[-empyre-] creative powerlessness, expressive violence, performance

[Christina Spiesel]

On 11/17/2014 10:18 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2014, Christina Spiesel wrote:
>
>  As testimony to the importance of feeling and the emotions as guides 
> to value -- something very much devalued at the moment as humanities 
> and arts budgets are slashed and education is increasingly thought of 
> as training.
>
> -- Can you elaborate on this? This, in the United States, is a crisis 
> of conscience and citizenry that is ongoing and worsening; humanities, 
> arts, music, and even phys ed programs are being cut out of K-12 
> schools - not to mention artschools themselves, which are increasingly 
> becoming vocational feeds for the tech industries. I do think this 
> plays into our inordinate fear of ebola, our magnification of crISIS 
> in general, and our deep ignorance of conflict and violence (although 
> we practice both with impunity). Comments appreciated, and thanks, Alan

In response to Alan's request for elaboration, I can claim no great 
expertise.  Last year I did do a presentation to a working group of 
which I am a member on electronic education initiatives. I knew how 
deeply this thrust has penetrated higher education when the director of 
the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (concerned with academic teaching and 
scholarship) wrote a newsletter saying that the Foundation had to get 
busy on the new paradigm so as not to be left behind. The efficiencies 
claimed for these higher education  initiatives rest on broadcasting by 
professors to ever more students. In such a scenario, evaluation will, 
of necessity, be carried out through that which can be assessed 
quantitatively.( Claims made for successful machine grading of essays 
are misleading. Those programs can get at language but not at thinking. 
) Critical thinking cannot emerge from choosing the right answer from a 
selection of options. There's a good parallel with problems with eye 
witness identification here.  If a viewer is shown one candidate for 
perpetrator at a time, the results are more accurate because the viewer 
has to ruminate more on the qualities of that individual rather than 
when a whole line up is displayed whether through photographs or people 
viewed in a line.  Have you ever seen a multiple choice set of questions 
where none of the questions was correct at all? ("None of the above" 
doesn't quite capture what I am getting at.)  So cognitively, students 
in these programs will be engaged in learning the facts and finding an 
answer from a pre-selected series. (Here an autobiographical note -- I 
discovered during my college years that I could test better on exams 
where I actually knew less because I didn't get into the differentia 
that I would ponder when  I actually knew something.) The arts and 
humanities and physical arts do not fit into machine learning; their 
"answers" require complexity unless it is just a factual test of names 
and dates or rules of the game, etc. I would guess that people who can 
see that there's something outside the closed systems of their 
educational opportunities but have no idea how to proceed must feel 
especial pain and powerlessness. And as I write that sad thought, I 
think about the vitality of DIY culture on the Internet.  My grandkids 
(all under 12) thinking nothing of going to YouTube to find videos to 
teach them how to make things.

There is another issue as well -- critical thinking itself is not 
valued. Or, maybe I should say, that for planners, that is the province 
of experts and not what a population needs as a whole. The kind of 
teaching that produces critical thinking is labor intensive -- it 
actually requires teachers who have real knowledge/preparation before 
they get to students and then students who can be responsive to inter 
generational conversations.

Because I teach critical thinking, my greatest concern regarding on-line 
educational initiatives has to do with the fact that no matter what the 
software package is,  its use is going to be backed up on servers and 
is, therefore, subject to surveillance. How can a teacher raise a 
hypothetical even if just to dubunk something without the fear that it 
may come back to haunt if not the teacher then the student? If we are 
not teaching the humanities how can we have any hope that our social 
systems will understand that questions of meaning are actually very 
complex? "Judgment" in these syetms rests on simple assessment of the 
presence of some datum.

So I will toss in two links: this was on the front page of today's NY 
Times: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/us/groups-in-ferguson-prepare-for-grand-jury-decision.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C{%221%22%3A%22RI%3A7%22}&_r=0 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/us/groups-in-ferguson-prepare-for-grand-jury-decision.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A7%22%7D&_r=0>
I believe that this is actually a very sophisticated use of 
representation as protest in Ferguson, Missouri.

And also from the NYT, here's a retrospective look at a famous case and 
the role of media in it -- just 15 minutes long or so: 
http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000003237187/a-dingos-got-my-baby-trial-by-media.html?emc=edit_th_20141117&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=28688506 
The media has been busy trying to create the Ebola panic. Why?

Finally, a generational problem has been created because parents of 
current students have not necessarily learned themselves. That said, 
there are pockets of wonderfulness around the country where parents have 
pressured the schools. In higher ed, there are still small liberal arts 
colleges but they are struggling for financial support.

CS

  On 11/17/2014 10:18 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2014, Christina Spiesel wrote:
>
>  As testimony to the importance of feeling and the emotions as guides 
> to value -- something very much devalued at the moment as humanities 
> and arts budgets are slashed and education is increasingly thought of 
> as training.
>
> -- Can you elaborate on this? This, in the United States, is a crisis 
> of conscience and citizenry that is ongoing and worsening; humanities, 
> arts, music, and even phys ed programs are being cut out of K-12 
> schools - not to mention artschools themselves, which are increasingly 
> becoming vocational feeds for the tech industries. I do think this 
> plays into our inordinate fear of ebola, our magnification of crISIS 
> in general, and our deep ignorance of conflict and violence (although 
> we practice both with impunity). Comments appreciated, and thanks, Alan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20141117/9f31b4df/attachment.htm>