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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.