1: introducing the division- is there one?

            In my experience over the last year and half in the early childhood care and education degree program, one of the most important concepts I have encountered is the question of the division between theory and practice in our work with young children. I have had a number of experiences- in different practicum and work settings- where I have been told that what I am learning in school doesn’t work in the field- it’s just theory. Teachers have told me that they know their children and their classrooms – and the theory doesn’t translate to practice. Now that I sit with one foot in a University childcare center and the other in academic explorations of early childhood education, I wonder what is lost and what power structures continue to be maintained in classrooms when we don’t translate the theory that can question the norms of early childhood education into our practice.

            I have been thinking about how to present the concept of theory and practice for a long time and struggling to find the words. I want to communicate and explore the idea that theory and practice are inseparable- but the language itself creates a division. I liken this division to the separation of mind and body. This division is already being challenged in education as we embrace the holistic child: social, emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual... It seems that we are able to recognize the child as a complex being- who speaks in a multiplicity of languages and brings with her a history, family, community and lifeworld (Van Manen, 1997) that shape the meanings she makes in every experience in the classroom. What is the lifeworld of the educator? What does she bring with her into the classroom, into her image of the child and her image of education?

            Some of what the educator brings with her is theory: Theories about children, about education, about teachers, about art, about best practice, about development, about learning, about literacy and many other things. These theories have been constructed through our culture and daily practice (Mac Naughton, 2005) and have become invisible. As we begin to break down the barriers between theory and practice- we can think with specific philosophers and theories in order to question and disrupt the theories and hierarchies that have become invisible in our practice. Lenz Taguchi (2007) writes about her experience working with a group of teachers, thinking with the ideas presented by the French philosopher- Derrida, to help them deconstruct their image of the child. The teachers questioned their ideas about children’s art and the dominant ideas about children’s art in their culture “as expressions of the child’s inner psychological and cognitive development through essentialist and universal stages” (p.277). This questioning of the dominant ideas in a culture or classroom is not easy. It involves disrupting the role of the teacher as an expert who knows children and knows what will happen in her classroom. Derrida states that “deconstruction happens: through a process of not knowing, uncertainty, indeterminacy; being always a bit lost to one another. This is what makes possible a space for another kind of communication, learning and change.” But, as we embrace the difficulty of not knowing, we are also able to embrace the beauty of co-constructing knowledge with children and being in the space of education with children.

Lenz Taguchi, H. (2007). Deconstructing and transgressing the theory-practice dichotomy in early childhood education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39, 275-290. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00324.x

Mac Naughton, G. (2005). Doing Foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas. New York: Routledge.

Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy(2^nd ed.). London, Ontario: The Althouse Press.

2: Thinking as an ethical commitment?

This week I am continuing my exploration of the theory practice divide by thinking with the journalist and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, and the interpretations of her work by Judith Butler (2009), who is generally known for her work in queer theory. You will notice that throughout the posts on my blog- rather than choosing a single lens to think about theory and practice- I will think about this single concept with different poststructural and other theorists and perspectives from week to week. Last week I likened the socially constructed division between theory and practice to the constructed division between mind and body. Through her analysis of Arendt’s work, Butler asks if “thinking implies a commitment to cohabitation” (video 2, min 9). This week I want to sit with this question and think about how thinking or theorizing “commits us in advance to the preservation of plurality” (video 4, min 2:30). How does thinking relate to the act of education? How does thought predispose us to the possibilities of being with children?

Here Judith Butler (2009) theorizes Hannah Arendt’s work on the Adolf Eichmann trial. For the purpose of this conversation I have focussed on videos 1, 2 and 4.

            I think in these questions and in this extreme example of the Eichmann trial – we can hear some of the implications of a prescribed curriculum and prescribed subjectivity (Osberg & Biesta, 2008, pp. 12). Arendt introduces the idea of an emergent subject when she speaks about “who a subject is, rather than [...] what a subject is.” She talks about how the subject is formed through continual “beginnings” that take place “when we act- [when] we ‘show ourselves’ in the human world.” As each beginning rubs up against the beginnings of others, it becomes a completely new and previously unknown beginning. It is in this way- through interactions with others- that a unique, but social, ‘who’ is formed. So how does this act of becoming with others relate to thinking and theorizing?

As children continually emerge and disrupt our ideas about what a child is- presenting a new ‘who’, a fluidly emerging ‘who’, Butler (2009) helps us to question if we are receptive to this call of the other. With Arendt, she helps us to see how thinking puts us in dialogue with ourselves and how this dialogue “is related to the plurality of the human- that differentiated many that belongs to the domain of sociality. So to maintain a dialogue with oneself, must in some way imply maintaining a relation to that plurality and thinking must require both and even implicate us in both” (video 5, min. 2). In this way, it would seem that diversity and the voice of the unknowable other might be allowed a space in our classrooms by engaging in thought that can disrupt the norms that have been established there.

Arendt and Butler can help us see how thinking in our classrooms is not just related to the acts we perform through our curriculum- but also the acts of acknowledging the human subjectivities in our classrooms. They help us question which subjects are allowed to emerge. How do we, as educators, allow our emerging ‘beginnings’ to be shaped by the beginnings of children? How do we think about plurality? How do we disrupt the norms and laws of education to make space for the voices of children and families?

Biesta, G. & Osberg, D. (2008). The emergent curriculum: navigating a complex course between unguided learning and planned enculturation. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40 (3), 313-328.

Butler, J. (2009). Hannah Arendt, ethics, and responsibility [online video]. Switzerland: European Graduate School. Retrieved from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOwdsO6KkkI&feature=channel

3: Learning as lived experience

                In this post I will continue to explore the ideas of Hannah Arendt- but this time- in conversation with Maxine Greene (1995, pp.58). As we look at how “meaning is for the subject” we will move to look at the theory/practice division through a phenomenological perspective (Van Manen, 1997). This perspective will frame the next post and will echo in this conversation with Greene and Arendt. When Maxine Greene says “meaning is for the subject [...] and meanings are always identified in a field” she speaks to how children create meaning through their lived experience within the parameters of the world they see, feel, hear and build relationships with. But, she also speaks to the ways teachers have created meanings about education, children, families and students. As we disrupt the division between theory and practice, we will also disrupt the division between teachers and students. We will look at the idea of the teacher as a researcher- as a co-constructor of knowledge.

Here is a video that shows someone theorizing their world and gaining new perspective from the distance that comes when entering in a dialogue with yourself through thought.

Theory and practice
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                Greene (1995, pp. 59) challenges the theory/practice divide as she states that “lived worlds themselves must be open to reflection and transformation.” A teacher’s image of her role is shaped by her own history as a student, her professional development, her understanding of the cultural image of the teacher, and by the expectations of the role of the teacher that the children, families, and political sphere bring to her (Mac Naughton, 2005). This image creates specific ideas about what a teacher can and cannot do that define what is possible in the classroom for that educator. They also define how she sees the child and who is allowed to emerge in her classroom.  Greene (1995, pp.183) quotes Arendt’s description of a place where things could be saved from destruction that relies

on the simultaneous presence of innumerable perspectives and aspects in which the common world presents itself and for which no common measurement or denominator can ever be devised. For though the common world is the common meeting ground of all, those who are present have different locations in it.... Being seen and heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position.... Only where things can be seen by many in a variety of aspects without changing their identity, so that those gathered around them know they see sameness in utter diversity, can wordly reality truly and reliably appear.  

            As we acknowledge that we learn through our experiences in the world and the meaning we make in our daily encounters- Arendt asks us what kind of space we have constructed for learning. She questions the hierarchies of knowledge in our classrooms- the privileging of reading, writing and arithmetic over other forms of learning and the legitimization of specific behaviours. When we take up Foucault’s (Mac Naughton, 2005) ideas that point to the political nature of education, we can see that only certain perspectives are heard in our classrooms and only certain ways of seeing are legitimized. How can we think differently about education? How can we think differently about children and teachers? How does this theorizing allow the voices of others to be heard?

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Liss, D. (Film Maker). (2006, February 3). Theory: practice [online video]. New York: Pouringdown. Retrieved from http://pouringdown.tv/?p=21

Mac Naughton, G. (2005). Doing Foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas. New York: Routledge.

Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy(2^nd ed.). London, Ontario: The Althouse Press.

4: (Re)Mapping Early Childhood Classrooms

Worldmaps
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 As we break down the theory/practice divide it seems inevitable that we also begin to challenge our beliefs about the dichotomies between nature/culture, reality/social construction, and object/subject (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). How do we learn with- rather than just from- the world; in relationship with the materials, spaces, languages and emotions we interact with? At the children’s center where I work, we have begun to think about the Voice of the materials in our classroom and in our daily interactions. We have begun to look at how- when working with clay or paint- the material predisposes us to certain possibilities and invites certain conversations. How do we make space for the often silent voices of materials and the complex conversations that children and educators engage in with materials?

               
           In her book “Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education,” Lenz Taguchi (2010, p.15) questions this division by thinking with Deleuze:

We are all in a state and relationship of inter-dependence and inter-connection with each other as human or non-human performative agents. ‘Existence is not an individual affair’, writes Barad, both human individuals and non-human organisms and matter emerge through and as part of entangled intra-relations (2007: ix). Everything around us affects everything else, which makes everything change and be in a continuous process of becoming- becoming different in itself- rather than being different in relation to another (Deleuze, 1994).

Deleuze points to the layers of meaning that are constructed through our continual encounters with people, objects, space, history and language. As we (re)visit our understandings we are continually becoming or as Arendt (Osberg & Biesta, 2008) suggests- engaging in new beginnings. It is in this way that we can begin to see how our interactions with objects inform our theories about them and vice versa. In this (re)mapping of the classroom- we come to question who and what is implicated in the co-construction of education.

     
             In my last post, I attempted to disrupt the teacher/student dichotomy as I talked about curriculum as meaning that is constructed between the child and the educator. However; I think it is important to go beyond disrupting the division between these two roles and attempt to break some of the barriers that set these roles apart from other educational concepts and the larger world. As I watch the video (Liss, 2006) of the baby and her father, the filmmaker, “tracking back out into the world from [their] small room in New York city” I wonder about the map that could be made of my history and how it follows me into the classroom and participates in my conversations with children. What is left unmapped in our classrooms? Do we map the meaning we make in relationships with materials, policies and space in the same way we might map our experiences with people?

Biesta, G. & Osberg, D. (2008). The emergent curriculum: navigating a complex course between unguided learning and planned enculturation. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40 (3), 313-328.

Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York: Routledge. 

Liss, D. (Film Maker). (2006, March 8). World maps [online video]. New York: Pouringdown. Retrieved from http://pouringdown.tv/?p=28

5: Educating hierarchies of possibility?

            In this video Sir Ken Robinson(2006) points to the hierarchy of languages and literacies in education. He argues that creativity should be emphasized in schools in the same way as reading, writing and math. This argument raises another accepted division in education that I think has become a barrier for learning: The division of disciplines- even in the field of early childhood where we separate art from dramatic play or blocks- creates an artificial division of thought and being that limits our experiences of the world. Sir Ken Robinson says “we think about the world in all the ways we experience it” (t. 13:05):

 





















The English version of this text is available on Google books (Saint-Exupéry, 1943, p.1-2): http://books.google.ca/books?id=-Hkez1E8jJoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+little+prince&hl=en&ei=9G3hTIqnMoiWsgOLnIi8Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

        

            
          






Sir Ken Robinson speaks about how the depth of education is measured by academic success, despite the evidence of the world we live in, where success exists in all shapes and sizes.  He challenges the way this focus on academic success seems to create a division between mind and body. David Jardine (2002, p.6) takes this much further using ecology theory:

"Ecology tells us that there is no center or foundation to this
web of living interconnections, just small, lateral, interlacing
relations of this to this to this, splayed in moving patterns of
kinship and kind (wonderful terms for pedagogy to consider)."

Through this perspective Jardine disrupts the dominant ideas created by the scientific discourse that suggest we can isolate materials, behaviours and concepts to analyse and perfect them. This reduction and simplification serves some purpose for understanding objects, people and ideas in isolation, but it also reminds us that nothing exists in isolation. Why is education so often set up as an isolated discipline when “our lives and the life of the Earth involv[e] a vast, vibrant, generative, ambiguous, multivocal, interweaving network of living interconnections?” (p.6).

De Saint-Exupéry, A. (1943). Le Petit Prince. New York: Harcourt, Inc. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=i5yLUd056GoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=petit+prince&ei=jobhTK-QN5_wkwSqpOXICA&client=firefox-a&cd=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Jardine, D. (2002). Speaking with a Boneless Tongue. Bragg Creek: Makyo Press. Retrieved from http://people.exeter.ac.uk/PErnest/pome16/docs/jardine.pdf

Rosinson, K. (Speaker). (2006). Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity [online video]. New York: Ted Conference LLC. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

6: Knowledge and the Unknown

In the pictures from the French fictional novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) I included in my last post- we can see some of the implications of assumptions and predetermined ideas about art and education. The narrator drew an elephant inside a boa constrictor, but the interpretations by adults -who thought it was a hat or that it was not worthwhile art- destroyed his motivation to continue exploring art and visual expression. The narrator speaks to the divisions of language when he says “grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to provide explanations over and over again” (p.2). In this post I want to think with Deborah Britzman’s (2006) work with psychoanalysis in educational philosophy to explore other ways of thinking about this gap or division.

            In many of my past posts I have written about disrupting this division between theory and practice- thought and action- in ways that question the fluidity of ideas and movement, and I have suggested that these concepts might be inseparable. However; I also want to acknowledge ideas from social constructivist theories and philosophers, like Foucault (Mac Naughton, 2005), who speak about the power of language, and I want to clarify that the divisions that are socially constructed through language and norms of relationships are no less or more real than physical divisions. The thought and theorists we have engaged with in earlier posts can help us become aware of divisions and aware of the actions and theories we engage with blindly that privilege specific cultures, groups of people and ways of being in the world. Ecology theory, in particular, disrupts the idea of divisions as it talks about how everything is interconnected- but it also emphasizes the relationships between things- in that space of the divide. It is this space of division that is taken up by psychoanalytical theorists (Britzman, 2006).

            In some of Britzman’s (2006, and in Boldt & Salvio, 2006) works, she thinks with psychoanalysis to focus on the divisions between knowledge and the unknown, learning and unlearning. Rather than looking at ways to break down this division- she considers its complexity. Our desires to know, and our desires to teach specific knowledge, are challenged on one hand by things that are taboo and on the other by things that are taken for granted. Briztman (in Boldt &Salvio, p.167) says that “in our attempts to know the depth of our world, we become entangled with our own phantasies of knowledge and resistance to this knowing.” With Britzman I have come to question how teaching pursues specific knowledges or resistances to knowing. How can we engage with children and curriculum in education in ways where we respect the gap between the known and the unknown?   Britzman talks about the drive teachers have to teach- to share knowledge- and how this is both the beauty of teaching and the danger of education, as we assume that learning happens in particular ways when engaging in particular experiences. Britzman quotes Gardner (p. 118): “What is the furor to teach? It is a menace. It is a menace to teacher’s, to students and to innocent bystanders. Teachers possessed by that furor are in trouble. Teachers devoid of that furor- if such can be called teachers- are in more trouble.”

Britzman, D. P. (2006). Novel education: Psychoanalytic studies of learning and not learning. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=tppiMsRJ-N8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=britzman+novel+education&source=bl&ots=uQuOyTj8P5&sig=tLAGtnPTBHB6mG-IIMlzepJPdOg&hl=en&ei=38DpTJaiBobQsAPe4KWxCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Britzman, D. (2006). Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and little Oedipus: On the pleasures and disappointments of sexual enlightenment. In G.M. Boldt, & P.M. Salvio (Ed.) Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching, and Learning. New York: Routledge.

                                                      

De Saint-Exupéry, A. (1943). Le Petit Prince. New York: Harcourt, Inc. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=i5yLUd056GoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=petit+prince&ei=jobhTK-QN5_wkwSqpOXICA&client=firefox-a&cd=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mac Naughton, G. (2005). Doing Foucault in early childhood studies: Applying poststructural ideas. New York: Routledge.

7: The Possibilities in Between?

In the chapter of her book called “Monsters in Literature” Britzman (2006) describes one of her early teaching experiences where her prepared curriculum did not fit the students she met when she entered the classroom. She presents the difficulty of creating a curriculum without knowing the students. The work of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has been taken up in Education by people like Sharon Todd (2001, 2008) and he speaks to the (im)possibility of knowing the Other- who can be a person, a child, parts of our selves, groups, ideas, things, and more. Britzman and Todd both question the assumptions that are made in teaching literature to young adults: Books are often chosen for their ability to inspire specific thought and action. These reflections have helped me to question the assumptions made in early childhood education when we select materials and experiences that are expected to motivate particular learning outcomes.

            As I was thinking about these ideas, I came across a few sources discussing Bloom’s controversial “Western Canon” (1994). This list of books forced me to confront ideas about the value held in a text. Sharon Todd says “reading embodies both a surprising transformative force and a time of belatedness. That is, we do not know prior to our reading of a book what effect that book will have on us; nor can we predict how others will or should respond to that book” (2008, p. 51).

Here is a power point presentation about the concept of a Canon that I found online (Mahmut, 2007):

Canon Formation and Value Criticism

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As I thought about the Canon and questioned how our early childhood curriculums might make similar assumptions- I recognized how I have been talking about breaking down the gap between theory and practice without recognizing the space in between concepts, as a space of being and reflection. Levinas (Todd, 2001) speaks about ethical moments taking place in brief encounters when we are face-to-face with the Other and- despite the fact that we will always hear and see the Other through our own lens and interpretations- we can recognize that something is being said that is not a part of us and we must respect that gap- the Other’s complete alterity. I think it is in this gap- this void for being- that we can question the theories we have become blind to; that have been woven seamlessly into our practice. In the presentation posted above there is a quote about the value Bloom ascribed to literature- strangeness. I wonder how this idea can be taken up in our classrooms- if we look at, for example, how art in early childhood has become strange- different from art done in other environments. How does thinking differently help us to recognize different theories and meanings in our practice? 

Bloom, H. (1994). The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages. Appendixes. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Britzman, D. P. (2006). Novel education: Psychoanalytic studies of learning and not learning. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Retrieved from http://books.google.ca/books?id=tppiMsRJ-N8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=britzman+novel+education&source=bl&ots=uQuOyTj8P5&sig=tLAGtnPTBHB6mG-IIMlzepJPdOg&hl=en&ei=38DpTJaiBobQsAPe4KWxCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mahmut, K. (2007). Canon & Value [online powerpoint presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/kedimahmut-26265-canon-formation-value-criticism-literary-david-hume-harold-bloom-education-ppt-powerpoint/

Todd, S. (2001). On not knowing the other, or learning from Levinas. Philosophy of Education, 67-74.

Todd, S. (2008). The belated time of reading, or inconsolable ethics. Philosophy of Education, 51-53. Retrieved from http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/viewFile/1341/91

8: Questions!

            I hope to continue posting on this blog as I continue to explore these complex concepts- but this post will mark a temporary conclusion or pause. To embrace the ideas of reflective practice that I have been exploring here, I would like to take this pause as an opportunity to sit with some questions and leave you with a visual question I have been thinking with for the last couple weeks by Miwa Matreyek (2010).

How do we embody theories in the practice of early childhood education? How is our practice taken up in our thoughts about children, families and education- and our thoughts about being in the world? How do we think differently about our practice? How do our assumptions about children, education, teaching, and our own histories shape our practice? What is the relationship between thinking and action in our work with children? How does this relationship privilege particular intelligences and ways of being? What divisions are created through language, space, emotions, relationships, etc in our classrooms? How do we respect the void that separates us from the unknowable Other and question the powers that are sustained when we perpetuate divisions?

Matreyek, Miwa. (2010). Miwa Matreyek’s Glorious Visions [online video]. New York: Ted Conference LLC. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/miwa_matreyek_s_glorious_visions.html

Note: Please share your questions, comments, ideas, theories, and experiences about Theory and Practice with me. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

9: Democracy

In many of my past posts I have discussed the divisions that exist in education and our daily lives that are often left unquestioned. By pointing to these divisions- and reflecting on them- I have been able to engage with concepts, hierarchies and theories that are often inherent and invisible in the practice of early childhood education. This seems to be the kind of conversation and thought that Michael Sandel (2010) is seeking to bring to political debate in the video below as he suggests “that we too rarely, articulate, defend, and argue about [the] big questions [...] of moral philosophy and justice” that underlie passionate political arguments. However; thinking with the philosopher Hannah Arendt and the works of Gert Biesta (2007), I have come to question how much of this thought remains embedded in an unarticulated paradigm that “thinks of education as the ‘production’ of a subject with particular qualities, most notably the quality of rationality” (p.740).

These ideas present a number of divisions that are embodied in the separation of theory and practice: rational vs. irrational, individual vs. social, and public vs. private. Arendt (as cited in Biesta, 2007) takes up these divisions in her work in ways that reveal how the lines between these divisions have become blurred as the discourses of individual freedom have seeped in to the public spaces and practices of our classrooms and society. Biesta takes up Arendt’s argument as he questions democratic education and what it means to be a democratic subject. He presents a subject that is neither individualistic nor social- but political. Biesta argues that the social subject (as presented by John Dewey) is still rooted in an individualistic understanding of the democratic subject who obtains social intelligence for him/herself through a democratic education. The political subject, on the other hand – is only a subject when others respond to his or her actions. 

These actions- as defined by Arendt- are not simply physical; they are a complex interconnection of thoughts, and acts, and new beginnings. They are also commonplace: Biesta(2007) states that “although action is about invention and creation, we shouldn’t think of it as something exceptional or spectacular” (p.754). Through a friction of words, movements, listenings, and other acts we come in to the world- as new beginnings whose innovation is defined by our own histories and the complexity of the responses we meet, rather than because it has not been done before. This beginning can also be denied if it is not responded to, and we learn about what it means to be a subject- and a democratic/political subject- through these denials as well as through the acts where there is a beginning.

Michael Sandel (2010) proposes that we have “lost the art of democratic debate.” Biesta and Arendt (2007) question instead “how much action is actually possible in schools” and society?”(p.759). What space is there for difference- and the diverse frictions of beginnings- in an idea of democracy that is limited to rational debate? How do we create public spaces and spaces of education where children, students and people can inter-act? Sandel has begun to question the ways we engage with democracy- but I think we need to go beyond this to question what it means to be a democratic subject. How do we create truly public spaces where we can engage together as plural beings?

Biesta, G. (2007). Education and the democratic person: Towards a political conception of democratic education. Teachers College Record, 109 (3), 740-769. 

Sandel, M. (Speaker). (2010). Michael Sandel: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate [online video]. New York: Ted Conference LLC. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_lost_art_of_democratic_debate.html

10: Making spaces?

The protests, struggles and celebrations that the world has witnessed in Egypt have further inspired my thoughts about democracy in education and the possibilities for public spaces in our society. This BBC(“Egypt after Mubarak”, 2011) article reflects a thoughtful beginning after the resignation of President Mubarak as people come together in the streets to clean up after the revolutionary events of the preceding weeks. This coming together to clean, an act often seen as mundane and merely necessary, is conceptualized in this context as an act of taking back public spaces and a fresh start to rebuilding a country collaboratively. The narratives in this article- the meanings these Egyptians were making in the act of taking their brooms into the streets- helped me to reflect on the meanings that are missed in many of the daily tasks of education. These events, along with the article by Gert Biesta (2007) and the theories of Hannah Arendt discussed in the previous post, have inspired me to ask how we can recognize the possibilities for a “political conception of democratic subjectivity” (p.740) in the daily living of early childhood education and the public spaces of children’s centres.

BBC News - Egypt after Mubarak: A clean start: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Please follow the link above to see the BBC news article

                I think the intention that these Egyptians bring to this work demonstrates that they are not simply cleaning up their history or sweeping away the struggles of their past. They seem to be building new spaces for democracy and for opening dialogue that acknowledge the implications of their past. These implications - and their hopes for the future- resonate in their choice to clear this space in the streets, a public space for people to come together with their differences. Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (1989) work critiquing critical pedagogy and the narratives that are ignored as this theory remains within a rational paradigm, speaks to the complexities of conversations and spaces that seek to let difference be heard- like her experience teaching a University class called “Media and Anti-Racist Pedagogies”:

I saw the necessity to take the voices of students and professors of difference at their word- as “valid”- but not without response. Students’ and my own narratives about experiences of racism, ableism, elitism, fat oppression, sexism, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, and so on are partial- partial in the sense that they are unfinished, imperfect, limited; and partial in the sense that they project the interests of “one side” over others. Because those voices are partial and partisan, they must be problematic, but not because they have broken the rules of thought of the ideal rational person by grounding their knowledge in immediate emotional, social, and psychic experiences of oppression, or are somehow lacking or too narrowly circumscribed. Rather, they must be critiqued because they hold implications for other social movements and their struggles for self-definition. This assertion carries important implications for the “goal” of classroom practices against oppressive formations (p.305-306).

This quote demonstrates in some ways how public space- the already intertwined implications of diverse experiences of difference- cannot be founded only in rational debate that strives to achieve complete and clear answers.

                These writings also brought my attention to the democratic conversations that take place in my classroom daily through a multiplicity of forms of expression by children, teachers and families. How then, do we take up daily tasks, like cleaning, without sweeping away those meaningful conversations of difference that were expressed as children and teachers explored clay or engaged with a book? How is democracy allowed to live in our classrooms? How are spaces for children allowed to become public spaces of democracy that acknowledge “the real and normal relations between children and adults, arising from the fact that people of all ages are always simultaneously together in the world” (Arendt, 1954, p.5)? How do we break down the divisions that prevent us from being aware of the meanings, theories and relationships that can be made in our daily engagements with the world?

Arendt, H. (1954). The Crisis in Education. In, Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books. Retrieved from https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEEArendtCrisisInEdTable.pdf

Biesta, G. (2007). Education and the democratic person: Towards a political conception of democratic education. Teachers College Record, 109 (3), 740-769.

Egypt after Mubarak: A clean start. (2011, February 12). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12441506

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review,59 (3), 297-324.

11: Saying the World?

Throughout the last two posts I have discussed ideas about particular perspectives of subjectification- the cyclic and simultaneous ways a subject comes into being. Similar ideas about the continual formations that people undergo in becoming subjects are discussed in the book, Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p.20). The authors of this book depict the space where subjects emerge between the tensions of submitting to particular discourses and taking up other roles or identities. 

Subjectivity is not essential, not some pre-given substance. It is shaped by social forces and produced in the functioning of major social institutions, including family, (pre)school, and workplace. But we are not just acted upon, not only made; we also continually make ourselves, and in this process of constituting ourselves we are strongly influenced by dominating discourses and practices of power.

This concept of a porous subject disrupts the divisions between the public and the private, the individual and the collective and learning as an act of individuality or community. It presents a fluid image of the conversations, relationships and explorations with people, places and materials that shape who emerges in any interlude in a classroom. Steven Johnson(2010) speaks about these plural origins of ideas as networks that mirror the connections of neurons in  the brain. 

Johnson (2010) recognizes the role of language in generative spaces, as the words we use influence the subjects that can emerge and the possibility for creating spaces where we can think with others. He has helped me to question how we create environments where theories and ideas remain trapped with the individual. How, instead, can we create spaces where thoughts can be  enacted and permitted to reverberate publicly in our classrooms? How can we embody the double-entendre of the French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy(2000, p.4), who says, "we make sense"? In this simple phrase Nancy speaks both- of how being together is meaning- and of how human beings make meaning of the world. Although, for Nancy (p.3), language sets humans apart, he still challenges the divisions of the physical world and the world inaugurated through language: "Language says the world; that is, it loses itself in it and exposes how 'in itself' it is a question of losing oneself in order to be of it, with it, to be its meaning." Like the ways subjects take up and submit to discourses, the speaker gives meaning to the world through language in ways that are influenced by the languagings of the world: What does it mean to think of ideas, words, people and learning existing in networks without origins or linear story-lines?   

Dahlberg, G. & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. 

Johnson, S. (Speaker). (2010). Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from [online video]. New York: Ted Conference LLC. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html

Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being singular plural. (R. D. Richardson & A. E. O'Byrne, Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1996).

12: The Possibilities of Conflict?

In some of my past posts, I have begun to take up ideas that connect with the theories of the prominent educational theorist, Sharon Todd (2009) as she explores the place of conflict in education, democracy, society and subjectivities. Todd inspires a reconceptualization of being with others that asks us to question the necessity of conflict as we emerge in the world. While many philosophers (see Arendt, 1954; Nancy, 2000) conceptualize the subject at the moment she or he appears in the world, Sharon Todd(2009) looks instead, with Levinas, to the pre-originary subject. What compels us to speak or act in ways that allow us to emerge in the world? I think this conception of subjectivity disrupts the division between I/you, we/they, and private/public. It forces us to ask, where does this idea or theory come from and why is it something that I will take up in my practice or in my life? What thoughts and embodied ideas drive our speech and action? She also asks us to question how these theories might contradict or conflict with our existing theories, and how to live with that inevitable tension. Sharon Todd’s conception of conflict as pre-originary and as something that is important, points to the significance of struggling with the tensions as we take up the theories presented by the world and wonder what to do with the theories we have already been living with:

What we are advocating for here is the need to consider conflict in terms of political disagreement so that students’ views are conceived on the register of we/they instead of on the register of good and evil. The point is not to abolish the we/they distinctions, which are continually being made and remade in the classroom, but to help students recognize how these distinctions are drawn and how each of them needs to live responsively with the exclusions they create.  In creating communities of “we” around certain issues, students need also to recognize those who are simultaneously being instantiated as “they.”  Instead of telling students that the work of democracy is to create one “we” through consensus building, the point rather is to come to an acknowledgement of their implication in creating – and sustaining – exclusionary forms of belonging in holding certain points of view collectively (Todd &Anders, 2008).  

With Levinas, Sharon Todd(2009) extends these questions of how we/they are formed in the classroom, to how we/they are formed within ourselves as we take up discourses and identities to form our subjectivities. As we submit to particular discourses- we exclude and omit others. Ellsworth(1989) reminds us in a previous posting that as we voice our stories and experiences in the world there are implications for others. While Sharon Todd recognizes the importance of discussing the implications of those conflicting and intersecting voices in the world, she also asks us to look at the voices within ourselves and recognize that there are often conflicts and diverse perspectives that are denied before we even speak, as we chose where to speak from. This silencing of the others within ourselves reflects the difficulty of living with difference and conflicting perspectives in the world. 

Sharon Todd (2009) questions Nancy and Arendt’s ideas about being with others as a condition for the appearance of a subject in the world:

Read through Levinas, I am bound to express myself as a form of address that is always belated with respect to what the other commands from me. The speech that is expressive of a singular plural, then, is not simply a result of my being in the world with others, but is first structured by the other’s being otherwise- a structuration that we do not overcome as one stage in development, but that continually plagues our speech and action as singular events of plurality (p.8).

These events mark the fluidity of the theories we take up in our practice and they inspire a commitment to continually re-visiting the theories that shape our perspectives of the other that calls for us to speak and act in the world.   

Arendt, H. (1954). The Crisis in Education. In, Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books. Retrieved from https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/330T/350kPEEArendtCrisisInEdTable.pdf 

Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review,59 (3), 297-324.

Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being singular plural. (R. D. Richardson & A. E. O'Byrne, Trans). Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1996).

Todd, S. & Säfström, C.A. (2008). Democracy, education and conflict: Rethinking respect and the place of the ethical. Journal of Educational Controversy, 3(1). Retrieved from http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/v003n001/a012.shtml

Todd, S. (2009). Can there be pluralism without conflict? Ingesting the indigestible in democratic education. Journal of Philosophy of Education Annual Conference, 1-11. Great Britain. Retrieved from http://www.philosophy-of- education.org/conferences/pdfs/Todd.pdf

13: Sympathetic thought

In this video Slavoj Zizek(2010) points to the political theories and hierarchies that exist within our daily acts of charity and sympathetic gestures. He discusses Oscar Wilde’s suggestion that “it is much easier to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought” (as cited in Zizek, 2010, 5:36). This quote asks us to think about the images we take at face value and our response to these faces. As we respond to suffering we often forget to question the perspectives and values that shape our image of that person who suffers and we respond without question. In early childhood we often respond to an image of the child as vulnerable and in need of help without sympathizing first with the thought that might have inspired this perspective. This speaks to the ideas of Sharon Todd (2009) that question how we look to ways of being in the world and being in spaces with others as possibilities for positive responses, and these single stories (Adichie, 2009) of desire for a peaceful, harmonious world deny other ways of being together that might invite generative spaces of dissensus. 

In our desire to know the answers to the world problems like poverty and war, or to provide the answer to the conflicts in our classrooms, we often forget that the answers we give come from particular perspectives that silence other possibilities. When we sit with the tension of conflict we can disrupt this certainty that denies voices of difference and other possibilities. Sharon Todd (2001) writes with Levinas’ ideas about the ethics of not knowing the other. Levinas speaks to the importance of recognizing the alterity of another person- the other’s unknowability. As we listen to this, we can hear Zizek’s(2010) questions about how the assumptions made about people as we create and maintain vulnerable positions of poverty through acts of charity, frame the other as a vulnerable subject in a way that limits the possibilities for other subjectivities to be allowed to emerge. How can we create global communities for theoretical discussions and practice that welcome difference? How can we create spaces for conflict and difficulty where hierarchies and systems of power can be disrupted? How do we address the suffering in the world in thoughtful ways that hopefully do not lead to more suffering? How do we address suffering in ways that embrace the generative potential of dissensus and difference? 

Adichie, C. (Speaker). (2009). The danger of a single story [Online Video]. New York: Ted Conference LLC. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Todd, S. (2009). Can there be pluralism without conflict? Ingesting the indigestible in democratic education. Journal of Philosophy of Education Annual Conference, 1-11. Great Britain. Retrieved from http://www.philosophy-of- education.org/conferences/pdfs/Todd.pdf

Todd, S. (2001). On not knowing the other, or learning from Levinas. Philosophy of Education, 67-74.

Zizek, S. (Speaker), RSAnimate (Producer). (2010). RSA Animate- First as tragedy, then as farce [online video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g&feature=related