December 2020
Theory as Liberatory Practice: A Primer on the Use and Abuse of Theory
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
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Divide
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Separate
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Exclude
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Keep at a distance
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Silent, censor, or devalue
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Serve as an instrument of domination (homophobia; race; class, sexism; imperialism)
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Question prevailing social practices
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Heal and liberate
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Offer a sanctuary, a place to belong, to understand what is happening
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Ensue from and connect to everyday life
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Reinforce its connection with practice
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Be understood in everyday conversation
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Act as a catalyst for social change across false boundaries
Everyone Needs a Mentor: bell hooks and Paulo Freire
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Estrangement and Community: Teaching in a Multicultural World
Friday, December 25, 2020
You Say You Want a Revolution? Okay, But It Won’t Happen Overnight
Thursday, December 24, 2020
bell hooks proposes a revolution. She advocates a reassessment of values to revivify a corrupt and dying academy. This revolution would transform how we view interactions between methodologies, content, and teacher/student relationships. It would renew the minds of professors and, thus, of educational institutions.
She calls the struggle protracted. This revolution would need patience and vigilance. The same patience and vigilance that the civil rights and feminist movements needed. In other words, it won’t happen overnight. At the same time, she discusses the antagonism that would go with the process. She quotes Peter McLaren, who, in an interview, said:
When we try to make culture an undisturbed space of harmony and agreement where social relations exist within cultural forms of uninterrupted accords we subscribe to a form of social amnesia in which we forget that all knowledge is forged in histories that are played out in the field of social antagonisms.
I’m not sure how social antagonisms would play out in my online classroom, much less the form they would take. Couple that with previous mentions of disruptions. That’s how I’d define my biggest challenge in this revolution of values: How to deal with change? hooks anticipated my concern. Most professors lacked strategies to deal with antagonisms in the classroom. Once I define the words antagonisms and disruptions, I’ll be better equipped to address the issue.
She raised a tangential issue in “A Revolution of Values'' that interested me. The relationship between people and technology. She quotes Martin Luther King (bold face mine):
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Why is that highlight significant? Digital platforms and productivity apps could overrun the practice of teaching. We don’t need to adapt to computers; we need to adapt computers to us. Blackboard is a tool, an extension of our pedagogy. It must serve our needs.
Five years ago, I set up my online introduction to art class. My goal was to replicate the academic and personal engagement I encouraged in my F2F classes. This was long before the pandemic events of Spring 2020, during an era I call B.C., before Coronavirus. (I’ll call the post- quarantine era A.D, after distancing.) N.B. In my case, I’ll continue to teach online once the quarantine ends.
Engagement motivated and guided the transition from F2F to online. Blackboard limitations? How to encourage and sustain the three-sided conversations (trialogues?) with students, material, and myself? I created workarounds. I would reject anything that would compromise what I wanted to do.
It’s a work in progress. It will take time. A lot of time. Things change. We’re now using the Ultra version of Blackboard. What impact will that have? The process is will take time. As hooks wrote in another context, it will need patience and vigilance. Mini success, mini solutions, relentless forward progress. Not so much a quantum leap but an evolving paradigm shift.
Engaged Pedagogy? Count Me In!
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
From Pedagogy to Dramaturgy: bell hooks’ World is a Stage
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
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A bad script (sacred, unalterable, and anachronistic pedagogy).
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A segregated, ill-designed designed stage (the physical layout of a classroom).
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A proscenium stage versus a thrust stage; or a theatre in the round; or a black box theatre.
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An knowledgeable though errant director (un-self-realized professors).
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An eager though unengaged - and paying - audience (bored students).
Sorting Things Out: Sort Of
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
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freedom
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disruption
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transgress
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excitement
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presence
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interrogate
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self-actualized
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intervention
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process
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crisis
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eros & eroticism
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love
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desire
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Is this a memoir or a book on theory? Is it a hybrid?
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Are her life experiences general enough to serve as a template for us?
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Feminist, critical, and anti-colonial theory, inform her pedagogy. How do they provide insight into the teaching of both the hard as well as the soft sciences?
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Once I sort these words and issues out, what is the book’s relevance to not just pedagogy but to digital pedagogy?