41 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2019
    1. What form will the language of criticism and hope look like if it is to address the everyday lives of people caught in the grip of neoliberal common sense?

      Sacred Economics. The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. Climate: A New Story.

    2. Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?

      Attributing this to schools is a pretty stark example of schools as political--in what I'd call an unacceptable direction.

    3. language of pollution

      MWLB

    4. neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialized out of grievances against the government, privileged elites and the massive hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism.

      I'd be more granular and attribute the problems to risk-free positive interest bearing debt--usury--and its necessary effect of the conversion of common wealth to private wealth.

    5. For Fisher, capitalist realism functioned less as a crude form of quasi-propaganda than as a pedagogical, social and cultural machine that produces “a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.”

      I'm thinking of the argument in Barry Schwartz's Why We Work that impoverished (mentally, emotionally, socially unengaging) forms of work create the very culture of "laziness" and lack of motivation used as arguments against policies like a Universal Basic Income.

    6. to turn education into a business

      leads to commodification

    7. Trump built on a longstanding neoliberal project buttressed by an anti-democratic formative culture in which educational institutions have been used to shape market-based identities, modes of agency and collective subjects bound together by the notion that there is no alternative to an unfair and pernicious capitalist social order.

      Per usual, I think this harkens back to a panoply of arguments made by Charles Eisenstein, The Myth of the Separate Self in particular.

    8. have done everything they can

      Disagree. I don't think this pigeon-holing is helpful.

      (Which isn't to say I think these groups aren't responsible for grave and pressing harms, only that there's more they could have done.)

    9. intervening

      Intervention evokes questions around default.

    10. If teachers do not have control over the conditions of their labor

      What exactly are those conditions? No thinking that falls short of recognizing at least a global whole has much hope, but no teacher has the kind of control (at least as I think the word is meant here) over whether a mass shooting takes place--but those events reach into and affect classrooms.

      Maybe the reason that I'm pushing back is that I want more specificity around what "control" means--and maybe to move in the direction of the language of autonomy support over the language of control.

    11. while limiting their willingness to believe in something larger than themselves.

      I think this is an in-born trait, so I agree with the idea that limits are coming from without.

    12. neoliberalism has not only achieved dominance

      MWLB--personification of an ideology as something that asserts dominance, rather than something that reflects dominance? The whole idea of domination is itself antithetical to mutual agency.

    13. pedagogical terrorism

      Strong language here, I'd say notably so. What work does this do?

    14. methods such as teaching for the test

      I'm hesitant to call this a method. It certainly involves a correspondence, but I don't think method is the right word. It seems to imply something that's stable, where "teaching to the test" is by definition variable depending on the form of that test.

    15. cut across mainstream party lines.

      Following capital ($)? Some resonance here with funding "cuts."

    16. they have aggressively attempted to turn education into a business, faculty into devalued clerks and students into consumers.

      Metaphors We Live By

    17. instrumentalist

      Objectification--The Anatomy of Peace

    1. Contemplative Community in Higher Education: A Toolkit

      Love this as framing (thank you Naomi)!

      For the DPL19 annotators, I thought we might collectively explode the margins.

    1. And when each of us steps behind any podium, we are positioned to be listened to, when really we need to be listening.

      "To lead is to serve." And to serve is to recognize and work to meet the legitimate needs of those in your care. To know those needs, we must listen--seeing them in outline, broad brush stroke, is here not enough.

    2. By the end of this course, you will: Give tongue to interesting thoughts of your own soul; Gain from dialogue the power of truth; Abhor and detest your enslavers; Understand how the silver trump of freedom rouses the soul.

      Love this.

    3. I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!

      I wondered a while back where I encountered this quotation--I bet I'll have a mental pathway back to this from now on.

    4. I wonder what my physical copy annotations are?

    5. emergence

      I'm convinced this is what we want to move toward, but I don't think I have encountered too much writing on the subject directly. The recent conviviality stuff strikes me as relevant, though.

    6. But Bloom and his team defined knowledge as involving “the recall of specifics and universals, the recall of methods and processes, or the recall of a pattern, structure, or setting.” Which means that by this definition, knowledge is the same as recall.

      Key assumption for this view of learning.

    1. critical thinking

      What Would Bob Shepard Say?

    2. The value of universities to a capitalist society depends on their ability to resist capitalism, to carve out space for intellectual endeavors that don’t have obvious metrics or market value.

      Fun irony?

    3. customers

      MWLB again, as I mentioned above.

    4. if we imply that history, literature and linguistics are more or less interchangeable “content” that convey the same mental tools, we oversimplify the intellectual complexity that makes a university education worthwhile in the first place.

      Agree strongly. More Bob Shepard about how these terms are much more specific and contextual than they're claimed to be...

    5. Yet bureaucratic jargon subtly shapes the expectations of students and teachers alike. On the first day of class, my colleagues and I — especially in the humanities, where professors are perpetually anxious about falling enrollment — find ourselves rattling off the skills our courses offer (“Critical thinking! Clear writing!”), hyping our products like Apple Store clerks.

      MWLB - "hawking" as education-is-a-consumer-good metaphor.

    6. Here is the second irony: Learning assessment has not spurred discussion of the deep structural problems that send so many students to college unprepared to succeed.

      Part of P.L. Thomas's arguments against Mindset Theory as it's often implemented.

    7. Maybe all your students have full-time jobs

      This would be an example of an underlying process as mentioned in my above annotation/link.

    8. “If you get unprepared students in your class and they don’t do well, how does that get explained?”

      From "Thoughts on Junk Indicators, School Rating Systems & Accountability":

      "The measures we take can be referred to as “realizations” which are generated by underlying processes (all the stuff going on in school, as well as in the daily lives of the children attending and teachers working in those schools, inclusive of weather conditions, heating, cooling and lighting, home environments, etc.)."

      This will be true of all assessments--but I doubt that there's many people who adopt that perspective (that nothing short of the whole context is an explanation). Our brains can't handle that, of course, but in the search of simplifications, losing sight of this risks inhibiting our humility.

    9. and to prove it

      Domains bound by the exercise of judgment do not admit the entry of proof.

    10. lacking the critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today’s workplaces

      See John Warner (and also that Bob Shepard link above).

    11. It was politically convenient to hold universities accountable for all this, rather than to scrutinize neoliberal austerity measures.

      Efficiency and cost-cutting; a way to undermine the perceived value of higher education? (See, it's not high-quality...)

    12. assistant vice president for assessment and institutional effectiveness at Furman University

      Colleague of P.L. Thomas?

    13. “I do not feel threatened emotionally when presented with multiple perspectives”

      Seems... ill-advised. Not that it's an unimportant question/issue, but it seems like an ineffective and potentially harmful way to gather the data--phrasing it as a durable trait (as something general rather than case-specific.

    14. analyticity

      Bahahahhahahahha.

    15. certify

      I'm not sure I like this word. Accreditation seems like one of the clearest ways in which current educational institutions are right-wing/control-based (à la Ivan Illich).

    16. skills

      I don't think we have anywhere near a good enough understanding of what constitutes a "skill" here--despite how obvious/intuitive it might seem. I'm thinking of that Bob Shepard blog post.