[MD] 42

[Ron Kulp]

A relevant. Model is Platos Socrates
Who called himself a midwife,
The "guide on the side" who first
Broke down the static " mule mentality" and induced aporia
As a method via dialectic to name
One method, to incite the love of
Wisdom.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 14, 2014, at 4:42 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The ideal student is the one who is not motivated by the "mule mentality" or "slave mentality". That's what eliminating the grades was all about. The grades were the sticks and carrots that produced this mule mentality in the first place. Just as it is with motorcycle maintenance, care is the other side of Quality. 
> 
> I think we cannot do better than Granger on this topic. There is a paper by him on Ant's site called "Dewey and Pirsig in Education. [ http://robertpirsig.org/Granger.htm ] Here's a little taste of it...
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> The student[s'] biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into [them] by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, 'If you don't whip me, I won't work.' [They] didn't get whipped. [They] didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which [they] supposedly [were] being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without [them]. (ZMM, 175) 
> Ironically, Pirsig thought, this is in direct contradiction to the academy’s claim that civilization “is best served not by mules but by free men” (ZMM, 175). And education is supposedly the means to this freedom.  As tragic as this slave mentality sounds, Pirsig saw that it is unavoidable only if one presumes that the cart of civilization must be propelled by something outside itself, by disinterested mule-selves. Whether these mules are in front of or behind the cart matters little here. In either position, they bespeak of stubborn, laboring beasts – the polar opposite of artistically-engaged human beings -- beasts that have no immediate investment in or sense of connection to the larger cart of civilization. This means that carrots (grades, monetary awards, amusements, special privileges) and whips (punitive threats) are necessary to keep them in line -- what in the vernacular of education is often called being "on task." External stimuli and behavioral conditioning become the accepted means to an external end. Take them away and, like Pirsig’s students, the mules protest forlornly or, being inherently passive animals, promptly fall into a torpor. But Pirsig had no desire to punish or cast off his student mules in abolishing grades (ZMM, 175). In fact he was convinced that the whole cart-mule analogy was at once ill-conceived and educationally destructive.   
>    I suspect that Dewey would once again concur with Pirsig’s take on the situation. In any number of places, he speaks about the difficulties issuing from the kind of presumed self-world separation endemic to the cart-mule picture.
> -------------------------------------------------
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