricasies; when the mission was accomplieshed, feedback was needed, to give teeth to the evaluation. This structure was given to an experiment in inter-cultural relations.
This and similar experiences have convinced me that we should consider action, research, and training as a triangle that should be kept together for the sake of any of its corners (149)The delegates moved from being isolated individuals to becoming cooperative teams
on the basis of readiness to face difficulties realistically, to apply honest fact-finding, and to work together to overcome them (149)The end result was a detailed training programme owned by everyone. Lewin recognized that global solutions to problems of cultural harmonious inter-relationships are complex and require local, national and internation action over a long period.
Action Research has been used widely since then, and this workshop model is no longer a common one; but there is great value for action research to return to its roots, and seek solutions by getting practitioners to work together with stakeholders to find solutions to difficulties and differences of vision, mission and practice. Such an an action research group consisting of a teacher and the pupils could have a great impact on behaviour, achievement and ethos. Open-minded groups of politicians, practitioners and stakeholders might have made better education policy than the failed efforts of the past 22 years.
Note * published together with Field Theory in Social Science in 1951, and reprinted from 1997 onwards by the American Psychological Association.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
The Authentic Person 3 Creative Tension, Openness and Morality
Sydney J Harris's 3rd and 4th lectures encouraged keeping opposites in a creative tension within a moral framework. So the bonds of marriage involve both bondage and freedom. He uses phenomenology to explore human experience. Again, what follows are my comments and not his.
This is to replace an 'either-or' frame of mind with 'both-and'. In his example, marriage binds and restricts on the one hand, yet liberates on the other. These two need to be held by both partners in balance, in creative tension, for the marriage to be healthy. In fact, readjustments will have to be made all the time, either emphasising the need for more responsibility or more freedom. Choices and decisions balance a number of points of view, sometimes contradictory. Democracy allows people to have a vote, and to be outvoted by a majority. The majority are not always right. Achieving a consensus aims at a solution that everyone can live with. Unfortunately it takes longer and assumes compromise. One intransigent individual can wreck consensus by refusing to compromise. In some cases he or she may be wrong to do this, but they may be right, especially if it is a moral matter of significant principle. Sometimes, someone has to stand up against the crowd.
Assuming that compromise does not mean 'being compromised' (i.e. feeling that we have to do something unethical), we need to define within the continuum of legitimate opposites a comfort zone within which we are prepared to trade. If others do the same, the ground is prepared for consensus. This assumes that ethics plays a central role in defining the limits of consensus and compromise. It is not that anything goes (relativism) - that gave us the ghettos and death camps. It means that there is room for manoeuvre within an ethically defensible range of choices.
The answer to many questions is yes and no. Understanding the parts we would say yes to (the pros) and those we say no to (the cons) are the ways we operate in this marginal zone of creative tension. Openness to others is easier for some than for others. People who are self-centred and disagreeable (poles of two personality traits) will find working with others difficult, and may find it hard to change. Openness comes in both dialogue (the willingness to allow another a valid point of view) and empathy (sharing in other people's emotional ups and downs0. Not wishing to hurt other people is the beginnings of morals and ethics. It is nothing to do with obeying petty rules.
Later lectures talked of polarised confrontational politics, misbalancing individual concerns with social responsibilities, and how in future we will have to live with ambiguity. Certainty is dead, although there are moral principles which are absolute. Globally, we have a lot of listening and compromising to do.
Humankind has evolved to be rational, though this is a discipline that escapes many. That should mean escape from aggressive responses and power to the strong, and to the possibility of working for the common good. The twentieth century was the most bloody in human history. What will the 21st be? What can we each do as individuals to achieve a fairer world both for humans and for other species?
So what is an authentic person? It is a dilemma. Authentic could mean true to me, and be totally self-centred. I do what I want, true to my beliefs and desires, and blow to anyone else. Or it could recognize that authentic recognizes the network of responsibilities and relationships that the self sits within. This is MacMurray's Self as Agent and Self in Relation, that as a human I have to be actively engaged, and supportive of the networks I exist within. My cats are not capable of that choice. For me, humans exist in a global network, so being authentic means promoting world progress and harmony.
This is to replace an 'either-or' frame of mind with 'both-and'. In his example, marriage binds and restricts on the one hand, yet liberates on the other. These two need to be held by both partners in balance, in creative tension, for the marriage to be healthy. In fact, readjustments will have to be made all the time, either emphasising the need for more responsibility or more freedom. Choices and decisions balance a number of points of view, sometimes contradictory. Democracy allows people to have a vote, and to be outvoted by a majority. The majority are not always right. Achieving a consensus aims at a solution that everyone can live with. Unfortunately it takes longer and assumes compromise. One intransigent individual can wreck consensus by refusing to compromise. In some cases he or she may be wrong to do this, but they may be right, especially if it is a moral matter of significant principle. Sometimes, someone has to stand up against the crowd.
Assuming that compromise does not mean 'being compromised' (i.e. feeling that we have to do something unethical), we need to define within the continuum of legitimate opposites a comfort zone within which we are prepared to trade. If others do the same, the ground is prepared for consensus. This assumes that ethics plays a central role in defining the limits of consensus and compromise. It is not that anything goes (relativism) - that gave us the ghettos and death camps. It means that there is room for manoeuvre within an ethically defensible range of choices.
The answer to many questions is yes and no. Understanding the parts we would say yes to (the pros) and those we say no to (the cons) are the ways we operate in this marginal zone of creative tension. Openness to others is easier for some than for others. People who are self-centred and disagreeable (poles of two personality traits) will find working with others difficult, and may find it hard to change. Openness comes in both dialogue (the willingness to allow another a valid point of view) and empathy (sharing in other people's emotional ups and downs0. Not wishing to hurt other people is the beginnings of morals and ethics. It is nothing to do with obeying petty rules.
Later lectures talked of polarised confrontational politics, misbalancing individual concerns with social responsibilities, and how in future we will have to live with ambiguity. Certainty is dead, although there are moral principles which are absolute. Globally, we have a lot of listening and compromising to do.
Humankind has evolved to be rational, though this is a discipline that escapes many. That should mean escape from aggressive responses and power to the strong, and to the possibility of working for the common good. The twentieth century was the most bloody in human history. What will the 21st be? What can we each do as individuals to achieve a fairer world both for humans and for other species?
So what is an authentic person? It is a dilemma. Authentic could mean true to me, and be totally self-centred. I do what I want, true to my beliefs and desires, and blow to anyone else. Or it could recognize that authentic recognizes the network of responsibilities and relationships that the self sits within. This is MacMurray's Self as Agent and Self in Relation, that as a human I have to be actively engaged, and supportive of the networks I exist within. My cats are not capable of that choice. For me, humans exist in a global network, so being authentic means promoting world progress and harmony.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
The Authentic Person 2 False Opposites.
Sydney J Harris's second lecture challenged the use of opposites such as good-evil, love-hate. Again, these are my comments and not his. We try to make sense of human experience, and either-or is a favorite mechanism. Many questionnaires work on the same principle, with yes-no answers. That a person might wish to answer both yes and no wrecks the system. I once did a careers test to tell me what career I ought to go for. Do you like to work indoors or outdoors? Choose one. I like both. Depending on my choice they would advise me to be either a banker or a lumberjack. The verdict of the questionnaire was that it could not advise me. I liked too many things. A scale of responses is more helpful, but on occasions whether I reply 1 or 5 may depend on circumstances.
So is a person good or evil? Do I love someone or hate someone? 'Love a little' or 'hate a little' seem perverse options within polarity. How can I answer until I know what good is, or what evil is? Do I even know what love is? It is these sort of questions that push me into qualitative research, which raises a similar question - do I know what quality is, and does my view agree with everyone elses?
Good and evil have been part of the human psyche for ever. Evil spirits are still blamed for misfortunes amongst educated folk. Children are killed because they are believed to be inhabited by an evil spirit - Victoria Climbie is the most famous example. Religions have promoted the idea, and pastors have connived with the murder of children so labelled. A girl I once taught, with some emotional fragility, was exorcised by a Christian priest, with disastrous consequences. This was to objectify evil into a separate entity and to deal with it by driving it away. Evil, and exorcism are the stuff of popular films, which portray a dualistic world in which evil forces reign. Children's stories sometimes depict battles between these evil forces and the child characters. Garth Nix's The Ragwitch, and his 'across the wall' books; Anthony Horowitz's Raven's Gate; Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The truth is that there are no evil forces. Philip Pullman shows struggles with archangels, ghasts, harpies and other monsters, and depicting fortune telling as real, but set out of this world, within the imagination, with a story which sets the mind free of these fictions by establishing a commonwealth or cooperative of individual endeavour, rather than a kingdom led by an authority - that is self help rather than dependence. This at least is an honest journey.
Evil characters in fiction and especially in computer games, can be killed. War stories exult in enemy dead. In a computer game, the child zaps aliens, or enemies, or even Indians. This is educating them to kill. The Nazis became very good at it. Few Germans in 1945 felt guilty and the victorious allies had to treat their misperceptions as a disease. People, in real life, are mixtures of good and bad. All are capable of change, given circumstances that enable them to. Equally good people are capable of becoming monsters if circumstances drive them in this direction. Madmen rule only because others permit them to. We need to cultivate those others to resist injustice and to build a fairer society.
So, there is no devil and equally no God. There are only choices, crossroads to different journeys with different consequences.
So is a person good or evil? Do I love someone or hate someone? 'Love a little' or 'hate a little' seem perverse options within polarity. How can I answer until I know what good is, or what evil is? Do I even know what love is? It is these sort of questions that push me into qualitative research, which raises a similar question - do I know what quality is, and does my view agree with everyone elses?
Good and evil have been part of the human psyche for ever. Evil spirits are still blamed for misfortunes amongst educated folk. Children are killed because they are believed to be inhabited by an evil spirit - Victoria Climbie is the most famous example. Religions have promoted the idea, and pastors have connived with the murder of children so labelled. A girl I once taught, with some emotional fragility, was exorcised by a Christian priest, with disastrous consequences. This was to objectify evil into a separate entity and to deal with it by driving it away. Evil, and exorcism are the stuff of popular films, which portray a dualistic world in which evil forces reign. Children's stories sometimes depict battles between these evil forces and the child characters. Garth Nix's The Ragwitch, and his 'across the wall' books; Anthony Horowitz's Raven's Gate; Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The truth is that there are no evil forces. Philip Pullman shows struggles with archangels, ghasts, harpies and other monsters, and depicting fortune telling as real, but set out of this world, within the imagination, with a story which sets the mind free of these fictions by establishing a commonwealth or cooperative of individual endeavour, rather than a kingdom led by an authority - that is self help rather than dependence. This at least is an honest journey.
Evil characters in fiction and especially in computer games, can be killed. War stories exult in enemy dead. In a computer game, the child zaps aliens, or enemies, or even Indians. This is educating them to kill. The Nazis became very good at it. Few Germans in 1945 felt guilty and the victorious allies had to treat their misperceptions as a disease. People, in real life, are mixtures of good and bad. All are capable of change, given circumstances that enable them to. Equally good people are capable of becoming monsters if circumstances drive them in this direction. Madmen rule only because others permit them to. We need to cultivate those others to resist injustice and to build a fairer society.
So, there is no devil and equally no God. There are only choices, crossroads to different journeys with different consequences.
The Authentic Person 1 Humans
These next posts come from The Authentic Person: Dealing With Dilemma by Sydney J Harris (1972). These were lectures from the 1960s for the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. I intend to reflect on the issues rather than just describe the lectures.
First, the dethroning of mankind, a new self image. What do we think of humanity post Darwin, Freud and Marx? Why do humans think themselves better than animals? After all humans are animals. Humans think themselves intelligent. Of course, 95% of them are not but sit gawping at a TV screen. Most cannot put a rational thought together but guide their choices by their emotions. Those emotions can be destructive and lead to killing, mayhem and disaster. Humans are easily led - three quarters would kill if they were ordered to if it was a way of saving themselves (see my blog on Stanley Milgram). See also Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Look at Abu Ghraib prison, and look into Iran today. Through the ages, human achievement has been measured by the ability to kill other people or things. Humans will soon wipe out most other species, and then wipe ourselves out. So what do we do about this? A quarter of people are resisters. In Nazi Germany these were the first to be eliminated. By every possible means, education, literature, theatre, we have learn to resist the bloodlust that fills our entertainment, and our political activity. What is humankind that we are mindful of them - quite a bit lower than the angels, and often behaving worse than the demons.
But we need the spin. We must believe ourselves to be altuistic, kind, cooperative and helpful. It is a delusion, but I hope we come to believe it. Those who believe they can be a positive force for good need to become the leaven of social and political development. Am I an optimist or a pessimist about humans having a worthwhile long-term future? Probably a pessimist but there are faint glimmers that grass-roots opinion is beginning to build a degree of inter-cultural understanding. The trouble is opinion top down - the grass roots are there, but often covered in tarmac.
First, the dethroning of mankind, a new self image. What do we think of humanity post Darwin, Freud and Marx? Why do humans think themselves better than animals? After all humans are animals. Humans think themselves intelligent. Of course, 95% of them are not but sit gawping at a TV screen. Most cannot put a rational thought together but guide their choices by their emotions. Those emotions can be destructive and lead to killing, mayhem and disaster. Humans are easily led - three quarters would kill if they were ordered to if it was a way of saving themselves (see my blog on Stanley Milgram). See also Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Look at Abu Ghraib prison, and look into Iran today. Through the ages, human achievement has been measured by the ability to kill other people or things. Humans will soon wipe out most other species, and then wipe ourselves out. So what do we do about this? A quarter of people are resisters. In Nazi Germany these were the first to be eliminated. By every possible means, education, literature, theatre, we have learn to resist the bloodlust that fills our entertainment, and our political activity. What is humankind that we are mindful of them - quite a bit lower than the angels, and often behaving worse than the demons.
But we need the spin. We must believe ourselves to be altuistic, kind, cooperative and helpful. It is a delusion, but I hope we come to believe it. Those who believe they can be a positive force for good need to become the leaven of social and political development. Am I an optimist or a pessimist about humans having a worthwhile long-term future? Probably a pessimist but there are faint glimmers that grass-roots opinion is beginning to build a degree of inter-cultural understanding. The trouble is opinion top down - the grass roots are there, but often covered in tarmac.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Deportation of a Bahai from Uzbekistan
The Baha'i Faith is committed to advancing peace, justice, ethical conduct and human unity. Members do not propagandise and worship quietly in each others' houses. This is clearly a threat to Uzbekistan's authoritarian government. Persecution is clearly not confined to Iran. See further http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/58.
From Forum 18 (click for link)
Sepehr Taheri, a Baha'i with British citizenship who had lived in the Uzbek capital Tashkent
since 1990, is married to an Uzbek citizen and their children were all born there. In the wake of his deportation, a local news website accused Taheri of "propagandising Baha'i religious teaching" and increasing the number of "proselytes" in the country. The website's chief editor defended to Forum 18 its publication of the article, which was written by the same author who attacked the previous Baha'i to be expelled from Uzbekistan.
The deportations are part of the Uzbek government's campaign to isolate religious believers in Uzbekistan from their fellow-believers abroad, which also includes visa and entry denials to foreign citizens wishing to visit for religious purposes.
The official who answered the phone at the department that registers religious organisations at the Tashkent City Justice Department refused to discuss the deportations with Forum 18 on 12 February. Nor was any official of the government's Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent prepared to explain why foreign citizens legally resident in Uzbekistan cannot freely practice their faith with their fellow believers. The Uzbek authorities deal especially harshly with local citizens who conduct religious activities they deem to be illegal. Among many recent cases, Muslim journalist Hairulla Hamidov was arrested in Tashkent on 21
January and is awaiting criminal trial (see forthcoming F18News article).
According to a 5 February article by Abduvali Turaev on the Novosti Uzbekistana website, Taheri was working in Tashkent as an English language teacher. He was found guilty of violating the Code of Administrative Offences and, on 17 November 2009, was deported from Uzbekistan. The author did not say which Article of the Administrative Code Turaev was accused of violating, nor which court handed down the verdict. The Baha'i community
confirmed Taheri's deportation to Forum 18 without giving details. No Uzbek official would tell Forum 18 which court had punished Taheri.
The deportation of Taheri is the latest in a series of government moves against the Baha'i community, which has been able to register its groups in Tashkent, Samarkand, Jizak, Bukhara and Navoi. More than ten officers from the police and NSS secret police, together with an official of the City Justice Department and the head of the mahalla (city district) committee raided the Baha'i centre in Tashkent's Khamza District in July 2009. Two Baha'is were found guilty of resisting the police, charges they denied, and sentenced to fifteen days' imprisonment. After that one of the two was expelled to neighbouring Kazakhstan (see
F18News 24 September 2009)
In the wake of both Baha'i expulsions, Russian-language media articles by Turaev in the local media appeared later. His article attacking the earlier expelled Baha'i was published by Gorizont.uz agency on 16 September 2009, more than five weeks after his expulsion. The 5 February 2010 article about Taheri appeared in Novosti Uzbekistana more than eleven weeks after his deportation. The delay was not explained.
Turaev's article, "Sower of Alien Ideas", claimed that Taheri had come to live in Uzbekistan in 1990 "for mercenary reasons" (which were not explained) and as a missionary. It claimed he married an Uzbek citizen "to legalise his presence in the country, to conceal his mercenary aims and to avoid being unmasked". The author alleged that "by concealing his real aims" he was able to set up nine Baha'i groups across Uzbekistan.
Turaev claimed Taheri had been arrested in August 2008 while "brainwashing" a local woman "with the aim of forcing her to change her religious views". But "on that occasion he was able to evade responsibility" (the author does not explain how). The author then claims that Taheri organised the participation of more than 200 people from Uzbekistan in an "unsanctioned" meeting of Baha'is from Central Asia in Almaty in Kazakhstan in December
2008 (he did not explain why the conference was "unsanctioned"). The author claimed that most of those who went from Uzbekistan did not know they were going to a religious conference.
The author accused Taheri of organising "illegal meetings" in private homes in Tashkent in the first three months of 2009, as well as invitations to foreign Baha'is to visit communities in the country. "It is natural that his activities were recognised as contradicting the laws of Uzbekistan," Turaev declared.
Defending media slanders
Forum 18 was unable to reach Turaev either at Novosti Uzbekistana or at Gorizont. The man who answered the phone at Novosti Uzbekistana on 15 February told Forum 18 "we don't have anyone by that name here". Pyotr Yakovlev, chief editor at Novosti Uzbekistana, also refused to pass on Turaev's contact details, but denied that Turaev was anything other than a journalist. He refused to explain why he is known to have published only two articles under his own name, both attacking Baha'is.
Yakovlev vigorously denied that his publication was a mouthpiece for the state's anti-religious campaign. "We are a private, not a state-run publication and we are independent," he insisted to Forum 18 from Tashkent on 16 February. Asked why he allowed his publication to attack the Baha'i community, and Taheri in particular, without giving them the opportunity to give their view, he declared: "I am an Uzbek. I am 64 years old and I know the Baha'is. Why shouldn't I publish this material?"
Asked why he had allowed the journalist to make unverified accusations, Yakovlev responded: "Decisions were taken by the court, not by us. You should ask them." He then put the phone down.
In addition to Turaev's September 2009 article attacking the Baha'is, Gorizont has a history of publishing other material attacking religious communities. In summer 2009 it published two articles attacking the Union of Baptists of Uzbekistan for holding children's summer camps. The author made a number of allegations which Baptists categorically denied.
The Gorizont articles appeared not long before the prosecution of three senior Baptist leaders, including Pavel Peichev, head of the Union. The three were given heavy fines (subsequently overturned), ordered to pay large sums in "unpaid" taxes and banned from positions in the Union for three years (see F18News 7 December 2009
From Forum 18 (click for link)
Sepehr Taheri, a Baha'i with British citizenship who had lived in the Uzbek capital Tashkent
since 1990, is married to an Uzbek citizen and their children were all born there. In the wake of his deportation, a local news website accused Taheri of "propagandising Baha'i religious teaching" and increasing the number of "proselytes" in the country. The website's chief editor defended to Forum 18 its publication of the article, which was written by the same author who attacked the previous Baha'i to be expelled from Uzbekistan.
The deportations are part of the Uzbek government's campaign to isolate religious believers in Uzbekistan from their fellow-believers abroad, which also includes visa and entry denials to foreign citizens wishing to visit for religious purposes.
The official who answered the phone at the department that registers religious organisations at the Tashkent City Justice Department refused to discuss the deportations with Forum 18 on 12 February. Nor was any official of the government's Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent prepared to explain why foreign citizens legally resident in Uzbekistan cannot freely practice their faith with their fellow believers. The Uzbek authorities deal especially harshly with local citizens who conduct religious activities they deem to be illegal. Among many recent cases, Muslim journalist Hairulla Hamidov was arrested in Tashkent on 21
January and is awaiting criminal trial (see forthcoming F18News article).
According to a 5 February article by Abduvali Turaev on the Novosti Uzbekistana website, Taheri was working in Tashkent as an English language teacher. He was found guilty of violating the Code of Administrative Offences and, on 17 November 2009, was deported from Uzbekistan. The author did not say which Article of the Administrative Code Turaev was accused of violating, nor which court handed down the verdict. The Baha'i community
confirmed Taheri's deportation to Forum 18 without giving details. No Uzbek official would tell Forum 18 which court had punished Taheri.
The deportation of Taheri is the latest in a series of government moves against the Baha'i community, which has been able to register its groups in Tashkent, Samarkand, Jizak, Bukhara and Navoi. More than ten officers from the police and NSS secret police, together with an official of the City Justice Department and the head of the mahalla (city district) committee raided the Baha'i centre in Tashkent's Khamza District in July 2009. Two Baha'is were found guilty of resisting the police, charges they denied, and sentenced to fifteen days' imprisonment. After that one of the two was expelled to neighbouring Kazakhstan (see
F18News 24 September 2009)
In the wake of both Baha'i expulsions, Russian-language media articles by Turaev in the local media appeared later. His article attacking the earlier expelled Baha'i was published by Gorizont.uz agency on 16 September 2009, more than five weeks after his expulsion. The 5 February 2010 article about Taheri appeared in Novosti Uzbekistana more than eleven weeks after his deportation. The delay was not explained.
Turaev's article, "Sower of Alien Ideas", claimed that Taheri had come to live in Uzbekistan in 1990 "for mercenary reasons" (which were not explained) and as a missionary. It claimed he married an Uzbek citizen "to legalise his presence in the country, to conceal his mercenary aims and to avoid being unmasked". The author alleged that "by concealing his real aims" he was able to set up nine Baha'i groups across Uzbekistan.
Turaev claimed Taheri had been arrested in August 2008 while "brainwashing" a local woman "with the aim of forcing her to change her religious views". But "on that occasion he was able to evade responsibility" (the author does not explain how). The author then claims that Taheri organised the participation of more than 200 people from Uzbekistan in an "unsanctioned" meeting of Baha'is from Central Asia in Almaty in Kazakhstan in December
2008 (he did not explain why the conference was "unsanctioned"). The author claimed that most of those who went from Uzbekistan did not know they were going to a religious conference.
The author accused Taheri of organising "illegal meetings" in private homes in Tashkent in the first three months of 2009, as well as invitations to foreign Baha'is to visit communities in the country. "It is natural that his activities were recognised as contradicting the laws of Uzbekistan," Turaev declared.
Defending media slanders
Forum 18 was unable to reach Turaev either at Novosti Uzbekistana or at Gorizont. The man who answered the phone at Novosti Uzbekistana on 15 February told Forum 18 "we don't have anyone by that name here". Pyotr Yakovlev, chief editor at Novosti Uzbekistana, also refused to pass on Turaev's contact details, but denied that Turaev was anything other than a journalist. He refused to explain why he is known to have published only two articles under his own name, both attacking Baha'is.
Yakovlev vigorously denied that his publication was a mouthpiece for the state's anti-religious campaign. "We are a private, not a state-run publication and we are independent," he insisted to Forum 18 from Tashkent on 16 February. Asked why he allowed his publication to attack the Baha'i community, and Taheri in particular, without giving them the opportunity to give their view, he declared: "I am an Uzbek. I am 64 years old and I know the Baha'is. Why shouldn't I publish this material?"
Asked why he had allowed the journalist to make unverified accusations, Yakovlev responded: "Decisions were taken by the court, not by us. You should ask them." He then put the phone down.
In addition to Turaev's September 2009 article attacking the Baha'is, Gorizont has a history of publishing other material attacking religious communities. In summer 2009 it published two articles attacking the Union of Baptists of Uzbekistan for holding children's summer camps. The author made a number of allegations which Baptists categorically denied.
The Gorizont articles appeared not long before the prosecution of three senior Baptist leaders, including Pavel Peichev, head of the Union. The three were given heavy fines (subsequently overturned), ordered to pay large sums in "unpaid" taxes and banned from positions in the Union for three years (see F18News 7 December 2009
Religion, spirituality, and challenging marginalisation
Religion, spirituality, and the social sciences: challenging marginalisation (2008) is edited by Basia Spalek and Alia Imtoual, the former from the field of criminology, criminal justice, and victims; the latter a writer on Muslims in Australia. Unfortunately neither writes a chapter of their own, although both write the conclusion. The contrubutors are a mix of very experienced and less experienced writers. Central to the many discussions is the hegemony of secularism in the social sciences, producing tensions when examining spiritual or religious topics. After decades of relative marginalisation in the social sciences (this is the meaning of marginalisation in the title), religion and spirituality have returned as a topic worthy of research and indeed as a factor which needs to be understood as the world tries to make sense of itself. 7/11 has brought Islamic values to the fore in a contested way; the death of Victoria Climbie as an example of belief in child demons could not be grasped by the Laming Commission, but many children are abused and killed because of beliefs in spirits, demons and ancestors. Religion is an aspect of identity for some, and attacks on religion can be part of their victimisation - 'spirit injury' is a term apparently used by critical Black feminists. One sub-theme is the championing of mixed-method research (that is introducing a qualitative aspect). There are examples of quantitative nonsenses, such as a statistical grouping which puts aboriginees, bahais and scientologists in the same box, to produce meaningless statistics. One appeal is to come to terms with shamanic altered mental states, another to included emotion in the research process, not only reporting the emotions of respondants, but also allowing emotion in the researcher, who is trying to get to grips with emotions labeled spiritual of religious.
This is one part of the issue. Another is that we need to understand the place of emotions in self understanding, and in particular distinguish between helpful and harmful emotions. People can be emotional to an obsessive level about nonsense, about demon possiession (remember The Crucible?), and about angels, crystals, heaven, hell. Giving them a voice does not mean we have to accept their dangerous misunderstandings.
This is one part of the issue. Another is that we need to understand the place of emotions in self understanding, and in particular distinguish between helpful and harmful emotions. People can be emotional to an obsessive level about nonsense, about demon possiession (remember The Crucible?), and about angels, crystals, heaven, hell. Giving them a voice does not mean we have to accept their dangerous misunderstandings.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Apologies for break in posts, owing to activities writing for publication. You can catch some of this, if you wish, on http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/view/author/Bigger,_Stephen.html.
See also my blog http://1930-1960.blogspot.com where I have added discussions of second world war literature.
See also my blog http://1930-1960.blogspot.com where I have added discussions of second world war literature.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Eco-Criticism
This post is a consequence of a call for papers on eco-criticism (green criticism) of children's literature. It has wider relevance as a critique of many other aspects of society and politics. I am drawing this discussion by reviewing Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, Routledge 2010. The title gives the order of interest - Postcolonial critique predominates, focusing primarily of ecocritical concerns, using the three subtitles as case studies. Colonialism regarded the environment as natural resources to be exploited, assuming that land's value lies only in what can be exploited. Exploitation takes from the land rather than enriches it - mines are dug, forests are cut down - and other assumptions about the land have had little voice, assumptions about preserving the environment sustainably to hand it on to our children and our grandchildren undiminished. Where environment and habitat have been lost, this implies that some efforts are made to restore it. Although colonies are ended, colonial attitudes linger as former colonists or neocolonialists pull strings and hold influence through multi-national companies, at worst producing atrocities such as at Bhopal in India, and more generally depriving local people of land and livelihood. Regarding animals as a resource has its extreme form in the killing of elephants for ivory.
I am concerning myself in this post with Ecocriticism rather than postcolonial and neocolonial aspects. This is not to deny the latter, for which there is more than enough evidence globally that these are real issues, and that it is closely linked to issues of poverty and the unfair distribution of wealth and resources. I will return to neocolonialism in a later blog. Ecocriticism involves how we critique human environmental usage, and what attitudes to land we build up in our broad education programmes.
I start my critique with social critique which involves issues of equity, democratic collaboration and fair distribution of the world's resources. The population of the world need sufficient water and food for their needs, which has to be the start of economic and political planning. If some people have less than sufficient, and others more than sufficient, this presents an ethical problem. Waste is also an issue, especially in circumstances where others desperately need the equivalent of what is wasted. To achieve global equity, most of the assumptions of the developed world need overturning. The 'right' to have plenty, and luxuries besides, has to be set against the 'need' of others to survive. Colonialism has left a legacy of exploited land, perhaps with an over-reliance on colonial crops such as chocolate, coffee, tea or rubber which multinationals can exploit in the name of competition to keep western prices low (and in so doing keep the producers' incomes low). In short, considering all aspects of life globally through the lens of social equity will be the main thrust of ecocriticism. Land ownership, even, becomes unclear where land was unfairly taken in the past. All this is mighty unsettling to current landowners in former colonies.
Education can address issues of social equity through history, geography and science (if the science syllabus allows time to be devoted to the use of science). Children might question priorities - why are billions of pounds or dollars spent globally on luxuries for the rich rather than on resources for the poor? On the space race rather than food race, or the race for green energy? Literature might also play a part, with children's stories about the lives of the poor and disadvantaged told with a political edge rather than a patronising one. Environmental education concerns itself (at the curriculum margins, it has to be said) with sustainability, habitat, biodiversity and so on. Without wishing to play these down, it is a neocolonial agenda, seeking to ensure that we who have do not lose pleasures in the future generations. Environmental education does also emphasise global resources at the radical end, but the political agenda of redistribution of resources from rich to poor does not dominate in schools. It takes a disaster to encourage rich people to 'help', forgetting that our wealth is part of the reason for their poverty.
I am concerning myself in this post with Ecocriticism rather than postcolonial and neocolonial aspects. This is not to deny the latter, for which there is more than enough evidence globally that these are real issues, and that it is closely linked to issues of poverty and the unfair distribution of wealth and resources. I will return to neocolonialism in a later blog. Ecocriticism involves how we critique human environmental usage, and what attitudes to land we build up in our broad education programmes.
I start my critique with social critique which involves issues of equity, democratic collaboration and fair distribution of the world's resources. The population of the world need sufficient water and food for their needs, which has to be the start of economic and political planning. If some people have less than sufficient, and others more than sufficient, this presents an ethical problem. Waste is also an issue, especially in circumstances where others desperately need the equivalent of what is wasted. To achieve global equity, most of the assumptions of the developed world need overturning. The 'right' to have plenty, and luxuries besides, has to be set against the 'need' of others to survive. Colonialism has left a legacy of exploited land, perhaps with an over-reliance on colonial crops such as chocolate, coffee, tea or rubber which multinationals can exploit in the name of competition to keep western prices low (and in so doing keep the producers' incomes low). In short, considering all aspects of life globally through the lens of social equity will be the main thrust of ecocriticism. Land ownership, even, becomes unclear where land was unfairly taken in the past. All this is mighty unsettling to current landowners in former colonies.
Education can address issues of social equity through history, geography and science (if the science syllabus allows time to be devoted to the use of science). Children might question priorities - why are billions of pounds or dollars spent globally on luxuries for the rich rather than on resources for the poor? On the space race rather than food race, or the race for green energy? Literature might also play a part, with children's stories about the lives of the poor and disadvantaged told with a political edge rather than a patronising one. Environmental education concerns itself (at the curriculum margins, it has to be said) with sustainability, habitat, biodiversity and so on. Without wishing to play these down, it is a neocolonial agenda, seeking to ensure that we who have do not lose pleasures in the future generations. Environmental education does also emphasise global resources at the radical end, but the political agenda of redistribution of resources from rich to poor does not dominate in schools. It takes a disaster to encourage rich people to 'help', forgetting that our wealth is part of the reason for their poverty.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Scholarship on learning and teaching
The next issue of the journal on scholarship on teaching and learning has just been posted. The articles sound very erudite but I wonder if it more of the same vacuous 'aren't I doing well' variety. So I am thinking here of what we might mean by scholarship on learning and teaching. Learning and teaching seems to me to attract big money for of insignificant papers.
Why is it 'scholarship' and not 'research'? Is scholarship work at a lower level? Scholarship is one of those nonsense words, since it refers to the low-level act of being schooled; yet to be called a scholar is an accolade, higher perhaps than being a researcher. Anyhow, we wish to examine learning and teaching rigorously to make a contribution both to evaluating whether we succeed, and to do it better.
Teaching is the act of enabling the learner to learn. It is not about crowd control, or dramatic performances. It is not about anger and temper tantrums and other controlling strategies; it is about honesty, respect, dialogue and motivation.
Research might imply that the researcher is observing some other teacher and learners, whilst scholarship might embrace rigorous evaluation of one's own practice. Research could be so defined, but can be straight-laced sometimes.
So, on learning and teaching. We are not talking about learning parrot-fashion, though I did learn things 50 years ago that I can still recite. We are talking about embedded learning, with understanding. Learning that changes me, corrects my errors, redirects my vision. It worries me that no teacher I ever had managed to do this for me. Learning had to come from within, and the most I could expect of teachers is to not get in the way. Which they invariably did. Perhaps the mistake is the word 'teacher'? Teach is something you do to someone, force information into someone, drill someone with new skills. 'Learn' must therefore be passive and not active, to do as one is instructed. This never worked for me. Learning is something I do, not something someone does to me. If someone helps me learn that is fine. Rare, but fine. Our task with the young is to turn them on to learning, to curiosity, to constructiveness. Schools are structured around the fill-and-test model, requiring memorization. So schools devalue learning and over-value teaching and its processes, of worksheets, control and tests. Billions of pounds spent on the wrong things.
So if I am to write a paper on learning, I have to be smarter. Where does learning occur? What facilitates it? What whets our critical edge? What causes us to say, 'You must be joking?'. Research into learning has to be subversive, to disbelieve the rhetoric of authority claims and expertise claims. In a sense even of truth claims?
If education is not helping our youngsters to be critical, it is a waste of time. It needs to build children up to contribute to developing the quality of their world over the next century. It is not about declaring them failures.
Why is it 'scholarship' and not 'research'? Is scholarship work at a lower level? Scholarship is one of those nonsense words, since it refers to the low-level act of being schooled; yet to be called a scholar is an accolade, higher perhaps than being a researcher. Anyhow, we wish to examine learning and teaching rigorously to make a contribution both to evaluating whether we succeed, and to do it better.
Teaching is the act of enabling the learner to learn. It is not about crowd control, or dramatic performances. It is not about anger and temper tantrums and other controlling strategies; it is about honesty, respect, dialogue and motivation.
Research might imply that the researcher is observing some other teacher and learners, whilst scholarship might embrace rigorous evaluation of one's own practice. Research could be so defined, but can be straight-laced sometimes.
So, on learning and teaching. We are not talking about learning parrot-fashion, though I did learn things 50 years ago that I can still recite. We are talking about embedded learning, with understanding. Learning that changes me, corrects my errors, redirects my vision. It worries me that no teacher I ever had managed to do this for me. Learning had to come from within, and the most I could expect of teachers is to not get in the way. Which they invariably did. Perhaps the mistake is the word 'teacher'? Teach is something you do to someone, force information into someone, drill someone with new skills. 'Learn' must therefore be passive and not active, to do as one is instructed. This never worked for me. Learning is something I do, not something someone does to me. If someone helps me learn that is fine. Rare, but fine. Our task with the young is to turn them on to learning, to curiosity, to constructiveness. Schools are structured around the fill-and-test model, requiring memorization. So schools devalue learning and over-value teaching and its processes, of worksheets, control and tests. Billions of pounds spent on the wrong things.
So if I am to write a paper on learning, I have to be smarter. Where does learning occur? What facilitates it? What whets our critical edge? What causes us to say, 'You must be joking?'. Research into learning has to be subversive, to disbelieve the rhetoric of authority claims and expertise claims. In a sense even of truth claims?
If education is not helping our youngsters to be critical, it is a waste of time. It needs to build children up to contribute to developing the quality of their world over the next century. It is not about declaring them failures.
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