Something by Virtue of Nothing

UX 2020?

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:48:00 +0000

We are not only "users" of life. But it is still interesting to view life through the lens of user design (UX), and to think about the design of the spaces we create around us - even where this design leaves empty spaces. (Empty spaces in the Montessori method; empty spaces in the Japanese garden...)
Mostly where I like design is where it involves consideration of others: processing what one thinks one knows to share it. Understanding that sharing is not simply spitting out, but creating an environment for reception.
And to in turn seek out environments where others are sharing. Otherwise "others'" realms of thought and/or activity can seem impassable, opaque, forbidding. What has helped me relate more to the tech bubble that has been late to reach my latter-day place of abode has been to try to listen to what tech workers and designers are saying. Seeking out conscientious contributors.
And indeed, such people are surrounded by environments shaped by lines of inquiry that can overlap one's own (and to what an extent...)
Here is an example of two such figures, Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen, who wrote a post I know will interest you: "How Can We Develop Transformative Tools for Thought". The authors are great names in the tech industry. The paper overlaps so many thinkers I am drawing on in my own work - and I would be so curious to see if this will be true for any of you, too, from different angles. I am guessing that, if you are stopping by this blog, you are also interested in thought ... and meaning.

Source, by Daniel Oliva Barbero

It would be reductionist to paste any single meaning over tech advancements of recent decades (which are so impressive: without even going into the details, consider the ability to process over 25 billion events in an hour). At the same time, some of the critique offered by Lewis Mumford, remains prescient: "He who does not see the choices in the development of the machine merely betrays his incapacity to observe the cumulative effects." I think that the authors of the article above would agree with this sentiment.
The tool can quickly become reductionist.
I might have lost appreciation of this had I not "gone Linux" this year (Windows is too expensive for my wages/salary). This move also caused me to lose Scrivener, with the coherent draft of my book and so in turn I have plunged into exploring "org mode". Both of these experiences made me feel (as corny as it sounds) like that film about the man who thought his life was a game show until he broke through to the other side. I doubt I fully watched it, but in my memory, a man suddenly walks around in a world of colors he could only have dreamed of before then...
What some people might find to be the decision fatigue of Linux, I suddenly find myself truly engaged with my computer and feel it to be my tool.
It's like how I have a deep need to keep this blog interface the way it is though I am not sure if it translated well to mobile presentations. If it did, what an incredible job the Google engineers and programmers are doing to allow for multiplicity.
My computer is now shaped just how I want it. And org mode! It reminds me of childhood adventures with Apple IIe; its epithet as being the Swiss Army knife of programs is well-deserved. I must admit that I may be breaking my computer as I learn (I have entered terminal - where one enters code - to do things I did not fully understand more than once), I have not had this much fun using a computer since the Apple computer I once battled to get time on. There were games for children to learn programming: I remember one about selling lemonade, or another to make text display and move in desired directions.
Which is a fancy way of saying that unless we are engaging with the processes around us, they are not fully engaging us and we run the strange and converse risk of being used by them.
But of course, many people have said that better, many times before now. The point here will be to conclude by wondering aloud what kind of experiences we are building around us with the tools that we have. I know that I have become a better and more focused person through my experience designing networked learning and developing the STS (science and technology studies) of my quondam dissertation. There are a lot of problems in 2020. But there are also tools. (The girl in the picture below does not know what she is missing by not being taught the code behind the interfaces she is now accustomed to...)

Source, techlicious

Generous Listening

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 14:00:00 +0000

The title comes from a Vox podcast interview with Jenny Odell, which also talks about Danah Boyd's notion of "context collapse".
To listen generously being the antidote to context collapse, which is happening on the internet and which can be tricky for those of us in micro-climates where complexity is already denigrated for being "philosophical" (for some people even working in higher ed, this word is at once categorically negative and deemed an appropriate [!] way to discard ideas that require work: some professionals apparently do not know the difference between technical schools and universities, which I do not write to belittle technical schools but to make a distinction).
Let me play the hypocrite and hyperbolize by saying: also disappointing are the number of people working in higher ed who would immediately discard those who do not agree with them as being stupid or crazy. Should it not be expected that an environment filled with people who have worked - at least - to form (and hopefully support) their opinion be by default an opinionated environment? (Because I agree it is unrealistic to expect for the motivations of everyone in the "academy" to be pure - and here I am being philosophical: ideally one departs from opinion to reach some form of more objective truth.)
I have been writing a Dada/surrealist-inspired manifesto to try to vent my frustrations creatively (entitled "Return to the Waking State of University") but every time I return to it and reread the first point (basically the one I made here), I think, that's probably all the manifesto needs and stop writing, though once I wrote number two about egos. I'd love to release it to crowd source and have it become a template for others to try to bring humour their situations...

Humour is good but not a panacea. Working on endurance helps. And also making the dedicated decision to stop worrying over the workplace. There can be so much negativity (I think what I actually mean is toxicity) which can even trickle down to the students who may become habituated at least temporarily to what David Epstein has called "wicked worlds" and 'act out' in ways that can hinder the progression of a class (sometimes; I usually find ways to bypass this a few weeks in).
A kind world, according to Epstein, is one where one knows the world and gets appropriate and timely feedback to assist with continued growth; a wicked world is one where the rules are not clear; feedback may be wrong; etc.
Given these prognoses (frustrations, wicked worlds, and related worries), one must be very clear in one's intentions to not fall prey to circumstance and to only answer provocative "calls" with goodness. Or, like in the akathist to Saint Nektarios of Aegina, to "Endur[e] hardships as a good soldier", "not entangle thyself in the affairs of this life", and "Refus[e] to speak one word in [one's] own defense" while "joyfully" committing to doing good.
Of course, perfection is distant from the realistic abilities of most of us - but the idea of renewed commitment to keeping the mind untangled from so much junk is helpful and even curative.
Like the anti-drug ads of the 90's, I am trying to remember to tell myself to "just say no!" to responding to small-mindedness in kind, or more accurately, to carrying the negativity of what I have heard home with me.
And to give an example of this in the art world, I will cite a rather (what was for me) unexpected example concerning the manufacture of the blackest black.
And a second, final example from the natural world: an account from a long-distance hike with some very astute reflections on humanity from Ryan "dirtmonger" Sylva, an example of which is quoted below, and which reminded me of a tactic used by French female explorer Sarah Marquis.

‘Hey man. I am sorry I upset you. Like I said, I didn’t know. Have a good evening.’ I turned and walked away, unphased in my stride, but agitated by this microcosm of fear I hear and see in America these days. I play the middle; the extremes in either direction just scream and shout and look for fights. Good luck with that, people. I’ll keep on walking along in this world. I am certain there’s more good than bad, more sane than psycho. The land is free but the people on it are not. Whether stricken emotionally, internally, or philosophically most of the time we set our own confines. ... I see their pretentious belief system solely based off fear and arrogance, anger. How can we connect, communicate, with so much anger infused into one person, let alone the impressionable folks around him? We severed our humanity with anger, with ideology. I find the irony in me identifying, or relating to a coyote. A varmint, a pest, unknown, killed off by folks who refuse to try to understand.

Galla Placidia's Stars

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 20:32:00 +0000

Once upon a time when I went to Ravenna, I did not take a camera. I was lent binoculars and told to not be embarrassed about sitting on the church floors to take time to look at the mosaics. That looking has remained with me in a far more vivid way than anything I have ever photographed. The couple who lent me the binoculars also gave me an old Baedeker, and among other things taught me to be aware of the space around people, the constellation they inhabit - all we bring with us through our being in the world. Are we brittle, soft? Do we seek growth?
People.
I think of people I have known who are near or far, or not on earth at all any more, and realise what a miracle of good will it is for there to be understanding. To shine as a person, this would mean being the ear for someone else, taking the best from them and nurturing it.
Letting go of the rest, remembering it only for potential reference.

B/LOGROLLING

America Has Two Economies And They're Diverging Fast (brookings) article with infographs

YETI makes very good video content (about cowboys, people spending time in the outdoors - always with a thought worth mulling on further, excellently shot and produced), including funny spoofs like this with the memorable line: "Scooters are the vaping of public transportation."

7 ways to de-escalate office tension (99u) : "The ultimate goal of mediation, after all, isn’t agreement. It’s understanding."

The Death of the Neutral Public Sphere (American Interest):
"The metaphor of a 'marketplace of ideas,' where some sort of rational choice theory means the eventual selection of the best quality information, looks naive in an environment where junk news driven by bots and trolls and other forms of non-transparent amplification floods the web, spreading faster than any byte of truth. (...)
A new approach to social media would need to be able to ignore such immediate financial demands. It would need to work with another set of metrics: Does a piece of content improve trust, and does it generate a constructive conversation? Indeed, how can one move beyond mere content production into a more hybrid approach to foster sustained online and offline engagement?"

On the Slow Build-Up to the American Revolution (lithub):
"As the histories of many modern nations reveal, a people who are terrified, who are continuously anxious about their own security, often demonize their enemies and entertain actions that they later come to regret."

Music
More about electronic music this week. Four decades after Jean-Michel Jarre's synthesiser (?! can it be? - also worth noting his fusion of being a performer as much as if not more than being a musician) I think its potential is starting to be discovered. Interesting works seem to be coming from musicians who happen to be classically trained. To wit:
Lena Raine (One Knowing; Celeste: Farewell). I discovered her through Bandcamp explorations and find it fascinating that her music usually accompanies video games (as in the second example). Does that not underline the hunger for experience, some kind of immersive and emotive experience, that people seem to be seeking today?
The DJ and singer "Alison Wonderland" whose show at Red Rocks included live musicians playing over some of her tracks (second half of this podcast).

Blogger I would like to have over to a dinner party (not on my standalone page): Will Knight, MIT Technology Review's senior editor for AI (link goes to his articles).

Here or Nowhere

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 12:00:00 +0000

The title is from Horace's Epistulae (1.17). It is a contested poem - Fraenkel thought it entirely ought of character for Horace, calling it "upsetting". It is definitely jolting; perhaps it is better to avoid any final conclusions. What I will share here is my understanding of it in recent times.
There are so many things I like about this poem, not least how it begins by the offering of teaching from one who yet "has much to learn". I like how this can be seen to compliment Seneca's disendo discimus - and other approaches to pedagogy that I am writing about in my book.
What is so shocking about the poem is that Horace criticises Diogenes' refusal to interact with the rich as being a form of excess: showing Aristippus as superior, for he can wear rags, as does Diogenes, albeit if circumstance requires, but he can also wear fine garb and eat fine meals. So the poem can be seen to promote parasitism (dining at the expense of the rich) over genuine friendship as the nature of the relations in this poem that are advised are of a purely worldly nature.
Stephanie McCarter's very enjoyable Horace Between Freedom and Slavery suggests that Horace in some of these epistles is the concept of the Aristotelian golden mean, which she writes goes

back to Hesiod. Wilson defines the term as 'the area between too much and too little' and as the 'opposite of excess' ... Aristippus has captured both the adaptability and the moderation that ought to be exercised in every situation.

In 1.17, "Aristippus offers a way of accommodating one's longings for public life and friendship with the great without sacrificing one's independence or consistency of character." This reminds me of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, where the Flyte mother discusses how wealth is not incompatible with the sacred (112-113).

I will be discussing this passage and these citations in my book. But what I want to write about here is the tension between friendship with the great/all the people who one can find in the world and contemplative withdrawal (the critics who do not like 1.17 feel Horace's allegiance to lie exclusively in the latter). Is Horace being sarcastic in the second part of this epistle as some say? Attacking the pursuit of profit? Or is amicitia with great men a test of virtue and modesty?
These are questions that are most relatable, and may represent tension felt from adolescence onwards: does one have a sarcastic relation to the world made by les gens du monde - and so is it the life well-lived to withdraw entirely? Or is it not necessary, foremost for oneself, one's own well-being, to be part of this potentially superficial world? To enter it, it is suggested, is a test.
The phrase "here or nowhere", where it appears in the epistle, becomes a symbol of the acceptance of the validity of participation. Because of this, I use it as my chat app motto: it is the admission that an outer face - while exposed to intricate traps (that even Diogenes could fall into, with his performance art exaggerations performed publicly) - is necessary for the holistic life.
This corresponds with Emerson's thought in "Self Reliance": "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
It can be seen that this tension is a timeless concern, but its implications and the shape of the trials associated with worldly life in this time in history are (as always) particular and do need especial thought and discernment (to say the least).
This is a tension that I have tried to bring forth (cf. maieutics) in my classes, in one way or another, over the years. Admission of whatever the topics of the moment are is integral to my courses, which are therefore always changing (they also change to attempt to cater to students' needs). But these aspects of the course are never the whole course, just a part of it.
And to that end, some of the links in this week's B/Logrolling section will likely end up being addressed in class (I am still finalising the syllabus).

B/Logrolling

A Letter From Hong Kong: I admit that from my distance, I did not immediately understand all of the angles of this situation, and this short piece is the best that I have seen. This passage in particular gives pause for thought:

Nor, sadly, can Hong Kong youth expect solidarity from the most militant of Western university students and faculty. They lost their taste for freedom years ago. Israel is apparently a bigger offense to their sensibilities than Communist China (or Iran). In all significant respects, these Westerners are the opposite of the young people I know. While Hong Kong students detest Communism, many of their Western counterparts embrace Marxism. While Western post-colonialists deride Western civilization, Hong Kongers wish they could have more of it. When Hong Kong students talk of a safe-space they mean a shelter from tear-gas and rubber bullets, not a refuge from offensive words. A trigger warning is not a professor’s presage of a painting by Goya; it is the sound of a revolver shot discharged skywards in the Causeway Bay night.

The site of Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants, with links to other articles he has written

Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz (edited by Nigel Warburton - I am quickly becoming a fan, though have followed him for quite some time as he produces Philosophy Bytes, which has had quite a few good programs, some of which, back in the day, I used in my classes)

Who I'd like to have over at a dinner party (I have not introduced the concept for this section of B/Logrolling very well: what I mean to do here is to introduce 'content producers' [for lack of better name] whose sites are not on my static, standalone B/Logroll page):
Tim Hurst, host of WFMU's Techtonic podcast

Brush

I - Thou

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 09:47:00 +0000

Let's invoke Shelley. In his "Defence of Poetry" he wrote that learning how to feel another's pain can aid the imagination to contribute to the greatest moral good (the highest political hope being the abolition of slavery).
I, you, they, he writes, are mere grammatical markers essentially modifications of one mind, though the practise in seeing such connections is a practise, until it becomes a habit. It "tends to abolish the course of history" - it is timeless, rooted in the unchanging aspects of humanity, in case anyone has forgotten one of the paths to immortality. Time washes away even the imperfection of authors where they fail to reach the perfection of which they write - the failure to allow for such disparity is to lose sight of one's own faults (1921: 57).
This ability to see beauty in something other, to see its relevance, is such a vital practise. I wrote about such 'relief' a long time ago, here. "Good" poetic writing restores order to the world, based on morals, Shelley writes - that kind of romantic imagining certainly seems distant today. But on the personal level, his sentiment has its relevance.
When one might feel like a carcass being devoured by so many thoughtless vultures, the mind can move away from those gory scenes of selfishness by seeking out other practises of healing, which may not be visible in the present scenes but that can be invoked, if one knows or remembers to call on them.
So the story goes. It has (obviously?) been a rough week in these parts, but I retain awe at the classical (not just Greek, also Chinese) rejuvenating and refreshing practise of returning to the font of literature: how is that not a treasure trove?

She descends from the soapbox, to write this week's

B/Logrolling

Other recipes I have made many times this summer:
Chipotle tahini sauce a great way to snack while avoiding processed foods
To make it from scratch, I make my own hot sauce (grilling tomatoes in the oven to avoid canned ones) - this is such a good hot sauce, it is hard to believe how simple it is to make
Nice and light eggplant parm (read: real eggplant parm, not breaded)

Why I am avoiding processed foods now: Have you ever heard of "cracking"? I hadn't either until I watched this (French) documentary. Wow. The process applies to foods now. The processed foods I ate most regularly were "bio" style. But now that I know about "cracking", and how the protein factor is obtained for those foods, I am making new efforts to home cook almost everything.

Another attack on the humanities. Yet again, a very educated person treats Plato as if Nietzsche had the last word. It is so tiring how trendy it is to submit the classics to reductionist gestures. I could write many pages on this but will make one point here. As if people don't understand what reading is. We are never finished reading the classics because the way we relate to them requires relating anew from the changing present. Yes, we do suspend our judgement to attempt to 'enter' the past, but what the past will mean to us and how we receive it will always be different - this is even true from within the limited scope of a single lifetime.

Speaking of history: Understanding religion in late imperial China from Columbia University's Asia for Educators

Apropos mention of acting (Brett) in last week's post: continued consideration of acting re. the individual vs. collective. To this end: a post on Hall, Fo, and Theatrics of Role and Story though I beg to differ on how method (Stanislavsky's approach to) acting is understood. It is very much an "I-thou" type acting and requires the actor to relate, in every 'beat' of dialogue, with their role. Similarly, through this very 'real' evocation (as the actor is calling up from their memory enough emotional vocabulary to make each 'beat' happen in real time - this is very taxing for the actor, who 'relives' the script every night), the audience is brought within a realm of introspection.
"Class wars" seem to efface this dimension of reality.

Two things I am thinking about how to include more thoughtfully in my classes: ethics and new practical skills (last year, it was a business proposal, this year, I am thinking about SEO...)

Ethics:
Daily ethical questions
A Framework for Character Education in Schools
Ethical storytelling:
A more thorough primer
Another good link - active version of reference links: Concordia's toolbox; Ethics pdf; the Ethics Guidebook consent framework; resource for ethical practice in digital storytelling
Interested in this for so many reasons. One of which, an educational site with the declared purpose of promoting the "good" (ethical) in education, recently published a post in which backhanded, reductionist comments were made about not one but two cultures (in all of about six or seven words, at that). As always, it is the "circuitous route" that is most likely to include not what we want to hear or what is being said - but what we are not hearing. But once you hear, as Gadamer wrote, you cannot "hear away".

Blogger I'd love to meet at a dinner party (forgot this feature last week!): writes and produces the Canadian blog The Art of Doing Stuff - it was her well-written recent post on blogging that got me thinking about introducing SEO skills to my class this year. (I ought to practise her tips myself, but ... actually, there are advantages to being less visible and to amateurism that continue to suit me.)

Real and Fake

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 18:10:00 +0000

I had no idea about just what kind of things are being copied these days - nor about the volume of fakes circling the world in shipping containers. Learning of this reminded me of a Deleuze and Krauss passage, which I reread to find just how accurately it foreshadowed this glut of 'simulacra' clogging the ocean. Of course, they were writing to 'overthrow Plato'. But my latest approach to this theory has been to see it as sci-fi: recognising a present trend and then exaggerating it to paint that picture of what would happen if things keep going - unobstructed - along their course: theory is, then, if I may be permitted a reductionist stroke, like an oversized 1980s photograph that has been blown up (not thinking of Cortázar). Remember the novelty? A zooming in, a distortion through the oversized. Us, but not us.
Anyway, here is the passage - first with the definition of "copy" vs. "simulacrum", then the passage itself. Does it not remind you of the profusion of fakes?
After that, this week's links.

Copies are secondhand possessors, well-grounded claimants, authorized by resemblance. Simulacra are like false claimants, built on a dissimilitude, implying a perversion, an essential turning away. It is in this sense that Plato divides the domain of the image-idols in two: on the one hand the iconic copies (likenesses), on the other the phantasmatic simulacra (semblances). (...)
In the overthrow of Platonism (...) The nonhierarchical work is a condensation of coexistences, a simultaneity of events. It is the triumph of the false claimant. (...) But the false claimant cannot be said to be false in relation to a supposedly true model, any more than simulation can be termed an appearance, an illusion. Simulation is the phantasm itself, that is, the effect of the operations of the simulacrum as machinery, Dionysiac machine. It is a matter of the false as power, Pseudos, in Nietzsche's sense when he speaks of the highest power of the false. The simulacrum, in rising to the surface, causes the Same and the Like, the model and the copy, to fall under the power of the false (phantasm). It renders the notion of hierarchy impossible in relation to the idea of the order of participation, the fixity of distribution, and the determination of value. It sets up the world of nomadic distributions and consecrated anarchy. Far from being a new foundation, it swallows up all foundations, it assures a universal collapse, but as a positive and joyous event, as de-founding (effondement).
Deleuze, Gilles and Rosalind Krauss. "Plato and the Simulacrum." October, Vol. 27 (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56

Compare the passage with: Les nouveaux mercenaires du faux - Documentaire: Les faussaires ne se contentent plus d'imiter les sacs ou les polos de marque. Ils ont infiltré l'agroalimentaire avec des mayonnaises, des sodas ou des plats cuisinés d'origine douteuse. (The blurb doesn't quite capture the craziness of the overflowing of fakes it shows.)

B/Logrolling:

Two more documentaries, the first on Linky: Des milliers de Français refusent l’arrivée de ce nouveau compteur dans leur foyer, et certains affirment même vivre un enfer depuis son installation. Tous craignent que cet appareil "intelligent" ne collecte toutes leurs données personnelles… (A more interesting point, only brought up in passing, is how the electricity infrastructure was built before we all started to use the internet and plug in dozens of 'extra' gadgets.)

The second on "anti-consos": Les « décroissants » : consommer moins pour vivre mieux Les sociologues les appellent les « décroissants », en France ils sont de plus en plus nombreux à refuser de consommer toujours plus. Ils refusent la spirale de la société de consommation.

For Wittgenstein, Philosophy Had to Be as Complicated as the Knots it Unties Making Sense of Nonsense, From Bertrand Russell to the Existentialists

The American Aristotle Charles Sanders Peirce was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician and scientist. His polymathic work should be better known

I also wanted to write about Jeremy Brett's onstage poise and gesture, perfected in Sherlock Holmes. The way he moves is like measured dancing. How you would dance if you were not actually dancing but wanted to use your body for expression. Of course, this is taught in drama, but Brett worked on his style for decades, as suggested by this early musical, The Merry Widow (what a voice he has!) His individual flair is so far removed from today's normcore: I hear that Smoky the Bear may get a new motto (from "Only you can prevent wildfires" to something with a collective "we").

Authorial Voice

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 08:23:00 +0000

This will probably sound odd. But I feel like I need some kind of dialogical therapy on my authorial voice.
As I was going through my notebook to see if I had once written about dialogical therapy (because I do not know what it is, but it sounds helpful in a Bakhtinian type of way: 'let's get all of the various perspectives out on paper' and not tainted with specific context like the 'talking cure' is), I came across an apposite note - and nothing on dialogical therapy. The note read: "Health - mental and physical - strangely not prioritised."
What happened to my voice?
How do I restore it back to health?
First, the diagnosis. I discovered something was wrong when I was trying to write my ideas, which are quite clear, but which could not be formulated in text because of decorum, which rhetoric recognises as structuring pedagogy and procedures of the discipline and governing the overall uses of language. In communicating, and communicating about communication on learning how to learn, the ideas must (obviously) be submitted to dictates of decorum. But how to get it right?
Then, I discovered another depth of the problem through comparison when I read the work of a very clear and authoritative-sounding writer who had assembled such a similar network of ideas as those I am working on, except her voice sounded like it was coming from a place of expensive good social dinners, which is definitely where I am coming from as I continue to make vegetarian pozole without the hominy and vegetables, which is to say, I continue to make chili - noted here for the recipe recommendation (which is to say, the acidic-hot 'sauce' added to the cooked beans towards the end).

Every time I begin to write, I look around to see if the enemy is approaching. I deploy theory like so many soldiers and leave a mess on the field. Or, I allow for Rothkoian approach and allow myself to paint the associations as they occur to me, but then remember I need to publish for academic reasons and drown that flight in declamation.
That's the melodrama - but if this were therapy, the emotions be brought out to play like children so as to have the opportunity to help them grow - so this type of story goes.
I am finishing off a paper that must be turned in today, but feel so strongly that so much academic writing (mine, in this case) suffers from the Midas touch, rendering the ideas it grasps 'unactionable' by pinning them down in respective bell jars, stripped from their vital context, smothered by the arcane which is necessary to respect a lot of complexity in a small space. Also, this language is so obviously not my own - with figurative like spoken languages, I am a fluent reader, not speaker, prioritizing the never finished work of comprehension. So I ask: is there a purpose for one who can listen but who is less able to speak?
Not all scholars (note: I am only an aspiring one) calcify and smother; just the majority. It is therefore a gift to do the academic job of delimiting a subject holistically: like choosing for the delimiting a statue whose finger happens to be pointing beyond the discourse.
Because I am pressed for time, which is to say, because it takes me so much time to write so little (or, sometimes, nothing), I will end this post with the B/Logroll links I prepared. I've decided to add a new feature to the series: ending by listing a blog or text whose author I'd like to have dinner conversation with.

B/Logrolling

Simon Sinek, "Most Leaders Don’t Even Know the Game They’re Playing In" (YouTube) seems to sum up the gist of his work in 30 minutes - with a very helpful section on how to relate to an emergent type of youth (insofar as one can speak of types...)

A Paris Review article on Fra Angelico that criss-crosses from the globe trotting associative to a silent monastery - also, made me think of how the enjoyment of Catholic religious art requires an understanding of history to be fully appreciated, as opposed to the Orthodox icon

The Community of Inquiry: Insights for Public Administration from Jane Addams, John Dewey and Charles S. Peirce (PDF) diss. by Patricia M. Shields which has a nifty section where the community of inquiry takes the form of an actual map: the graphic facts of a city assembled in Maps and Papers (Holbrook 1895) mapping out local evidence of problems for a community practise of politics. I like how this work could parallel nicely with CoPs, explained below.
I will make a note here on contemporary pedagogy: little of it - except nominally, occasionally - does the work to relate its approaches back to the tradition/trends it emerged from. Lave and Wegner popularised the so-called Community of Practice (CoP), which, by the way this term is cited in so much recent work, would appear to be an entirely contemporary phenomenon. But there's even a passage in Plato's Phaedrus that encapsulates something of CoP.
It is true that the genesis of CoP emerged from Lave's anthropological work - and out of the CoP of an IBM think tank if I remember correctly, but we know that ideas can surface in different environments at around the same time - Thony has written about this in the history of science.
But the uncanny similarities to Peirce/Dewey's approach combined with how CoP is being used in pedagogy makes these historical connections relevant. To illustrate, CoP was not just plunked down on a 'panopticon-style' classroom, but coherently fit with the constructivism that emerged through Dewey, who was influenced by Peirce's work on inquiry.

Dinner conversation I'd like to have with the author of this blog.

B/Logrolling

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 19:58:00 +0000

This week's posts could be said to address empty spaces: areas of society where people have found something missing and have sought to build something constructive or begin a potentially constructive dialogue.
There are definitely quandaries that need creative, discerning, thoughtful guidance. Subito.
So, as usual, life continues to be interesting and to provide plenty of areas in need of work.
Or, in Confucian terms, we should do a little rectification of naming: are we living up to the promise of our professions?
Finally, on a personal note, it has been a pretty lonesome summer as I put my time towards my book and I console myself by thinking of how Erasmus spent three years teaching himself ancient Greek, begging his friends to buy him the books he needed. But I have taken breaks, often to put the mind out to pasture. I am finding it 'cleaner' to think, and think a lot, before I write (so not much is written, but the idea is gaining lucidity and cogency).
One type of break has been to make desktop icons from images of museum displays (one is in the bottom image) which I consider not to be a waste of time because sometimes when I am struggling to compose my thoughts as I write, having this constellation of images that span time and geography, with such different contexts, it is a help to the mind, like a mind map.
A second is to explore music, which also helps the thought - not only for its rhythm. There was a period in my life when I socialised very heavily with musicians and could write a lot about that. Liu Sola has written the best short story about musicians, "In Search of the King of Singers" and composed a modern rendition of the Chinese classic about Zhong Ziqi and Yu Bo Ya who form the model of ideal friendship, and about whom the term 知音 was coined, literally meaning "to know the tone" but which denotes a close friendship. That classic encapsulates so well something of the essence of music. I have included links to music at the end of this post.

Howard Gardner updating his multiple intelligences with the priority of doing good work.

Speaking of AI: a Fresh Air podcast on all of our data that is being mined and sold;
also, this old podcast put out by Mozilla with Zuboff, author of Surveillance Capitalism.

Another area in need of addressing is the surge in the use of public lands - as people are now in need of instruction in how to be in the outdoors. The exact figure is cited in this Trail Show podcast episode which features the curator of the Our Public Lands Hate You instagram account, who has taken it upon himself to start dialogues (mostly) with the social media influencers who are using public lands irresponsibly (the famous recent incident being how they damaged the super bloom in CA).This person has essentially taken on an extra, thankless, unpaid job.

Politics:
I cannot recommend enough this blog post on centrism, which I have sent to my relatives, because it is always nice when the message comes, for the nth time, from someone else.
An article on the Japanese origins of 8chan (Tablet Magazine).
Also from Tablet, "The Left's Race War."
Lastly, for this section, this quote: "Censorship nowadays isn’t done by constricting speeches; it’s by flooding the information space with so much bullshit that people don’t know what the hell’s going on anymore." From a LitHub interview.

The NPR series Tiny Desk Concerts (on iTunes; YouTube; their site) - perhaps I am late to the party on this one. Excellent sound engineering. Special performances (we have all seen A Capella-type live performances, but there is something so intimate about these, even watching them online).
I will link to the Jeremy Dutcher performance, and agree he is unique, not just in terms of his byline: hailing from an indigenous tribe of 100; trained in classical music and opera. The series has clips with artists ranging from Bilal to Florence and the Machine. The series introduced me to TX siblings The Oh Hellos and to Oddissee (links lead to their Band Camp pages). The latter reminds me of an artist who one took out a prohibitively large loan to go to Columbia, seeking there to learn strategies of how to more successfully produce 'positive' hip hop (there is a term for that that I forget). He was talking to Mick Taussig who gave him a look that I will never forget though of course I may have misinterpreted his signal that what he was looking in the wrong place.
On the 'positive' note, two Red Eagle videos: Still Here and Song of Survival - the latter shows a young boy on the reservation who combats the misery through music, which is not a new theme, but sometimes I think about life on the reservation... It is also interesting to see in the first video fusions of traditional dance and breakdance. And this electric pow wow inspired video incorporating a Cree singer group by Tribe Called Red. Also interesting is their 360 degree video.
The potentials of electronic music and other artistic applications of technology are still being explored and it is exciting to watch it develop (this is no Jean Michel Jarre synthesiser!)

Brush: Misprinted Type. Png Akrotiri Museum

Amateur Scholarship

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 21:44:00 +0000

I was initially going to write a very short post pointing out the similarities in two extracts on the 'views of the universe' and the ideal orientation of man's mind within it. It turns out the underlying theme of the dispassionate took on a new dimension, and warranted a longer post, once I looked into the author of one of the extracts cited.
Does that ever happen to you, where you look for something you know you know, but you want to see it in a text, and googling for that knowledge leads you to a brand new source, and by extension, new ideas?
Before embarking on the theme of disinterested scholarship, I will begin with my original topic, which is now an apt preamble.
Behold, after the image, how both the extract by a 17th century Japanese sword-saint on the Way and the extract on Egyptian mythology, specifically about Horus' eye once recovered from its injury by Seth, are founded upon a knowing that surpasses man's knowledge yet is also connected to things that exist/ a physical, material consciousness:

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void. People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment. ... Until you realise the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly. Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void. In the void is virtue, and no evil. via

And:

... Seth is said to “steal or injure” the Wadjat 𓂀, because sensorial and fractioned consciousness (solar vision) inhibits the perception of universals, archetypes, or Ideas which is “lunar vision”. To regain the Lunar Eye or Wedjat means that one regains a cognitive power, and the power which allows this “recomposition” of the Eye of Horus is Toth. … The loss of the left eye Wedjat 𓂀 in the Egyptian mythology symbolizes a loss of vision, but more specifically a loss of holistic or holy vision which allows for the reunion or reconciliation of two opposites in Unity .… Seth has the eye or vision in his grasp until Horus is able to recover it through the power of Toth . ... We cannot fail to point out how important it is that Toth: the neter representing God’s Intelligence, is the one that allows for the reconciliation of the reciprocal powers of Horus and Seth . This is not something that Man can achieve by himself, for as an image of the Supreme Being, the “gods” or neteru are the cosmic functions living in him, and to control them he must return to his innermost Origin and Unity.…In as far as the psychic or mental order of the Eye of Horus, it is demanded that one achieve the equilibrium of vision wherein one does not deny all metaphysical and divine qualities of the universe by an excess of analytical and sensorial (solar) consciousness, nor does one deny the manifest reality of the physical or material consciousness by total holistic idealism (which is excess of lunar consciousness). via

The latter appears (through superficial googling; my apologies if I am wrong) to have been written by an amateur Egyptologist, Christian Irigaray. The text seems to be a chapter in a book - which, considering no apparent professional involvement, betrays that it is a labor of love. The author's internet presence is made up by a series of related papers and an active Goodreads page - so part of the map of the intellectual activity that has gone into the amateur work is visible.
We live in an age of institutional "scholarship" that is obsessed with peer review - a direct outcome of the outmoded organizational principles that rule university, such as its hyper insistance on various forms of quality control (e.g. "publish or perish"; time-sucking administrative obligations; unpaid editing or writing work that is not necessarily related to one's area of expertise or teaching) that stifles the actual jobs that one is officially responsible for. What is more, the quality even despite this quality control is suspect. My experience is that articles in recent decades reveal how comparatively little their authors seem to be reading (where possible, I look for older articles on a subject which often contain a surfeit of sources). So, these institutional systems are not only outmoded but also ineffective.
I write outmoded because in this century's sequel to time and motion management that is characterized by managers, managers of managers, and consultants, there is actually quite a lot of stellar (popular) work on what kind of leadership and organizational principles work most effectively in the long term. Spoiler: they are not focused on quality control. One model that I have heard mentioned by three independent 'leaders of leaders' (and Harvard's Good Project) stresses the importance of alignment of mission or purpose. The mission is to be negotiated on a local level, the larger mission being clearly connected to each individual's mission.
A labor of love is bound to be connected to a mission. Also: it has the power to be free range. Publish or perish "scholarship" is more likely to resemble the force-fed sickly chick of mass production, caged in, existing on an unnatural schedule.
This is not to say that I do not believe in university. There is a lot to be said in favor of much of the convention behind respective disciplines. Also, universities should be places where expert knowledge keeps getting passed down, so also increases. Also advantageous is being exposed in real life to the people thinking intelligent ideas: one can see how they live, how they move through space and information &c., and that can be another kind of important instruction. Universities are supposed to be disinterested places of learning, so with greater creative, liberal agency. Etc.
But where the writing is forced, how can university education expect to survive?

Coda

We are so quick to discount mythology or lessons from other arts. But, as our author above who may be an amateur scholar pointed out so niftily, Aristotle had rejected Egyptian mythology because, unlike Plato, he had not been educated in it. My elaboration would explicitly state that these sources still convey lessons that could stand to be repeated and internalized by everyone. One such lesson is contained in the passages above: the more accurate understandings are those that are holistic, and good (this latter word is not as problematic as it seems: the sword-saint in another work writes that good reveals itself if one is committed to living according to it; dedication makes up for lack of understanding and knowledge). Vico argued about the importance of both particularly in connection with university education, but how much of university work today upholds these points?

Brushes: link 404s but tape brush by Pfefferminzchen; Horus eye png.

Culture

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 10:28:00 +0000

I am ostensibly trying to write my publish-or-perish book again, and as I have done until now, ended up discarding most of my thinking on the subject matter. Also, as one of the topics is culture, I am having a hard time finding an approach to the subject without getting mired down in extant scholarship, so much of which I do not entirely agree with.
It seems to me that much "theory" (which can be less theory than doctrine - see Myers' writing on this; also see), to which I would add more recent theory, lacks full consideration of consequences. There is plenty of literature (the roots of which now decades old) that argue against "nation" as a construct. Empirically, there is indeed evidence of a back and forth (and other directional) exchange of ideas and ways of being among 'nations' today. It is argued that nationhood is a bunk concept. National symbols, in intercultural literature, are often presented as essentialist propaganda. Nationhood is argued as an outmoded concept to be "disrupted" for the betterment of an international flow of economics and ideas, or at least acknowledgement that this flow moves outside of older geographical patterns.

This is related to the problem of multiculturalism. A glance at my blog reveals a little bit of different cultures, but in my case, I actually lived in these places for years, have (or more accurately today, had) competence in the languages; have family members representative of these cultures. People like me are not uncommon today, and related labels have been coined, such as "third culture kid". I am explicitly making this disclaimer, because I have observed a superficial multiculturalism, or even careless cultural appropriation (see Root's book Cannibal Culture). I see people who praise themselves for their cultural awareness, but already from the point of view of hubris, this is problematic. What I prefer to call interculturalism is hard and often uncomfortable. It is also something that is very difficult to explain to people who have not been exposed to different cultures. Perhaps it can be compared to the idea of growing another set of eyes.
Not quite like this but similar is when you have a friend in palliative care, and on your runs you look for beautiful things to take pictures of to send: an extra awareness of surroundings can be gained, and once obvious things have been photographed, you begin to notice increasing subtleties, like how light itself can create beauty as it falls on or through segments of nature; how the wind causes foliage to drape like the expensive gowns of yesteryear. Awareness of another's being can call into relevance and sight more than what one had before. This can be explained by hermeneutics.
My favorite book on the topic of cultural 'knowing' continues to be Kristeva's Etrangers à nous-mêmes, because it ultimately brings the difficult point down to our virtue and responsibilities as individuals. This is different from the euphoric individualism that celebrates every last detail of the separation of person into their own unit. Rather, it draws from οἰκείωσις, the Stoic theory of appropriation which sees individuals as part of a greater whole.

This has been my experience of cultural exchange. I will never forget a childhood experience of being given a shell necklace in Thailand (this was back in the day when fair-skinned people were a sight to be beheld there; we got to these places because my mother spoke Thai) and feeling so inadequate at only having the little trinkets my mother had us bring; this act of giving what one has has stayed with me, and something I have looked to do myself, though any introductory class in anthropology will cover just how problematic giving is. Diseased blankets is only one example.
The model I try to follow is one of respect and listening to others.
In American history, the right to due process has played a very important part. I mention it here because of its role in listening.
But speaking of law, I read (via) an interesting Gibbon quote today that sums up quite well the practical difficulties of multiculturalism:

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter XXVI:

As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation. But the most experienced statesman of Europe has never been summoned to consider the propriety or the danger of admitting or rejecting an innumerable multitude of Barbarians, who are driven by despair and hunger to solicit a settlement on the territories of a civilised nation.

Or consider the difficulties of achieving equality: would we be able to afford our laptops? Difficult questions arise.
To everything I write, I can hear people slapping potential labels on me. But I have rarely been content with labels.There are other ways of defining and looking at these matters.
I am keeping that for the book.

And I definitely have my biases, models I respect and wish to cultivate.
As a cliffhanger, I will note the existence of an early American text drawing on Varro in praise of agriculture and related virtues of thoroughness and patience. Lessons from the natural world. Lessons only had through exposure to nature.
To illustrate, because I run long, I often pass one of the natural springs at the outskirts of the city where I live. At first, I was puzzled by just how many people would go to fill up bottles at that spring. But over time, and through increasing heat, I filled up my handheld there with increasing frequency and noticed two things. First, the taste, which is so good. Second, the water clearly contains minerals - I not only did not miss any salt, but found the water 'more nourishing'. As a result, I think a lot about water on my runs. How up to 60 per cent of the human body is made of water. How even twenty years ago, I knew people worried about the depletion of water tables. Water is important. Are we preserving its sources?
The etymology of culture has roots in the cultivation of the earth. I think this is important. The word gained its figurative meaning referring to collective customs only recently (according to Etymonline; I have not looked into this in more detail and my memory is not cooperating as I write this post - I am still working on how and where I store things in my mind). The thesaurus ends with a beautiful quote by Yeats, which I think will provide a sufficient if not conclusive end to this post:

For without culture or holiness, which are always the gift of a very few, a man may renounce wealth or any other external thing, but he cannot renounce hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge. Culture is the sanctity of the intellect.

Brush: misprinted type; png made from Vesuvian memento mori floor mosaic from grey ghost's pinterest (found via google images).

Plogging Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 11:05:00 +0000

A central theme of my summer seems to be cleaning up. While I thought I had been reasonably free of superfluity, recent circumstantial challenges have revealed a lot that would benefit me by being removed. I feel unprecedented gratitude for the trials, for I see their direct correlation to opportunities for improvement. I had not been aware of how critical this was.
Plogging is a Swedish portmanteau, coined to describe a recent trend of jogging while picking up litter. I am comparing it with blogging because I wonder if this activity might also result in cleaner sections of the internet landscape, places where bees thrive - as opposed to the trash heaps that attract flies, who, as that spiritual tale warns, will seek the tiny piece of trash even in a landscape of flowers; bees, the opposite.
My thought here about plogging the blogging is to make a renewed attempt to the motion of blogging, with an added attempt to clean up my thinking (cf. para one, above). As I have written before, I think that blogging can be a virtuous activity.
A central topic of my blog is learning how to learn. I see this as a continued touchstone even now. Last year, I wondered about including management skills in my teaching, and did in fact develop this. It was enough that I had been open to this idea: circumstance itself brought certain pieces, through networked learning and collaboration, that allowed this to be developed. I can reaffirm, then, the thought I sometimes have to console myself when I feel that teaching is a task so far above my competencies/knowledge/skills (problems include how to reach all students when only meeting with a hundred of them once a week; the problem of knowledge itself - a topic I will shorthand here by referring to Hadot's brilliant consideration of Heraclitus' Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - often translated (problematically) as 'nature loves to hide'). This consoling thought is that my ability to teach will always be wanting, so my main concern must be to not close doors to the learning of my students. My primary task is therefore to try to foster a love of learning, not quash it. To reward attempts. To acknowledge that a seed planted can suddenly be registered years after it was first planted.

I don't know if I will be able to get some momentum going again with blogging, but I hope I will. I think I might include an aggregated component, which I have benefited from on other blogs (e.g. Siris' evening notes). To this end, I will end this post with a short list of interesting links I have found. But not before sharing a paragraph that has helped me immensely with the fact that I have not had a break or holiday in years. This could be elaborated on but the spirit of it is in this post. I am still processing quite a bit. The spirit of this post is: some things are not up to us; what is up to us is how much cleaning up we are doing of that which is up to us. I've condensed the passage below, though the original is already wonderfully condensed, so that it would fit tidily into the desktop wallpaper I made for myself:

EVERY DAY
You don't get weekends off.
No.
Here, there's no such thing as weekend.
Today, I'm putting the pressure on.
I'm on the attack.
I will get beat up, knocked down and drilled.
But I
will
not
STOP.
- Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual

There are many kinds of soldiers, and many kinds of cleaning up. To learn this requires more than one kind of learning. Learning how to learn is not only beneficial, it can also be a matter of survival. I think that this message is also delivered in Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One. Such as where he writes: “I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.” To clean up is to find this flame that cultivates our fruitful continued growth.

Links of interest:
Aeon, "Atoms and Flat-Earth Ethics" on objectivity and overcoming commitments
Book Haven, Chris Fleming on the Tyranny of Cool Ideas
"If", Rudyard Kipling
NYR Daily "Orientalism: Then and Now"

Books of interest:
Living Dangerously, Ranulph Fiennes
The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll
(topic) doctrine of signatures
Aristippus of Cyrene
(topic) dialectical behavioural therapy
Organizational Trauma and Healing, Pat Vivian, Shana Hermann

Film:
Coyote Waites
All Passion Spent (1986)

Art:
Nick Brandt's Inherit the Dust
The Pine Trees screen (松林図屏風, Shōrin-zu byōbu)
Gongshi decent enough explanation here (included because I put one in the images accompanying this blog post)
Préhistoire : le vertige du temps Entretien avec Rémi Labrusse
Au-dessus de tout À propos de : Pierre-Henry Frangne, De l’alpinisme, Presses universitaires de Rennes
Prolific the Rapper x A Tribe Called Red - Black Snakes [edited]

Quotes:
Deng Xiaoping's, cross the river by feeling the stones. One stone was Shenzhen. (From one of the many YouTube videos about Shenzhen - I think it was WIRED's.)

Brushes: misprinted type. Gongshi png.

Forgo the Perfunctory

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 18:54:00 +0000

A conversation with a friend today revealed that I am not the only one thinking about how to rise above the dark concentration of same-old lines travelled in every day life. I don't mean the physical map of concentrated common routes walked in a city, but that is what I am picturing. I mean the quotidian lines of thought that are pursued, that become perfunctory.
What if, for example, instead of worrying about petty environments, one were to look past them? What if, instead of whinging about orders to work on mediocrity, one were to set about planning a strategy to implement a series of boundaries where one would not have to do such work? Such creativity - forging a way that is better in line with what one has to give (which can be decades in the making, requiring other work of its own) - requires extra work, but fulfilment is rarely presented on a silver platter. It has to be fought for. And in this battle, mistakes will be made. But while mistakes may lead to tough consequences, if one has already set off on the journey called Creative Learning, one will be left with something to learn from. This wouldn't be the case if one had done nothing.

As I was trying to think through several problems recently, I once again practised my favourite exercise of phrasing these problems as questions, which I then type into google. The results led me, albeit circuitously, to a business motivational speaker and an underwater diver. The former, Marcel Schwantes, speaks to human-centric management: a know thyself lateral approach to others. I would give a Creative Learning award to for Remaining Constructive Under Duress for the following (from here):

...every problem has the seeds of its own solution. You can find the answer to your problem if you look deeply enough into the problem itself.

When things go wrong or are poorly managed, people get reactive, maybe even start to slap damning epithets onto peoples' backs, but one can maintain the vision that there is another way. And that there is a way out.
Diver Guillaume Néry (whose most recent fame is this breathtaking video that has transportive qualities) speaks (from 9:25) of the flurry of thoughts that begin to spin and intensify as he begins his descent to the depths of the ocean - in a description that seemed relatable enough to more general experiences of difficulty. He goes on to say that one can't control thoughts at that point: one shouldn't try to, "you have to let it happen; the more you try to control, the harder it is to manage". Once he lets go, he finds there is no need to breathe.

There has to be a letting go from the "perfunctory answer" of poorly-zoned quotidian thought if that deeper place, where wisdom lies, has a chance to be heard. In fact, I wonder if even mediocre chores are better accomplished once one has taken the plunge to this deeper place, that exists in a limbo between coming and going.
A long time ago, I saved to my phone what I found out today was a passage from Castanada who I have never read, so I have no idea how I found it, that resonates with this:

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; ... This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

(Full passage here.) The going through the bush, or into the bush reminds me of this 'coming and going' limbo that maybe I should call Tao. Néry's Tao is also tied to a going when he describes what happens on needing to return to the surface after a deep dive. It would be easy to panic, he says, because from those depths one can suddenly be overwhelmed by the desire to get to the surface. It would be easy to panic, but he says that instead of panicking, he looks straight ahead, never allowing himself to even picture himself at the surface, only looking at the line in front of him, in the present. In this way, time goes faster...
This seems equivalent to the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach to running. It really works.
What I have gathered together here are different lines of counsel and experiences that suggest that the way forwards may come from a temporary resignation of self from the flurry of unthinking narrative. This involves an important differentiation: some thoughts occur, and they go on and on, as if they make sense or are of use, but after following them through, one realises that they are a waste. This is unthinking narrative. Thoughtful narrative has a through line to a clearing, and is constructive.
To return to the problem: it has the seeds of its solution within it because if it is accepted (as opposed to denied, ignored), it leads to broad questions, which lead to a clearing of their own. The problem is entertaining: it is asking something of us we did not have before. As we look at it, we are also looking at ourselves, asking what we need to cultivate within in order to meet the needs of the seed. It asks us to grow with it. It is an invitation to forgo the perfunctory, the same old narratives. It allows us to imagine, if we dare, who we would like to become as we steward its growth.
If we care, we may be met with a flurry of resistance. But if we see it through...

Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 20:57:00 +0000

Once upon a time, someone said something to me I thought quite shocking: that one could benefit by experimenting in life, to gain a clearer idea of what helps one flourish. I have probably returned to this idea because in conducting the periodical internal housecleaning that it so necessary, I have uncovered quite a bit of lazy thinking - including some that is self-righteous adjacent. So, it would help to start to experiment to find ways to get out of these bad habits. I found some useful ideas in Rich Roll's latest podcast (though have yet to listen to the last half hour). One of the anecdotes recounted reminded me of one I heard a few days ago: the late Serbian Patriarch Pavle had been asked what he thought of Milosevic, and whether he blamed him, etc., to which he responded that such an approach was irrelevant as the true problem lay in each individual. If they were better, the situation would be better, he said.
I was not "better", last week. I recounted to a colleague a deviant statement made by a third colleague who had shared his understanding that university be akin to kindergarten for adults (his view rendering the essay redundant, laughable work). I realised afterwards just how wrong that was of me on so many levels. I recount the specifics here only to show an example of what I consider to provoke a self-righteous response. But here is another response: what if one understands that other people are always, in their minds, doing the best they can? It doesn't make sense to criticise their actions (outside of classrooms - though even correction of students can be done in multiple ways). The question is whether one can navigate around Scylla and Charybdis, accepting them in their present state (for who would want to be blocked the opportunity for later change? So why would one slap a judgement on someone else?) The question is whether we can try to help those around us grow, just as we see we need to grow, and also would like help ourselves. Is this not the pedagogical mission? And if we claim to be teachers/instructors/etc. and are not doing this, are we truly what we claim to be?
Another thing I have noticed is how much fear can build up inside that distorts vision. I am pretty sure that this fear has caused me to act in an uncalled for way from time to time, which is to say that I have caused my own problems.

Brush

Can I try to experiment to live without fear? To inhabit moment to moment and stop worrying?
Can I experiment to try to find my voice and what it is that I have felt for so long now that I need to write? Academic fear is very real: one knows that one's arguments can easily be refuted, that one can never have read all the relevant books... But the very beautiful pragmatic American approach says: cut your losses and begin. Begin to have any chance whatsoever at getting somewhere. And the time is nigh when you can start to riff from idea to idea and know what sources there are behind those ideas.
I will end this post on one idea I am thinking about. It has to do with some of the sources behind the idea that we should all be heard, which I hope this post makes clear that I respect. That said, some of the models for that approach quickly veer off into relativistic cacophony or willful ignorance. For example, one paper, quite prominent in the field of contrastive rhetoric, stresses how "classroom dialogue that underscores difference in rhetoric ... could perpetuate Othering, cultural stereotyping, and unequal relations of power." It is astonishing that it is assumed that equal relations of power is that simple. In fact, this entire post, written by someone who shirks at the idea of lording over others, demonstrates that despite such antipathies, self-righteous impulses can develop and be at once made manifest while remaining latent. What of those who are not self-critical? Does experience not teach that something is always in power, that hierarchy will exist in one way or another? Note that this does not mean to say that attempts at unity are futile; rather, the spirit in which one approaches unity is most pertinent.
This is why the pursuit of large words like truth and equality is to be stressed. Nowhere in Plato will you find a prescription for the achievement of such goals; in fact, Socrates says that he can only pursue truth and never possess it. It is not a complicated idea, this humility. But it is an unpopular one.
While children's books generally present truth and equality as virtues that can be achieved, I would like to point out that as adults, very few live by those precepts. How many adults forgive the person who stole their metaphorical lollipop? Or who confess, in the end, to stealing it in a moment of weakness? Or who live with an open heart?
Indeed, my colleague may have unwittingly been on to something when he equated university with kindergarten because it could truly be asked whether we would all pass the test we put to children. We ask of the child to temper its zeal and to be patient. Etc. Such growth of character is crucial to the prolonged existence of humanity. The experiment here is to find ways to retain the rudimentary lessons of childhood in order to fully be the adult.

Brush

What Is A Literary Polis

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:43:00 +0000

One of the problems I encountered this year was dealing with the assumption that literacy has been gained if one can comprehend written sentences and use the google search engine. The basis of this assumption lacks self-criticism to the degree that it is considered acceptable to "hate lists" (of the kind that are best internalised if there is to be literacy of genres, further reach of perspective) and demonstrate impatience at being indicated any idea that is not to personal taste. This assumption is not to blame if it has grown unobstructed through university education, and has a degree behind it, supporting, in this way, its existence: ironically, on paper.
But are we literate if we can read a passage and use google? Or are there different levels of literacy - to thus instill in the former assumption a degree of humility?
To follow an Aristotelian line, as put forward rather succinctly by Edith Hall in Aeon, one is to practice clearly and precisely systematic communication of the rudiments of one's ideas which may then be further developed among more advanced 'readers' through specialist, technical language. (This approach was popular in Victorian times: think, for example, of Farraday's lectures.) Following this line, it may be seen that literacy is of course developed beyond an elementary level. It may then be asked just what kind of constellation of ideas one must have to be able to follow - and then create - cartographies of complexity. Literacy in this respect may be seen as something that is never fully mastered (as universes are not mastered by single human minds), but explored with varying degrees of depth.
Hall argues that Aristotle's approach to philosophy was to make the rudiments available to the general public through his exoteric works that would draw on beliefs commonly held by the majority as their starting points. Put in the terms I am discussing here, Aristotle appealed to the public by building on its platitudes to raise the literacy of the polis. One of my pet ideas right now is about how important it is to discuss the role of a literacy that has depth-perception, as it is crucial to society for enabling a temporary distancing from oneself (where one enters into another's argument, for example) as this movement teaches that one is not the centre of the world.
This literacy will be reflected in self-reflection (following the hermeneutic arc). The more I think about this arc, the more it seems to me bound to pedagogy, or to epistemic fluency: to achieve a high level of literacy seems bound to the ability to understand which requires some conscious knowledge of how things are learnt. So, a higher level of literacy might then require both a knowledge of a given subject and a knowledge of how knowledge is obtained or used.
I think this idea is illustrated in Shannon Cain's definition of literary citizenship (via mhpbooks). It acknowledges listening/reading, teaching/mentoring/being mentored, and sharing - which speaks to what I wrote above. The latter reminds me of what some call the conundrum of saving a human life vs. a library - what is the more important: life or the learning?
Cain's definition of literary citizenship follows:
•    Read. A lot.
•    Subscribe to literary magazines.
•    Buy books. Review them, and publish the reviews.
•    Teach.
•    Celebrate the achievements of your colleagues. Champion their work.
•    Share your power.
•    Donate to small presses. Volunteer. Join a governing board.
•    Practice humility.
•    In workshop, be patient and kind and truthful.
•    Attend talks and conferences. Listen hard.
•    Mentor a new writer. Be mentored.
•    Be a good friend to other writers. Keep generosity in your heart.

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Epistemic Flow

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 08:09:00 +0000

It is not only because it is spring that I feel that aspects of myself that had been Persephonean are blooming; indeed, the contact with death this summer had also contributed to that feeling I am departing from: of being closed up under the earth, but still breathing - nourishing hope, and cultivating within myself those ideas that I feel to be life-giving. (Colleagues would say to me, as if I were living in the lap of luxury: how great that you are focusing on those ideas, we don't have time to - to which I would reply, I don't have time for anything else...)
And all of a sudden, I am seeing the ideas I had been cultivating everywhere else: as if all that time I had been stuck in the underworld, people above had been playing in colour.
One example is the podcast I referenced yesterday, which I finished today. Here is a link (very hard to link directly to specific podcast episodes! that should really change!) to the episode of The Moment where Koppelman interviews Godin.
Godin gives one of the best illustrations of epistemic fluency I have ever heard. (Epistemic fluency is something that I decided as of last year to include among my course objectives.) Godin says he once interviewed job candidates (before the age of the internet) by asking how many gas stations there are in the US. He notes how some would not even engage with this game, saying "I don't have a car", and getting up and leaving the interview. On the basis of how interviewees answered this question, he could gauge what it would be like to work with them.
That question is a great illustration of epistemic fluency, which can be defined as "learning how to solve problems when the correct answer is unknown". I am pretty sure that I got that definition from this 1972 CONARC paper. I have condensed the guidelines to accomplishing this (given in the paper) as follows:
1. learn/ask/define what the job is
2. learn/ask/define what resources are available
This fits in with the "approach to topics" that I give that draw on rhetoric.
I would just like to point out in closing how once again my hunch that all of the tools that had once been taught in language/literature classes are now taught more practically (cf. phronesis) in business classes. More than once, I have found myself even taking ideas for pedagogical approaches from studies that have emerged from business schools (a favourite author includes Peter Goodyear, who has a hefty tome about epistemic fluency).

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Enrolment

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 16:40:00 +0000

It would hardly be a new observation to note that not all students want an education. My favourite reference to this being in Confucius where he remarks that some students are like rotten wood: material from which nothing can be made (朽木不可雕).
Lest this sound disparaging, I will point out that constructivist pedagogy puts emphasis on the need of student engagement for the teaching to be effective. Once the classroom is no longer teacher-centric, which some call didactic, responsibility shifts to the students. While it is possible to spark engagement through delivery, it is not always possible to reach recalcitrant students. Some do not wish to put forth the good will for the communication that could take place. It may be true that some instructors just aren't a right match for certain students, but I will posit that overcoming any potential mismatching is actually one of the elements of learning.
There are times when I have put all other work aside in an attempt to repackage my classes in such a way as to maximise the chances of engaging everyone, with varying degrees of success. These days, I am starting to think of ways in which I can continue to repeat the course objectives through the end of the semester - letting the repetition through the changing situations of weekly readings and activities do the work for me. We know that objectives are not meant to by myriad; we also know that they are somewhat broad. This - sadly, or happily, depending on the perspective - will help guarantee that most if not all students will meet them, if only superficially or barely. (So, the question could stand to be asked just how much students have internalised the criteria of the objectives. This depends on how much institutional support there is in implementing criteria.)
By focusing on repetition, one can curtail criticism - which, while called for, is not an effective mechanism. As stated above, I am now interested in gathering a number of ways in which I can repeat the same thing, but in a different way.

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To this end, I have been visiting types of podcasts I do not normally listen to, and have found the series between Brian Koppelman and Seth Godin (on the former's The Moment) not only charming to listen to because of their friendly relationship but useful. I'll give two illustrations.
In one episode, Seth takes issue with the word quality, pointing out that in much popular definition it means "closeness to specified need or expectation". He lists examples where because of the stipulations of whatever the specified need may be (e.g. low cost) the proximity to our first connotation of "quality" may be very distant indeed.
Going back to class, one could revisit the criteria given to students, and explain them in terms of "specified need", and give students the definition of quality listed above. One could then ask students why, or why not, they consider their work good quality.
The second takeaway from the interviews is Seth's consideration of "enrolment": how one might focus on enrolling only those who are interested in what one is saying rather than being concerned with having any greater reach. His illustration is how, in his bid to leave a trace that would outlast the transience of the internet, he printed a very small run of books containing his collected works: an unwieldy colour edition. With a limited number of books to sell, there was no need to worry about marketing, promotions, book tours, negotiations. And while this example reminds me of why I stopped reading Seth's blog, because it begins to sound like so much "spin", it also reminded me of why I used to read it: such a conceptualisation of audience can be a useful tool. It is a fresh way to approach the "know your audience" conundrum when, say, trying to write a book.
It is fitting that it came up in the context of Koppelman's urging for answers as to how we can be more productive as people and conquer the doubts that can be crippling.
But behind enrolment are the objectives ... and I don't only write that to bring this post full circle. I would describe objectives as goals best aligned with one's strengths. Only certain educationists acknowledge this ( - to borrow from Seth's nomadic nomenclature again - ) "wabi sabi" aspect of teaching. One such educationist with decades of experience noted: two different teachers may end up teaching the exact same course differently.
So this story of enrolment is a story of playing to strengths: not for any form of dominance but merely to share what it is that we can. This in turn suggests creation: to share means that it can be communicated; to be communicated means that it has been conceptualised, and, in a sense, made. Enrolment plays to strengths to bring something into being.

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Meaning

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Thu, 14 Mar 2019 09:22:00 +0000

The last post I wrote was ambiguous. I have been thinking about different "publics" and the problem of dialogue. Possibly because of my multicultural background (multi-culti being a word that can have as many negative as positive connotations), I am less interested in arguing and more interested in finding ways forwards for discussion.
My concern is that the devotion to dialogue is not universally shared.
I asked an expert on dialogue what to do if dialogue is not invited and, granted that the question could be construed as being out of place at a conference where the purpose of the paper was to extol the benefits of dialogue, I never got an answer. I am not an expert. And I am only beginning.
I just hope my beginning will not be my end.
Meaning: will I be afforded space in which to speak? Or will I be mowed down - the green, inexperienced grass that I am, immediately?
What is it that I want to say? That dialogue is a balsam, that it is possible to disagree without needing to destroy, that dialogue is like marriage: something for shared good, and because of this, is worth making some concessions to. One example of such would be the patience to listen to what the other side is saying. It can be difficult because sometimes we do not like the way that messages are packaged. But if we let the message wash over us, we may be left with talking points.
But sometimes I wonder if my ideal regarding dialogue is unrealistic.
For example, interacting with one who describes Plato as going off on "bizarre, loopy speculations" could make it difficult to have a conversation about Plato if one has a different understanding of the premise of life that one considers Plato to be exploring. Wondering about how one would come to such a statement (of the "bizarre, loopy") caused me to think that some texts function as a Rorschach test: this is an unformed idea as of yet, but what I mean is that for some, perhaps, interaction with Ideals/Ideas/Infinite (? - I need to figure out what I mean here, basically, deep abstraction) - where it ceases to engage becomes a Rorschach test. By ceasing to engage I mean entering into what I will call the hermeneutic suspension of disbelief. In other words, the entry into the meaning of the text, even where this will require difference from personal meaning.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

While it is interesting how freely some use older works as inspiration for their own work, I am also concerned with the question of the work involved in getting as close to the original contextual meaning of a text as one can. But here is a fun exercise (by which I mean not so fun): try teaching a course in reading comprehension, and seeing how many (especially of the more intelligent!) students will take the time to write an accurate summary of an extract - when this is exactly what you ask for, after teaching strategies to check comprehension.
Maybe I should have highlighted that paragraph somehow, because I think it is actually central to my main point here.
It seems to me that some 'contemporary' work borrows more from the technique of the sophist: refusing to stop long enough at words and ideas to flesh them out, being more inclined to verbal gymnastics where words are in Heraclitian flux. But I mention Heraclitus, and I often wonder how equipped anyone not an expert in him and on pre-Socratics is to understand him. Still, the reason I bring him up is because I like how eloquently this popularizer of change being the only constant that seems to be the underlying component to much thought today also stressed the importance of wariness of opinion. Opinion is another 'problem area' that comes up in class.
Here is another 'fun' class exercise. Invite students to explore their 'opinions' with the qualification that merely stating it is not enough: asking that they support it, and then find a counterargument, and either refute or make a concession. The counterargument happens to be a feature of many business plans - which is to say that this should be a skill that is 'pragmatic enough' to warrant practise, but it is an exercise that is consistently met with resistance, despite how it is packaged.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

On my blog, I have been wont to skirt around certain topics. In real life, because of the nature of my decisions and the early zeal I once demonstrated (ah, zeal, the trait of the puberty that some never grow out of), I am not so concealed. I feel sorry for the zeal, but know that I have been taking the path that I needed to take, that I am growing how I want to, given that this is the only life I am given and I only have a certain amount of time to pursue... I am going to say it... the truth. I find it fascinating how the acceptance of plurality that has emerged from cultural studies (in my opinion through the Boasian cultural relativism - though of course he is criticised for not being relativistic enough today) has come to mean complete denial of the validity of an attempt to pursue truth. I find it so necessary to do so much reading because this is one of those points where dialogue is shut down entirely. 'If you believe in the possibility of truth, you must be a bigot' the reasoning seems to go, 'how backwards you are and not aware of contemporary reality - you must be an enemy of progress.' But if applied to me, I would think such reasoning unfair. Among other things, I am quite a fan of the internet, and think it has renewed a Republic of Letters' type exchange.
I could be asked at this juncture why I care so much about dialogue. Why do I spend so much time reading "verbal gymnastics"? Firstly, I think there are many forms of communication and do not think that everything is to be read in the same way. Nietzsche, for example, may be viewed as a poet of provocation. One need not agree with everything he writes to see value in thought-provoking nuggets.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Further, as I only intimated yesterday, those of us who entered postgraduate work in recent times will likely demonstrate in the titles of our work - as Perloff noted in her PMLA address - the markings of the effects of Theory in our work. Until I read that address, I had not fully realised the extent to which my approach is indeed something in between the before and the now. It is a fact that I was instructed to interact with Theory in my dissertation, though I was permitted to deviate. One thing I would like to point out is that while these older Theorists had the advantage of 'having' to read the works that I gave myself the task of reading (e.g. Plato), I do not see this as being the case today. I think pursuit of these texts is becoming a matter of personal choice.
So, this means that there is ever less potential for there being a 'shared language' of exchange. Some will immediately cry: good riddance! How oppressive to learn that Language! To which I would reply (taking a line of thought from Freire) that indeed it does take effort to learn, and time but (again calling on Freire) this does not mean having to deny your 'own langauge'; rather, it is to give you the chance to be bilingual.
My feeling is that while there may actually be a move to shut down bilingualism (whether explicit or not - Freire suggests that this is implicit and internalised, then reproduced), there is also a great need for it, for it is also understood - somewhere, and again, maybe not explicitly - that cross-fertilisation can be a great source of vital ideas that bear fruit.
I think it is very important to rid one's 'real life dialogue' of the banter of negative critique, because this quickly deteriorates into argument. The art is in taking the time to sort through the common areas, and consistently cultivate these.
I do not think I am ready to enter into public discourse fully, because I still need time to figure out where those areas are. All I know is that I do not want to be contributing to the argument: I'd rather give up ideas and tend to a literal garden before doing that.

Source: Old Hong Kong in Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, Chung Hwa Book Co. Profiled here.

Thinking Aloud In Public

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:26:00 +0000

This post has been updated: addendum added below.
A fusion of two texts I was reading in the same day gave me the idea that blogging might be considered as 'thinking aloud in public'.
The latter link takes you to an old Scientific American post by Bora Zivkovic, whose belief in the important place of the blog seems sadly idealistic almost ten years later, though noble. Like Tony of Renaissance Mathematicus lore, many of his posts explore the boundaries between science and journalism, like in this post with a wealth of ideas and links. Tony, however, remains an active blogger. My search for Bora's more recent work led me to his website page where he asks: what should I do next? "Blog some more," say I.
I continue to feel inclined to do my bit to fuel the idealism behind the web, which extends to its pedagogical promise, as outlined by the Revisiting the E-Quality in Networked Learning Manifesto. Incidentally, Bora's second post links to a visualisation of the Republic of Letters (as his blog posts gives his historical overview of the exchange of information) and is a wonderful illustration of the kinds of resources that the web makes possible. This in turn links to a 9-year-old Stanford digital humanities initiative which I mention because I found it to still contain some relevant kernels. Note though that many of these pages have changed their addresses and may need some extra googling to find.
But (after my extended absence from my own blog) it is occurring to me that it takes 'extra' work to keep this promise alive. Just like how the manifesto I linked to suggests that networked learning demands "greater professionalism in teaching and support for learning. Grafting on technological advances does nothing to mitigate this need for maturity in formal learning environments."
And I submit this as my reason why the promise of blogging has fallen short: it takes a lot of work - or, more specifically, time, which I seem to have less and less of (needing to read more and more: it just doesn't end). It is a luxury to be able to blog - which by extension leads to the interesting observation that hype rubs off on even bookish types.
But is blogging not a public necessity in some way? Sharing our thoughts in a somewhat visible way, to help each other sharpen our senses?
What I would like to sharpen my senses regarding concerns the question of whether it is possible to be bilingual in Theory and tradition. For many, that is already the wrong question to ask. To which I cite the ongoing popularity (in the public sense) of returning to dig into the classics, sans Theory, to get a taste of ancient Rome or a feel for Dante's Inferno. It is true that there may also be a fair share of inaccurate movies or misattributed quotes - but the introduction of such nonetheless tends to change the discourse, if momentarily and superficially.
Since the 1980's, it has not been required to do the requisite reading to claim some level of proficiency in both Theory and tradition. Among those studying the humanities, unless one has a very specialised field or focus, or attended a very particular college, I am inclined to agree with the statement that postmodernism is likely to be like the air we breathe: at least, bound to have permeated some approach we take. Or maybe this is only true of East Coasters and their equivalents. I am not married to these ideas...
Once upon a time, it was said during my career as an undergraduate, that one could forget about persisting in academe (to say nothing of progressing) if one were to openly pursue anything that smacks of a Christian line of thought. This is purely anecdotal and may or may not have anything to do with me. It does pertain to my question about bilingualism, though. It would hold - if the anecdote is true and assuming that higher ed instructors represent a range of types and also assuming that it is appropriate to equate this line of thought with tradition - that there would likely be some form of bilingualism extant, somewhere.
When I was 20, I wrote: "[James] Clifford argues that 'a permanent and ironic play of similarities and differences, the foreign and the strange, the here and the elsewhere is ... characteristic of global modernity.' ... I agree with Clifford when he writes that 'Humanism ... still offers grounds for resistance to oppression and a necessary tolerance, compassion and mercy.' It is a noble goal, but so often the search for connectedness not only devolves into a search for similarities but also the eradication of aspects inherent to culture. Hybrids emerge."
It would seem that the answer is that bilingualism is not possible as it is transformative: to follow the line of hermeneutics, once there is an exchange, if it is a genuine exchange, both parties will be changed.
By way of conclusion: What if some texts and exchanges are in fact Rorschach inkblot texts? ADDENDUM: In my next post, I address why this blog was deliberately ambiguous. I am sorry for distressing certain readers.
ps. it is really funny how blogger's spellcheck indicates "blog" and "blogging" as incorrect.

Photo from: Old Hong Kong In Colour, Otto C. C. Lam, with an Introduction by Peter Cunich.

For purchase at Chung Hwa Book Co.

Featured on HKFP Lens.

Teaching Teaches: Managerial Skills, Constructivism

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 09:54:00 +0000

In my new move to take stock of the transferable skills I have gained in the past 17 years I have worked in higher ed - to list those that promote epistemic fluency - I am thinking I might write a series of posts to help articulate what indeed they are, as I prepare to rewrite my resume. I plan to do this regardless of whether I remain in academe. This is because epistemic fluency has become a central organising theme behind the course objectives that I design. Epistemic fluency, as I see it, is learning how to learn how to do things; the "meta" of learning. The spirit of it can be seen in Socratic dialogue: Socrates demonstrates how a certain type of questioning can be applied to any trade, to reveal some of its essential features. It was by reading Plato that I came to this idea - but once I came to it, I saw it everywhere.
Readers of this blog know that I am personally invested in course design, specifically, how to design a course to maximise the quality of material taught and student engagement with and retention of this material. As of last year, I made little experiments to my teaching style, and as I have continued to do so again this year, it occurred to me that I am also exercising managerial skills in this execution of class design.
For example, one needs to assess the quantity of resources at one's disposal (time, materials, number of invested students, for example). One needs to review pedagogical approaches and then make decisions. One can back up the shortcomings of any approach, or shortcomings in students' realisation of course objectives throughout a semester - so, make on-site changes - by calling on experience. One chooses the medium through which to deliver content, and masters new platforms where necessary. These are some examples of managerial skills.

In the teaching of my two courses on culture, I have decided on the following. As my second year students are generally receptive, it is quite an intensive course, with homework reading assignments being half overview, half a selection of primary sources. It is a historical survey highlighting a selection of different viewpoints, in detail. It is a general survey that highlights a series of more specific thematic features, not unlike Auerbach's ansatzpunkt, highlighting one issue here, some figures there, another set of events here, and so on. Presenting culture as ongoing negotiation of a number of concerns, ideas, hegemonies, freedoms, etc. The lecture period is spent, at the beginning of the year, with half the class going over bullet points of 'more important terms/figures/events' from the readings, and the other half with exercises asking students to engage with, for example, the primary sources, or a work of art, etc., and apply the ideas from class to other material, making their own connections.
For the senior class this year, I began with about four "teacher centred" lectures to model an 'academic approach'/an approach to realise the course objectives, which I explained the gist of. Students were told they would then prepare their own projects, demonstrating the same approach, on one of a series of themes presented (that relate back to the original lectures, which contained many resources as part of the reading homework). Each week, different 'phases' of the project will be discussed, as a few groups present the progress of their project in miniature presentations. It has been explained that students are responsible for all guidance given in class to the realisation of these 'phases' (which is to say that if they do not come to class, they need to be sure to catch up on what was missed).
In addition to completing these phases (e.g. picking a topic, narrowing it down, evaluating and gathering resources), there are periodic reflection logs that students are required to write, describing the subject of the phase they are asked to consider, then listing their personal response and analysis, and what they learnt. They will be given a final and different set of reflective prompts at the end of the semester.

My hope is that by encouraging attendance in this way, students will be exposed to other subjects not their own. And as they are encouraged to critique, they will be engaging with those subjects. Also, each individual project is to demonstrate an awareness of historical precedent, an Auerbachian awareness of the larger context and the interconnectivity of different areas of life. Each student will focus on two to three more specific areas (a painting, a document - together with analysis of this and what it represents) that together combine to demonstrate an understanding a larger topic. Put another way, the larger topic will be broken down into key 'points of departure' that show the various perspectives on it.
There is enough polemicising at this time in history. After reviewing the kinds of soft skills that are sought in the workplace today, I decided that the goal of the course should be to demonstrate an understanding of various, sometimes competing perspectives. (Students may convey their own view if they want to, but they must all demonstrate an understanding of other views.) In other words, they are to demonstrate good, old-fashioned comprehension skills.

I designed the course this way because the seniors generally think they know it all and are resistant to teacher-centred lectures. I am tired of grading essays that show that students only glossed over the material: it defeats the point of the learning at this level. So, I made the managerial decision to focus on whether students can engage, in detail, with something; can demonstrate an understanding of difference. But it pains me to recognise that some of the more factual teaching is bound to get lost in this process. For example, while students think they know it all, at least a handful of them could afford to go back to my second year class, and take it again (note: only next year will I be teaching students I also taught in the second year). I plan on simply giving directives to such groups, instructing them to look at this or that historical document, figure, etc. But that is not the same as the more colourful and filled-in overview (which is already a condensation!)
Thence the managerial skills: to make a decision. Decide on what the primary objectives are, and execute to those ends. It will not be perfect. But this is where experience comes in, to help try to fill the gaps. I have made it very clear in my fourth year class that it is dialogic: that the content will come through our discussion. I have reiterated this by using the features in my digital classroom (which is merely support for the class, not a substitute) to feature, for example, good questions students ask, and what the answer to the questions are. Students are invited to ask questions; are told that this is not a course where they will be judged as ignoramuses if they ask (there are some classes they take where this is the case); they are told that articulation of what they know and what they don't know are viewed as tools in this class.
They are tools because they will use them to make something (thence the constructivism in this title - a word I am using from its popular meaning in education, though its philosophical meaning is not lost on me, and which I have used in at least one academic paper).
We will see, though, what is indeed created by the course at the end of the semester. But I will retain my managerial status regardless; I've read enough literature on managerial skills to know that failure is as appreciated by good managers as it is by teachers who love to learn.

something about mortality

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 00:39:00 +0000

It was a summer of grief. It was only recently that I realised the word to describe it. Actually, it was on reading a novel featuring grief - and when I saw that word, it was like a strange gift, staring out at me. Grief washes at you; it is a great tsunami and you choke, maybe almost die; but when it recedes, you realise it has left you with something, all those shells on the shore... And suddenly, all of the pettiness that piles up over the years has nothing on you; you are changed forever. You continue to mourn, but this mourning saves you from the more hollow pits, and as you stare into those voids (like of people trying to frustrate the growth of your life), you are left with gratitude. And grief. At the same time. But mostly gratitude for being given the chance to live through death.
Looking back, the dying during life was the hardest; when you are watching someone dying but don't quite realise it. I was also dying in my own way. So much nervousness, fear. Periods of not being able to communicate (when I have never had a problem with that before). Last weekend, it finally dawned on me that I needed to find my peace; this weekend, I began to find it: a "coming to terms".
It is strange how death 'finds you', reminiscent of that line in Rilke's "Archaic Torso": "for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life."
My life choices have left me scraping by in a university job in an immediate professional environment where I have not felt valued, and definitely underpaid for the conscientious approach I take. I have no money to even go on vacation. But I can run. I run 50-60 miles per week, on average. And the last two runs have been such that I was able to fully gain strength from them: the beauty of the autumn trails, what more could one ask for in life? There was no lack.

But this very morning I was stopped by a woman who asked: I see you here often, running by; what's all of that for?! Health, I said. And are you healthy, she asked? I gave her a thumbs up, and ran on, momentarily cursing her for that look in her eyes when she asked the second question, and thinking, you in your fancy clothes clearly know nothing of Socrates and even less of that platitude, in mens sana in corpore sano; you are an example of what my doctor friend with a world-recognised patent explains as the kind of person unable to draw peace and strength from nature, so sad... Then I stopped, all of those interruptions to what I am doing with my life are just so much noise that can be tuned out - like tuning out a noisy fridge when trying to sleep at night.
I feel embarrassed by writing these things. They are personal like so much wash hanging out to dry. But I've been thinking recently about how necessary it is to bring the corporeal to communication; how quickly communication becomes a cloud of specious sophistry unless it is seen in concrete ends (some kind of telos), beginning from where we are (in our telo, or тѣло; body).
Subjects I have considered recently in these musings include the EU directive on plurilingualism (what I have to say about this as a lecturer - can we not talk about intellectual aptitudes/readiness related to higher proficiency?); how quick people are to enter 'political' debate without consideration of the problems of politics (without having read, at the very least, Aristotle: politics comes after consideration of virtue, morals, the potential for corruption of self); how little is understood about civics - so, people in cities walk their dogs on long leashes and lash out at people who trip over them; drive illegal buggies wherever they want; push past neighbours in buildings; etc. In other words: how can we, with wisdom, live together? Do we even know how to live with ourselves?
There can be phases of flailing. Are we able to find compassion for this? To find love for ourselves in our fallibility, our mortality. To know when to laugh it away. I've been a slow learner in this, but I intellectually understand that not every question is deserving of a serious answer. But sometimes, the gravest of the grave cedes life.

Breadth Work

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 18:09:00 +0000

I would love to share ideas and to be critiqued at work. But it is not that kind of environment. So instead, I torture myself by reading the works of authors from the past who I doubt I will ever live up to.
My experience at the educational institution where I work has been that though I inherited nothing, I am expected to give, and not say anything when my resources are poached - though that means needing to find something new to use. My view on this overall state of affairs is that I should only share some, not all, of what I have assembled. (Well, I think I actually would have spilt all my tools in the instance when I was asked to hand over sections of a course. I would have done so because in some respects I am about as advanced as a 4-year-old ripe only for board games "in which there is no strategy". Except I encountered a hostile heir, who was possibly even unable to take it all in. So in that case, I only passed some things on. Please note, what I am passing on here are merely carefully amassed resources, ranging from exercises, to expectations, to objectives, gathered out of necessity as I have found typical college handbooks to be seriously wanting. So I wish to stress that what I consider I possess is not actually my own, but rather what I have synthesised in order to pass on to students what I consider to be a full and working tool box.)
All of this to say that it is my assessment, since I am mostly self-taught in pedagogy, that I must therefore be wild and in need of serious scholastic grooming. But every now and again I come across resources that seem to spell out in neon that, even if I am untamed, I am on the right track.

One such orienting resource is the list published by Sophie Blumet guiding a study conducted with Howard Gardner (the Harvard educationalist) as to the parameters of a liberal arts education, which include:

Working within and across scholarly disciplines;
Spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural/physical sciences;
Engendering communication skills in various media;
Inculcating critical, discriminatory, and analytical abilities;
Acknowledging the importance of different perspectives;
Tackling big questions, with an eye toward continuing to pursue them; and
Reflecting on ways to contribute to society as a citizen.

It almost verbatim echoes the definition of a university education forwarded by Giambattista Vico in his speech addressed to students on the meaning of a university education entitled, "The Heroic Mind".
When I began teaching, at which time I desperately strove to imitate the kinds of classes I had taken at my Ivy League alma mater, before the age of the internet, and before I became clearer about pedagogy, I had perused Jacques Barzun's Simple and Direct, and retained from that book what I will shorthand as 'breadth of approach'. The Blumet/Garnder list above captures the gist of what I understood breadth to mean, even back then. I would like to point out the ubiquity of this breadth, conspicuous even in the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, which falls short just where it fails to conceive of the telos of education as the formation of a good citizen.
This past week, I suddenly felt a need to revisit Barzun, and am astounded by just how much what he wrote is being reformulated by the contemporary educationalists that I try to keep up on. Barzun's breadth of approach is multidisciplinary, and includes an awareness of the political implications of thought. This should be straight forward to anyone - we all know it was to his possibly more famous colleague, Lionel Trilling.

Trilling writes that if politics is not understood as imagination and mind, imagination and mind will become a kind of politics we don't like. That kind of statement can only be made if one is attempting to gain a grasp of the bigger picture. Trying to see it requires asking bigger questions. As I mentioned, Gardner (in his recent work) is a proponent of the need to tackle big questions. One of his recent posts, asking, "Should we require all students to take philosophy?" ends by responding to attacks on philosophy as lacking practical knowledge by calling on its ability to ponder life's bigger questions in the best possible way.
I would add to that defense what I feel to be of burning importance at this time: the need to tell all students - regardless of their field of study - that philosophy, as conceived by Aristotle, has an ethical prerequisite involving exercises in discernment. Without this, no politics for anyone!
So, going back to Barzun, consider this: "And when the mind has grasped in several contexts the effect of circumstance, the nature of partisanship, the role of chance, and the influence of leaders and bunglers, the student of history who has discussed with others these potent imponderables may become not only a better judge of public policy and politicians, but also a more tolerant person." What a beautiful summary of how broad (so also historical), attentive reading can be an exercise in character building - or should I say character bildung (sorry, bad Humboldtian pun).
Another gem essay of Barzun's, which outlines another of the values on the Gardner list cited above, is entitled, "Math and Science are Liberal Arts". It demonstrates through effective examples how basic compositional skills are needed by scientists if they are to get their point across. It also shows how the lack of common sense in the teaching of these subjects leads to their popular demise. It shows many interesting things that he says so effectively, summarising it does it a disservice.
And while comparing one's own capacities to those evinced in such works shows just how far one has yet to go, others would have educational goals narrowed at this time. For example, a green colleague who was asked to list the various ways in which a topic can be approached, claimed that any kind of list is off-putting, including those that serve as reminders of the topics of invention. Yet not one breath later this same person wanted a list where this would narrow down their job. So, the problem is not in lists but in the work of the responsibility of the freedom of having options.

Baring

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 17:51:00 +0000

"Life itself, which is a membership in the living world, is already an abundance," Wendell Berry writes in a lecture printed in The Way of Ignorance.
So much can take away from this abundance, such as that terrible movie screen that is also crammed with the victimising, materialistic, and ego-fuelled junk that poisons our minds, seas, and water tables. Speaking of that which is "victimising" is trauma, which "violates aspects of the person's self and world". Trauma is contagious. Among the syndromes listed as defining organizational trauma, Pat Vivian and Shana Hormann is "stress and anxiety contagion" (emphasis added). The traumatised can be better versed at multiplying destructive negativity than their vital talents.
But as a degree-bearing philologist (one who loves words), I task myself to improve articulacy (the necessary joints) to relate from the confusing temporal appearance to the abundance that is essential, and life-giving.

We are all naked to begin with - and under whatever clothes we do our social posturing in. What is essential can be reached through "baring"; through uncovering to reach the core of something.
Want has the potential to strip away, and so does trauma - if one can bear it, and hold out like an 'initiate of life': if one takes the leap of faith into that which is life-bearing. The alternative is to believe in destruction as a terminal inevitability. In that context, consider this phrase: "a smile, an inheritance, and laughter is a gift."

Who has not felt the sweet release from the gerbil-wheel of depressive thought? A single smile, help along the trail. Life is like a thru-hike. Or, an endurance run. What I'm trying to say is that we pick our destinations. In other words, whether we accept responsibility for it or not, our actions demonstrate which destination we serve. (Yes, I am referencing Aristotelian τέλος.)

Many times, because of the glut in which we live, if we are not facing hardship, we need to impose on ourselves some form of austerity to reach the essential. This is why people choose thru-hikes. Stripping away the bells and whistles that distract us, we can better appreciate that which is already abundant in this life, like just how beautiful it is to be warmed by the sun (...after a cold night out at camp). Read about a much more compelling experience of the same, along the Altiplano Traverse, here (by Ryan "Dirtmonger" Sylva; it's his quote about the smile, above).
But other times, sickness and injury strip us down to the same result (hear one such account here). Personally, I am coming out of a summer filled with myriad traumas, with two ongoing, and feel a great need to reconfirm the kind of destination I want to be headed towards. I discovered (again - it's funny how much amnesia can occur, for weeks even, until the nervous system calms down) that one can even feel abandoned in hard times. This isn't to say that abandonment is real. But...we can make it real, if we don't watch out. Anyone who doesn't know what I am talking about should count their blessings.

While I don't have the luxury to go where I will, I run long distance (my typical run is over half a marathon, so I can get to the forest and lift up my eyes - I reference the motto of my first boarding school, from Psalm 121). As much as I would love to quit my job (which gives me more and more work, and less and less pay), I will instead endure it a little longer, to gain better eyes for the abundance that life already is.
There is nothing like being told you will get help at work and instead being given a helper who not only lacks basic training (an assistant with a degree in politics who doesn't know what rhetoric is!) but who is also resistant to learning, and then going for a 26K jaunt in nature and being bathed by tree upon tree, casting their fiery shadows upon you, and forgetting your worries in that light show... The random willow in the little park just means so much more when it weeps for you.

Saint Nikolaj Zicki is said to have valued his days of imprisonment in Dachau above all else, for it is there where a simple ray of sunlight meant the most to him.
It is interesting how someone whose life was spiritually rich also benefitted from a baring: a release from 'things'; situation.

I hunt for the golden stag.

You may smile my friends, but I pursue the vision that eludes me.

I run across hills and dales, I wander through nameless lands, because I am hunting for the golden stag.

You come and buy in the market and go back to your homes laden with goods, but the spell of the homeless winds has touched me I know not when and where.

I have no care in my heart; all my belongings, I have left far behind me.

(from Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, 69)

Image (of painting) source: Pier Fracesco Mola "Oriental Warrior" wikimediacommons.

To my adolescent imagination, when I first saw this painting in the Louvre, I thought, this is someone who's hunting for the golden stag. His eyes are lifted (Ps.121); at least, aimed for more distant goals.
He's always looked to me like a janissary, though it bewilders me (I now refer to the definition at that link) how someone who is kidnapped "willingly" does anything.

Reflection and Reflexion on the Classroom

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 09:41:00 +0000

It is thanks to a blogger friend that I have returned here to give an update. Please note, though, that what is below is but a first-draft; if I edit, this won't get published 'til mid-August (though if I somehow find time, I will edit and remove this disclaimer).
Without reading old blog posts, I felt as if I had left this chrysalis behind, because so much of the breadth in thinking I had been working on here came into place, and I know that when I look back on older writing after reaching such plateaus, I only have an eye for all that was missing of the foundation (elementary ideas) that went into reaching that plateau.
But I claim to be a lover of process, so this means leaving in sight (as opposed to discarding) the earlier steps.
And the premise of what I am about to write is also based on 'what came before', for when I review the changes I made to my classrooms this past semester, I was very aware just how much past experience was there to temper the changes.

In my largest intro class, I added two online components: reading based online, and students required to comment a few times during the semester online. Their comments could be summaries to their own links on the weekly topics they found useful or interesting; insightful questions on the material; analysis. I also gave students the opportunity to set their own colloquium questions: there were about thirty they contributed, from which two appeared in that test. Early in the semester, I tried to 'lecture' the material through asking students questions and bringing their answers or observations into how I covered the material, but students found that too intimidating. I then experimented a few classes with setting them group exercises using additional source material, structured so that the exercise would review key points from the reading. This worked for 1.5 of the three classes. But my experience obviously told me that this was not a good way to go on (so many students need more structure and modeling and help - at this level - identifying what hey points are), though the students were happy for the change of dynamics. I ended the semester by delivering 20-30 minute lectures, followed by group class exercises. These varied in their content: asking students to find topics from the reading/lecture in song lyrics; giving them images asking them to expand on what they learn from that image and connect it to the reading, then share this information in brief presentations; etc. Such exercises are very labour intensive because, especially when choosing groups to share, I need to remember which groups are doing better with the exercise and call on those groups. It is also necessary to end class with a brief recap, which means tracking all the students said and being sure to include anything they may not have commented on. Etc.

In sum, I used a combination of didactic and flipped classroom techniques. I continued to use aspects of the blended classroom, but as in previous years, did add a grade component to encourage more use of the internet (which essentially means, putting the graded homework component online). I used Google Classroom, but did not use it to the fullest extent. For example, it was important to me to see which students were being thoughtful in their online comments - so I did not have Google tally up the homework points.
The way in which I included the online component did not save me any time - if anything, classes became more labour intensive. Not only did I lecture, but I also had to come up with exercises, and in addition to grading, I had to scan the online comments and enter in that work assessment manually. I also took attendance, which took time to be entered.
However. I think that this was the way to go in terms of getting the results I wanted from students. They were engaged, actually did the work ! , and seemed to enjoy the class (I do ask students to assess the class, but one always wonders about evaluation re. truth).
The final thing I will add here is the importance, in my opinion, of having very clear epistemic goals if this approach is taken. For example, in a course on culture, I decide about which events/figures/themes/etc. are the bare minimum I want students to know - but in addition to that, I also decide on the set of abstract skills I also want students to practice, eg. comparative analysis. I ask myself: assuming students will forget most of what is taught in this course, what is the gist you want a vague trace of to remain in their minds?

Most of what I have written about in this post reflects classroom elements I have been using for years; this is why I began by referencing the importance of experience. Experience tempered my introduction of change - when I saw students not being as self-directed as I thought they might be (I admit I did wonder if new generations would indeed be as far-more-internet-savvy-than-their-professors, as some media implies), I re-introduced the more didactic, modelling element to class.
For undergraduate classes, I think it is appropriate to continue to begin class by establishing the gist of what one wants students to take from the class - but to leave time for students to articulate their own understandings, extrapolations, comparisons, etc.
The hardest aspect of these courses comes with the upper level (fourth-year, ie. senior-level, courses, where something as simple as having students summarise a variety of texts they will use as the foundation for their analysis, is a challenge for some. I teach this in those classes that last two semesters, hoping students will master this by the second semester. Those students who make the effort to engage with class always make immense improvements. But what happens is that some seniors seem to check out after the first few weeks of the second semester. It is this dialogic element plus analysis that some seem to wish to skirt past - though, in my opinion, this forms the basis of the liberal education, an skirting by it means a lower level of literacy. And civics.

I am the kind of instructor that aims for a 100 per cent success rate, which is why I am concerned about this: others might look at the 20 per cent or so students who make great progress as success, and call it a day. In fact, the large majority of my students make progress (I am thinking of the numbers this year). But it is the few students who don't, or that single student whose final work was worse than the mid-term work, that cause me to want to keep things fresh and reconsidered in terms of how I teach each new year.
It is probably because of this that sometimes I feel a little burned out (like now, when I am supposed to be marking papers). It also does not help that in academe there are other things that need to be dealt with, like backstabbing colleagues (though this does not mean the backstabbing is personal; merely, that one is in the way of someone else's ideas of how things should be done), or like all the research papers to be written. This comic says it all (via Piled Higher and Deeper).
I don't know if my way is sustainable: as it happens, this past week I have totally (accidentally) missed out on two important obligations, which aside from being mortifying for someone like me, makes me wonder if I can go on like this. I was given more than an average course load, but still...
To conclude, I will be thinking about one of the best essays I have read in an age (and one, those who know me, might say it could have been written by me: just swap out the art and book references to mine from hermeneutics, the message would remain the same). It is by Jenny Odell, entitled, "How To Do Nothing". Among other things, the essay raises the question of maintenance (or what we could call sustainability) vs. development. It is my secret wish that this author will want to co-author a paper with me. I will be keeping the idea of maintenance in the back of my mind as I mark those papers...

Status: Flipped

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 18:59:00 +0000

After belabouredly deliberating over how to teach this semester, I made the decision to remove the traditional lecturing component of my classes, and "flip" my classroom. I felt that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain as I wasn't satisfied with the percentage of students who were benefitting from the traditional model. I was reading how Howard Gardner used to tape his lectures for students to watch outside of class, using class time for questions and discussions of associated readings. I thought about how today, the taping part is almost superfluous given that for many intro-level courses, there is a selection of lectures to choose from that can be sped or watched through and mixed and matched (this is what I suspect students are doing anyway) already available online. Which is to say that I have started to go so far as to question the relevance of the lecture to every course.

For one of my classes, I merely ask that students, after overviewing criteria for evaluating sources, link to what they watch or read in the comments section of an online platform. This counts towards their grade. I do provide two sources that cover the material they are asked to learn (one that is simplified, one that is more elaborate - explaining that the simplified version only gives enough information for a lower grade), but they are given the choice to find their own alternative (providing it is 'scholarly'), or supplement it. It sounds complicated, but in my last post, I explained how I suspected that most students were consulting online sources for their study-material as it was (and despite the material presented in class being different).
I plan to use the class time for this class by having students do in-class exercises, and calling on groups week by week, explaining that it is up to them to volunteer at least twice, if they want a grade for that section of class (if not, this will negatively impact the final grade). I am still building the exercises (and have found very useful ideas by googling: lecturing to large classes), but plan to focus on a few images most weeks, using Harvard's Artful Thinking exercises as a way to promote fluency of the material covered. The second-year students balk at having to synthesise information in their exam essays, and rather than overwhelming them with composition techniques (which I have also taught at that level), I think that Artful Thinking, with its elementary questions asking one what one sees, what one thinks and wonders about what one sees (branching out into making comparisons, exploring, reasoning, and pondering) is an approach all of the students will be able to take, and one that I believe will lead them to being able to write thoughtful essays.

I wrote in my last post that I always decide ahead of time what the minimum is in terms of what I want students to be able to accomplish for a pass in my class - and have since found a great post on this approach penned by Louise Lamphere Beryl, who calls it: "backward design". It is important to maintain a clear vision on what the key understandings of one's class are, and have an idea of how to lead students to them. The post explains how to do that very clearly.
And reading someone else write about these very ideas helped me clarify the key understandings I want my fourth-year class to reach (practise a key aspect of a hallmark methodology). A great portion of this class will rely on in-class exercises. Also, students will be responsible for setting the reading: they must each contribute one text or one image/video etc. with summary to at least half of the classes. After establishing the guidelines of what is needed, I said I would supplement where necessary, though students are motivated to eschew my intervention because a large part of their grade will be determined by peer evaluation (following Michael O'Hare's guidelines) - which is to say that they will be grading each other on how much they were able to help each other prepare for the established goals. I decided to let the students have control of what they read because about half the class was not interacting with the material I assigned last semester (which I was a tad saddened by, because I put a lot of thought into it - but to be fair, it was perhaps too broad, and too complex for those students, though I have to add that some students mastered it and thrived). My reader was the one I dreamed would exist. I think I was inspired by the artistic parameters of some of Leon Litwack's lecture topics - but I'm a poor imitator.

I justified abandoning my own reader also because I think that despite my attempt to be broad-reaching, I still wasn't reaching my students and bringing out their voices. There were at least a handful of students who were clearly following the lectures, but not engaged enough to be able to use the material in their own essays. So, I thought that if they had agency over the reading material (which be the nature of the course can be broad-ranging - and is made richer if it is), they might be more motivated to connect with the material.
I never thought the day would come when I would use some of these techniques. I never thought that I would welcome the internet in such a massive way as part of my courses - all of the texts are now online; so is part of our classroom where students share their thoughts and assignments.

The Howard Gardner post linked to above in which he recounts flipping his own classroom in passing, is primarily about raising questions on how to promote transformations of students in class: "changes in how one conceptualises the world of ideas and associated practises; ... changes in how one relates to peers and other individuals; and ... changes in how one thinks about oneself" - with respect to being "good". He is raising a Socratic, and Aristotelian question - and that it is a vitally important question: for what is learning devoid of ethics, civic responsibility? But the point I want to focus on is that if such change for the better (i.e. maturity!) is effected, it is obviously effected within the individual - which is to say that such education must cater to an individual, not a number.
Catering to individuals is yet further support for the idea of flipping the classroom. But speaking of transformations, I'll repeat that I did not expect my views on this to transform so dramatically since my last post.
In closing, I want to share another post on pedagogy I read this week: "Classroom Confession: I am a Terrible Teacher" - a post that frames Achilles' heels in such a way as to show just how much can be taught, in so many ways, despite them.

Gravitas and Caricatures in Education

noreply@blogger.com (ane pixestos) — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 22:15:00 +0000

Not since the daringly personal and narrative-based entry to serious study in The Anguish of Snails (blogged of here) have I been able to fathom an entryway into an other type of academic writing. But listening to a Practical Backpacking podcast, episode 51 with Kolby "Condor" Kirk, brought me to a slower world, where there is time and space to allow connections and meaning to emerge organically and courageously, returning me to the idea of how to approach academic writing organically and daringly. Kirk is a long-distance, not thru-, hiker, who is known for his journalling which came to light via a Muir project video. I was intrigued that a man journals and was particularly drawn in by the narrative of someone who consciously felt the trials of the race of life around him, but has literally stood still for long enough in the midst of that to find his own peace replete with butterflies landing on him. The culmination of listening to Kirk, and following up on a song he mentioned about not caring about winning anymore and further interviews with him, was catching a glimmer of a space where work gets realised, but in so much of a kinder way, so much more of a humane way. In other words, the question that comes to mind for academe from the context of the interview (and Snails) is: can knowledge be spoken of by someone who sees their own human fallibility? The mouth speaking, after all, is on one such fallible human body. The narrative, therefore, if it is "fitting" (kairos! - here, to the measure of man), begins with uncomfortable caricatures of us, like the cartoonish figures in Plato's dialogues, though we may be striving to learn something more than ourselves. In other words, too, how wont we are to run away with ourselves. How hard it is to remain centered within, say, our adolescent mistakes, our gaffes (even if not in the workplace), wherever we fall short in the race or competition, and yet still be able to deliver something seriously, with gravitas.

Is it maybe the overall historical awareness of human fallibility (in a general sense, I think few individuals can handle it on a more personal level) - the sense of "historic perspectivism" or "reflective historiography" Auerbach says we have "inherited" - that has led to the urge to change pedagogy to be less grave; to also be less certain - so, therefore, devoid of anything to be learned by rote: that 'deserving' of learning being dynamic and always shifting (capricious). And in the mean time, teachers are encouraged to put the focus of class on the student, who is to be given "autonomy" in learning.
I actually subscribe in many instances to such pedagogy - but still think that some subjects need rote, like when learning verb declensions. Or dates! Etc. I think that too much focus on the student can then disable the student, as when, for example, the student learns to pursue only what is within range or likeable to them - where the student does not learn discipline, and the ability to absorb something far beyond their interests: that 'suspension of disbelief' that allows a totally different foundation to be laid, alongside other existing foundations, to create true breadth.

Discipline in the modern world is now mostly learned through illness: when we have to, say for example, laoriously peel and grate beets daily for health reasons. Suddenly, the daily discipline is possible, whereas before, it was not, it was only possible to grab something from the bakery.
So, all this to say that there is a place for the graveness of gravitas, obviously, in life (which the academy should ultimately be a lover and servant of), but also a place for our goofy, affinity-driven caricatures - so that balance between the two is an art.
Going back to modern pedagogy, many celebrate it (again, I subscribe to some of its practices), but perhaps we might want to sober up for a moment and remember Auerbach's warning that just at this time when we are so historically aware, we are also threatened by an "ahistorical system of education". For example, I have a few very smart students who cannot see the past without evaluating it in terms of more present concerns. They write very analytical papers, but papers that cannot extend 'suspension of disbelief' to enter into a time of different values. I see this as intellectual impoverishment, and I see it increasing. Learner autonomy cannot really fix that; it needs correctional intervention, of the kind: what you have written is indeed analytical, but can you extend your analysis further to consider looking at the subject from the vantage point of...?

I have to admit that I was very excited to read about a course in Berkeley that employed a system of peer evaluation, but thought to myself that I would not be able to employ such a system every year: some years, there are not enough students of the kind who "raise the level of conversation" (to borrow a phrase from the poet O'Donohue). I think peer evaluation could quickly diminish into a pool of mediocrity. That said... there are years when that happens anyway: no matter how much one makes adaptations and modifications to content and delivery to try to engage students, they mostly come away with the bare minimum. And such years, one wastes too much time and energy.
So, it is exciting to read about different pedagogies because many of them might be kinder solutions to the real problems that face us in the classroom today. Kinder to teachers and to students. If one is facing a class of average students, so average that not even one or two more motivated peers spark competition and engagement, then the teaching problem is not top-down (delivernig maximum content and engaging students to meet it) but bottom-up (trying to begin with the students to get them to take a single step from where they are). In the latter case, I find myself trying to figure out, OK, so if there is one thing I want students to take from this course, what is it? I think in my class that has a historical component, that single thing is simply: can the student imagine at least one feature of this time that is not like our own, and understand it as such a distinction? (Of course the 'minimum list' is longer; but the distillation is real.)
More advanced classes are less rigorous in the sense that there is more that can be explored; there is a choice of several combinations that would be adequate. And that is where there is joy: some degree of mastery, some degree of flexibility. Everything before that is the stepping stone to that.
Stepping stones...

I'll try to bring this post to a close by bringing it back to the Kirk interview. He speaks of the importance of being not going somewhere, yet endurance as the means to reach those points of being, as it begins from that point where the journey seems too hard, where people extrapolate how much more the remaining journey will hurt based on pain experienced thus far and want to give up, when instead they should realise that they are getting stronger and better. It is clear why so many pedagogies focus on growth. But tied in with growth are all kinds of other things needing consideration, including even belief. Or even love of the world, and the question of how to love it... Auerbach once quoted Hugo of St. Victor in giving his answer: "...he is perfect to whom the entire world is a foreign land". One loves the world if one is endowed with the love of the traveller, but with the gravitas of being the student of the lands. There is a place for this human love in academic writing - Auerbach has demonstrated this. Some pedagogy also emphasizes this by showing the teacher as not being the sole gatekeeper to knowledge. And a final note to this: isn't it a good thing that this pedagogy has come to popularity at exactly the time when students can see, on the internet, that teachers are not gatekeepers to knowledge? But, and the internet does not teach this, how to instill in average students, bent on easiest routes and minimal engagement, discipline and textual apparatus?