Re: teaching (was "let us")

ed,
very quick response, the nature of the teaching and students are very
different-but i would want to say that i attempt to give the minumum comfort
teaching re context- micheel rooney's points on strife are quite relevant
here ( although i have some different strife with the kind of strife -N's-
that defines its kind of strife against a  theatre of silence of women). the
point is that the women's groups i work with get the minimum hand holding
from me-enough to build confidence but no mumsy- the learning support tutees
get a little bit more re intitial confidence becasue the risk factor is
often higher but they have to work very hard ( if often for little initial
result) for the learning support to really kick in effectively.this is
nearly always a case of getting the student to make me redundant  as
successful outcome.   

some teaching necessarily is fact based and sure-i will use stats based data
etc to illustrate arguments but most of my teaching is not that kind-as a go
where i get paid postgrad-i teach critical perspectives in related arts ,
historiography, women's studies media- for example in historiography i tend 
to focus of the interpreative dimensions of historiography as a practice i.e
how 'facts' become sedimented as facts- what ideas, values, aesthetics of
selection etc are active in the handling of historical data. whose notion of
nation, history, selection and so on. thus- my main aim is to get students
to work out how they are making knowledge, a question as simple as 'how do i
cut things out' and from some understanding of this make some evaluation of
their practices as historians or future teachers of history. the last thing
i can do is say what the answers are here!

re other subjects- i am not saying fact based ed should not take place but i
prefer to find ways of getting students active in finding them out in ways
which allow the meaning of the fact to be as student owned as is possible.
obviosly i have to draw lines on what is the unacceptable in the conventions
i work within so i make a big deal out of plausibility re these-which then
opens up the how and why of plausibility, whose plausibility etc-great fun!.

by masquarade i mean critical mimemis which can move from a nearly deadpan
simulation of a set of values in practice to a more discernible
ironisation-the power of pedagogy is that students often start copying you
without realising that they are doing it 'so wanting no disciples-i often
counter this performatively-and give them the theory to work this out for
themselves- many don't grasp this part-so do not notice-the ones that grasp
it usuaully do the optional part of the assessment. 'politically incorrect'
but clever students need to take risks too!

there is more to answer but again running late
ciao
Ruth.C 
>>> "edward p. kazarian" <epkaz@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 02/09 9:36 pm >>>
Ruth,

Let me try to clarify in response to your observations, which are 
very helpful:

I wrote:


>
>One caveat, we should be very careful not to confuse this "utility,"
>which we would like to reject, with what is required by the context
>in which we are working in order that we may be able to produce as
>many (and hopefully as many different kinds of) effects as possible.
>Those of us who have spent some time trying to navigate the practical
>minefield that is known as academia will all be aware that it is a
>profession like any other, and an institution like any other, and as
>such we will also know that what is often referred to by some people
>as the "compromises" academics are always making for the sake of
>their are not necessarily as "capitulatory" as is often supposed (and
>if anyone on this list thinks they are not living well and thoroughly
>within and through a framework made up of a vast number of
>institutions, then I humbly suggest that they quit smoking so many
>drugs or, if that fails to work, try to get some treatment for these
>frequent hallucinations).

You wrote:

>
>yes i agree re attempting to provide conditions for as many effects as
poss-
>i don't think i have ever said what 'the  answer' to a q might be but i do
>have to say quite firmly that responses that do not follow certain
>professional conventions-like referencing, not plagiarising ( however hard
>it is to draw the line) will fail- marks mark- i just find it easier to go
>through this with students at the beginning and give them a copy of the
>criteria and validating doc.


I agree with you, though I think there are also plenty of places 
where it is perfectly appropriate, and indeed even necessary, to tell 
students what "the answer" is, pending discussion of its meaning, 
whether or not it should be accepted, what the problems with it might 
be, etc.  This may be a function of my context (see below) and of the 
fact that my students tend to be gross relativists / dogmatists, 
willing to believe whatever makes them happy and to discount whatever 
does not.  In this context I do often use "facts" and "answers that 
are just basically true" (in a very Foucauldian sense of the latter) 
as means of challenging them. Sometimes its about selecting which 
"facts" rather than repudiating them altogether.

>  i think Chris's views are very sound re
>compulsory ed but the ball game changes slightly in H.E re reasons why
>people are there, expectation etc. nearly all the students i teach are
>regarded as 'non-standard' entries re standard educational molarities e.g
>'late returners' 'underchievers' 'disabled', so i find i have to develop
>some fairly multivalent strategies to teach non-dogmatically-re what you
say
>about risking thought below-i agree totally but and its a huge but, i also
>have to build in ways of working with the different perceptions of risk
>students have. e.g if i have a student with a specific learning difficulty,
>perhaps has to go through the labours of hercules to grasp something quite
>simple- then high risk may well lie in making a quite basic point
>publically. so i try an structure assignments, seminars etcetc which
>encourage a fairly wide range of 'risk differentials'.-


I think all of your references to context and situation here are 
extremely important.  I teach largely "normal" American Catholic 
college students, so my strategies for producing effects and 
encouraging a bit of risk taking are obviously going to differ from 
yours, as do the lines of comfort / safety which have to be respected 
in the course of doing so.  I think the key is challenging them 
enough that they become able / discover for themselves abilities to 
go beyond their present situation without threatening / alienating 
them so much that they simply turn off.  This does require a great 
deal of sensitivity to the context and background of your students. 
An example, when I teach feminism to them (and even and especially to 
the women) I have to make very sure to both give them some reasons to 
believe that something important is at stake in this discourse--e.g., 
some "facts" about pay differentials, etc.--and also to reassure them 
that taking this discourse seriously does not mean they have to 
alienate themselves from the church, their peers, etc.  It is only on 
the basis of getting them to accept these things that I can ask them 
more profoundly critical questions about why, for instance, they are 
so worried about being separated from men by virtue of being  osed (and
>if anyone on this 
feminists, i.e., isn't this fear a repetition and an acquiescence to 
a postulate of a masculine hegemony on power and "reason" that is 
precisely what is being criticized.


I wrote:

>The point of this is that, as the frequent references to "resonances
>across distance" and other such things in Deleuze and Guattari's work
>should clue us in to is that while we cannot be sure of the nature of
>the effects of our work (teaching or otherwise), we do tend to get a
>pretty good idea of when these effects are being produced and when
>they are not.  To be insensible of this is the worst of practical
>academic sins, and indeed of practical revolutionary sins.  We cannot
>control the effects we produce, but failing that we can at least do
>what is necessary to make damn sure that we produce some, and one of
>the things that this entails is tailoring our discourse to the rules
>of intelligibility within our community, and thereby of attempting to
>establish for it a sense (in all the complexities of that term, and
>subject to all its vagaries and reversals).

You wrote:

>
>yes, but some masquerade re these rules please-specially for the monor
>literatures!


If by masquerade you mean not simply buying them lock stock and 
barrel, as if they are the only appropriate way to speak, but only 
insofar as is necessary to be a bit subversive, then yes, of course. 
Your relation to these rules is always going to be a game of smoke 
and mirrors, but that is precisely what they ask for and giving it to 
them is not so harmful.  Your comments about "catch phrases" in 
outcome oriented teaching reports would be a great example of just 
such a practice.  Otherwise I guess I need you to expand a bit on 
what you mean.


I wrote:

>
>I shouldn't have to say this, but I am convinced that this is the
>opposite of elitism, alienation, or exclusion--all of which would be
>defined for me by the fact of not giving a fucking shit whether or
>not anyone understood you as long as they heard what you had to say.
>
>[potentially really incendiary comment follows, don't read the next
>paragraph you are simply going to react without thinking]
>
>And this, I think, having nothing to do with who is or is not an
>academic, is the biggest difficulty I have with some of the posters
>on this list and why I do not read it more closely, namely, that some
>really don't seem to care whether they are understood, they would
>rather have their say (and, I suspect be protected from any
>possibility that they might be understood differently than they
>understand themselves).  This is not discourse, this is not
>collaboration, this is not collective action, or even collective
>thought, it is the worst, most punishing form of narcissism--the
>capitalist disease (opium of the people) par excellance.  It is a lot
>of other things too, but I am stopping here because this already
>feels too polemical and my intention really is to start thinking
>rather that stop it.

You wrote:

>yes but are you saying that all posts should mind their pedagogical ps and
>qs? i would have a problem with that-despite the fact that i find many
posts
>irrelevant- while i accept the problem you mention- part of my research has
>focused on the problems of narcissism and uninteligibility that might well
>seem quite narcisstitc and unintelligible sometimes-it is an experiment in
>testing/inventing ideas which anyone is free to ignore if it says nothing
to
>them.
>who is to say what is and is not collaboration, especially when its
>disjunctive-moreover,as bataille points out thinking starts from the
>unintelligible. this list is one of the very few places where this sort of
>activity can happen-i guess i  have to draw a personal line at being
>attacked for not supplying some demands-but am in no mood to return to this
>topic
>

I certainly do not mean to say that all posts should adopt a 
specifically "pedagogical" tone, or even to attempt to make some set 
of requirements that all post should follow.  That would be, as you 
observe, very problematic.  My point was more about a kind of speech 
that does crop up on this list a lot and which I think falls into a 
kind of narcissistic spiral that I described.  I would like to say 
that the difficulties of this kind of speech are more about its 
effect in discussion / exchange as a technique of asserting or 
reserving power for the speaker rather than being about its relation 
to a specifically pedagogical or non-pedagogical form.  In this 
regard I think you would agree that there are "teachers" who do 
exactly what I'm complaining about, as well as "activists" and 
"rebels."  Years ago I made a number of posts to this list invoking 
Deleuze's repudiation / compalints about polemics, and this is what I 
am thinking about when I say this.  Polemics come in many forms, from 
many places, but I continue to suspect that polemicism is one of the 
most profound dangers that threaten productive speech in the present 
situation, political, educational, artistic, and otherwise.


Cheers,

Ed

___________________________________________
ed kazarian
     Ph.D. Candidate and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
        Villanova University
            epkaz@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
"two things that were left out of the bill of rights:  the right to 
leave and the right to change one's mind"
      -- 'Veronika' from John Eustache's *The Mother and the Whore*