Performance of Affect: American Style

I apologize that my vision has shrunk. At this point in the middle of the workweek, my gaze has shifted downward, so I can find nothing to write or think about except my place of employment, and the goings on there. I sometimes hope as an expatriate/exile from the empire living in a foreign land I am, in some ways, more in the center of things than I would be at home....

Yesterday we suffered through another magnificent "Staff Meeting" here at the Pretty Good International School.

Meetings come at the end of a long workday, so my patience is not exactly overflowing.

In some ways our meeting was a perfect illustration of one of the theses of Michael Alpert, he of PARECON fame, that in our capitalist world, the managerial class always comes to meetings better prepared than the workers.

Certainly, I felt that way when I was hit with a badly written so-called "mission statement" written by the ruler of an empire of international schools. The document was so over-written that it couldn't passEnglish 101 without a re-write. Excessive, puffy language--filled with pompous self-importance.

Our fearless leader, the local answer to Maggie Thatcher, called on class members (actually teachers) to suggest what they'd change to make the document more human. Plainly, she'd prepared her own re-write in advance.... My colleagues enthusiastically took advantage of a chance to participate in immortality.

Oddities in the text included the assertion that "group interaction" and "independent endeavor" were universally recognized virtues. As if there were not intense debates in the social sciences about what might be universal, and how you might prove such a proposition... As if there were no such data as that reported in "Schooling in Capitalist America", data suggesting that teachers and bosses in the US care more about whether workers follows orders than whether he or she has any capacity for independent thought or creativity . ..

But then, the whole meeting was the demonstration of a certain fascistic American groupthink: teachers enthusiastically acted out the roles dictated to them (implicitly at times) by our version of Maggie Thatcher. Public emotion displays--on demand.

Footnote: Aneta Pavlenko has some interesting things to say about this in her Emotions and Multilingualism--the first chapter of which is available for free at the CAmbridge University Press's web site. She points out that as English spreads, so too do Anglo-Saxon ways of performing affect....and she is judicious enough not to spend too much time asking if that's a good thing....(Though I would like to....)

Security and Paranoia

Who is protecting who from whom?

As a teacher at the Pretty Good International Schools International School, my job largely consists in providing the privileged children of moneyed parents with skills which will guarantee that they maintain their status.

It's something like being a servant of the rich in the past.... But is there shame in that? Isn't that how many creative composers survived in the past?

On the other hand, I recently explained to the director of our "IB" program that one student has missed more than half of my classes. She urged me to document this fact, in order to protect myself.

Hmmmm. Who am I protecting myself from? Is the student (or her parents) actually going to tell me it's my fault if this student can't get a passing grade?

From what I know of the student, I don't think she would. And, as a scholarship student, the parents won't complain about all the money they are paying......

paranoia to what point?

No Citizenship for Law Breakers--Or War Criminals?

There was a report on the BBC yesterday which featured the following thought about recently proposed repressive legislation aimed at non-citizen workers:

We shouldn't give citizenship to people who break the law.

That seems like a nice thought. But, what I really like is the converse of it: that some serious law-breakers should lose their citizenship--people like Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, and all of the others who profit from the illegal war in Iraq.

(I hope to add a reference on this in a future blog.)

The next morning on a BBC Business Program, I heard an even more insightful (and deliberately glib) remark about people who "sneak" into the US to do low paid work....

Although the next segment of the report offered a different description, the initial sting of this deeply unsympathetic description hardly left my ears. Some people are living lives of desperation without the customary guarantees of citizenship, and citizens are profiting thereby.

At any rate, the prominence of business programs on the BBC itself deserves comment for the deep insights it gives us into reality..... but I shall have to wait until I have a better example.

More IB TOK Madness

Continuing to assess my students' performance, I have also (inadvertently) been assessing the "International Baccalaureate Organization's" choice of essay topics....

Consider the following: "If education means learning to see through the cliches of one's time....."

My problem with this question is whether a 17 or 18 year-old student is capable of understanding the idea that people live according to cliches... let alone seeing what cliches motivate people today. (And I suspect this probably works at a generation or country or profession level.)

It seems to entail a sort of intellectual maturity that my students don't possess--something that comes from acquiring a certain distance and perspective.

My students themselves seem to be living desperately in the grips of various cliches--starting with the vulgar materialism which comes with free market fundamentalism in post-Socialist countries. (I'm getting sick of reading that we're all motivated by money.... with most of the alleged or presumed implications of that remark operating offstage--offstage both of the students explicit thoughts, and offstage of the particular piece of writing in which it occurs...)

A colleague has suggested that this question looks like something the question's author would have liked to write about..... There may be something to that....

Why does the IBO organization write so badly?

I have begun to re-read my students "Theory of Knowledge" Essays. I was immediately struck (once again) by the unnecessary verbiage in the questions.

In general, I believe that this is a common property of documents issued by the IBO organization. That is shameful for a variety of reasons. -Not least of which because they are supposed to be giving students an example....

Here is a question desperately in need of re-writing:

"Statistics can be very helpful in providing a powerful interpretation of reality but can also be used to distort our understanding. Discuss some of the ways in which statistics can be used or misused in different Areas of Knowledge to assist and mislead us, and how we can determine whether to accept the statistical evidence that is presented to us."

Exercise for the reader: Re-write this question in a simpler way.

Celebrate the Commercialization of Sports

Here at the Pretty Good International Schools International School, we recently had so-called "Sports Day".

On "Sports day" students and faculty were allowed and encouraged to support their favorite team by wearing attire with the team's name on it.

Are we supporting sports or the commercialization of sport?

What if I can't afford to buy a brand-name tee shirt?

Wouldn't a real sports day consist in spending the day playing sports?

One colleague encouraged me to participate: "You can wear sneakers", he said. I know he meant well, but I don't own sneakers; and I find it morally objectionable that such objects are made in countries where the workers are poorly paid and work in sweatshop conditions.

I do support health. I do support the pleasure of moving. Commercialization of sport? No thank you.

Distributed Cognition and the Pretty Good International School

This can be classified as gossip gone public......

Ordinary gossip about the work place is a way of dealing with problems. Of course, if you are powerless (e.g., because you lack a union), talking to co-workers is primarily a way to understand what you are experiencing.

Recently I was impressed by the way that some of my colleagues articulated certain problems at the school where I work. I believe that the manager's reaction showed a complete failure to comprehend what they were saying.

So far as principles of justice go, there's a very bad one that identifies justice with treating everybody the same. This intepretation of justice is regularly applied at the Pretty Good International Schools International School ("PGI International School").

One recent example involved faculty meetings after school. Our contracts stipulate that there must be a weekly meeting. The meetings are a time when administrators communicate. Sometimes we've witnessed teaching displays, intended to help us.

I must confess that I've not found the displays informative. Neither do I find the meetings valuable. They come at the end of a long day, and their main effect is to increase my exhaustion.

At any rate, it seems to me that even administrators find it difficult to find something to say every week. Recently the high school has had separate meetings from the elementary school. But, elementary school teachers are required to stay in their classrooms and cannot go home early. This is an example of the justice means the-same-for-everyone principle.

Behind the same-for-everyone principle is a fear that our Director once openly expressed: if she did it any other way, someone might complain...

unfinished

Where is there "distributed" cognition in all this? Gossiping with colleagues is a way of sharing and developing thoughts. Perhaps I abuse the technical language; perhaps not.

Brief Note on Bowling for Columbine

Moore thinks it is funny if he makes other, less privileged people, appear stupid. He asks the questions, and gets to be "smart".

He seems to have no concept of class. I write those words with a fresh memory of an excellent interview with Lani Guinier which appeared Friday in ZMAG : http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=9879 The people he pokes fun at are not privileged members of the society. And they certainly don't make the decision to go to war. Rather, they are the ones manipulated by the ruling elites.

However, that's a perspective beyond Michael Moore.

Yes, I'm a sort of "liberal" too; but with allies like Moore, who needs enemies?

Yes, it's good that he reminded his audience of the aggressive use of military force by previous US administrations..... but that doesn't justify his arrogance or ignorance.

draft

Capitalism and lack of democracy

This morning I heard Nancy Kellaway's Business commentary on the BBC. It is always interesting when a dogmatic friend of capitalism unwittingly provides support for those of us who believe capitalism is inevitably un-democratic.

Kellaway had been inspired by recent events at Harvard, but her comments were much more general. She remarked in passing (and quite blandly, I thought, though it is part of her "sarky" know-it-all style isn't it?) that in the ordinary workplace workers "kiss up" to the boss. (Evidently, that's okay with her.) By contrast, individualistic and selfish professors are just out for themselves, and wish to maintain a status quo which benefits them. Pity the poor manager, who, glimpsing the true needs of the organization, wishes to make a change.

This vision of a grand leader who knows what others cannot dates back to Plato and is intensely un-democratic. And, the depiction of the competitiveness of the ordinary workplace begs the question whether it's a good thing.

It is questionable whether the needs of "the company" or institution can be classified as unselfish or moral. On the contrary, when we talk about the "company" we are talking about the interests of a small group of people--the owners or stockholders. The suggestions that professors are selfish and managers are not is, simply, laughable. (I won't mention Enron or the way that US auto companies are reneging on promises to people who used to work for them...) Similarly, the suggestion that managers are in a position of privileged knowledge is itself questionable. They may have some special access to the wishes of owners or other privileged groups, but that's hardly knowledge of what's just....

Politeness and the Full Service International School

Yesterday at the Pretty Good International School here in Fast-vakia, teachers met parents. One colleague was positively itching to get one student's mother aside and inform her of the rude behavior of her daughter. After their conference, the teacher said to me something like, "It wasn't just a case of cultural misunderstanding...." And he went on to imitate the child's behavior (eyes rolling toward the heavens)....

But by my lights, this particular colleague carries politeness to an obsequious extreme. Morevoer, I worry that one can get personally committed to the Just Avenger Routine.
What really hangs on it? Can a child really harm me or my ego? Those are the sorts of questions I've asked myself at various times..... Footnote: See the article by Ekman and others about the Buddhists on emotion. There are emotions which simply are never good to have.....
http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/publications/ 2005/Ekmanet.al_CurrDirPsychSci.pdf-
Further afterthought: and are not those emotions which some find themselves holding precisely in virtue of what they wrongly imagine to be morality?......

Alas, these are deep waters, and here at the Pretty Good International School, we are very busy. Deep sea diving equipment is just too expensive. Our inboxes are overflowing with good intentions and demands to meet, forms to fill out, and students to educate and moralize. So, as a teacher, I sympathize with other teachers who find the demands overwhelming. We are not only supposed to teach but also to entertain our young charges with sports and cultural activities. Additionally, we are (according to some) at all times appearing on stage in the guise of role models. Hence, we must never, for example, use taboo words....

Unfortunately, I have not got the facility for determining a student's intentions that some of my colleagues seem to possess. I've heard such expressions of certainty as, "That student was being impolite. I know it..." (And somewhere in the background I want to add the unspoken words: don't give me any of that crap about cross-cultural misunderstanding...)

I am, however, deeply sceptical. Sin, classically conceived, requires quite determinate intentions: the evil-doer must know what they are doing.

And that requires the person passing judgment to be in a position to say: I know what he/she knows.....

Which, is a matter of what's in the head, what they are really thinking, or what they've done with the input they've received, or a matter of how attention is focused, and a matter of how one's particular personal history has primed one's attentiveness, etc.

All of which complications are too much for the busy teacher bees at the Pretty Good International School.

Some will complain that these complications are merely the invention of frustrated philosophers or psychologists. Alas, they correspond to things in the real world. And so long as we ignore these elements of reality and tar them with the brush "unncessary complication" we shall be behaving ignorantly, and willfully so.

I think of a conversation I recently had with the local version of the Iron Lady. Why, the IL pondered, don't the Korean students smile and say "Hello" or "Good Morning" back to her in the early morning when she greets them?

I asked one of my students about this. She said that she does smile and greet the IL. And the other students? Probably they think the IL is crazy, or they are simply embarrassed and confused. A school director in Korea wouldn't engage in this behavior....

Are we teaching something substantial? Or are we merely spreading Anglo-Saxon or North American ways of behaving?

Footnote: Which linguist was it who once said something like this: There's an ethical problem about monolingual English speakers going around the world allegedly educating multilingual students.....?

Indeed, there is an ethical problem here.

experimental philosophy

The original article in Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2137223/?nav=fo did have its share of hyperbole. You can excuse that on the grounds that it was a "popular" article. That does not affect the fact that work classified as "experimental" is among the most interesting stuff being done today.

I give Josh Greene an A+ for his article on Kant's joke--linked to the reply by various philosophical heavies to Velleman's remarks...http://leiterreports.typepad.com/.What I especially liked about the article was the way it managed to deflate deontological approaches to ethics.

I suspect that anyone working in Ancient Ethics could benefit from thinking about Greene's suggestion. Socrates can be made to seem very odd if you insist he's either a deontologist or a consequentialist. I once attended a Socrates Seminar led by the late Gregory Vlastos in which he seemed to suffer from an undefended philosophical commitment to some sort of deontological view, and that made his interpretation of Socrates (for me) most implausible.

I can't defend this in detail if any Ancient Philosopher should happen to read this; but, then this is a blog, not a journal article.....

limits to parental authority?

To earn my daily bread I teach at an International School...and this is a peculiar niche in the cultural fabric of the world.

My daily experiences are often troubling and leave me with a sense of incompleteness, as if I had entered a sort of whirlpool where I must watch other people drown, all the while doing the best to prevent my own head from going under. Ugliest of all, of course is seeing other people (metaphorically) drowning because someone has pushed them under.....

All these generalities boil down to one particular experience involving a student and another teacher. The issue is whether one should take into account the possibility that a parent uses corporal punishment at home. Should that make a teacher hesitate to give a bad report about student "behavior" to a parent? This particular incident is more complicated because I doubt my colleague's assessment. Moreover, I doubt the efficacy of having an official report of less-than-ideal deportment.
My colleague shocked me when she took the attitude: whatever a parent does at home is none of my business.
On the contrary, if you know your actions have certain consequences, you are responsible for those consequences. And, unless you approve of corporal punishment in the home--and you'd better have arguments for that--then you'd better think twice.
My colleague's approach was, in short, irresponsible.

Recommended article: Nicholas Humphrey, "What shall we tell the children?" http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers1998WhatShallWeTell.pdf

wise and foolish decisions

What is the underlying ideology among teachers and administrators where I work? I've heard teachers talk about the choices made by students in a very bizarre way: He made a c h o i c e ... or It was h i s c h o i c e .... as if choice were some sort of magic word.....

I don't believe this is merely ordinary English uninfluenced by religion or some other ideology.

What they seem to be saying is: It was his choice; so I have a right and duty to PUNISH him.
--As if somehow any responsibility for that act of punishment were obviated...

I seem to have heard a similar ideology-influenced pattern of speech in the beginning of "Bowling for Columbine", of which I've only seen 25 minutes. (And about which I say: the theme seems to be "Smart Michael Moore/Stupid Everyone Else"....not insightful...)

I suspect a rather primitive picture of morality is at work: Good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell. --And those bad ones deserve to suffer because of the free choices they made.

All of which is dubious for a variety of reasons. To start with, I can't see the sense of suffering in and of itself. If suffering isn't educational, then it serves no purpose--except, perhaps, to assert an unequal power relationship. Moreover, it is a rather obnoxious idea that one person should have the job of doling out suffering to another.

But the important point is: what is the basis of these beliefs? Do any of these people have any reason (other than "intuition", or the empty and a priori "it makes sense", or appeal to holy texts) to believe what they are advocating works? I suspect they have absolutely no evidence whatsoever.... And these beliefs actually make them unfit to come into contact with young people; they are more likely to do harm than good. Their relationships can't be healthy when it includes this bizarre thought process.... no matter how "good" the intentions may be on one (superficial) level... ((Good intentions and their harmful consequence: The best description I know of this is found in Graham Greene's The Quite American...))

a note on props, meditation, and the theatre

Books about meditation tell of one way to focus the mind: think of a specific object. Recently, I seem to have found an application of that principle in (what was for me) an unexpected context.

In my outside of work life I sometimes participate in amateur dance concerts. At a recent rehearsal for a local school's recital, the school's director was trying to explain his dissatisfaction with my performance, and said something like: You should have a red nose.

At the time, the meaning of his words was opaque to me. But, the day of the performance another dancer brought me a red nose (with string attached) to wear during the performance.

The nose helped me play the part of someone involved in a circus or carnival. (The music was from the film 'Emilie of Montmarte" (sp?), and I apologize to the composer for not knowing his name.) If I were to try to describe it now, I'd say: I felt freer to pretend to be someone else, to play a part--though no specific part had been specified. (And, in the very indefinite suggestiveness of it all I felt there was a certain charm....)

It was especially amusing to hear the sounds (comments?) from the audience as I made my entrance with my red nose......

This also reminds me of Zimbardo's suggestion that wearing masks--being impersonalized--helps soldiers be violent....?possibly a similar process? (see, ?eg? -I need to check this reference....http://www.zimbardo.com/downloads/2003%20Evil%20Chapter.pdf