The children's charity Barnado comments (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12258379) that interracial adoptions are being resisted and blocked by adoption gatekeepers, and that numbers of children being adopted has to rise dramatically. Keeping children in care is, according to research, the greatest social, educational and economic disadvantage a child can have. I have written about this at http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/872.
My wife and I tried to adopt in the 1970s, asking for any child of any ethnicity up to the age of 8. We were passed fit after a range of unreasonable demands which we bore stoically. For example, having rushed home from work and tidied up for the social worker, we were accused of being houseproud, and not to forget that children are messy.
The point of this blog is to say that despite being willing and suitable adopters, no child was found for us over a five year period. On having to move jobs and house, that would have required us to start again with a different authority, and we gave up, being then too old at 40 to be considered. So, two or three 'looked after' children in care missed out on having a caring home. We also have missed out on having grandchildren, but that is another story.
Saturday 22 January 2011
Wednesday 19 January 2011
Creativity
I am sifting and sorting books to decide which to get rid of, largely so I can by more with a clearer conscience. One was on creativity and 'creative quotient', which prompts this post.
What is creativity? The statements and definitions are scattergun, and lead me to the conclusion that creativity is seen as anything that is not boringly simple. I don't wish to summarise all the points made, but rather have some new thoughts about creativity. I would stress though that formalising these vague notions into a creativity questionnaire is a no-hope exercise.
First, creativity is not the same as artistic. Being able to draw a line and recognisable representations is a skill: doing something unexpected with it approaches what we are looking for in creativity. Creativity is about the brain making surprising associations, especially ones which are meaningful.
The route to creativity is to free the mind from conventional thinking. Ambiguity is feared by people who wish to know for certain, but ambiguity is central in creativity. Easy certainty is the enemy of creativity. However, education encourages certainty, looking for right answers, which may be simplified by the adults involved to be understood by the children. In so doing, the ambiguity is removed. The children are given a sanitised account.
The key to creativity is to allow children to be inventive; and adults also, remembering that their impulse to convention has been developed throughout their lives producing self-consciousness when doing anything unconventional. This suggests an unregimented curriculum with time for experimentation, art, drama, literature, and making things. This is exactly what we do not have currently.
Knowledge today requires creative response. Science cannot tell us what it means by real. History cannot give us answers, but can only repeat old simplifications. Geography cannot open up the problems of land ownership and empire. Land ownership not only throughout the old empires but also closer to home may have legal title but not moral title, after land grabs, dispossessions, and hegemony of the powerful. In Scotland, my own forebears, the Macmillans, where dispossessed and took refuge in Canada (from the Camerons, incidentally). Aristocracy have accumulated wealth and acres in ways neither just, proper or moral.
So, we need to open up the curriculum, develop new ways of looking at what has always been asserted. It is wrong, and the curriculum is based on and reaffirms lies.
Creativity is mental, intellectual, and spiritual. It describes new ways of interpreting the world and expressing new ideas. The status quo, the powerful, the wealthy, the vested interests have much to fear and will resist it. But our youngsters will be managing the world in 20, 30 and 40 years. We need to help them develop the sort of vision which will help them improve the world.
What is creativity? The statements and definitions are scattergun, and lead me to the conclusion that creativity is seen as anything that is not boringly simple. I don't wish to summarise all the points made, but rather have some new thoughts about creativity. I would stress though that formalising these vague notions into a creativity questionnaire is a no-hope exercise.
First, creativity is not the same as artistic. Being able to draw a line and recognisable representations is a skill: doing something unexpected with it approaches what we are looking for in creativity. Creativity is about the brain making surprising associations, especially ones which are meaningful.
The route to creativity is to free the mind from conventional thinking. Ambiguity is feared by people who wish to know for certain, but ambiguity is central in creativity. Easy certainty is the enemy of creativity. However, education encourages certainty, looking for right answers, which may be simplified by the adults involved to be understood by the children. In so doing, the ambiguity is removed. The children are given a sanitised account.
The key to creativity is to allow children to be inventive; and adults also, remembering that their impulse to convention has been developed throughout their lives producing self-consciousness when doing anything unconventional. This suggests an unregimented curriculum with time for experimentation, art, drama, literature, and making things. This is exactly what we do not have currently.
Knowledge today requires creative response. Science cannot tell us what it means by real. History cannot give us answers, but can only repeat old simplifications. Geography cannot open up the problems of land ownership and empire. Land ownership not only throughout the old empires but also closer to home may have legal title but not moral title, after land grabs, dispossessions, and hegemony of the powerful. In Scotland, my own forebears, the Macmillans, where dispossessed and took refuge in Canada (from the Camerons, incidentally). Aristocracy have accumulated wealth and acres in ways neither just, proper or moral.
So, we need to open up the curriculum, develop new ways of looking at what has always been asserted. It is wrong, and the curriculum is based on and reaffirms lies.
Creativity is mental, intellectual, and spiritual. It describes new ways of interpreting the world and expressing new ideas. The status quo, the powerful, the wealthy, the vested interests have much to fear and will resist it. But our youngsters will be managing the world in 20, 30 and 40 years. We need to help them develop the sort of vision which will help them improve the world.
Tuesday 18 January 2011
The Anthropology of Experience.
edited by Victor W Turner and Edward M Bruner, with Epilogue by Clifford Geertz. University of Illinois Press (Urbana & Chicago), 1986.
These are mainly developed conference papers, tied together by the phrase 'anthropology of experience', which revealed the term 'experience' to be very pliable, or in Geertz's words, 'elusive' and 'the asses' bridge all must cross' [374]. The anthropologist/ethnographer needs to uncover people's authentic 'experience' by patiently 'scratching surfaces' (Geertz again). Turner includes a paper on 'Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama' [33-44]. Social drama, whether ritual or 'its progeny', theatre, helps to dismember, reconstruct, and refashion experience. He distinguishes between indicative mood (the description of what is) and subjunctive mood (glimpse of what might be): the latter is liminal, reflexive, experimental, focusing on and renewing meaning.
Anthropology is the study of humanity and the human condition. What people do is easy to observe and describe. How to study people's experience is more tricky. The experience of being a woman is one example, and is the basis of feminist research, normally written by women. The anthropologist rarely writes about himself or herself, but about 'other', so investigating the experience(s) or these 'others' is challenging. The ethnographer can be 'native' (i.e. an insider) but then there is no guarantee that one individual will experience life as others do. So to find the experience of 'others', much scratching the surface needs to be done (and then can we ever escape our own horizons?). Anthropology of experience focuses on authenticity, how ethnological description is 'real' to experience, whereas outsider observation is complexly filtered.
We could look therefore at instances where anthropologists focus on life as experienced, as frail, oppressed, in power or under power. There has been an emphasis on the world as experienced locally. Ethnomusicology - the study of ethnic music. Ethnogeography, place as understood locally. Ethnomathematics - maths as experienced locally. Ethnobotany, medicinal plants as understood locally. We could add new categories: ethnoreligion - religious belief as locally held. Ethnohistory - history through local eyes.
For Turner, performance (social drama) was part of the picture. How is/was social life experienced? With what tensions, strategies for power and rebellion? How is change carried out? Their solutions may be flawed, but we can ask, can we research today how life is experienced? Using in depth interviews, insider accounts, focused observations?
One historic solution was to use phenomenology, the study of how we assume life to be (the term means 'study of appearances'). We might not know but we construct our world view, and construct what we think experience means. We may be mistaken, but it is all we have. We can improve our conclusions by triangulation - that is by drawing on the opinions of others as well as ourselves. We may try this way to step into someone else's shoes and experience life as they did. But of course we may be fooling ourselves.
We might use fiction to distance ourselves from the action. Construct a scenario in which human experience (or animal experience for that matter) can be examined and explored, creating results that are generalisable to all (that is everyone can identify with it. We are here entering into creative and controversial methodological methods. We may have to eventually admit that experience cannot be understood. If we find it hard to be clear and accurate about our own experiences, being equally clear about other people's experiences is possibly impossible. Nevertheless, the task of studying subjective experience is worthwhile, as since this is where personal meaning is found. Qualitative methodologies have been developed to add rigour to how we personally deal with the chaos of our world.
These are mainly developed conference papers, tied together by the phrase 'anthropology of experience', which revealed the term 'experience' to be very pliable, or in Geertz's words, 'elusive' and 'the asses' bridge all must cross' [374]. The anthropologist/ethnographer needs to uncover people's authentic 'experience' by patiently 'scratching surfaces' (Geertz again). Turner includes a paper on 'Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama' [33-44]. Social drama, whether ritual or 'its progeny', theatre, helps to dismember, reconstruct, and refashion experience. He distinguishes between indicative mood (the description of what is) and subjunctive mood (glimpse of what might be): the latter is liminal, reflexive, experimental, focusing on and renewing meaning.
Anthropology is the study of humanity and the human condition. What people do is easy to observe and describe. How to study people's experience is more tricky. The experience of being a woman is one example, and is the basis of feminist research, normally written by women. The anthropologist rarely writes about himself or herself, but about 'other', so investigating the experience(s) or these 'others' is challenging. The ethnographer can be 'native' (i.e. an insider) but then there is no guarantee that one individual will experience life as others do. So to find the experience of 'others', much scratching the surface needs to be done (and then can we ever escape our own horizons?). Anthropology of experience focuses on authenticity, how ethnological description is 'real' to experience, whereas outsider observation is complexly filtered.
We could look therefore at instances where anthropologists focus on life as experienced, as frail, oppressed, in power or under power. There has been an emphasis on the world as experienced locally. Ethnomusicology - the study of ethnic music. Ethnogeography, place as understood locally. Ethnomathematics - maths as experienced locally. Ethnobotany, medicinal plants as understood locally. We could add new categories: ethnoreligion - religious belief as locally held. Ethnohistory - history through local eyes.
For Turner, performance (social drama) was part of the picture. How is/was social life experienced? With what tensions, strategies for power and rebellion? How is change carried out? Their solutions may be flawed, but we can ask, can we research today how life is experienced? Using in depth interviews, insider accounts, focused observations?
One historic solution was to use phenomenology, the study of how we assume life to be (the term means 'study of appearances'). We might not know but we construct our world view, and construct what we think experience means. We may be mistaken, but it is all we have. We can improve our conclusions by triangulation - that is by drawing on the opinions of others as well as ourselves. We may try this way to step into someone else's shoes and experience life as they did. But of course we may be fooling ourselves.
We might use fiction to distance ourselves from the action. Construct a scenario in which human experience (or animal experience for that matter) can be examined and explored, creating results that are generalisable to all (that is everyone can identify with it. We are here entering into creative and controversial methodological methods. We may have to eventually admit that experience cannot be understood. If we find it hard to be clear and accurate about our own experiences, being equally clear about other people's experiences is possibly impossible. Nevertheless, the task of studying subjective experience is worthwhile, as since this is where personal meaning is found. Qualitative methodologies have been developed to add rigour to how we personally deal with the chaos of our world.
Teaching, learning and psychotherapy
George Kelly from the 1950s based his psychotherapy on ways in which people construct their sense of self, self awareness, self construct (and through these self confidence and related features). He called this Personal Construct Psychology (PCP). Children are constructing their self understanding from birth, and they are helped or hindered by those around them, especially significant adults (parents, teachers, friends, enemies). Our model of learning should first and foremost embrace self understanding. This focuses on relationships and our place in the world. The mechanisms may be literature, or drama , or art, but always to see new aspects of self. This might suggest that the main purpose of education is self understanding, producing rounded individuals. Anything else is its context.
Carl Rogers is known for Person Centred Therapy, where progress can only be linked to detailed discussions between client and therapist. This replaces grand theory such as promulgated by such as Freud or Jung. In school, children present with complex individual issues, and the teacher's first task is to decode these to remove any blocks to progress. Again, teaching content is simply its context.
Paul Moustakos called this phenomenological therapy. It is in fact progress by deep discussion, getting as much information from patients as possible before diagnosis. The parallel for teaching children is patient listening to children's ideas and thoughts and interacting with them respectfully without putting them down.
The subject curriculum is not unimportant. In fact it is so important for this to be done well that we need pupils to be in good heart, motivated, comfortable with learning, curious and hungry for understanding. This is where helping children to learn how to learn is the launchpad to their later success.
Postscript, 24 hours later.
The Education Minister Michael Gove disagrees with me, which makes me think I am probably right.
Transaction Analysis (TA).
TA by Eric Berne provided a therapeutic solution to observations about human transactions. This can be simplified as having three Ego states:
Parent, Adult, Child.
These are modes, not age related so two adults could engage with each other in child to child mode. A transaction is a unit of interaction. Parent to Child is authoritative/ authoritarian, child to child is immature, adult to adult is mature. Every transaction can thus be codified. If one of you chided me petulantly (parent mode) and I cheeked you back (child mode), then we have a way of altering things by recognising this and each moving to adult mode. You could make a point rationally (adult mode) and I could answer seriously (adult mode). Things go wrong when inappropriate 2 way transactions take place. A teacher indulging in child to child arguments with children will fail. Equally a teacher who is able to talk to a 6 year old adult to adult is more likely to succeed.
Berne also spoke of people having a life script. We may have to take up a new script if our usual one fails us. Like a B movie, life might be bad because the script is awful.Psychotherapy, and education, can help people revise or rewrite their life scripts.
Carl Rogers is known for Person Centred Therapy, where progress can only be linked to detailed discussions between client and therapist. This replaces grand theory such as promulgated by such as Freud or Jung. In school, children present with complex individual issues, and the teacher's first task is to decode these to remove any blocks to progress. Again, teaching content is simply its context.
Paul Moustakos called this phenomenological therapy. It is in fact progress by deep discussion, getting as much information from patients as possible before diagnosis. The parallel for teaching children is patient listening to children's ideas and thoughts and interacting with them respectfully without putting them down.
The subject curriculum is not unimportant. In fact it is so important for this to be done well that we need pupils to be in good heart, motivated, comfortable with learning, curious and hungry for understanding. This is where helping children to learn how to learn is the launchpad to their later success.
Postscript, 24 hours later.
The Education Minister Michael Gove disagrees with me, which makes me think I am probably right.
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