[MD] Barfuersserkirche (The Role of the Academy)

[Platt Holden]

Arlo,

Nicely done.

Platt



> Dan made some comments recently differentiating "educating yourself" and
> "being educated". The underlying premise appeared to be, "who needs the
> Academy when there are libraries and bookstores". Above our library, one
> building across from my office, is engraved the words "The True
> University is collection of books". As always having seen the inherent
> wisdom in such a statement, and yet one who also sees the value of The
> Academy as a discursive "place", I got to thinking... is there a
> conflict here?
> 
> Anticipating the forthcoming book from David Granger, one could lay out
> a historical spectrum of ideas as to the role of The Academy (assuming
> for present purposes we don't make an artificial distinction between
> "higher education" and "K12 education") from enculturation to utility
> (preparing workers) to assimilation to preservation, from a "tool of the
> state" to a naturally emerging discourse community, inhabited by those
> seeking grades, jobs, wisdom, knowledge, from those who have no idea why
> they are here, to those with a distinct goal. It is home to the humble
> and brilliant as well as the arrogant and condescending.
> 
> Within The Academy, "classrooms" range from large lecture halls with one
> main speaker, to small discussion-oriented circles, from the Socratic
> Ideal to Fordian Functionality. It has excluded minorities and sought to
> populate its halls with them. But are all these local, historical,
> cultural manifestations of the "university" (lower case), the brick and
> mortar parallel to Pirsig's "Church of Reason"? And of the "Church"
> itself, is it a condemnable remnant of Aristotelian metaphysics? If we
> "burn down the schools", will Quality be served by simply issuing
> library cards? Is The Academy imposed on us, or does it spring naturally
> from our activity? Would people NOT congregate to talk, to share ideas,
> to work together on research? If Pirsig taught a class, would none of us
> attend? Is there nothing, no body of thought, or area of knowledge, or
> skill, that is served better by collaborative work in the Church of
> Reason?
> 
> Dewey maintained that there are four primary (and social) functions
> served by The Academy: the habits of language, manners, good taste and
> esthetic appreciation, and deeper standards of judgements of value
> (which is a fusion of the prior two). (Democracy and Education, Chapter
> 2,
> http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/education/Democracyand
> Education/chap2.html). Of the third and fourth points, Dewey writes, "If
> the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of
> form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of a
> tawdry, unarranged, and over-decorated environment works for the
> deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings starve
> out the desire for beauty. Against such odds, conscious teaching can
> hardly do more than convey second-hand information as to what others
> think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous and personally engrained,
> but remains a labored reminder of what those think to whom one has been
> taught to look up. To say that the deeper standards of judgments of
> value are framed by the situations into which a person habitually enters
> is not so much to mention a fourth point, as it is to point out a fusion
> of those already mentioned. We rarely recognize the extent in which our
> conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to
> standards of which we are not conscious at all. But in general it may be
> said that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or
> reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking
> and decide our conclusions." (The entirety of Democracy and Education is
> available off that link).
> 
> In this case, The Academy serves as a conduit to the person's ability to
> perceive Quality. On the other side of the dichotomous fence sits
> Bourdieu who argued that all forms of education (self or schooled) are
> understandable as "symbolic violence". "Symbolic violence is
> fundamentally the imposition of categories of thought and perception
> upon dominated social agents who then take the social order to be
> desirable. It is the incorporation of unthought structures that tend to
> perpetuate the structures of action of the dominant. The dominated then
> take their position to be "right." Symbolic violence is in some senses
> much more powerful than physical violence in that it is embedded in the
> very modes of action and structures of cognition of individuals, and
> imposes the vision of the legitimacy of the social order."
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu).
> 
> Bourdieu's position would seem to gain weight from the historical 
> observation of how "educational pedagogy" has always aligned itself with
> the "mode of production".
> 
> "We can examine [Educational Systems] in three eras: the agricultural
> era, industrial era, and informational era. During the agricultural era
> (until the late 19th century in the United States), the majority of the
> population worked on farms. Little formal education was required, as
> farming was learned through personal apprenticeship. Education, which
> focused on rote learning, oral recitation, imitation of "correct" speech
> and writing, and memorization, served to enforce the aristocratic mores
> of society (de Castell & Luke, 1986).
> 
> During the industrial era (from the early 20th century until about the
> 1970s in the U.S.), the majority of people worked in manufacturing.
> Factories were organized according to a Fordist model of a strict
> vertical hierarchies, minute divisions of labor, and individual
> compartmentalized skills. Schools too came to be influenced by the same
> model, with students learning decontextualized functional sub-skills
> through programmed instruction in large classes (de Castell & Luke,
> 1986).
> 
> In the informational era (from about the 1970s in the U.S.), increases
> in productivity depend on the use of science and technology to manage
> the quality of information (Castells, 1996). The archetypal workplace is
> the office, and work is increasingly organized on post-Fordist
> principals of horizontal networks, teamwork, a flexible division of
> labor, and just-in-time production and distribution (Gee, Hull, &
> Lankshear, 1996). Informationalism requires a new learning mode
> emphasizing collaborative inquiry and systems thinking (Reich, 1991)."
> (http://greco.dit.upm.es/~leverage/conf1/warssumm.htm)
> 
> Are we fooling ourselves into thinking The Academy is anything more than
> a hammer of conformity, smashing us into pegs to meet the contemporary
> labor activity required by society? Is it, as Dewey suggested, from
> engagement in The Academy that we learn to value harmony, elegance and
> beauty as those are culturally defined? (Is there a distinction between
> these two statements, or do they say the same thing??). What would be
> the Ideal version of The Academy? Or, in the Ideal, would The Academy
> vanish?
> 
> Just some thoughts...
> 
> 
> 
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