Chapter 6: Enter Postmodernism
Barker
Wow. How interesting to see the nation-state and military power as a social construction. I had listed Germany in the first exam as also a form of hegemony. The whole idea of nation-state was forced on the people such that denial of the state became a crime. Even today the idea of country and nation is so entrenched in the beliefs of all people that I find it amusing that American citizens with Mexican ancestry cannot see the irony in the the celebration of supplanting one nation with another in the La Raza Unida and LULAC rallies.
I have some problems with the facts of modernism in individualization and urbanization. I find that in many ways these are at opposite ends of the spectrum. To me the rural ideology is more entrenched in individualism than the urban ideology. The ability to self-sustain is far more applicable in a rural environment than urban where the person is more required to depend on others for needs and goods. I think of an electoral map of the United States that shows the rural maps invariably vote for individual rights over beauracratic services and redistribution of wealth in a community based manner. How does Barker explain this seemingly disjointed belief?
Chapter 7: Issues of Subjectivity and Identity
Barker
The thing that is most at the forefront of my mind during this chapter is the identity of women in immigrant cultures. At what point in the interactions with new societies do women become willing to address themselves as individuals in a new permissive culture? Do women's rights apply to women who willingly choose to not partake in them? Does the willingness of a woman to exist as a subjugated culture mean they are choosing as their identity this role or is this something the new culture should enforce on immigrant women?
Disrupting decifit notions of difference: Counter-narratives of teachers and community in urban education
Milner
When I taught over a decade ago it was in a rural school in East Texas that was 45% black, 45% white, and 10% Mexican (and by this I mean Mexican nationals who were working fields of agriculture or oil). Most of the Mexican students had limited English proficiency. While the number of students in each class varied from an urban environment the diversity, cultural beliefs, and transience were similar to those mentioned in the article. What I noted as I taught was that students LOVED hearing about my life (both past and present). It was interesting for me to read the article to find the applicability to rural schools as well. To this day I have relationships with past students and really appreciated the power of story to effective teaching.
I think I identified most with "Mr. Hall." Every day I taught I tried to find a similarity to my life so that students could see that I was not "other." That I could empathiize with their lives in some way.
It was interesting to watch Milner deconstruct the idea of "urban student." For so many situations I wondered what made each of these teachers good teachers versus what made them good for an "urban" environment. Milner presented the situations in ways that tore down the walls about socio-economic standards and made the reader identify the students as just that "students" and children at that.
What is the implication of consistency with students across demographics? Is this more important to students who perhaps lack it in their lives, or is this a need that all students need in that age group? Or is this a need all children have, period?
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Reading 5
The Surveillance Economy of Post-Columbine Schools
Tyson Lewis
"To control the populous, disciplinary regimes do not rely on ostentatious displays of power through violence. Rather, disciplinary power is effective because it “differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes.”
Power will always need to exert itself to control a population. This is done through a variety of laws that need to be adhered to for the safety of the populace. What differentiates this from a totalitarian regime would be the quiet, less physically abusive method. A citizen must ask him or herself if this normalization is acceptable for the safety of the populace. I would be interested to see an example of a society that does not use normalization techniques or physical pressure. Can a society exist without pressures of some sort to ensure the "safety" of the people.
Always suspecting they are under surveillance, the prisoners will become self-regulating, docile bodies, internalizing disciplined behaviors. This system “enables the disciplinary power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and always alert, and absolutely discrete, for it functions permanently and largely in silence.”
So the answer is to give more power to this government? How strange that on the one hand people recognize this surveillance, especially the overt Patriot Act which is in the news, and yet are willing to give even MORE power to this same government (regardless of political affiliation) with respect to the banking, education and health care industries.
The newest terms that are bandied about is safety and fairness. Safety can be applied to all avenues of life: safety from hunger, unemployment, disease. In exchange people give upa lot and those who disagree are labelled through normalizing techniques "inconsiderate" or "angry" or "greedy". Ironically through discourse within each group the same terms have different meaning. What is "fair" to one group is grossly exclusive to another group.
Teachers are taught to police student work for signs of potential violence, extracting feelings and motives from creative expressions and comparing these motives against a battery of normalized prescriptions. Some teachers have protested
that such extremism only leads to hysteria and paranoia, but, at the same time, many teachers feel that the stakes are simply too high to ignore what might be warning signs.
In reality teachers were already doing this. The change was in the labelling of subsets according to criteria that was based on things that teachers didn't ordinaarily consider (ie. student-student interaction)
While such emotional hysteria might benefit the extension of disciplinary power, it certainly does not encourage the construction of democratic coalitions or critical intellectualism that is willing to challenge forms of domination and oppression.
I personally find critical intellectualism to be just as problematic. It enters the field as an outsider looking into a situation without little to no experience in practical application. Education is rife with experimental beliefs that are based in unpracticed theory and students become experiments to prove their validity. How is the construction of critical intellectualism necessarily appropriate for this purpose? Isn't the intellectual basis for educational principles in fact a hegemony that teachers are forced to follow?
American Education- Chapter 6
Joel Spring
I found this chapter to be purposefully vague and contradictory.
I was really disappointed that Spring chose to support the side againt vouchers using a TEACHERS UNION who would of COURSE be against school vouchers. And the book stated only " there is no credible evidence to prove it actually works." Is there proof it is a negative factor? The point of school vouchers is more than an academic need. If a parent wants the student to attend a new school for social or safety reasons what is to work? Who determines what works? While I am sure the evidence exists against school vouchers, Spring didn't offer any research or aticles to prove this point. This dissapointed me because I would like to have read an informed reasoning against vouchers.
What would not be reflected in the school vouchers would be the cultural frame of reference the student holds even in a new environment. The student may deal with situations with new people in the same way because they expect to have a situation play out in a particular way. This reminds me of D'Angelo's take on the Great Gatsby. The decision to create a new persona relies on the ability to let go of the past AND the willingness to be someone new. If you buy new books but never read them, you aren't any different than when you didn't own books to start with.
I would think that to be effective school vouchers would need a large measure of social and psychological intervention for students choosing to change schools for safety reasons. A new environment doesn't mean the student is necessarily safer.
Homeschooling is a controversial subject in many states. I find it highly amusing that the same teacher unions that fight accreditation for teachers then disaparage parents who homeschool for not having this same accreditaion. Many of these parents are college educated in fields more applicable to homeschooling that some certified teachers.
I think that what ties all homeschoolers together is the interest in being affective educators. The control over the child's education (regardless of political leanings) is central to the decision to homeschool. Again the parents who choose to homeschool buck againt the elite hegemony who limits what is important and what it not.
Tyson Lewis
"To control the populous, disciplinary regimes do not rely on ostentatious displays of power through violence. Rather, disciplinary power is effective because it “differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes.”
Power will always need to exert itself to control a population. This is done through a variety of laws that need to be adhered to for the safety of the populace. What differentiates this from a totalitarian regime would be the quiet, less physically abusive method. A citizen must ask him or herself if this normalization is acceptable for the safety of the populace. I would be interested to see an example of a society that does not use normalization techniques or physical pressure. Can a society exist without pressures of some sort to ensure the "safety" of the people.
Always suspecting they are under surveillance, the prisoners will become self-regulating, docile bodies, internalizing disciplined behaviors. This system “enables the disciplinary power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and always alert, and absolutely discrete, for it functions permanently and largely in silence.”
So the answer is to give more power to this government? How strange that on the one hand people recognize this surveillance, especially the overt Patriot Act which is in the news, and yet are willing to give even MORE power to this same government (regardless of political affiliation) with respect to the banking, education and health care industries.
The newest terms that are bandied about is safety and fairness. Safety can be applied to all avenues of life: safety from hunger, unemployment, disease. In exchange people give upa lot and those who disagree are labelled through normalizing techniques "inconsiderate" or "angry" or "greedy". Ironically through discourse within each group the same terms have different meaning. What is "fair" to one group is grossly exclusive to another group.
Teachers are taught to police student work for signs of potential violence, extracting feelings and motives from creative expressions and comparing these motives against a battery of normalized prescriptions. Some teachers have protested
that such extremism only leads to hysteria and paranoia, but, at the same time, many teachers feel that the stakes are simply too high to ignore what might be warning signs.
In reality teachers were already doing this. The change was in the labelling of subsets according to criteria that was based on things that teachers didn't ordinaarily consider (ie. student-student interaction)
While such emotional hysteria might benefit the extension of disciplinary power, it certainly does not encourage the construction of democratic coalitions or critical intellectualism that is willing to challenge forms of domination and oppression.
I personally find critical intellectualism to be just as problematic. It enters the field as an outsider looking into a situation without little to no experience in practical application. Education is rife with experimental beliefs that are based in unpracticed theory and students become experiments to prove their validity. How is the construction of critical intellectualism necessarily appropriate for this purpose? Isn't the intellectual basis for educational principles in fact a hegemony that teachers are forced to follow?
American Education- Chapter 6
Joel Spring
I found this chapter to be purposefully vague and contradictory.
I was really disappointed that Spring chose to support the side againt vouchers using a TEACHERS UNION who would of COURSE be against school vouchers. And the book stated only " there is no credible evidence to prove it actually works." Is there proof it is a negative factor? The point of school vouchers is more than an academic need. If a parent wants the student to attend a new school for social or safety reasons what is to work? Who determines what works? While I am sure the evidence exists against school vouchers, Spring didn't offer any research or aticles to prove this point. This dissapointed me because I would like to have read an informed reasoning against vouchers.
What would not be reflected in the school vouchers would be the cultural frame of reference the student holds even in a new environment. The student may deal with situations with new people in the same way because they expect to have a situation play out in a particular way. This reminds me of D'Angelo's take on the Great Gatsby. The decision to create a new persona relies on the ability to let go of the past AND the willingness to be someone new. If you buy new books but never read them, you aren't any different than when you didn't own books to start with.
I would think that to be effective school vouchers would need a large measure of social and psychological intervention for students choosing to change schools for safety reasons. A new environment doesn't mean the student is necessarily safer.
Homeschooling is a controversial subject in many states. I find it highly amusing that the same teacher unions that fight accreditation for teachers then disaparage parents who homeschool for not having this same accreditaion. Many of these parents are college educated in fields more applicable to homeschooling that some certified teachers.
I think that what ties all homeschoolers together is the interest in being affective educators. The control over the child's education (regardless of political leanings) is central to the decision to homeschool. Again the parents who choose to homeschool buck againt the elite hegemony who limits what is important and what it not.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Reading 4
Barker- Cultural Studies Chapter 4
Biology and Culture
I respect Barker's viewpoint to assess gender and the body with respect to cultural as well as physiological implications. In choosing to dismiss completely biological explanations as reductionist, the practitioners in effect present a form of their own reductionism. A viewpoint that is encompassing of a variety of alternative explanations would be by definition more open-minded and critical.
Reductionism makes me think of the scientific method. It is impossible to have a true scientific experiment without some measure of control and variable so that a scientist can truly track that which is part of the causal chain. Additionally, a trained scientist should acknowledge that even when a causal chain appears to exist one must account and accept that forces not controlled could be the cause of any events.
Even more interesting to me is viewing the science culture through a Foucault lens. Science expects and demands answers in varying levels. In fact it can be argued that the scientific community forms its own social grouping that consists of it own normalizing techniques especially with respect to who can speak and who cannot. Even more disturbing is that through peer-reviewed journals, scientists determine which ideas are "important" and which are not. Strangely through surveillance and discursive practices scientists allow themselves to be restrained with respect to the very ideas they should be attempting to unravel.
I'd like to dissect this comment by Dennett "The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution is now beyond dispute among scientists." First is the irony of stating a theory in "beyond dispute." ( Barker, 124) Theories (while at any given point in time may seem "truth") should always be subject to new viewpoints and varying tests. This statement directly exemplifies the problem I noted in the preceding paragraph. As scientists are at the mercy of journals in who can say what, when, information that may be in disagreement with a current theory may be suppressed for political and personal reasons thus altering the known and public set of scientific principles.
What Barker does not note (and I think it is important here) is that Dawkins is a devout atheist (and I reconize the oxymoron here!) who uses his evolutionary theory in a political way to disprove the belief in God. I note this because in Dawkins's attempt to break the ideology of God, he creates a new ideology based on the theory of evolution.
Barker- Cultural Studies Chapter 8
Ethnicity, Race and Nation
Not only is race a social construction but it became embedded in a political agenda. This correlation made me question how many of our political beliefs are embedded in social constructions and how many social constructions are embedded in our political beliefs. Does the connection work both ways in equilibrium (constantly shifting due to outlying factors) or is one direction more prevalent?
The idea of the nation-state and "imagined communities" (Barker 253) are especially important when taking into consideration Ogbu's social theory of voluntary and involuntary minorities. One would assume that in the application of a voluntary immigration a person is giving a level of acceptance to the nation-state ideal with which respect to their own identities. As a contrast, involuntary immigrants would see acceptance of the new nation-state as a denial of self and futhermore a consent to the treatment to which they would be subjected.
This is most obvious in contrasting a black citizen of America to an African immigrant who comes to America. I remember in college finding it very interesting that foreign students from Africa were more likely to cross race lines (not only in normalizing techniques of whites but also black Americans). I especially remember thinking it was odd because the African immigrant was more likely to have language as a cultural barrier. Perhaps African immigrants were more willing to lump together Americans despite color than Americans are willing to lump themselves together. This feeds my assertion that cultural studies should spend more time on emphasizing what draws us together and less on what separates us.
Wih respect to savage and slaves (Barker 264), I'd like to take it one step further. In Shakespeare's time through the use of current popular culture, the playwrights took the savage to a new level by naming a character in a play Caliban. This is a clear play on the word cannibal. Caliban's character also extends the stereotypical belief that native, wild people can't keep their hands off pale white women (menace to society). It is this belief that causes the protagonist Prospero to treat him poorly and through a series of typically Shakerspearean farce, eventually leads Caliban to CHOOSE to obey his enslaver.
Based on the notion of race, ethnicity and culture, how long (how many generations) occur before the hybridization occurs such that the dominant culture starts to replace facets of the immigrants culture?
Spring- American Education Chapter 5
Multicultural and Multilingual Education
I am leery of accepting the binary of Western/Confucianism. I think that alternate realities encapsulate a measure of both the whole and the parts to view different portions of the world at any time. Confucianism is limited with respect to orientation and travel. By this I mean that an object or person is seldom removed from its original environment and moved to a new environment. The Chinese society of past (in Confucious time) was very isolated. The ideas about the object on its own apart from environment was not as required as in Western world when objects had to serve similar purposes in a new environment. For example, will this plant, animal, person thrive in this new environment? Western thought would be concerned with the plant and not necessarily the new environment as a whole. It is obvious how these viewpoints led to Individualist and Collectivist societies.
How does the concept of freedom differ in Individualist and Collectivist societies?
Cultural frames of reference can act as negative factors on a person's experience. It could create a false concsiousness of discrimination in a changing culture that does not actually discriminate according to the expectations created in the dominated culture.
My experience is completely contrary to the sexism experience. I was always supported by my teachers and parents for my abilities in skills in math and science.
I hit the SAT out of the park, was involved in sports, and pursued a bachelor's degree in a male-dominated science discipline (Chemistry) Even in those courses I never felt like I was less of a student or treated different in any way. However, I will say that I find myself grouping "women" into a less than acceptable group based on my experiences with them. I would never choose an all-woman's university or school, simply because that would mean it was all women LOL!
Language and Cultural Rights in a time of Diaspora:
Jews are a unique culture (race and/or ethnicity) because their being revolves around their religion. Because Jews were forced to travel the world to find a place to live they always found themselves as outsiders in part of a foreign culture. However they held onto their primary culture and beliefs in two main ways:
a) educating for economic power (via lisa delpit's theories)
b) ethnocentric education (held at synagogue through Hebrew School)
I would propose that althought for most intents Jews would be considered "white" (especially Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European ancestry) they have only recently been accepted by the dominant culture as "white." This in fact coincides with the decrease in ethnocentric education (while educating for economic power was held constant).
Biology and Culture
I respect Barker's viewpoint to assess gender and the body with respect to cultural as well as physiological implications. In choosing to dismiss completely biological explanations as reductionist, the practitioners in effect present a form of their own reductionism. A viewpoint that is encompassing of a variety of alternative explanations would be by definition more open-minded and critical.
Reductionism makes me think of the scientific method. It is impossible to have a true scientific experiment without some measure of control and variable so that a scientist can truly track that which is part of the causal chain. Additionally, a trained scientist should acknowledge that even when a causal chain appears to exist one must account and accept that forces not controlled could be the cause of any events.
Even more interesting to me is viewing the science culture through a Foucault lens. Science expects and demands answers in varying levels. In fact it can be argued that the scientific community forms its own social grouping that consists of it own normalizing techniques especially with respect to who can speak and who cannot. Even more disturbing is that through peer-reviewed journals, scientists determine which ideas are "important" and which are not. Strangely through surveillance and discursive practices scientists allow themselves to be restrained with respect to the very ideas they should be attempting to unravel.
I'd like to dissect this comment by Dennett "The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution is now beyond dispute among scientists." First is the irony of stating a theory in "beyond dispute." ( Barker, 124) Theories (while at any given point in time may seem "truth") should always be subject to new viewpoints and varying tests. This statement directly exemplifies the problem I noted in the preceding paragraph. As scientists are at the mercy of journals in who can say what, when, information that may be in disagreement with a current theory may be suppressed for political and personal reasons thus altering the known and public set of scientific principles.
What Barker does not note (and I think it is important here) is that Dawkins is a devout atheist (and I reconize the oxymoron here!) who uses his evolutionary theory in a political way to disprove the belief in God. I note this because in Dawkins's attempt to break the ideology of God, he creates a new ideology based on the theory of evolution.
Barker- Cultural Studies Chapter 8
Ethnicity, Race and Nation
Not only is race a social construction but it became embedded in a political agenda. This correlation made me question how many of our political beliefs are embedded in social constructions and how many social constructions are embedded in our political beliefs. Does the connection work both ways in equilibrium (constantly shifting due to outlying factors) or is one direction more prevalent?
The idea of the nation-state and "imagined communities" (Barker 253) are especially important when taking into consideration Ogbu's social theory of voluntary and involuntary minorities. One would assume that in the application of a voluntary immigration a person is giving a level of acceptance to the nation-state ideal with which respect to their own identities. As a contrast, involuntary immigrants would see acceptance of the new nation-state as a denial of self and futhermore a consent to the treatment to which they would be subjected.
This is most obvious in contrasting a black citizen of America to an African immigrant who comes to America. I remember in college finding it very interesting that foreign students from Africa were more likely to cross race lines (not only in normalizing techniques of whites but also black Americans). I especially remember thinking it was odd because the African immigrant was more likely to have language as a cultural barrier. Perhaps African immigrants were more willing to lump together Americans despite color than Americans are willing to lump themselves together. This feeds my assertion that cultural studies should spend more time on emphasizing what draws us together and less on what separates us.
Wih respect to savage and slaves (Barker 264), I'd like to take it one step further. In Shakespeare's time through the use of current popular culture, the playwrights took the savage to a new level by naming a character in a play Caliban. This is a clear play on the word cannibal. Caliban's character also extends the stereotypical belief that native, wild people can't keep their hands off pale white women (menace to society). It is this belief that causes the protagonist Prospero to treat him poorly and through a series of typically Shakerspearean farce, eventually leads Caliban to CHOOSE to obey his enslaver.
Based on the notion of race, ethnicity and culture, how long (how many generations) occur before the hybridization occurs such that the dominant culture starts to replace facets of the immigrants culture?
Spring- American Education Chapter 5
Multicultural and Multilingual Education
I am leery of accepting the binary of Western/Confucianism. I think that alternate realities encapsulate a measure of both the whole and the parts to view different portions of the world at any time. Confucianism is limited with respect to orientation and travel. By this I mean that an object or person is seldom removed from its original environment and moved to a new environment. The Chinese society of past (in Confucious time) was very isolated. The ideas about the object on its own apart from environment was not as required as in Western world when objects had to serve similar purposes in a new environment. For example, will this plant, animal, person thrive in this new environment? Western thought would be concerned with the plant and not necessarily the new environment as a whole. It is obvious how these viewpoints led to Individualist and Collectivist societies.
How does the concept of freedom differ in Individualist and Collectivist societies?
Cultural frames of reference can act as negative factors on a person's experience. It could create a false concsiousness of discrimination in a changing culture that does not actually discriminate according to the expectations created in the dominated culture.
My experience is completely contrary to the sexism experience. I was always supported by my teachers and parents for my abilities in skills in math and science.
I hit the SAT out of the park, was involved in sports, and pursued a bachelor's degree in a male-dominated science discipline (Chemistry) Even in those courses I never felt like I was less of a student or treated different in any way. However, I will say that I find myself grouping "women" into a less than acceptable group based on my experiences with them. I would never choose an all-woman's university or school, simply because that would mean it was all women LOL!
Language and Cultural Rights in a time of Diaspora:
Jews are a unique culture (race and/or ethnicity) because their being revolves around their religion. Because Jews were forced to travel the world to find a place to live they always found themselves as outsiders in part of a foreign culture. However they held onto their primary culture and beliefs in two main ways:
a) educating for economic power (via lisa delpit's theories)
b) ethnocentric education (held at synagogue through Hebrew School)
I would propose that althought for most intents Jews would be considered "white" (especially Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European ancestry) they have only recently been accepted by the dominant culture as "white." This in fact coincides with the decrease in ethnocentric education (while educating for economic power was held constant).
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reading 3
Spring American Education Chapter 4
Student Diversity
"...emphasis was on deculturalizaton or replacing what were considered non-American cultures with an American culture." (Spring, p.87) I am curious if this is past projection of reasons or if this truly was the reasoning. It is incontrovertible fact that to succeed and become a part of the diverse culture that you MUST learn English. Allowing citizens to keep within their communities would increase likelihood of strife between cultures that see themselves as having nothing in common as they are not able to communicated with each other. Because the requirement of learning English (and please note that their own languages were never outlawed like the use of Scots in the late 1700s) has been tagged with negative connotation then people fall in line to see the negatives instead of realizing the positives of such cultural beliefs. Knowledge is power and knowledge of the language of the vast majority of the people in the country is power and the decision to not learn is foolhardy. The eradication of primary language is alluded to many times but not a single excerpt has shown this. This may even have been the intent but I see no where the outlaw of the speech within the homes or everyday behavior. It doesn't even seem to be outlawed with respect to economic structure.
Teaching another language as seen as eradication of the language is a anachronistic leap. It is rational to follow that as California was conquered by the United States who language was English that the laws would be expected to be passed in English. How could they establish state's rights in a federalist system otherwise?
Similarly the requirement that school children learn the language should be seen as a stepping stone of empowerment. Children who speak dozens of languages (my grandparents are examples, both didn't have English as a second language) come into public schools every year and one language that the economy and society uses would be the intuitive language to teach to the children. Allowing bilingual education in Spanish only is ludicrous as well.
The people in power see that education is empowerment so they make laws to suppress it. Yet today it is free for everyone and who are the ones suppressing their own people and devaluing it? How does one increase the number of Latino students going to college id their families and parents do not understand the value of it?
Interesting that Spring does not mention coolie labor with respect to immigration numbers and makes it sound like the Chinese just didn't save enough money to get home. He does mention it later with respect to cultural stereotypes however. What the heck is yellow peril? Is it a disease?
The situation with Chinese students as well as Mexican students gives credence to my assertion that a single language is more conducive to learning as a group without de facto segregation within schools as well.
I have to note here the silliness in advocating Anglo-Saxon Christianity when Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew. Also, do the Native Americans consider it their land? Or are we placing capitalistic mentality on a different culture in expressing their concerns for them? It became "their land" because the government called it "their land"
Table 4-7 Increase in percentage of school children who speak ESL but DECREASE in the number of students who speak English with difficulty.
As the census starts this year the note that classification of race is done by self-determination really struck me. At what point will people classify themselves as separate from what others would classify them. How do people who come from disparate cultures decide to classify themselves (Chinese and black for example).
My question is Why is the teaching of school in English necessarily considered eradication of a primary language?
Barker Cultural Studies Chapter 3
Linguistic Turn in Cultural Studies
Dress codes as speech. I'm reminded of a trip to Italy and France where we couldn't find any shorts. We were told that shorts were ONLY worn to the beach and walking the streets of Paris in them is equivalent to wearing a bathing suit. It also screams AMERICAN. So people are speaking and telling people who they are without saying a word.
Question: Are polysemic signs based on intent or on the receiver. All communication is made of three parts: Sender, Receiver and Message. Any part in the process which is not what was intended and/or expected creates a process in discord with intent.
"difference and deferral" Perhaps the reasoning behind this is the use of synonyms. Words all have shades of meaning and in taking the steps to share shades of meaning I am reminded of geographic speciation. As animals move further away and isolated from each other, a new species is developed through natural selection that can no longer successfully reproduce with the original species. In this the deferral process is a kind of word speciation.
Discursive practices: (Barker, 90)
Discourse constructs, defines, and produces the objects of knowledge in an intelligible way while excluding other forms of reasoning as unintelligible.
Discourse gives meaning to actions, beliefs, objects that ordinarily would serve other purposes.
Chapter 13 Youth Style and Resistance
Youth is not a scientific definition? I find this unclear. Adolescence and growth markers are used on ALL species. Life cycles are a form of biology study and youth (a time period of continued growth and physical maturity) is certainly a scientific part of that cycle. I think that youth waas constructed for legal purposes. Physically and mentally (and maybe even emotionally) the persons may be mature but the law is based on numbers (18 to vote and 21 to drink) so those who are in a time period where they seem "lost" to the law are labelled youth.
Style constitutes a group identity And by creating a new identity they find themselves a part of a greater whole just as they would be otherwise.
Self-damnation. This is something I would like to study more of as it is so incredibly irrational to me. Can I say again how insulting I find the term "working-class" I am working even if I am at my desk thank you very much. The problem I can't understand is why physical labor and education are exclusionary. My husband was raised in a farming family and his brother and father still farm while Craig works at a desk. But if given a choice Craig would farm as well but his value education places him in a different occupation until his children are through with their educations.
I appreciate that youth subculture is not just about resistance. I think that in labelling it only resistance or speaking out the control center of the culture was attempting to define youth through a tag off the center instead of acknowleding the cutlure in its own right.
Question for this chapter: If the youth or subgroups descend into the same beliefs that originally caused the culture then did the predominant culture win or was there ever a chance that the subculture would last and therefore it just ran its course through a process of maturity?
Student Diversity
"...emphasis was on deculturalizaton or replacing what were considered non-American cultures with an American culture." (Spring, p.87) I am curious if this is past projection of reasons or if this truly was the reasoning. It is incontrovertible fact that to succeed and become a part of the diverse culture that you MUST learn English. Allowing citizens to keep within their communities would increase likelihood of strife between cultures that see themselves as having nothing in common as they are not able to communicated with each other. Because the requirement of learning English (and please note that their own languages were never outlawed like the use of Scots in the late 1700s) has been tagged with negative connotation then people fall in line to see the negatives instead of realizing the positives of such cultural beliefs. Knowledge is power and knowledge of the language of the vast majority of the people in the country is power and the decision to not learn is foolhardy. The eradication of primary language is alluded to many times but not a single excerpt has shown this. This may even have been the intent but I see no where the outlaw of the speech within the homes or everyday behavior. It doesn't even seem to be outlawed with respect to economic structure.
Teaching another language as seen as eradication of the language is a anachronistic leap. It is rational to follow that as California was conquered by the United States who language was English that the laws would be expected to be passed in English. How could they establish state's rights in a federalist system otherwise?
Similarly the requirement that school children learn the language should be seen as a stepping stone of empowerment. Children who speak dozens of languages (my grandparents are examples, both didn't have English as a second language) come into public schools every year and one language that the economy and society uses would be the intuitive language to teach to the children. Allowing bilingual education in Spanish only is ludicrous as well.
The people in power see that education is empowerment so they make laws to suppress it. Yet today it is free for everyone and who are the ones suppressing their own people and devaluing it? How does one increase the number of Latino students going to college id their families and parents do not understand the value of it?
Interesting that Spring does not mention coolie labor with respect to immigration numbers and makes it sound like the Chinese just didn't save enough money to get home. He does mention it later with respect to cultural stereotypes however. What the heck is yellow peril? Is it a disease?
The situation with Chinese students as well as Mexican students gives credence to my assertion that a single language is more conducive to learning as a group without de facto segregation within schools as well.
I have to note here the silliness in advocating Anglo-Saxon Christianity when Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew. Also, do the Native Americans consider it their land? Or are we placing capitalistic mentality on a different culture in expressing their concerns for them? It became "their land" because the government called it "their land"
Table 4-7 Increase in percentage of school children who speak ESL but DECREASE in the number of students who speak English with difficulty.
As the census starts this year the note that classification of race is done by self-determination really struck me. At what point will people classify themselves as separate from what others would classify them. How do people who come from disparate cultures decide to classify themselves (Chinese and black for example).
My question is Why is the teaching of school in English necessarily considered eradication of a primary language?
Barker Cultural Studies Chapter 3
Linguistic Turn in Cultural Studies
Dress codes as speech. I'm reminded of a trip to Italy and France where we couldn't find any shorts. We were told that shorts were ONLY worn to the beach and walking the streets of Paris in them is equivalent to wearing a bathing suit. It also screams AMERICAN. So people are speaking and telling people who they are without saying a word.
Question: Are polysemic signs based on intent or on the receiver. All communication is made of three parts: Sender, Receiver and Message. Any part in the process which is not what was intended and/or expected creates a process in discord with intent.
"difference and deferral" Perhaps the reasoning behind this is the use of synonyms. Words all have shades of meaning and in taking the steps to share shades of meaning I am reminded of geographic speciation. As animals move further away and isolated from each other, a new species is developed through natural selection that can no longer successfully reproduce with the original species. In this the deferral process is a kind of word speciation.
Discursive practices: (Barker, 90)
Discourse constructs, defines, and produces the objects of knowledge in an intelligible way while excluding other forms of reasoning as unintelligible.
Discourse gives meaning to actions, beliefs, objects that ordinarily would serve other purposes.
Chapter 13 Youth Style and Resistance
Youth is not a scientific definition? I find this unclear. Adolescence and growth markers are used on ALL species. Life cycles are a form of biology study and youth (a time period of continued growth and physical maturity) is certainly a scientific part of that cycle. I think that youth waas constructed for legal purposes. Physically and mentally (and maybe even emotionally) the persons may be mature but the law is based on numbers (18 to vote and 21 to drink) so those who are in a time period where they seem "lost" to the law are labelled youth.
Style constitutes a group identity And by creating a new identity they find themselves a part of a greater whole just as they would be otherwise.
Self-damnation. This is something I would like to study more of as it is so incredibly irrational to me. Can I say again how insulting I find the term "working-class" I am working even if I am at my desk thank you very much. The problem I can't understand is why physical labor and education are exclusionary. My husband was raised in a farming family and his brother and father still farm while Craig works at a desk. But if given a choice Craig would farm as well but his value education places him in a different occupation until his children are through with their educations.
I appreciate that youth subculture is not just about resistance. I think that in labelling it only resistance or speaking out the control center of the culture was attempting to define youth through a tag off the center instead of acknowleding the cutlure in its own right.
Question for this chapter: If the youth or subgroups descend into the same beliefs that originally caused the culture then did the predominant culture win or was there ever a chance that the subculture would last and therefore it just ran its course through a process of maturity?
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