Social Environment and Adult Learning. INSTITUTION Montana State Univ., Bozeman

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 326 660 CE 056 419

AUTHOR Fellenz, Robert A., Ed.; Conti, Gary J., Ed. TITLE Social Environment and Adult Learning. INSTITUTION Montana State Univ., Bozeman. Center for Adult Learning Research. SPONS AGENCY Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, Mich. PUB DATE May 90 NOTE 56p.; Papers from an Institute sponsored by the Center for Adult Learning Research (Big Sky, MT, Lilly 31, 1989). For related documents, see CE 056 416-418. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Adult Education; *Adult Learning; *American Indian Education; American Indians; Biculturalism; *Critical Theory; Cultural Context; *Social Environment; *Social Influences IDENTIFIERS *Crow (Tribe); Highlander Folk School TN; *Horton (Myles)

ABSTRACT This monograph contains papers from an institute on the theme of adult learning in the social environment. "Bill Moyers' Journal: An Interview with Myles Horton" provides excerpts from a televised interview :hat discusses Myles Horton's life, work, and association with the Highlander Folk School. "Myles Horton's Views on Learning ih the Social Environment" contains Horton's comments on his view of learning and respormes to questions from a group that viewed the edited tape of the Moyers intervies "Radical Pedagogy: Constructing an Arch of Social Dreaming and a Doorway to Hope" (Peter McLaren) is theoretical in nature and shares some perspectives on social context from the viewpoint of an educator working within the critical educational tradition. "Learning in the Social Environment: A Crow Perspective" (Janine Pease-Windy Boy) reflects on the process through which the Crow Indians integrated their culture into a modern educational institution, the Little Big Horn Community College located on the Crow resernation in Montana. "From an Adult Educator's Perspective" (Lloyd Korhonen, Chere Coggins Gibson) contains immediate reactions to the two preceding presentations. "The Arch of Social Dreaming: Teaching Radical Pedagogy Under the Sign of Postmodernity" (Peter McLaren) expands on McLaren's earlier paper. (YLB)

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Myles Horton Big Sky, Montana July 31, 1989

In my life, I set for myself a goal that I knew I would never be able to achieve....`ity goal was to work for world democracy--real democracy, not just make believe democracy- -economic democracy, cultural democracy, as well as political democracy. There is still no place in the world where I have seen the kind of democracy I would like to see....Anything worth doing takes a lifetime to do....One of the jobs I enjoy most is to create lizfie islands of decency, places for people to be human. You get enough of them, you know, and somehow they spread....I would like to judge myself not by what I have done but by what I have ht!ped other people to learn to do. That would be my criteria of a successful life. Social Environment and Adult Learning

Papers from an Institute Sponsored by The Center for Adult Learning Research Montana State University Bozeman, Montana

Funded by The W. K. Kellogg Foundation

Editors Robert A. Fellenz Gary J. Conti

May--1990 Center For Adult Learning Research Montana State University Bozeman, Montana

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Table of Contents

Foreword Robert A. Fellenz and Gary J. Conti v

Bill Moyers' Journal: An Interview with Myles Horton Bill Moyers 1

Myles Horton's Views on Learning in the Social Environiaent Myles Horton 9

Radic:11 Pedagogy: Constructing an Arch of Social Dreaming and a Doorway to Hope Peter McLaren 19

Learning in the Social Environment: A Crow Perspective Janine Pease-Windy Boy 37

From an Adult Educator's Perspective Lloyd Korhonen and Chere Coggins Gibson 41

The Arch of Social Dreaming: Teaching Radical Pedagogy Under the Sign of Postmodernity Peter McLaren 43

iii 6 Foreword

A short time before he died Myles Horton ganization gratefully acknowledge for its long- spent a week in Montana with a group of term support of continuing education. The adult education professors. He reminisced theme of the 1989 Institute was "Adult Learn- about his life and about what he had learned ing in the Social Environment " A growing from people. Fifty-seven years of dedicated realization of the major emphasis given to the work at the Highlander Center constantly effect of cognitive psychology on adult learn- struggling to bi ing democracy to the world ing and the concomitant neglect of the impact was a life that had brought him satisfaction, of the social environment on learning led in- even though his great goal of democracy for stitute organizerstoinvite Myles Horton, all remained 2 hope for the future. It is bet- Peter McLaren, and Janine Pease-Windy Boy ter, he said, to build toward a future ideal for to address the assembled adult educators. The human living than to be side-tracked by more purpose of this monograph is to present the attainable but less meaningful goals. It was thoughts and suggestions of these individuals thisenthusiasm,thistrustin people that to the field of adult education with the hope marked so many aspects his life as a great that they will inspire greater attention to the adult educator. impact of the social environment on adult Horton confessedthat when hefirst learning. started the Highlander Center he had to "go Peter McLaren describeshimself asa back to school with the people and learn from critical pedagogist whose message "represents them." Schooling had given him many answers an approach to schooling that is committed to to problems that people didn't have but no the imperatives of empowering students and answers to problems they did have. "So we transforming the larger social order in the in- started learning how people react; we learned terests of justice and equality" (McLaren, from them, how they learned." This lesson of 1989, Life in Schools, Preface). He is As- learning from the people was a lesson well sociate Professor of Educational Leadership learned for it remained one of the dominant at the School of Education for Allied Profes- characteristicsoftheHighlanderCenter. sions, Miami University of Ohio. Peter is also People gathered there not to be given answers Associate Director, with Henty Giroux, of the to their problems but to share their insights Center for Education and Cultural Studies at and to learn together how to bring freedom MiamiUniversity.Histwopapersare and justicetothe people of their com- theoretical in nature and share some perspec- munities. This "circle of learners' apprc .ch, as tives on social context from the viewpoint of Myles liked to call it, also necessitated a re- an educator working within the critical educa- examination of the role of the teacher. "I al- tional tradition. ways titought my role was to pose questions Janine Pease-Windy Boy is President of and help people examine what they already Little Big Horn Community College located knew. By questions, you help people to know on the reservation of the Crow Indians of what they already know but don't know they Montana. Suchtriballycontrolledcolleges know." have the two-fold mission of preserving their The occasion of Myles Horton's visit to Native American cultures and of providing Montana was the third annual summer in- modern educational opportunities for mem- stitute for adult educators sponsored by the bers of their tribes. Janine's reflections on the Kellogg Center for Adult Learning Research. process the Crow Indians went through to in- The Center, the summer institute, and this tegrate their culture into a modern education- publication were all funded through a grant al institution provide exceptional insight into from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, an or- this process of integrating culture into educa-

7 tion. Her paper also causes one to re-examine truth, of goodness, or of reality? How do we how accepted standards of a dominant society integrate critical theory with the issues and can interfere withthe learning of those problems of real-life learning? How do we, as belonging to minority groups. educators,competewithtoday's"image The reactions of two participants in the makers"? How is adult education a social institute are also included. Lloyd Korhonen reform movement? Or the Myles Horton and Chere Coggins Gibson, professors of challenge: How do we bring real democracy-- adult education at the University of Ok- cultural democracy, economic democracy, as lahoma andthe University of Wisconsin well as political democracy to all people? respectively, shared their immediate reactions Such questions are complex, and their to the McLaren and Windy Boy presentations answers may well call for radical changesin and thus initiated several days of in-depth dis- educational structures. But the challenge of cussions among participants regarding various understanding the effect of the social environ- aspects of learning and the social environment on learning andof helping others ment. benefit from this knowledge is a challenge While this brief publication presents some that has been faced by other adult educators. insights into adult learning in the social en- In reflecting on a lifetime of struggling with vironment, our hope is,as Myles Horton such issues, Myles Horton concluded: "I feel would say, that it will raise more questions that I would like to judge myself not by what I than it provides answers. How does the social have done but by what I have helped other environment affect the way adults perceive people to learn to do. That would be my the world, solve problems, remember the past, criteria Gf a successful life." interpret their experiences, or hope in the future? How do interpersonalrelationships Robert A. Fellenz change learning processes? What aspects of Gary J. Conti our culture most dominate ourvisions of

vi 8 Bill Moyers' Journal: An Interview with Myles Horton

Bill Moyers

The following are excerpts from an in- of the few places in the South where the two terview of Myles Horton by Bill Moyers. races could meet under the same roof. In the The entire two-part interview was ailed on early 1950's, Horton turned the emphasis of PBS on June 5 and June 11, 1981, under the his workshops from union organizing to civil title of The Adventures of a Radical Hillbilly: rights. Highlander was now principal gather- An InterviewwithMyles Horton.Itis ing place of the moving forces of the black reproduced here with the gracious permis- revolution. Martin Luther King came; so did sion of Bill Moyers and the Appalachian Rosa Pai.ks, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Journal. The full text of the interview can be Stokely Carmichael, and scores of unsung foot found in Volume 9, Number 4 of the 1983 soldiers in the long march of Southern blacks issue of the Appalachian Journal. toward equality. The state tried to close it This edited version of the int3rview was down; the Klan harassedit;state troopers shown to the participants at the 1989 Kel- raided it. But Highlander seemed indestruc- logg Summer Institute, Following this 30- tible, and so did Myles Horton. He's 75 now, minute video, Myles Horton made com- and his school, from which he has stepped ments and responded to questions from the aside as leader in favor of younger colleagues, participants at the institute. Those remarks is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary are in the following chapter. this year. I thought it a good t ie to pay a visit to Myles Horton at Highlander, now lo- (The broadcasted interview opens with the cated on a farm near Knoxville. following comirwts by Bill Moyers.) Few people I know have seen as much change in Moyers: Myles, you've upsetalotof the American South, or helped to bring it people down here over the years. The Mill about, as Myles Horton. He's been beaten up, Owner said that Highlander was about the locked up, put upon, and railed against by boldest, the most insulting thing in an Anglo- racists, toughs, demagogues, and governors. Saxon South that has yet been done; one But for almost 50 years now, he has gone on Georgia governor said that you were a can- with his special kind of teaching-- helping cerous group spreading throughout the South; people todiscover withinthemselves the the state of Tennessee closed you down, con- courage and ability to confront reality and fiscated your property, sold it at auction; the change it. Myles Horton came to his mission Ku Klux Klan beat up your staff and burned from a childhood among the mountain people your buildings; a United States senator had of Appalachia, a land rich in beazity but a you ejected from his hearings. Now what's a colony of poverty. "Nothing will change," said nice man like you doing upsetting all those Horton to himself, "until we change-- until we people? throw off our dependence and act for oursel- Horton: Well, I don't try to upset people. I ves." So in 1932, in the mountains west of try to help people grow and be creative, and Chattanooga, in one of America's poorest fulfillthemselvesaspeople. Andinthe counties, Myles Horton founded the High- process of doing that, they upset a lot ot lander Folk School, dedicated to the belief people. that poor working-class people-- adults--could Moyers: What do you mean? learn to take charge of their lives and cir- Horton: Well, they start doing things, as- cumstance. At first he ran workshops to '.rain sertingtheirrights,for example, working organizers for the CIO. Jim Crow laws for- people asserting their rights to have a union, bade integration, but Horton invited blacks asserting their rights to be treated decently, :ind whites alike, and Highlander become one people in the mountains assert their rights to

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be left alone to live their own way if they want they're adults; you help them learn. And in- to without having the absentee landowners sofar as you learn how people learn, you can run them out of their holdings, their neritage. help. And that's a powerful dynamic force, And we try to help people, you know, stand when you realize that people themselves in up against this kind of thing. We try to help these hollows, and these factories and these people become empowered so they themsel- mines, you know, can take much more control ves can do things, and that's very irritating. of their lives than they themselves realize. One of thc reasons they confiscated High- Moyers: How does it work, I mean, how lander was because the charge was made by do you teach--how do yot., help people learn the governor of Georgia that this cancerous something like that? growth was spreading over the South and that Horton: Well,firstthing you haveto the civil rights movemert came out of High- clarifyis thatyou have to understand, you lander. And only a, you know, only a racist have to know that people--working people, white person could int ke that assumption that common people,the uncommon common some white people had to be doing that kind people--they're the most uncommon people in of thing. So they assumed that since a lot of the world, the common people-have mainly a the black had been at Highlander long before past, they're adults. Unlike childrei .inthe the civil rights movement and during the civil regular schoo1 system, who have practically no rights movementblacks couldn't do anything past and are told by the schools that their temselves, so it had to be some white people. present isn't worth anything, are taught, you So they got four or five of the governors know,theyaretaughtabout thefuture, together and closed Highlander. And it was they're prepared for the future. Adults are-- only after they closed it they found out that come out of the past with their experiences. they, you know, didn't have anything with the So you run a program at Highlander based on Civil Riglts movement, but the blacks were their experktnces, their experiences in learn- doing the civil rights movement. ingfrc: - which they may not have learned Moyers: I think that's what really upset a very much, because they haven't learned how lot of people. to analyze it, buiit's there, and the grist for Horton: And they got upset, I think, whorl the mill is there. And our job is to help them they found out they couldn'tthey couldn t understand that they can analyze their ex- stop it by confiscating Highlander. When they periences and build on those experiences, and first came, they came and padlocked the maybe transformthoseexperiences,even. building, and some of the news reporters that Then they have a power that they're comfort- were there,said "What are you laughing able with. See people--first I should tell you about?" I was standing outside laughing, and that not only are people adults with a past, they took apicture of me standing there with experiences, but they are leaders in their laughing. And the sheriff padlocked the buLld- communities. Idon't mean officialleaders, ing. Isaid, "My friend here, you know, he but grass-roots leaders. thinks he's padlocking Highlander," and, but I Moyers: You mean, not bankers and-- said, you know, "Highlander is an idea--you Horton: No, they are the people in the can't padlock an idea." people's organizations, like labor unions or Moyers: You say Highlander is an idea. community orglizations of variouskinds. What's the idea? Well, those people come and we say, "Okay, aorton: Well, we have a philosophy, that what are your experiences that related to this we know, that we can identify. We believe topic--not all your experiences, but your ex- that--we believe in people. Our loyalty is to periences that relate to this topic?" Now they people, not institutions, structures. And we try hadn't considered those experiences too im- to translate that belief and trust in people's portantthey hadn't thought of them being ability to learn in ) facilitating peoples' learn- very important. We say, this is very important ing. Now you don't teach people things, since because that's the curriculum, that's the building stones that we're going to use here. And got to have a lot of deviations, to have a lot of it's something you can take back with you be- pluralism. We believe in people keeping a lot cause you, you know, you brought it here. So cf their old custom:: and adding new ones. we start out-- And we saki, tha s what enriches life. So Moyers: They didn't know it, when they we're going to focus on that, and there's a lot got there. of dynamics and a lot of power in that, that Horton: They don't--they hadn't learned scares people. When people in the South, to analyze those experiences so they could before the civil rights were started, began to learn from them. You know, people say you feel that they could do something, in spite of learn from experiences--you only lf rn from the laws, in spite of tradition, and started experiences that you learn from, yJu know. doing it, then you know, all hell broke loose. That's not all experiences. And we try to help We had that experience earlier, in the '30's. them learn from their experiences in sucha We started back in the Depression, in the way that when they go back they'll continue to pre-industrialunionmovement in this learn. But we have to also learn from our ex- country, before the CIO was started. And periencm And one of the things we have to many of our students who had been at High- do in addition to what they have to do, is to lander before, you know, became leaders in learn how to relate our experiences to theirs. the unions in the early days when it was And you ;lo that by analogy, you know, you do rough. When we first started organizing it was it by storytelling. You don't get up andsay, illegal to have a picket line, and a lot ofour "Look here are some Pads we want to dump activities were illegal. Highlander itself was il- on you." We say, "Well, you might consider legal up until about four years ago. We defied this. Now this happened to somebody kind of the state law on segregationinpublic--in like you in a different situation." So we get private schools, which stayed on the books them doing the same thing with each other. long after the public schools were integrated. .. You get peer teaching going, where everybody You know, we had to work that way to live up that's in the circle is part of a peer teach:4 to our principles. So, to get off the subject a group. little bit, but the people have all this power, Moyers: What's radical about that? What but it's suppressed by the public school system was radical about that back in 1930? and by the institutions. We, having loyalty to Horton: Well, it's terribly radical, because the people and not the institutions, you knew, education, it goes against what education is always try to throw our weight on the side of supposed--Education is supposed toprepare the people, and heir them do things thatare people to live in whatever system the educa- right. Now you can't get people to dosome-. tional school system is about. Like inour sys- thing they thinkis wrong. You know, you temit'sto prepare people tolive under can't--you know, people say Highlander is a capitalism and be--you know, fit into thatsys- propaganda necI, you get all these ideas in tem. In the Soviet Union, it'sto prepare people's heads and they go out and do things people to live in that system, and fit in that they learned at Highlander, well, you know, system. And that's what education, official that's not the way things are. education is all about, to prepare people to fit Moyers: They were in their mine's. into the system, and support the system. Horton: They were in their minds, they're Moyers: And Highlander? seeds. What you do, you develop those seeds. Horton: And turn them--really, it's to turn They're crusted over, you know, with all kinds them into nuts and bolts to keep the system of things and the people don't even know together, you see, whatever kind of system it they're there. We know they're there,we dig is. Highlander says, No. You can't use people for them, and we cuRivate those seeds. We that way. People are, you know, creative, help prepare the ground for them togrow, you've got to allow them to do a lot of things and we help people learn, they can learn from that don't fit any kind of systems, and you've eachother,thatthey'restronger.In-

3 1 1 dividualism is enhanced by being part of a people. You know, so we can't have economic group, you know, individuality, I guess, would democracy under a profit taking system, we be a better way of saying it, is enhanced by can't have political eemocracy when we don't being part of a group, instead of telling people have some kind of decentralization that brings they should go it alone, they should be com- government closer to the people. That sounds petitive, ttey should, you know; compete with like Reagan, you know, but you do have to their fellow man. We say, work togother, and have--you do have to break the system down you'll be a better person. to where people could have more sayabout Moyers: Look, Myles, if everyone made a their own lives. I mean, that's efficient, that's private heresy out of challenging tlie system, more creative. I believe in akind of pluralistic how would society function? sort of society. We've never--no country, no Horton: I believe in laws, but I know tliat system has to my mind, you know,thought too the only way that laws can have any meaning, seriously about how you do this, and I think they have to be just laws. For just iaws to it's one of the things we ought to be about in have a meaning, and to have a society of laws, this country. you've got to challenge unjust laws. This con- Moyers: But tell me specifically, Myles, cept was provided for by an anaendment to what did you do le these workers when they the Constitution, you know, our trials were came here in the early days? you can appeal--this L not as kindof outside Horton: Okay. In the first place, you had reality as it seems to people. to have their confidence, because byhelping Moyers: You think that's what Jefferson them with their problems, like I said earlier, might have meant when he said that every you had to learn from people, youhad to start generation ought to entertain the pc,ssibility wInre they were and deal with their problems. of its own revolution? And we say, "Look. Who's been telling you Horton: That'sright,that'sright.I've what to do--teachers, preachers: politicians-- quoted that many times, I've said, you know, I and did it work? Was it good ad-ice, did it started out I thought there ought to be a work for you? I don't know, but you wouldn't revolution in this country, I mean a revolution be here, if that work,RI. Because you've had that, you know, is run democratically, because plenty of people telling you what to do. So I believe in democracy--we don't have it, and we're not going to do that, we're not going to none of the countries that I knowof and I compound that. We're going to try something know practically all of them-- else--we're going to try to build on what you Moyers: We don't have it? We hear all know, and your experiences, and help you un- these salutes to democracy on Inaugural Day derstand that your neighbors have some ex- and-- periences, and that ottt:r people in another Horton: No, we don't have it. We have place, maybe in another country, have some some trimmings of democracy.We have some experiene!.s that relate tu this problem. MI of of--like the parliament electoral system, which that are related, died in with your experien- might have worked in the early days when you ces. I remember one fellow that camefrom had a handful of people, but, you know, over here in the mountains, ur nearthe people don't have anything to say about the North Carolina line. He said, "When I came people they elext today, you know that. That's here, I had one little piece of pie that had all why only a small percentage of people vote. the answers. Pie has all of the answers," he They know that the timing is set up-it's so-- said, "I hae a little slice of that pie. And joe too far away from them. We have toreally ex- here, he had a little slice, somebody else had amine all of our structures in this country, to a slice, and he e.,ntributed tothat slice. So make them more democratic. You can't have now we got the whole pie and nowI know democracy in the workplace, when the system everything, I got the whole pie, and I'm going is run for the benefit or the profit of some- to take the whole pie back homeinstead of body instead of for the benefit of allthe my little slice." Well, he was proudof the fact

4 that he contributed aslice, yov know, he know, to cultivate the spirit and soul. And it's didn't then just learn from other people. Well obvious that drama and dance and music and that's what happens. things like that would contribute--and art, dif- Moyers: You didn't-- ferent kinds. Well, we were really fortunate in Horton: But in addition to getting that in- that when Zilphia, my wife, came to High- formation, you got to get motivation. And lander, she was a trained musician, from motivation comes from within, not from out- Arkansas, and, you know, had a background side in something, you don't motivate some- of--a miner's background, her father was a body, you help them to learn to motivate coal miner. But she also had, you know, musi- themselves. So what you do istry to get cal training. But the musical training, but, you people to have more confidence in themselves know, was a classical kind you get in ayou and their peers, and to understand it's up to know, going to college and so on. So she--but them, there's nobody else can do it. she soon, you know, started singing labor Moyers: Was it a coincidence that the songs and folk songs and learned to play the trigger of all this, Rosa Parks on the bus, hap- guitar and accordion--she played the piano-- pened two months after she was at High- and used her music tohelpfitinto the lander? Was that just a coincidence? program. The same time she was doing it, she Horton: No, not according to Rosa. Now I was a good teacher. She was a very good never tried to tell what happened at High- teacher, like in training shop stewards on how lander, just let the people it happens to, tell. to take up grievances, and the Highlander way Rosa said that the connection between those of doing it, mot just technically, but in rallying two things was that at Highlander it was the the people behind you. And she'd use drama first time in her life she had met white people as partof her way of teaching, so she she could trust, fully trust. And what Rosa-- developed a drama program lloag with the Rosa had known some wonderfulwhite music program. So she 11%u two kinds of people who were full of social equality and-- programs going. but, what she was saying was she had never Moyers: Do you rememner that song that been in a place where you could demonstrate John Hancock of the tenant farmers taught by everything that happened that you believe Zilphia? Called "No More Mournin'?" in full social equality. You know, that High- Horton:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,that'sa lander was--anywhere you went, you know, it beautiful song. I was teaching in a school for waseverybody was equal. There was no, you sharecroppers, tenant farmers out in Little know, that was no way--I always said we were Rock, Arkansas, in a school that Claude Wil- too small and too poor to discriminate. We liams ran. And the police were, you know, didn't have any facilities for discrimination. harassing us, because had some whites and There was no way .:,,,.. could have done it if we blacks together there. And every time the wanted to, you know. So you know, Rosa just police would come, why, I would sit down ;n saw a total way of living she'd never seen the audience like a white person being enter- before, she just couldn't believe that would, tained, and the blacks would start leading you know, happen. She didn't go back with singing.Ind John Hancock was the--become any plans or anything, she went back with a the star, because he could always make up different spirit. songs if we'd run out of songs. And that's the Horton: One of the ideas that we had at part--I brought that back to Zilphia, I col- the beginning of Highlander was that we had lected that. touseculturalactivitiesas partof the Moyers: Do you remember that song? program, because people need not just intel- Horton: Yeah,Ican't remember the lectual discussion, or even-- words, now, but I remember the-- Moyers: Politics-- Moyers: No more mourning/No more Horton: Actionlearning from action and mourning/No more mourning after doing it, but they also need something to, you awhile/And before--

5 1 3 Horton: BeforeI'll be aslave/I'll be into what has become one of the most famous buried in my gave/And go home-- hjmns of the civil rights movement, "We Shall Moyers: Leadbelly was here, too, wasn't Overcome. Is that a true story? he? He wrote a song that was going to be Horton: Well,it's almost. There was a used to raise money for Highlander, that be- strike of tobacco workers, working in the came a classic. tobacco plant in Charleston, South Carolina, Horton: Yeah. and we always encouraged students to bring Moyers: You remember that one? songs that they had written or used on a pick- Horton: Yeah, Leadbelly was never at et line, and just like Guy (Carawan) does Highlander. He always wanted to come to today, we still do the same thing here now. Highlander, but he did three or four benefit And that song was a kind of rough-hewn song concerts for Highlander. that they'd gotten from a black hymnal; the Moyers: But he did write that song. blacks had sung it, and the white people had Horton: Oh yeah, he did a :ot of songs, a picked it up--they had tried to make a strike lot of music. Zilphia used .i play with him, song out of it. And it was a song that Zilphia they'd play together. He said she's the only said it wasn't singable, it was too hard to sing. white woman could play, you know, black So she sat down at the piano like she always music, that he ever saw. And he'd get her to did with people like that, and they worked out play with him any time she was around. She'd the music so it'd be simpler. She used to say get on the piano and play with him. there was singable songs, and then there was Moyers: "Bourgeois Blues" was-- songs like 'The Star-Spangled Banner," which Horton: And she'd--he'd sung the--We nobody should sing. You know, she thought were at a party, a fund raising party, in Newsongs should be eisy to sing. So that was York, and--well, that was back when we had revised, and that became a very popular song respectablesortofsponsorslikeMrs. that week. People likeditafter they had Roosevelt and all the big people in-- simplified it a little bit. Moyers: Eleanor Roosevelt? For ten years it was just a Highlander Horton: Eleanor Roosevek. Well, she was song, and then the labor movement started at Highlander twice; she was a great sup-using it a little bit more, and then it died porter _A Highlander. But at that time shedown, and just kind of stayed in the High- helped us, used her influence to get a name--a lander domain. And then Guy Carawan, who bunch of name people together there, and is in charge of music here now, taught that Leadbelly was the performer at that place. song, which is a black peoples' song, to a lot And when we were getting ready to put on a of his people in SNCC, and later on did it for program, Zilphia and Leadbelly were back theSouthernChristianLeadershipCon- playing backstage--playing, just having fun, ference, and it kind of--the song came back to and he said he wanted to try this song out on the people where it originated from, and then her. He'd just been working on it, but he tried it became a popular song again in the civil to get it done for that occasion, he wanted to rights movement, and now as you know it's use it for that occasion, but he hadn't finished sung around the world. It's everywhere. it. And- -so she liked it so well, she said go Moyers: How do you assess its impact on ahead and use it anyway. She persuaded him our times? to sing it even though he wasn't quite satisfied Horton: Oh Lord, it's no--there's no one with it. So that was the beginning of "Bour- song that I know of that is still, you know, you geois Blues"--that was the first time it was see the Irish scrapping, you see people in ever sung. Chile, they use itin Chile,it was used in Moyers: There is a story that a couple of Cuba, it's used in,it's sung in China, all the striking tobacco workers from Charleston, schools sing it h. China--it's used everywhere. South Carolina, brought your wife Zilphia a I don't know of any song of that kind that is song which she and Pete Seeger then turned so widespread.

6 1 4 ., Moyers: Well, it symbolized, didn't it, your looking back over your life, has helped me. own transformation from the union movement And it's what you discovered about how much to civil rights? conflict is in the lives of poor people, and how Horton: Yeah. Some peopletriedto often only conflict is the way the way they can describe Highlander, they said Highlander resolve their problems. You know, well-edu- was just a series of different schools, you cated middle-- know, it was a community school, we were Horton: That's a very hard thing to ex- poverty, you know, a depression school, we plain to my nonviolent, pacifist friends. They were an industrial union school, a CIO school, say, you know, of course you'd always advise we were a farmer labor school, we were a civil against violence. And I say, no, I said, High- rights school, we were Appalachial--that's one lander--the people that Highlander deals with way to describe it, because you have to, you live a life of violence, and this violence takes know, break things up to describe them. But a lot of forms. Not just the physical violence, to me, it's vety inaccurate. Highlander has just but the violence of starvation, the violence of bee,' one school all the way through, we were depriving people of education, the violence of justdoing the same thing withdifferent being--you know, of oppression of various groups of people. We try to empower people. kinds. All those are forms of violence. So We're using these different periods of interest you'd have to choose a lesser violence always, in the South to--as a means of educating never between--Our choice at Highlander was people to take more control of their own seldom between violence and nonviolence--it lives. And although the subject matter differs, was between the lesser forms of violence. We the approach differs, the purpose is the same. had a discussion some of us, some young We use the same methods that I described people that came down from the East during earlier, and the same purpose--the purpose is the big summer in Mississippi, you know, in-- to help people become so empowered that when was it, '64, '65? they can begin to have something to do with Moyers: '64 their lives. And you can't do it with large Horton: '64. And we were down at Green- numbers of people. wood,Mississippi,andthey were talking Moyers: Is that why you've stayed small about, maybe we'd better talk to the police, and-- maybe--after all, they're not all bad, and we, Horton: Yeah. Well, see, the reason is--I some of us could talk to the police. And I knew that intellectually, and I said Highlander remember these kids were just a bunch of is--I never want to be big, because I always them from Yale, just had come down. And want to deal with 20 or 30 people at a time, they w\ere going to talk to the policy. So one because that seems to be the n.aximum you of these black guys, said, no, no, no. And can deal with effectively. And I don't want to finally this white guy said to this guy, "Why is have a lot of branches, I just want to be small. it that you don't want to talk to the police?" And whatever influence you have, developing He says, "When they sees this black head, people with a multiplication influence. They they hits it." Now, see that's what blacks have multiply, that's where you get your, you know, known all the time, and people don't know. your two cents' worth--you multiply people, They just hit them because they're black. Kill you deal with leaders who multiply themsel- them, bc-muse they're black. ves. Then you have an outreach. You don't do Moyers: But the point I want to get at, be- mass education, so you don't need to deal cause I think it's essential to you, is that when with a lot of people at a time, because that's middle-class, upper-class,well-intentioned, not the way you get your Brownie points built liberal peopie rule out conflict as a way of up.It's how many people are influenced. poor people solving their problems, they leave That's done best by taking the people who can those poor people powerless, don't they? multiply themselves. Horton: No, they support the status quo. Moyers: I'lltell you something that in What they're doing is reinforcing the situa-

7 1 5 1 don, firming up the situation as it is, and not you don't know fear, in this kind of business, allowing for any change, and the condition of when you're playing on the cutting edge of so- those people will get worse. It'll continue to cial change, and conflictsituations, where get worse, becauseif you don'tstruggle there--you know, where the sides are lined up, against oppression, oppression moves in on and there's violence all the time, you better you. So what they're doing, they're accelerat- lea a to know it. ing the rate of oppression on people by not Moyers: Well, given that reality, why did understanding it has to be a struggle. A strug- you think that a bunch of teachers at a gle is not only, in my point of view, the moral seclusive place like this could identify with thing to do, but it's a great learning ex- men in circumstances as painful z.,:s those? perience.People--thbgreatesteducation Horton: Okay, now, I believe that it had comes from action, and the greatest action is to be done. And I was determined to try to do struggle for justice. So if you deny people the rt. And I was determined to identify, to be-- opportunity to become empowered and edu- havethese peopleperceivethatIhad cated, deny people the right to be free, you solidarity with them. I knew that had to be. know, to be people, and they all do it in the Moyers: Here you were Union Theologi- name of law and order. cal Seminary, Chicago University-- Moyers: You do know fear? Horton: A year ago up in West Virginia Horton: Oh yes, I know fear. You didn't they got to arguing about people who had survive--I wouldn't have been here today if I come down, these experts would come in from didn't know fear. If you don't know fear, it's these universities, and somebody says, "Well, just like having the sense of touch, so when you know, your friend Myles Horton is one of you burn your finger, you know, it hurts. If them." "The hell he is," he says, "he's never you didn't have that, you'd burn your finger been to school. We know him." You know? off. You know, you wouldn't--or you put your Moyers: (laughs) But why did you think-- hand in the buzz saw, you wouldn't know it Horton: So I knew it was a handicap, but I but you'd be looking off when you cut it off. If thought I could overcome it somehow.

1 8 1 Myles Horton's Views on Learning in the Social Environment Myles Horton

At the 1939 Kellogg Summer Institute wonderful totell whether you are making on Learning in the Social Environment, the progress or hot. But they can also make it participants watched a 30-minute excerpt seem that our goal is something that is always from The Adventures of a Radical Hillbilly: getting further and further away. My goal was An Interview with Myles Horton by Bill to work for world democracy--real democracy, Moyers. Following this viming, Myles Hor- not iust mah.e believe democracy--economic ton commented on his vie.w of karning and democracy, cultural democracy, as well as rczponded to the following questions from political democracy. There is still no place in the group. the world where I have seen the kind of democracy I would like to see. I suppose if I Horton's Comments had the opportunity to see some of the things The Appalachian Journal of Aging and I dream of today, they wouldn't took too Knowledge wanted to publish an article on my good. I would want to see something beyond work at Highlander. They asked for 50 pic- that. It is like climbing a mountain. When you tures of me, and I said that was all right get to the top of the mountain, you see a big- providing they put in one picture thatI ger mountain and go on. I think that is great selected. The picture I sensibl; put in was a to have that kind of goals. My goal is for picture of iiisleeping in front of the capitol democracy. I am not disappointed that I have in Washington during the poor people's cam- not been able to see a world of democracy. paign. I called it a portrait of Horton in ac- Another thought I had was that anything tion. worth doing takes a lifetime to do. Goals Some people have seen me limping shorter than that you should not get too in- around here. My leg turns to well-cooked volvedin. Any kind of limited reform,it spaghetti once in a while when I'm wai#.ing seems to me, would reinforce the system, around. It hasn't always been that way. In fact, rather than change it. That s just structural I am having a hard time practicing what I reform, and that does not change things. I am ha 7e been preaching all my life in terns of not unhappy about my life journey because I the interdependence of people. I'm having a believe that you build a future as you go hard time justifying the fact that I am having along; what you do today is a building block problems. Recently while in Nicaragua, we for the future. The future is not something were going down to demonstrate in front of that you have later on; itis something that the American Embassy. Someone said "Don't you build now. The way you do things today you want to get a cab?" I said, "No, I want to determines the future you will have. I am a walk along so I can greet the people. I can get revolutionary in my philosophy. I think when there all right." My friend said, "Yes, but you you accomplish something now, it builds for seem to have a problem with your knee." It the future. That is a revolutionary act. I am looks like I am dying from the bottom up. If I very content to do things that are important had a choice, I would rather die from the bot- today provided they are building in the right tom urthan the top down. I would rather direction--in a democratic direction. At one know where I am going and not be able to get time I said one of the jobs I enjoy most is to there, than be able to get there and not know create littleislands of decency, places for where I am going. people to be human. You get enough of them, In my life, I set for myself a goal that I you know, and somehow they spread. Any knew I would never be able to achieve. I don't kind of education that doesn't multiply itself think limited goals are really helpful. They and doesn't spread is no good because you can be a step toward your goals, and steps are have to have masses of people to bring about

9 17 Aft. changc. You have to have the majority of the. of what I am going to do; I share with you people who really know what they are into in what I learned, and you make decisions of order to bring about fundamental change. So whether you want to do anything with it or you have to have an educational program not. That is your choice. where one of the components is the multi- Another question was raised about roles plication of what you do. Then hopefully there of the educator. That is something I had to do will be a law of decency, and you won't have a lot of thinking about. If I were to be a part to appeal to laws. of this circle, what is my role? Am I going to You can build more yourself if you get be like everybody else, or am I going to be other people to help you, even though it takes like everybody in some ways and different in more time than doing it yourself. It may be other ways? This is how I figured out what I easier to do it yourself, but it is more impor- was going to do. If people don't think of me tant to get other people involved. I feel that I as being in solidarity with them, then I am not would like to judge myself not by what I have going to have any influence with them. I will done but by what I have helped other people be an outsider trying to tell them what to do. to learn to do. That would be my criteria of a If I am to identify with them, I have to con- successful life. tribute on the same basis as everybody else; The other thing that I would like to talk that is, staying within the sphere of knowledge about is what we call a circle of learners. of the people. This can extend rapidly in this Thoseof you whoareintriguedwith process, but you can't break that chain from American. Indians know where we go: that their experience to what you aretalking idea. W e wzre aczused one time of having a about. If you are aware of that and stay within communist schoot because we didn't have a those parameters, you cantalk justlike desk or pocharn fJr a speaker; we sat around anyone else in the group. They can take what and talked and didn't have text books. Our you say or leave what you say, just like they text books were the curriculum the people take or leave what anyone else has to say. brought with them. But some couldn't under- You have to participate because if you just sit stand that; it didn't fit their definition of a there you are saying that you are not like school. That didn't bother us, but we did care them. about our status as a tax-exempt institution. You also have another role that has to be So they kept bringing up the idea of this circle exercised with care. I always thought my role being a Red invention.I went along with was to pose questions and help people ex- them. I said, "Yes, you are right there." I just amine what they already knew. By questions, let them talk to build up to that point. Finally you help people to know what they already I said, "Well we got this idea from the Native know but don't know they know. Admittedly, I Reds in our country, not from Russia." Our had a wider range of knowledge than any Native American Indians had the idea long other one person, though not than the total ago that groups had to do things, not in- group. I knew a lot of things going on in the dividuals. They had an educational process region, and they only knew their area. So my where groups were involved in the learning job sometimes, in addition to posing questions process. So I want to give them credit for that and getting th...m to examine contradictions, idea. (If I gave credit for all my ideas,it was to tell them about other people that they would take all day.) didn't know and to relate things I knew but I don't think there are many new ideas they didn't have any way of knowing. You but only adaptations of ideas.I am hoping have the responsibility to share that part of that as we talk a little bit about Highlander your knowledge with them too. That is how I some of you might feel that you could adapt resolved my role, and I found if I followed it borne of these ideas. Others feel you would carefully, I never had any problems. The big probably like to but can't get by with it. That thing is to stay within the limits of their ex- is all right with me. I have to make decisions panding experience. What theyrwere doing at

10 18 Highlander was their experience too, and it from those who they identified with and who had to be examined as they went along just had notforgotten how theylearned.It like any other experience. worked. They went back and within a year People got ready to leave Highlander and they were organized. That is another way of tried to figure out what they had learned from empowering the people. each other as part of a group. They then real- The last two years we have done a lot of ized they had to go back to different situa- what we call participatory research. Once we tions. There was no effort to try to get any didn't have a name for it, but now it is an in- agreement on what to do and how to do it; ternational organization. People usually think everybody had to take what they could use, of that as a simple situation where people re- just as you do here. But we had everybody search their own problems, but it can be used make a summary of what they thought they in any situation. For example, everybody knew would do when they went back. I mean right that Appalachia was in absentee ownership. the next day they were back doing things be- Nobody knew how it was done or who owned cause they had evolved into leaders. So they the region, so we didn't have the evidence to made a statement about what they would do know exactly who owned which land. The and had the advantage of the evaluation of signs on the mines didn't mean anything. They other people right there to discuss their plans. named a subsidiary of a subsidiary or they This peer evaluation became a commitment. I used front people. So instead of us doing a re- would tell them, "If you think you are safe and search project and saying here is information, go home and goof off after you said you were we decided to use that project as an em- going to do this, all these people are going to powering program. We empowered people to find out about it." It is a good way to make do their own research. They asked the ques- people remember what they said they were tions and we said here is how you get to going to do and to take responsibility for answer the questions. We brought the people doing it. That is another part of that circle of together from states for some training about lea rning. research. They went back and did a study That is not the only thing we do at High- which became the biggest land study ti..'t has lander to try helping people. For example, the ever been done in the United States. Over miners in our region finally got strongly or- 100 peopie were involvedinthe process ganized to protest black lung. We had been before they got through. They collected infor- working with them. We did not play a major mation and in the process of collecting it role, but we knew all the leaders. After they learned how to do other kinds of research. got pretty well established, the textile workers They startedusivg the process for other in the Carolina's found they had a similar things even before they got through the land problem in the textile mills. They called it study. brown lung. They wanted to organize and Iremember one countyinKentucky asked us if we would help them. When we where theohool board said they had no said yes, they thought we would tell them how money for what the people wanted. They went to do it. Well we did, but in a way they didn't in and got the records; they analyzed the expect. We brought in the people from the records and said, "Here is the money." Before, black lung association--some of the victims, they would not have known how. So they used the doctors who pioneered the treatment, and the process on organizations; they changed the president of the black lung association-- laws. One successfulgroupinKentucky and they were the teachers. They shared with studied the practice where owners of mineral the people what they had learned. They spoke rights would come in and tear up whole farms of the political problems they had, problems in explorations. Well, they got a law passed with the medical association, and so on. They out of that study. learned from peers or as close to peers as you But the land ownership project was sucba can get. It was peer learning they learned massive thing there came a time whenyou lth had to know more than could he learned in react; we learned from them, how they the short time at Highlander. In fact there learned. was so much material that the biggest com- We never went through the formulation of puter in Knoxville could not hol i it all. But up thcory. That doesn't mean I didn't profit by to that point, everything was done in a par- some of the theoretical background I had, like ticipatory way by the people themselves. r. some of t1... concepts I got Li sociology. I was their material being analyzed so they kept found them useful, but I didn't find it useful control of it. It was studied and summarized to talk about them and not apply them. I by the University of Kentucky press, but there found them useful as a kind of background for was no author's name on it. It belonged to the my thinking. That's the reason I read a lot, 80 to 100 people that made it all their study. and I still read a lot. I don't try to develop a That is a good example of how participatory theory to fit a situation, but I agree that you research can empower people and those have to have theory. If you can start with the people are still in power today. If that project experience of the people, that is the way to had been done for those people, they would get going. People start where they are, not have the information but they wouldn't have from where the teacher or somebody else is. been empowered by someone else's informa- You can't start from where you ain't, you tion. This way it was theirs. Two county have to start from where you are. papers published their research data intheir The trouble we found was we were trying state, every bit of it. So people had the oppor- to make the people start from where we were tunity not only to use it, but go home with it. as teachers instead of us trying to start where But that will give you an idea of the they were. It was our obligation to find out variety of methods used at Highlander. I where they were, and the only way was to ask would like to answer any questions you have them or observe them. It is their perception or would like to get your reactions. of where they are,not our perception of where they are that is important. Our percep- Questions and Answers tion of where people are and their perception It is very clear that you have a genius of vision of where they are may be two different things. arid a clear set of intuitions of where you want We see them through our background and our to be and how to get there that lets you not way of thinking. That is not a safe way to do need to articulate what these principals and it. You have got to fird some way to get the theories are. Do you consciously use theory? people to have a voice; then you know what action to take. We found in the early days When we started, we didn't know any that we were one of the 11 poorest counties other way to function except to start with in the United States according to literacy rate. theory. Butit was an abysmal failure. We So a lot of the things we had to do was in came to the conclusion that all of ourtheories nonverbalwaysofcommunication.We and all of our answers to problems were not couldn't just ask people some things; we had relevant. We had answers to problems people to observe them. Sometimes you find out didn't have, and no answers to problems they more about people by watching theirkids did have. What we were taught to think of as than by watching them. You had to get close learning in school didn't have any application. to the situation to listen to their voices too. In So we had to take a kind of postgraduate that we had no training as you can imagine, course and go back to schoolwith the people so we had to work it out ourselves. and learn from them. At that point, we We had great ideas about democracy and decided that we would never get anywhere if how people get together and do things; and we tried to learn how to teach butwhat we they wanted food tOeat. They were too would do is try to learn how to learn. When hungry to think about these things. We had to we learned how to learn, then wecould help learn that. We had to learn a lot of things we people. So we started learning how people didn't know before. We had to learn that even though people didn't talk about these grand crafts, all that kind of thing that is very real, ideas, wonderful things like brotherhood and very much a part of people's lives. Singing is sisterhood, they had them anyway. They didn't the most obvious part of that because it is the say it in words but they had it. I have heard it kind of thing people can hear and pass on. said that poor people focus just on material "We Shall Overcome" was used at Highlander things, but people live by values. But people as part of a consortium with all kinds of ideas. have to eat; they have to have a job. That is a Zaphia used to tell people to bring their musi- problem today, people can't get a legal job; cal instruments. Well, they also told stories they create illegal jobs, like our people always and danced. She would get people together to did by moonshining and bootlegging. But do skits or 11ay acting or something. They people have to find a way to eat whetherwould dance and sing and tell stories and society provides them an opportunity to work jokeseverything was a part of the experience. or not. Singing was integrated with the rest of the We also found people had to dream, to culture because it was so integral to the total say what they wanted, even if they had no way program. Sometimes we would be working on of expressing it in their lives. I have seen a some problem like labor history and the best mountain miner, tired, and the kids came to way to do it was to act it out. If that was the bother him and he gave them a slap. The kid way to do it, that was the way you do it, right? cried, but pretty soon he climbed on his Or sing it out or tell stories about it from daddy's lap and his tired dad was loving. The your own experience. We made culture an in- kid knew there was another side to his daddy. tegral part of the experience because it has al- Somebody who doesn't know people like that ways been a powerful thing. see that slap and say "Wasn't that cruel?" Music kind of steals the show like "We Well, that w,_s a cruel act, but it wasn't a cruel Shall Overcome". Did you ever see the PBS person. When you deal with people, you have special "We Shall Overcome" last year? It was to know there is a down side and up side to on our program "We Shall Overcome." It told all of us. People have a decent side and that's of its origin, how it was started, how it went the side we have to cultivate. People become around the world. You couldn't do that with what they do, andf we get people doing everything else at Highlander; there is no way more of that kind of thing than the other, you could share all that with the world. But then they become that kind of person. music gets a bigger play than anything else. Somewhere in our beginnings, we heard a The thing is to make culture a part of learn- lot of nonverbal things about learning and ing because culture is a part of people's ex- about people that got us back on the right perience. track. We said weid to unlearn much of the We were interested in democratizing cul- stuff that we had learned so there would be ture, in having a pluralistic culture. Just as we room to learn new things. That doesn't mean wouldn't try to get everyone in a workshop to you have to relearn everything. As I said ear- (Nelop the same plans while working on dif- lier, many of the concepts I learned theoreti- ferent situations, so we don't expect people to cally, I made use of in my thinking but rot in have the same culturalbackground. Our my talking about them. respect for the cultural backgrounds of people is part of being a de-nocratic society. Myles, I am curious about the use of music. What do you see as the role of music at High- I am curious about what you are curious about lander? right now as a result of this week, this past year. What are you thinking about? My way of approaching the role of music is culturally. We leave out culture so much in I keep learning, you know. I just pick up education. The whole field of culture, oral his- ideas, like a sponge, of everything I can get tory, dancing, singing, story telling, whittling, and then I try to sort it out; not sort out so

I 13 2 1 much theoretically but tied a lot to action. have to come back to Highlander to do it; Oh.; of the problems I have with theory that I they could do it at home. But then they had to have no evidence of having any kind of reality have another hypothesis or theory on which to is that itis so easy for somebody to write move next. That goes on all the time. If something that sounds good, but who doesn't people don't know where they are going, they know what they are talking about. Then that are not going anywhere. They are just going in isused as the basics of somebody else's a circle chasing their tails. They don't theorize documentation. It never had any reality. But it about what they are going to do. has become the basis of what could have Fraxis is the right idea. I think the idea of worked in practice. There comes a basis of praxis is what we have to think about more theorizing about what could help in practice, than any other word, that concept of theory so I think I would like the people to test out and practiceintertwined--youdon't know their ideas. Ivan Illich, this friend of mine, whf 2 one begins and the other starts. That is and I have had a lot of discussions, and when why I never speak in terms of overall theories. my daughter met him she thought he was just I think of theory as pointing out the direction an elitist with all these ideas. She was really and not as a sign the air above our head, right. Illich had all these ideas, beautiful ideas, saying hereitis.Itpresentsa not un- exciting ideas, very stimulating ideas. I always reasonablegoal,an ever expanding goal. found it very stimulating to be around him. There needs to be some way to tell if you're But once I asked him why he didn't test out on the road. That is a kind of theorizing; it some of his theories in Cuernavaca. I said I tells us if we're moving in the right dit,.-tion. always took advantage of chances to test out For example, ittells us if we're just going my ideas to seeif they worked. You are along with the system and not basing our ac- remembered more for what you do than for tion on needs of people. You need some goal what you say. So I asked how his ideas will be posts along the way, and that has to be done tested. He said, "Well, people like you test theoretically. them out." I said "PT ideas of my own I'm going to test out. It seems to me the only per- Could yott 'a& about democracy and pluralism. son who will test out your ideas is somebody A lot of people would say they are not the same who never had ideas of their own." I think thing at all. I would like to hear what you have there is a problem there somehow about how to say about that. ideas get tested. Modernistic society is best done under My sense is if you are acting in a critical way, fascism. If we want to have a really monolithic then that action is in fact informed by some society, it should be done under fascism. If we kind of theory. I think that the problem is when want a democratic society, we don't know how we try to separate the two, as if to suggest that that is done, but we do know it isn't done the everything we do we have to filter through some way fascism is done. People here have asked kind of explicit theory. In the politics of everyday me if I felt my life *as a failure because cf life, in fact, is where you see theory and practice never achieving all my goals. I said no, I had coming together. Mcybe it is important to think to make a choice between fascism and some about theory not stpaiate from practice but sort of democracy; the fascism that existed think about it as praxis. and some kind of imagined democracy.am very happy to have spent my life not being That is the right idea. Theory and practice part of the fascist part of society. Democratic are always intertwined. When I was talking pluralism means that you welcome differen- about Highlander students, they had a theory ces. You are not into efficiency as goal. That about what they were going to do; now they will get you no where fast; it is not veg im- were going back to test it. If they learned how portant. I am not interested in efficiency. I am to analyze their experience, then they didn't interested in people living a full life now and

14 22 with hope for a better life for all people later on. They need to get a little taste of decency Two things are important. One is that we or they are not going to value it. I believe we no longer have national capitalism; we have build revolutionary change as we go along--as international capitalism because capitalism by we contribute toward it. I am very comfort- its very nature necessitates growth. If a com- able with that kind of thing. Our system was pany does not grow,itistaken over by built up when the whole United States had a another company that does grow. They have smaller population than Tennessee. People to grow to make the capitalist system work. were pretty well represented in that system Now the United States has outgrown the then. But as we gotlarger,thesystem economy here; they have exploited that to remained the same. There was less and less give them maximum profit. Now they have to representation. Look atthelastelectoral move into the world economy. There is no process and the choices we had to vote for or question that we have world capitalism. You not vote for. Most people decided not to vote can't change a system unless you understand becauseit would not have made any dif- it and know it; so we can't understand it as ference one way or another to have a voice in national capitalism; that way it doesn't exist it. anymore. We needtoseeitas world When you get smaller units then people capitalism.So,ifyouare goingtobe can't know everything that is going on. Then monolithic, not in the old fascist idea of a na- we'relessefficient,lessfascist,sortof tional capitalism but a world capitalism, you pluralistic.Ithink that enriches us. What will have to have everybody at the same pot would an orchestra be if you only had a harp? all over the world, not just in any one nation. You would hear an awful lot of harp but noth- Soitiseven more important todecide ing else. You need all of the instruments to whether we want to play that game and be playtogether. So we need todo things part of the world melting pot and to loose our together; not all things but some things.I identities, to ban the right to express oursel- think that is the mistake we make when we ves culturally in our own ways. think everybody has to work together on Your other point is weii tzken bccause if everything. We have to work together on you want to make it in the system then you some things but on other things we don't have have to support the system. People have to to work together. That is the kind of world I decide whether they want to wait for the long would like to see--sort of inefficient smallness haul and change the system, in other words to where people really express themselves and have something more than capitalism, or to see what they are. buy into it. That :s a tough problem if you are going to survive. You might have one foot out Given the global economy that we are all of the system, but you have to have at least facing, it appears to me that one of the major one foot in for that is where the jobs are, that problems when it conies to oppressed people is where your livelihood is. I think there has and a capitalist system is that capitalism seems to be some sort of compromise there between to now be a worldwide entity. When it conies to selling your soul and survival. democratic pluralism where different cultures I personally am against the capitalisticsy- are indeed toleratg where efficiencyis no tem and have been all my life. I don't think !ono- the goal, it seems that sort of movement capitalism can ever be democratic. Socialism flies in the face of very strong capitalism, and may not be democratic either. We never had that if you are not smart or a student in the realsocialism.Stalinismwasn'tsocialism; capitalist arena, you will be impoverished from what they are doing in China is not socialism. the economic perspective. Black and hispanic So we don't know what socialism couldtie. communities want the part of capitalist pie but We do know what capitalism is, what it has to in order to get it, they have to trride off some be. Capitalism has to continue to get bigger cultural advantages. and has to exploit more people andresources;

15 23 it will die if it doesn't. There is nothing per- world capitalism. What are you going to talk sonal about that. Charles Wilson, the presi- about next?" I szid, "I don't run the show. I try dent of General Motors, was criticized for to study and learn about it."Contradictions moving General Motors plants out of Detroit. are part of the dichotomy of life. We will They said, "Don't you have any concern for never have a situation where there are no the people in Detroit?" He said, "I might have contractienr You can talk about violence and a personal feeling, but as chairman of thedifgrent forms of violence,but you can board, I don't have any. If I didn't maximize choose a lesser form of violence. We know as profits, I could be sued by the stockholders agitators, you can't shoot ideas in peoples' for not doing my job. My job is to maximize heads, you have to have nonviolent activity. proirts, not to have consideration for others." Education per se is nonviolent, and anyone That is capitalism; it has to be that way. It is talking about social change has to work non- the nature of the system. It seems to me we violently. Right now the miners, who have a are going to have to have another kind of sys- history of militancy, are in a nonviolent cam- tem. I don't know what itis,. ut money can- paign; they quote Martin Luther King and not be the top and bottom line and the only talk about High la,. ''..r. Those ideas are good priority to be considered. To change a system, to learn and un.stand, but there isstill you have to understand it. Last year a group violence against them even though they are of teachers from the South came to High- nonviolent. So you always have contradictions. lander to try some workshop discussions. They Contradictions are nothing to avoid; they are were new atthis;they had never gotten something to analyze just like a crisis. I al lays together before. It soon became obvious they welcomed crises because people learn faster didn't understand the school system. They under strife when they are emotionally in- thought the school system started with the volved. They thi± of thingstheynever principal of the school they worked for. They thought of bsiore. Most people try to resolve didn't know that me-t decisions had been a crisis by taking people into the system. I made before they got to the pr:acipal, and few resolve them by making people mad at the of them ever gotto be made withthe system so they can have a smoldering anger at teachers. Because they didn't understaid the the system. You could use things like that to system, they thought the principal was mean. help people understand. Learning is best in a Like Charles Wilson, he would lose his job if socia l. movement when there is a struggle for he didn't do what he is supposed to do ac- injustice. When sparks fly, the fire spreads to cording to the state. The state would lose the help a lot of people. money if they didn't do what the national government wanted them to do. If you don't If it is true that caphalism is all pervasive, is it understand those things, you can't talk about possible to change the system without causing changing these things. the collapse of capitalism? If capitalism collap- So you have to understand this world sys- ses, what will replace it? tem. I remember doing a paper with Helen Lewis about 10 years ago on the role of third Capitalism, asIunderstanditand as world countries. We agreed that what hap- capitalists say and do, is a system that has to pened to third world countries is going to ef- get bigger and bigger. That has to be changed. fect this country more than things here. Right We can never have a democratic society as now the wheat farmers here in Montana can't long as that is the dominant course. There are sell their wheat because the banks want to a lot of good things in this country, and a lot collecttheir money from the third world of good things elsewhere. We were talking countries which don't have the money to buy about how people analyze those good things their wheat. One guy said, "Twenty years ago in their own country and in other countries. you said we had to understand this systemof For example, since I believe the future is nationalist capitalism, and now you say it is going to be built on the present, our freedom

16 2.4 of speech has to be carried on. Once you have people who are so depressed they can't think freedom of speech and the rights of protest, and act. People have to have hope, have to you can never change that. That's one of the see the possibility of change and want change. contributions that we have to make to the If things are too bad, people will be hopelesr, world because that is further advanced in this and thi will despair. For the last 20 years I country. People buod on what they know and have said we need the third world countries to they don't know anything about freedom of get us off dead center. I used to work at a saw speech. They don't know what you are talking mill, and as the wheel went around, the arm about. People in this country do know about sometimes gotstuckinthecenter and freedom of speech even if we only give lip wouldn't go up or down. What we had to do service to it. And that is a contribution which was sit on it to get it off dead center. I use we can make to the world. that figure to talk about how we are on dead My contributkons have been different. To center. We're in what we call the organizing me, building islands of decency was terribly stage. WI-tat we have to do is sit on it and important fromthe beginning.I am an somehow get it off dead tenter. We are not upholder of absolute freedom of speech. That going anywhere with these short-range goals; is why I am upset by President Bush's obses- they always tend toreinforce the system. sionwithpushing changeinlaws about Third-world pressure and our concern with desecrating the flag. I believe in concern for third-world countries can get us off dead cen- what the flag should stand for, but not the flag ter and get us moving. We have to understand itself. That is something serious because we've our inter-relationships in a lot of ways. For ex- got to keep thosl rights, not only keep them ample, we banned DDT in this country but here but share them with qle world. I think send it to Latin America where they spray it there are a lot of good values in America. on fruit and send it back for us to eat. Most people don't realize that Karl Marx saw I think we have to learn from third world capitalism as the greatest thing that happened people. Not that they are better--they have to this country. He thought we had to go not been corrupted; they have not been ex- through that stage of industrial development posed. They may have a fresher look at things befc. ~e we could have socialism. You learn to and may come at it from a different perspec- work together in industry. He saw ahead, tive. So I have hope that they may get us without know:ng a lot about the third world moving and get us thinking. It means we have power,thatthe time would come when to understand that we are part of that world, capitalism wouid get so big it would squeeze that we have to work with people throughout out everything else. That is what happened. the world. The president of one of the com- So I don't care what it is called. That kind panies in the United States that has had a lot of economics never allows for people. Money, of expansion in the third world countries said as they say, is the bottom line but then the in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago people have to come under the bottom line. that wc had to change the laws in this country to make it easier for them to make a profit in Is it possible we have to go to capitalism to other countries. He said they are no longer reach some kind of socialism? What do you see responsible to this country; they are systems happening? Is it possible to think that systems of the world. will go so far and the people will rise up for change? What does a mean in this internationalization of capitalism that we now have factory workers Ithink the people will awaken to the in Tennessee who are being portrayed as having situation when it gets oppressive enoughso accomplished a great victory because they have there is no way they can avoid seeing it. On rejected the oppression of this union that was the ether hand, I don't think11), change is trying to take it over in the name of Japanese- brought about by people who are hopeless, by owned factory?

I. 17 25 '''....iy care about debts. Eventually 'they will I predicted that vote because they had not realize they have no freedom and they are experienced the situatim long enough to be part of a machine. It takes some time to be- industrial workers. The country people are come unhappy about that, but eventually they some of my relatives and they are hungry; will. nen they will Nvant a union so they will they want good-paying jobs. So they will settle have a voice. Now they don't want a voice; for anything as long as they get those wages. they nnt to be told. It just takes time. They don't care about their health right now;

18 Radical Pedagogy: Constructing an Arch of Social Dreaming and a Doorway to Hope Peter McLaren

Dedicated to Myles Horton

I have been invited to speak to you today which continues to this day at the Highlander on the topic of social context and learning in Research and Education Centerin New adult education. I don't specialize in the field Market, Tennessee; and in Janine's case I am of adult education, as many of you are aware. thinking of her heroic struggles with the Crow Most of the work that I do at the Center for Nation and other indigenous groups, a strug- Education and Cultural Studies is with public gle which takes many forms, not least of schoolteachers andstudents,prospective which has been unwavering community ac- teachers, university professors, and student tivism and resistance against unrelenting for- and community activists and itcross-cuts a ces of oppression and the logic of colonization numbe- of disciplinary domains: the politics of which continue to exact so much suffering literacy, the sociology of education, political among the Crow and other Native American theology and the theology of liberation, cur- groups across the country, and the important riculum theory, cultural studies, and critical work being done at Little Big Horn College in socialtheory. Today's talkwill no doubt Montana. Both Myles and Janine recognize reflect these various theoretical trajectories as that the homoge.ieity of our cultural world I discuss some of my own work, and that of needs to be detotalized through a recognition other educators who place a great deal of em- of and respect for difference and tha the his- phasis on social context both in their research torical voice of liberation is the voice of the and teaching; and while itis not specifically poor, the marginalized, the downtrodden, and located within the general tradition of adult the oppressed. Both give serious recognition education, I hope my talk today can shed to the revelation of the oppressed without some modest light on some of the issues and romanticizing their plight. I would also like to concerns to which you have invited me to say that I am honored to be in the presence speak. of suchadistinguishedgroupofadult I am honored to be on the platform today educators. with Myles Horton and Janine Windy Boy, Some of you may find what I am about to both of whom exemplify in my mind the best share with you unremarkable or relatively attributes of the critical educator. The work of commonplace, especially those of you who are Myles and Janine is a shining example of what familiar with the work Jf Myles Horton, Paulo I refer to as "critical pedagogy," especially in Freire, Henry Giroux, and others who work the way in which their respective projects of from a critical education per:pective. Others liberation have managed to actively contest may find my perspective to be relatively un- and disrupt the ideological mechanisms and familiar, perhaps initially unsettling, or maybe social practices of domination which plague so even irrelevant to what you do or think you many levels of our society; in Myles' case, rm should be doing in adult education. referring to the path-breaking work he has Before I go any further, let me situate my done with the people of Appalachia and other discussion by making some initial comments economically disadvantaged groups of the on what I am referring to when I use the term South, especially in conjunction with his work "critical educator" or "critical pedagogy." I'll in literacy campaigns, antipoverty organiza- do this by summarizing some of the primary tions, labor unions and civil rights movement-- initiatives taken within the critical education all of which began with the Highland Folk tradition over the last fifteen years. Although School at Monteagle, Tennessee in 1932 and their work has frequently been marginalized

9,1 19 .2 7 and shunted to the periphery of the debate ticulating the real and the common sensical. overeducationinthiscountry,critical That is, what we conventionally accept as the educators have maintained a particular cogent normal, the mundane, and the everyday are grasp of the link between the actual forms thrown into disarray. Practical consciousness, which schooling takes and the wider structural as Raymond Williams describedideology, is arrangements of society. They have both radically dismembered by this group of educa- revealed and unsettled the ways in which the tional theorists. While teaching discourses and inequities of power and privilege that exist in practices project into "nature" their own ar- classrooms--with respectto the acquisition tifices calling them "reality," critical educators and distribution of knowledge and the institu- have helped to throw this reality into ques- tional practices which support them--are an tion, destabilizing its dominant assumptions. extension of the conditions which prevail in Thus, through such efforts, educators may the large colonial society. begin to see their teaching as a means by Despite their imposed otherness, they which the teaching profession has constructed have managed to counter elitistracist, and the "normative teaching event" in which social sexistassumptionsin dominant forms of lifeis codified and legitimated by existing teaching and curricula, by sounding disruptive relations of power and privilege. voices from the margins. Inadditionto Thecriticaleducationaltraditionhas providing both an oppositional language of provided teachers with modes of self-critical critique and contestatory social praxis, they reflection through which they can make the have paved the way for new forms of social transition from seeing what they do in the analysis. For instance, in their recent engage- classroom as isolated, individual concerns to ment with continental social thc ory and other understanding them as profoundly social mat- new developments within the socialsciences, ters requiring a pedagogical praxis that is able they have placed under hermeneutical stress toreflexively change the knowledge base the truths--of seeing, naming, and ordering which informs their classroom teaching. The reality--whichmodernity has soarduously lesson to be learned here is that all action has struggled to justify either within an objectivist a structure of intelligibility to it, and to say world of scientific "truth" or upon transcen- that liberation starts with action--as some so- dental grounds of uiliversalreason. Their called progressheducators are want to do--is analyses have often served to counter the in- to woefully misunderstand the relationship be- fluence of a debilitating positivism and in- tween action and discourse. I want to em- strumental rationalit ,which--at least intht., phasize here what I have termed critical sub- case of educational theory andcurriculum jectivity."Here subjectivityassumes a development in the United States--continues methodological position of bothanalyzing to pervasive tendency of reducingquestions of forms of oppression in the classroom and ethics and social justice to those of epistemol- larger society in terms of how they have ogy, developmental theories ofcognitive/be- developed the conditions for their own per- havioral development, or to those dealing with petuation and for disposing teaching as an human capital and group management theory. engagement in the nonhabitual, in making the In particular, these educators have been suc- familiar strange and the strange familizr. cessful and for the most part uncompromising Specifically with reference to the current in establishing connections among dominant literacy debate and the struggle within the formsof education--andhencedomina.,t academy over the "canon," they eschew a forms of literacy--and the present regimes of propensity to see the world in Manichean truth and dominant social practices which terms, as gripped by a titanic strugglt between help constitute them. the forms of civilized "high" culture and the By distancing themselves from their own contaminating forces of the culture of the "socialpresent,"th yhavemanagedto masses. They reject the recent assaultsby defamiliarize the conventions or genres of ar- critics such as Allan Bloom, whose Closing of

29 2 8 the American Mind has served as a reactionary colonizer. bludgeon in debates over the liberal arts cur- The work undertaken by critical theorists 1 iculum, and E.D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, has helped us to see this literature as essen- designed as a cultural thesaurus for every tially"constructions"socially produced and aspiring student. In the mawkish elegance of reflecting particular modes of subjectivity for Bloom's highbrow paradise, whose salons and their readers as well as providing specific sub- drawing rooms are populated mainly by belles ject positions which can be located geopoliti- lettristes from ivy league schools, and other callyinthe way inwhich the expansive descendants from the White European, the hegemony of the European/North American educator can confront inits inost hideous conqueror has been able to define who is per- manifestation, power's vertiginous intoxication mitted to inhabit the centers of the empire with theselectivetraditionof knowledge and who is to be policed at its margins. production in our schools. It is here in which The critical education (I'm using the tel m the classical tradition of European literature "tradition" here rather tentatively since I may assume an exclusive monopoly on the power be romanticizing what is, in essence, a body of to sanctify human life. work which exists on the borderline between Thecriticaleducationtraditionhas, contemporarytheorizingandpedagogical through an emphasis on social theory, at- practice) has kept alive--in theory and prac- tempted to uncover how such a European tice alike--the link between the struggle for legacy such as"the Great Works of the critical knowledge and struggle for democracy: Western World" privileges the discourse of perceiving them as inescapably intertwined. the white, male colonizer. The subject--or The tradition of critical pedagogy has con- model reader--that has been constructed out tinually brushed against the grain of those of many of the "Great Books" have been strands of the mainstream approaches to shown by critical educators to be charac- schooling, including both liberal and conserva- terized by a geopoltical construction of the tive accents, which still enjoy a relatively un- center and the margins within the expansive contested hegemony. As well as defamiliariz- hegemony of the conqueror. It is also to lock ing the "real-seeming' of classroom relations, uptheancestralcargoof theGreeks, they have helped to uncover ways in which Romans, Germans, French, English, and other domination and exploitation have become sys- civilizations of the center into the sedimentary tematized, removing the cloak of sanctity layers of our collective subjectivity. The Ar- from existingsocialrelations and cultural gentinean theologian of liberation, Enrique practices. For instance, they have shown how Dussel, put it well in his book, The Philosophy many teachers who refer to themselves as of Liberation, in which he remarks: "From the progressive preachliberationinsuch an 'Iconquer' applied to the Aztec and Inca ethereal fashion it declares them innocent ii: world and all America, from the 'I enslave' the face of so much injustice. Just look at the applied to Africans sold for the gold and sil- drop-out rates (Latino student: rightly call ver acquired at the cost of the death of them "push-out"rates),the persistence of Amerindians working in the depths of the tracking, the sexism and racism which has be- earth, from the 'I vanquish' of the wars of come institutionalized in our public school India and China to the shameful 'opium war'-- system as well as in higher education, the une- from this 'I' appears the Cartesian ego cog- qual outcomes amor,g minority groups that nito." What Dussel has so cogently revealed is are structured into the system, and the em- that the "I think, therefor.; I am" of Descartes phasis on control-oi iented and narrow techni- has provided the empires of the center-- calknowledgethatshapes dominant ap- England and France as col mial powers, Nazi proaches to curriculum design. Germany, and later the United Statesits Operating within a theoretical subterrain CentralIntelligence Agency--withthe on- outside of the policing structures constituted cological expression of the ideology of the by the dominant culture's "imperial" discourses (which set the limits of what can be said, sentation on a battlefield which is unequally by whom, and under what conditions), where andunevenly occupied.Culture is a both the teacher and the student rarely as- power/knowledge network in which a specific sume their appointed role and places, the re:...ity is produced through institutional prac- tradition of criticai pedagogy continues to tices and discursive regimes which allow such make unconventional alliances between reality arealitytoproceeduntrammelled by and representation, between description and democratic imperatives. meaning. What critical pedagog has managed Within this view of culture we need a new to do is to seriously challenge the social uses understanding of power, and people such as of pedagogy; so Ilike to think about this Michel Foucault have helped us in this regard. tradition as not a hidebound compendium of Power, as Foucault has shown us,is not a prescriptions and proscriptions but rather a capricious spirit; it is :lot a disembodied force locus of ideas and prntices where new in- thatlventitiously insinuates itself in human scriptions and transformations can take place. affairs. Rather, it is historically rooted, social- Critical educators are not, in my mind, sub- lyconstructed,participatesinacultural mission to any one disciplinary trajectory or politics, and serves interests which are struc- socio-politicalcurrent;they may be con- tured into society. It can, of course, serve to sidered "critical" in the best sense of the term resistthese same conditions. If discourses in that they are fiercely antagonistic to con- transform ways of speaking into ways of ac- ventional ideas and practices which constitute tion, we have to see power implicated in this the expansive hegemony of disabling social ocess. Foucault has shown us that the exer- relations which promote gender, race, and c:se of power creates knowledge and that class oppression, and other oppression such as knowledge also induces effects of power. I those which have to do with sexual preference think this is what Foucault meant when he and reh6ious and political freedom. Broadly said everything is already interpretation. We speaking, critical educators have ruptured the don't possess power or even apply it since it is sense of the objectivity and homogeneity of everywhere and contiguous with discourses the social and the proliferation of the logic of which help to constitute our bodies and struc- equivalence. turethedirection of ourdesire. Power The tradition of critical pedagogy works produces certain forms of knowledge and such from a particular conception of culture which knowledge is used to legitimate and extend has far removeditsstandard view asa the interests of those served by the effects of monadic site of harmony and control. Within such power and to justify the subjection and the critical perspective, culture is site of dis- certain groups on the basis of transcendent juncture, rupture, and contradiction--a terrain norms. Power therefore subjectivizes (permits of contestation that serves as the loci of multi- us to speak and desire) and also subjugates valentpractical-discursivestructuresand (by empowering certain discourses over others powers. That is, culture is viewed as struc- and thereby constraining the way we can think tured by a combativeness among competing about our own subjective formation and act to discourses. Culture is a labyrinthine play of reshape those cultural forms and social prac- discourses,including thepracticaland tices which constrain and disrupt our narra- materialeffects of their multifarious con- tives of and paths to liberation and freedom). figurations and articulations;itis the place Every ideological guarantee--or idea that goes wheresignifyingchainsflowintothe unquestioned in public discourse and social catacombs and subterranean spaces of the so- practice--carries with it unstated assumptions, cial, as well as the structured space of social unsuspected cons..2quences, shrouded in ethi- silence where coherency and uniformity is cal and epistemological issues. All discourses forged. That is to say, culture is perhaps more bear the effects of power. appropriately viewed as a heterogeneous and So what is the point of all of this for transgressivezone,ascircuitsofrepre- educators? I want to suggest that a renewed

22 30 understanding of culture can assist teachers to recent work on context and culture, educators situate their own classroom practices within will become better equipped to both resist larger structures of power and privilege so and transform the recent assault on education that they are better able to acknowledge the inthe United States by neoconservatives, interestsservedbytheir ownideological reactionaries, and fundamentalists of all sorts- predilections, rather than purging the cultural -whose disarmingly familiar rhetoric natural- field of diffe, ence through the universal cal- izes oppression and inequality under the guise culus of putativelydisinterested,objective of meritocracy and fairness--and to strive for analysis. a greater role for schools to playinthe This perspective of culture slices up its deepening of our vision of democracy. presumed uniformity into di.erse pieces of Let me conclude here my summary of the shifting perspectives and untold possibilities. critical tradition, which I hope has made clear Our teaching practices do not possess norms thatallteaching and knowledge formation but continually remake cultural and social consists of rhetorical tropes of some kind or norms (which are remade again and again). another, which both reflect and shape th P... way Our task as critical educators is to disrupt the we engage, and are transformedby,the authority of these practices in the interests of polysomy, contradklion, and social, friction of great social justice, of "what could be." everyday life. This process has been more Given the language of efficiency which has fully explored in my own work, and the work brutally and insidiously colonized the discipli- being carried out at the Center for Education nary domain of education in recent years, and and Cultural Studies, where I have the good the current stress on management techniques, fortune of working with Henry Giroux and accountability schemes, and classroom-ready othersonanumberofcriticalthemes. curricula--features which readily strip school- Giroux's work, in particular, has advanced the ing from any substantial concern with justice, notion that reality does not possess a pre-sig- equality, or democracy--it is hardly surprising laying nature but is an interactive cultural, that the debate over culture and schooling has social, and historical process. What I'd like to only just begun to spill beyond the cramped emphasize is the important way the critical andinsulatedboundariesofmainstream theorist articulates the relationship between educational research.Inparticular, Anglo- the discourses of literacy and the workings of Saxoneducatorshave been generallyin- power, and reveal the various ways in whicu cautious about their pretenses to occupying a power operates as a regulating force which privileged cultural vantage point with respect conforms to its sway dominant ideologies and to other cultures; they have, for the most part, theirinstitutionalizedsupports aswellas remained loyal to a view of culture which per- centralizes and unifies often conflicting and mits them to anchor their meanings ina competing discourses and subjectivities in the bedrock of their own prejudices and in so interest of capitalia social relations. Please be doing have failed to disturb the popular as- remindedthatsubjectivitydealswiththe surance of received -rthodoxies about the cul- "inner sign" which must take into account not tural fields that inform the classrooms where just our experiences but the language we use they teach. The discourse of technocracy, to mediate and understand our experiences. which has insinuated its disturbing presencc I want to make the case here that, despite into school policy and practice over the last their rhetoric of disinterest, traditional models decade, and which has been seriously imasive of teaching and learning, as well as those of of democratic life, has proliferated due to the educational research, are never innocent. I lack of attention to the way cultural context want to go so far as to argue that the con- hasbeendefinedandunderstood by struction of knowledge, whether within the educators. It is my hope, and I'm sure the precinct of the classroom, or more informally hcpe of a number of you gathered here today, in the world-at-large, is never self-authenticat- that in taking up the issues at stake in the ing,self-legitimating,orself-ratifying. The

23 31 concept and the real are non-identical or stabilizing functions which serve the collective asymmetrical. Put less abstractly, becoming interests and regimes of truth of the prevail- literate or a knowing person is not a process ing power elite. To assume a "centrist" posi- which can determine its own effects or speak tion--in which a balance of political perspec- its own truth in a manner which transcends its tives is sought by refusing to capitulate to the relation to the socio-political context in which discourse of either left or right--is to support meaning takes place. And here we touch on those whose interests are preserved by the the central theme of today's talk: knowledge status quo, it is to patrol the ideological bor- or the act of knowing is always a creatureof ders of common sense, finding in the stability cultural limits and theoretical borders and as and familiarity of the mundane and predict- such isnecessarily implicated in particular able a recompense for the current instability "selective" economies oftruth,value, and of social life. power. Knowledge is alwaysindexical to the Not only is it important to contest what I context of the knower and knov. n. Knowledge, have called a "centrist" position, but it is also in other words, is always ahead./ implicated in important tochallenge what liberals have relations of power and power is distributed called the "pluralist" position. The key to es- laterally and historically, which ie to say une- tablishing knowledge forms which are liberat- quallyamonggroupsdifferentiated by ing is not simply to offer a menu of every con- race/ethnicity, gender, and class. What people ceivable position, since it is obvious that many say and do and the interpretationsthey con- of these perspectives harbor racist, classist, struct art attached to everything related to and sexist assumptions. We need not insist on the whole of social and material reality, and cultural diversity, if by that we mean trans- not just the interests of their respective inter- forming culture into a living museum of con- pretive communities. temporary choices, but a critical divershy. A Most mainstream educationalresearch critical diversity means that choices need to remakes reality within the frames of reference be seen as social practices which are themsel- embodied in the language employed by the re- ves historically and socially constructedand searcher or else within the researchers' own teachers need to learn to distinguish cultural discursiveoundaries. Critical educational re- choices as liberating or oppressive. In other search .,,ttempts to situate the construction of words,moral,political,orepistemological meaning within the life worlds of the par- choices under the name of democracy or ticipants themselves and the specificity of his- totalitarianism all occupy specificable loca- torical trends and cultural forms which shape tions in relations of power. Within pluralism, the subjectives of the participants. Research demands for justice among the oppressed are withinthecriticaleducationaltradition often treated simply as threats to diversity, as creates conditions which enables individuals privileging one group at the expense of the to investigate their own reality andthe social freedom of another. This position refuses to conditions which shape their daily lives. recognize that choices are themselves social In relation to these larger social axes of constructions which exist in relations of power power, it is necessary for educators toremind and must be understood as existing asym- themselves: Whose interests are being served metrically and hierarchically in relation to in the social act of becoming literate? Where other choices. is this process situated ethically and politically For instance, the pluralist may argue that in matters of social justice? What principleF women and men need to be given anequal should we choose in struc,turing our pedagogi- voice in our society but fail to recognize that cal endeavors? the frames of reference for how such voices To avoid asking such questions is to run are to be heard are constructedwithin a the risk of enlisting our services as educators decidedly male discourse. Similarly, a critical in such a way as to demote our critical facul- pedagogy needs to counter the essentializa- ties to custodians of sameness and system- tion of difference which occurs in the liberal

24 ;i2 humanist position withfaciletolerance or action. I would argue that critical education celebration of difference or diversity. This leads to action--but it's a particular form of position amounts to a mere tolerance of the action we call praxis. To claim that action and multiplicity of the voices of the marginalized, experienceisallthat you need is wrong- the disenfranchised, the oppressed. As Henry headed and reflects a profoundly stupid un- Giroux andothershave pointedout,a derstanding of emancipatory teaching and so- celebration of difference without investigating cial transformation and really constitutes a the ways in which difference or diversity be- profound misunderstanding of people such as comes constituted in oppressive asymmetrical Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. Experience relations of power often betrays a simple- or action does not speak for itself. There is no minded romanticism and exoticization of the pristine, unmediated ground of experience "Other." from which to speak or act. I disagree that ex- This brings me to two important issues perience provides you with some kind of which I want to only touch on briefly before I transparentaccesstoreality.Experience get to some studies which bear directly on the should never be celebrated uncritically. No ex- topic of social context. The first has to do perience and language are irrevocably inter- with the relationship of education to theory, twined. One cannot simply give primacy to ex- and the second deals with the issue of lan- perience, without taking into account how guage and experience and languageand experience is structured through language. In clarity of expression. my classes, I often hear teachers complaining: Let me share my position on the impor- "What can all this critical theoretical stuff do tance of theory and for educators and stu- for me? I live my experience in the classroom. dentsemployingatheoreticallanguage. This is just a lot of big words that don't speak Theory occurs as teachers come to understand to my experiences." I think that it is very im- what they know about their teaching and out portant that critical theorists speak to both of this create new and informed meanings. the heart and the mind of the educator, of Theorizing, the way in which I am envisioning course, since critical knowledge is not only an it, does not have to be applied to practical abstraction, but something that is embodied, situations because there is no separc:tion of felt, and lived out. But it is also important to one from the other to start with. Therelation- remember that many teachers read their ex- ship between theory and practice needs to he periencesinwaysthatblamestudents, understood as dialectical, such that theory al- demonize them, and construct them as the way3 emerges out of practice, and practice is "other." In some cases, for instance, their ex- always informed by some form of theory. Just perience is informed by the language or dis. because people dort:tself-consciously raise courseof reactionaryconversatism.Here questions about the theories which inform educators confront the legacyleft by the their practice doesn't mean they don't hme colonizer, especially in relation to minority theories, it &imply means that they are inar- populations in U.S. schools where there have ticulate about them. Theory is not a means of been concealed attempts to integrate the op- distancing yourself from the minute and par- pressed into the moral imperatives of the ticulars of everyday life; ratIver, theory is an ruling elite. Some teachers have, after all, em- effort to understand the liturgies of the mun- bodied in their teaching practices discourses dane and the everyday even more profoundly. supported by the Reagan administration in Theory moves toward what Mathew Lamb which Blacks, Hispanics, and other groups are calls the "complexity of the concrete" indicat- essentialized as either biologically or culturally ing the contradictory tensions in reality. In deficient and treated as a species of inferior this way, theory can guide the transformation vertebrates,asphylogeneticallydefective, of reality. lobotomized Allan Blooms, driven by urges There are some very naive educators who and impulses either to violence or lethargy. claim that critical education mdst start with Such a perspective of the subaltern also sur-

25 33 faces, in more sophisticated, but not less in- believe, as I do, along with Raymond Wil- sidious forms, as inthe.amonstrations of liams, Henry Giroux, and others, that domina- liberal reformers whu argue that Blacks and tion cannot exhaust all social experience, then Hispanics can become good, obedient workers acquiring a critical vernacular can enable us just like their lighter-skinned counterparts. So to forge alternative acts and oppositional in- we see that we are dealing with more than tentions in that social space which is not al- simply experience here, but also a language of ready colonized by the oppressor. analysis. For me, the issue for the development of On the other hand, one cannot simply contextual,criticalknowledge andunder- privilege the langume of theory, either be- standing is, first of all, affirming the experien- causeideology is not only lived through ex- ces of students to the extent that theirvoices perience but also through language. Learning are part of the dialogue. You affirm that lan- the language of racism, of decoding its forma- guage and speak a language that resonates tion in institutional and social sites, is not the with the concerns expressed by the students, same thing as living as a victim of it. I think it but you also must be careful not to take such is important to think of language not as prior experiences at face value,asifitspeaks toexperience,butas constitutive of ex- romantically for itself. What happens, as Paul perience. Social experience can be critically Willis notes in his book, Learning to Labsir, transformed through a language that enables when student vuices are burdened by the dis- an educator or student to situate himself or course of rdcism and sexism? For me, the herself as an active social, cultural, and his- pedagogical implications of this are very im- toricalagent. We needalanguagethat portant. How do you affirm these voices while enables us to understand the process, always at the same time questioning and challenging profoundly socia. 'sses, through which we the racist and sexist assumptions which inform have been formeu, which includes the con- them? The issue here, as my colleague Henry crete and specific constitution of the historical Giroux notes, is understanding that itis im- moment in which we have been given our perative for teachers to critically examine the voice with which to speak. Within the uneven cultural backgrounds and social formations topography of needs and desires to which we out of whichtheirstudents producethe have given the label "postmodern condition" categories they use to give meaning to the we too often discover that our voices have world. For, as Giroux notes, they are not been soundedby whatFredPfeilcalls merely dealing with students who have in- "anonymous, unplaceable tongues" whichis dividualinterests,butrather are dealing the result of the chaos of identity in which we primarilywith studentswhose stories, find ourselves uncomfortably installed--a bab- memories,narratives,and reading of the ble of discourses without one orchestrating world are inextricably related to wider social narrative around which our identities can and cultural formations and categories. Itis cohere. important here to understand how 1Ith the In this age of postmodernism the grand voices and experiences of the stuuent has narratives which contained and recuperated been subject to and shaped by historical and our subjectivitieswithinone secureepis- cultural factors such as those o: race, class, temological and moral frameworks are cur- and gender. Critical educators can help clarify rently splintering and cracking apart. The for groups and individuals their histo:ical ex privatizationand withering of thepublic perience of oppression by linking individual sphere is being replaced by the conceit of the narratives of specific instances of suffering to consumer moment The doctrine of salvation an even larger historical framework in order by consumer freedom israpidly displacing to recover the social memory of awareness of participatory democracy and communal self- other struggling or oppressed groups. That is, management for the pursuit of private happi- itisimportantto engage thesubjugated ness through material acquisition. But if you knowledge of other subaltern groups so that

26 34 we can develop a solidarity with them and at proletariat. The transformative intellectual is times this will involve our co-suffering with engaged in the act of the cultural strugglea them. culturalpolitics,if you will--in which new A criticalpedagogyis,therefore, one forms of identify and subjective formations which involves the curtailment of the monopo- are sought. They are sought in the context of ly of educational power exercised by the es- a deepening of democracy. The issue here is tablished sacerdotal body who preside over one of the intersection of language, theory, the development of curriculum practices and and power and is not an attempt on the part educational policy which obliges such prac- of theorists to form an elite intellectual class tices and policies to the satisfaction of the to administer to the uninitiated. heterogeneous exigencies of the competing For those of us involved in developing a categories of educators working within the new, ri positional language, there is always system. But itis also a pedagogy that links the si,Mous charge that we are convoluted, such policies and practices the productioa of abstruse, elitist, and exclusionary because we social dislocatlon caused by structural con- don't adopt the language of television jour- tradictions and the historically-rooted process nalism in our critical work. There have been by which subjectives of both students and chodges made by some teachers and students-- teachers are formed such that this social dis- both on the right and the left--that the lan- location is allowed to persist and reproduce it- guage of critical educational theory is esoteric, self through the schools and other institution- and that leftist critioal theorists ar2, primarily al and secial networks of power/knowledge. concerned with speaking to each other. But This means more than a simple causal move this ignores the important point that Richard from understanding to undertaking but rather Wolff has recently made, namely, that major the social construction of a new historical sub- shifts in ways of thinking usually interact in jectthroughcategoriesandformulations very complex ways withrelatedshiftsin which exist outside of and in opposition to the modes of speaking and writing. He goes on to expansive colonizing logic of the dominant say that you cannot equate clear, easy and ac- culture. The new historical subject is nut only cessiblelanguage withaproperradical's abletodenaturalizetheappearancesof respect for the public because to be clear and capitalist society but assume an active resis- easilyunderstoodoftenmeans resonating tanceagainsttheexcrementalethicsof ideologically with the prevalent presumptions postmodernculture--anethicswhich is and desires of the postwar public which has propelled, as Ernesto Laclau has pointed out, grown increasingly hostile toradical ideas. through "a pure logic of the circulation of sig- Those who write with clarity and accessibility nifiers"--and those contemporary economies in mind may have, Wolff claims, "abandoned of powel and privilege which would attempt the tough work of convincing readers of politi- to subvert the autonomy of the margins in the cally unpopular truths." To write in a clear interestsofthediscursiveandmaterial and straightforward way often means writing monopoly of the center.Itisa pedagog inharmony withcertainideologicalsen- which restores the individual as a subject sibilities of the American public, of which a rather than as object of history. Henry Giroux hostility to radical theory is one. Of course, speaks of this process as the development of this is not an argument for complexity for the teachers and students into transformative in- sheer sake of being complex, norisita tellectuals.Transformat intellectualsare defense of leftisttheorists who are,quite mobile subjects sensitive to the shifting con- frankly, terrible writers. texts of contemporary social life--in fact, to Why is it, then, that critical social theorLts the very contingency of the social and the speak in what often appears to be a dense relation character of all identify--and do not and arcane- and I dare say often alienating-- define themselves as the uniform vanguard on language? Why can't the social theorist just a steady march towards the liberation of the adopt the language? Why can't the social

27 35 theorist just adopt the language and reasoning Much of the specific forms of anti-intellec- of the social actors he or she is attempting to tualism that you find in the United States at study? this present historical juncture has to do with Certainly, the critical social theorist must the production of specific modes of electroni- acknowledge the fact that the social actor un- cally-produced meaning, and I don't have time derstands a great deal about the world by vir- to go into this here, but it invr' es an analysis tue of his or her participation in social life; of television, 1.dio, film, and irraetive video thus, the critical social theorist must include and computer technology. SuLproduction the actor's own rationalization of his or her has to be understood eulturally and historical- behavior in any critical analysis. On the other ly, of course, and if you take a look, for in- hand, as Anthony Giddens points out, "The stance, at American film, you will often judge rationalization ot action is always bounded, in the worth of a film in terms of its ability to every sort of historical context; and it is in ex- entertain while books usuaLy possess two ploring the nature and persistence of these primary categories: entertainment and pack- bounds that the tasks of social science are to aged information forpracticalapplication. be found." While, as Giddens notes, we cannot Foreign films, such as those by Bergman, dismiss in our analysis ordinary language and Wenders, or Fassbinder, are often deemed as the world of natural attitude, by the same unacceptably intellectual and, in their forgoing token we need to avoid the "paralysis of the of the formulaic car chases and their emploj- critical will" which has been brought about by ment of actual dialogue among characters, are the rediscovery within social critique of ordi- often considered brooding and depressing. It nary language and common sense. To engage appears that Americans don't want to wander critically in forms of social lifeisto par- too far away from the mind set of cheerful ticipate in that life, but it also means under- ideologicalsubordination. A he happy-face standing how what is taken to be "common icon emblazoned on T-shirts and buttons and sense"issociallyorganized throughtacit other cultural artifacts that greets you with presuppositions which form the background of the exclamation, "HAVE A NICE DAY!" is, every discursive formation. Giddens suggests of course, sending you concurrent messages that this involves making a distinction be- beneath the threshold of the obvious whien tween"mutualknowledge" and "common are equally emblematic of the American na- sense." Mutual knowledge mediates frames of tional consciousness: Don't think too much, it meanings and brackets the factual status of might make you sad; don't waste your time tacit and discursive understandings; it is ap- analyzing or worrying about som,-thing that plied in often tacit and routine ways. Com- can't be changed. Print media is equally as mon sense, on the other hand, refers to the problematic. Popular books today include self- "un-bracketing of mutual knowledge" and a help volumes on stock investment, consideration of the status of :ts belief claims. psychotherapy, home repair, the art of sexual The criticalassessment of common sense seduction, subliminal programming, etc. Be- beliefs does not logically presume drawing cause much of leftist social theory doesn't give upon mutual knowledge and, of couise,hi you classroom-ready, prepackaged lessons on reverse is also true. what to do on Monday morning, but instead Following Giddens, the critical discolzse raises issucs and presents challenges to exist- which I am trying to develop, respects the ing ways of thinking and acting, and because it mutual knowledge that participants shore in isn't "lite" entertainment putting, instead, con- everyday life yet such an appreciation does siderable responsibility on the reader to grap- not serve as an obstacle to a critical assess- ple with .:omplex thought, it is often dismissed ment or "un-bracketing" of sach knowledge. asirrelevant, jargun-filled,andnot much Of course, this all ties in at one level with a more than discursive puffery. Of course, this need to resist prevailing forms of anti-intellec- attitude is precisely in accordance with the tualism. prevailing hegemonic articulations which have

28 grown up with the logic of consumerism. group marginal productivity,utility function, In response to the debate over language and catharsis. Plunk them down in Chicago and clarity, Henry Giroux has made some and ask them to explain poverty and crime. very significant points which I will attempt to Willtheir"ideas" be unaffected by their summarize here. First of all, language must be "tools"? Bowles and Gintis think not. I agree seen as a terrain of contestation that allows with them. for the generation of multiple and competing The point that I am trying to make to you vccabularies regarding how knowledge, ex- this morning is a simple one. Please excuse perience, and social relations are constructed me for repeating it so often, but I think it's in schools and in the larger social order. Lan- important to recognize that language in fact guage is not only an issue of clarity, but rather constitutes reality rather than merely reflects an issue of the politics of social and moral it.Itisa symbolic medium thatactively regulation thatis deeply implicated in the shapes and transforms the world. This is not larger politics of representation and power. meant as a defense of the strong form of the To claim that complex language must be Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language deter- abandoned in favor of a language of clarity mines thought, although I certainly support and accessibility often legitimates a form ofthe notion that language imposes structure m that is increasingly becom- and content to our relationship toreality. ing a code word to legitimate a form of red- Language influences thought but does not lin- baiting. A stress on clarity and simplicity fre- guistically determineitsince groups often quently suppresses questions of context and challenge dominant signifying practices for the specificity of multiple audiences to which reasons which are highly political. Linguistic such writing can be directed, suggesting in- communities invest differently in different ex- stead that there is a justifiable normative lan- periences depending on the contexts which guage that should envelope the entire public stipulate the struggles over the merinings of arena. According to Giroux, this attitude also such experiences in which such communities-- suggests that languageis able to act as a or groups within them--are engaged. Here we transparent window to the "truth" and that the need to follow A. Wilden's advice in language which most closely approximates the making a distinction between language and language of truthisthat of popular jour- dis,ourse; we can't reduce them, one to the nalism. Further, such a view takes a demean- other. What is most significant in the present ing view of the teacher-as-reader, suggesting discussion is to recognize the diversity of the that teachers are not intelligent enough to discourses createdatdifferenttimes and grapple with complex theory. This attitude fits pint, and to realize certain discourses usual- perfectly with a society comprised of powerful ly dominatL uthers. Wilden defines discourses interestgroups many of whom serveto as "some people talking to some other people benefit from keeping teachers and other in- about some relationship or another." Unlike dividuals unconnected from a theoretical con- language proper, a discourse has a subject and nection with emancipatory social projects. a subject matter, which forms the ground of If :,ou think that I'm exaggerating the im- what all members of society accept as true portance of language, ask yourself whether or and false, legal and illegal, legitimate and il- not ideas are logically prior to language. In legitimate. Language is not some conduit to answering thisquestion, Sam Bowles and an immutable order of coherence and stability Herb Gintis suggest that we perform an ex- but is generative of the reality which it evokes periment: Take three groups of social science and to which it speaks. Of course, my em- initiates, and provide each with a distinct set phasis here on language and experience, dis- of works and rough definitions to supplement course, and praxis, could make me, in the eyes their everyday language. Give the first group of some social theorists, some sort of em- the terms function, norm, structural differentia- piricist to which I would answer "yes" if this Is tion, role, and pattern variable. Give the second takentomeanempiricistin Raymond

3 7 Williams' fashion of challenging the categories use terms given to us by Jurgen Habermas, which the human subject is produced through knowledge can assume certainknowledge- the relationship between linguistic construc- constitutinginterests.Itcan be technical tions and social life. knowledge, which helps individuals and groups Language always stamps the world with a in facilitating technical control over their sur- social presence which is never neutral or un- roundings. This is the instrumental knowledge problematic. When meaningisproduced of the natural sciences, which claims for itself through language unreflectively to the extent an unbiased or value-neutral status via strict thatit gets sedimented into common sense methodological procedures. Practical knowledge--which we call ideology (properly knowledge, on the other hand, results from the speaking, even critical knowledge is very much process of meaningful dialogue and grasping ideological)--it often masquerades as a "fixed the social-meanings constitutive of a shared truth" or "a brute fact" about the social world, lifeworld, tradition, culture, and history. This as if such "factuat knowledge" were immune to type of knowledge relies on interpretive un- particularrelationsof powerorcertain derstanding which can inform and guide prac- material interests. Knowledge isnever im- tical judgments, as well as the interpretation mune. All knowledge speaks to particular in- oftextsandsocialevents.Emancipatoty terests, particular relations of power in which knowledge, on the other hand, seeks a form of certain groups benefit over others and certain non-alienated communication and an under- narratives of identity are accorded a certain standing of the social contradictions which status over others. Again, I suppose this is stand in the way of human freedom and social what Foucault meant when he said that every- justice. This form of knowledge wives beyond thing is already interpretation. The language s.:1)jective knowledge to that of critical praxis, I'm using right now at this moment certainly AsHabermashasfurthernoted,each isn't neutral and I would never claim other- knowledge has its own criteria of validity, and wise. It is already populated by interpretations you can't judge one in terms of the other. of others. You can't judge critical knowledge, for in- I've spent cons derable time in setting out stance, hti terms of its technical potential to the importance of recognizing the relationship enhance the control of the physical environ- between lan9uage, discourse, and power be- ment. The type of knowledge I will be em- causeIthinxitisvitallyImportant that phasizing in the following studies is that of educators understand their own aituatedness critical knowledge. within the professional and pracjcal discour- The first study I want to review is one ses which they draw upon in their daily work. which was recently conducted by Lois Moll It is also important to understand the limita- and his associates, Carlos Yelez-Ibanez and tions of the languages that are made available JamesGreenberg,attheUniversityof r, for helping them to understand both their Arizona. Moll studied familiesin Tucson, own everyday experiences and the categories Arizona, who lived in an Hispanic, their students use to speak their reality, their predominately Mexican, working-class com- truth, including the relationship between such munity. His idea was to create collaborative categories and the cultural forms aad modes activities among teachers that would draw of Nubjectivity in which they become articu- upon what he terms the "funds of knowledge" lated. that the families in the area already possess. Let me turn now to some recent studies His analysis focused not only on how literacy which help add some narrative as well as activities occurreJ within the households of some explanatory substance to some of the the community, but examined the features of ideas surrounding the topic of knowledge and a significant and pervasive socio-cultural prac- context. The primary context of knowledge is tice or activity which Moll and his researchers the language that speaksit, and the form call "confinanza" or mutual trust. This term, which that knowledge takes. For instance, tc explains Moll, refers to reciprocal exchange

30 1 S relations that form social networks among through the children's own interests and their households in this working-class community, questions.InMoll'sschool-basedliteracy which were often developed in response to project, teachers obtained funds of IPlowledge difficult economic situations. Now these net- by connecting the literacy activities in their works also penetrated the labor market in set- classrooms to parents, community organiza- ting up pipelines to possible jobs in both the tions, libraries, and other resources. formalandinformaleconomy.Specific In the literacy projects, students initiated markets included child care, plumbing, con- almost all of the writing. Some students chose struction, and folk medicine. Shared proficien- to communicate with a school in Puerto Rico cies in these areas served as social contexts with a computer; others students formed a so- for the construction of krowledge in the class- cial group who preferred to be taught in rooms. Spanish. Some students chose as their topic of What Moll and his researchers did was to interest, the study of how buildings were con- investigate how knowledge gets constructed structed. This v,as an interesting choice con- within the family dwelling:withinthe family in sidering the fact that house construct:' I was terms of job sharing, andbetweenthe families oneofthemostprominentfur.usof of this particular working-class community. knowledge found in the homes within this Moll wanted to understand the qualitative community. Parents were invited to the school characteristics of the pedagogies employed by to speak on this and related topics, and the parents, as well as by uncles, aunts, and com- children were surprised by the thought of munity leaders. His goal was to educate the seeing their parents in the role of experts, tochers in the local schools, how to affirm especially given some of the parents' lack of and build upon the funds of knowledge which formal schooling. Parents contributed substan- the students brought with them into the class- tively to the development of lessons, and their room from the surrounding community. The funds of knowledge were deliberately accessed funds of knowledge possessed by certain for academic purposes. Moreover, this was an families were quite wide ranging and abun- intellectual contribution to the content and dant. Parents and relatives were knowledge- process of classroom learning. In their class- able in a variety of areas including soil cultiva- room literacy approaches, teachers were able tion, planting, seeding, water distribution and to tap the following funds of knowledge; the management, animalhusbandry, veterinary student's own knowledge; the knowledge pos- medicine, ranch economy, auto mechanics, sessed by students' parents and relatives; in- carpentry, masonry, electrical wiring, fencing, dividuals from the teachers' own personal net- herbal cures, midwifery, and first aid. work of friends and colleagues; school staff SoMollanalyzedhowthespecific and teachers; community members without household activities made use of these funds school-age children, university faculty and stu- of knowledge and the domains within which dents. they were organized and transmitted. Further- Moll concludes his study by arguing that more, Moll stressed the social matrix in which both the content and process of exchange of funds of knowledge were acquired. That is, he funds of knowledge developed in households resisted seeing funds of knowledge as simply a are enormously useful for classroom instruc- repertoire of skills, and focused instead on the tion. By incorpor ting social networks of the variouscontextsinwhichthesefunds of home into instruction, v.eachers can mobilize knowledge were used, and how knowledge was funds of knowledge in order to transform socially organized within them. The social classrooms into more advanced contexts for 1 relations provided a motive and a context for teaching and learning. This is especially tme, applying and acquiring knowledge. Much of claims Moll, in bilingual classrooms, wheR. the teaching and learning that went on in the special linguistic characteristics allow qudents household was obtained by the children not access to broader and more diverse:ial net- throughimpositionof adults,butrather works and funds of knowledge. Moll's re-

31 39 --- - ... search points to one way in which classrooms cated in the unique texture of Black-White can be viewed in the context of broader social relationships in the United States: What she relations and practices wherein the funds of calls an "oppositional collective or social iden- knowledge which exist wnin the students' tity" and the oppositional cultural frame of communitybecomethemostimportant reference. Black students struggle against un- resource for educational change. acceptable options--denying theiremerging Let me turn now to another study which peoplehood by suppressing issues of identity appearsintheforthcomingMulticultural or, as Fordham putsit, camouflaging their Education and Empowerment, edited by Chris- desiretobeacademicallysuccessfulby tie Sleeten. In her analysis of a high school in preteoding not to be doing well in school or the District of Columbia, Signithia Fordham putting forth the effort necessary to retain develops an alternative way of peer-proofing their identity as Black Americans. Fordham Black students' academic performance which describes the fictive kinship system among will directly empower the students themselves Blacks as a kinship system not related by rather than the school officials. This is an ap- blood or marriage by among people wha have proach that goes against the general policy ofsome reciprocal social or economic relation- placing academically successful Black students ship--a type of collective ethos which struc- into advanced placement or gifted programs tures the way in whi...h Black people define away from their age cohorts and peers.It their relationship to one another. The kind of means immersing them in what Fordham calls social interaction characteristic of this fictive the"fictivekinshipsystem"or"collective kinship relationship which exists among the ethos" of the Black cirnwunity. As Fordham Black population in general within the United suggests, this means comb:ning the desire of State .;iswhat Fordham, citing Williams, Black students to be achdAmically successful desaibes asa preference for depth over and their ethnic and/or racial identity. It also breadth, an interest in rich, vivid, personal, means beginning academic instruction with concrete, tangled detail in which human inter- students' own cultural predisposition to ideal- actions are replete with repetition and den- ize the collective ethos within the Black com- sity, and the mining of situations from many munity and structuring the school curriculum facets and angles--characteristics which and academic learning in ways which make Fordham maintains sharply contraFt with what them feel responsible for each other rather is expected of students in tbe Anglo school than being engaged in one-to-one competi- context where there exists a strong separation tion. What she basicail... argues is that a grow- of the personal and non-personal and an ing number of Black students in the United ethos of individualism, greater attention to States are in some form becoming raceless, breadth than depth, competition rather than being located in the position of racelessness. cooperation, and noninvolvernznt rasher than To understand what Fordham means by race- deep, tangled engagements. lessness, we have to understand what she Schools, maintains Fordham, reward be- means by afictive kinship system among haviors and an interaction style which are the blacks. It is a kinship system not related by inverse of the indigenous cultural patterns of blood or marriage, but by a people who have Black students. Fordham assigns the term some reciprocal social or economic relation- "racelessness" to the predicament of those stu- ship, a kind of collective ethos whicf. .hapes dents who minimize their connection to the the way which black people structure and fictive kinship system or oppositional cultural define the relationship to one another. In e.. frames adopted by resistant Black groups. In amining theexpressive dimensionof the this context, she attacks homogeneously struc- relationship between the dominant culture turedclasses which separate Blacks from andthe indigenouscultureofBlack tutelage from their peers and those who arz Americans, Fordham discovers what she con- racially similar. This suggests, in Fordham's siders two important factors which are impi:- view, that academically strong Black adoles-

32 4 0 cents come to believe that in intellectual and people tend to make the student a misfit in nonintellectual ways they are different from both contexts. other Blacks and, except for phenotypical fea- Now let me turn to another study in that tures, little more than clones of their white same volume edited by Christie Sleeter. She peers. Fordham writes that "Separating Black and Carl Grant argue that there is a bi-firca- adolescents and other nondominant group tion between school knowledge and real-life children--both spatially and psychologically- knowledge, with the pc.tency of real life con- from their peers and other members of their trasting dramatically with the lifelessness of communities regardless of its benign inten- such school knowledge. Students who are dis- tions, appears to exacerbate the conflict such abled by their school experience do not ex- students experience around academic achieve- periencea congruencebetweenschool ment and school success. This appears to be knowledge and knowledgetheybringto especially traumatic for Black students born school with them. They cite Everhart's distinc- and/or schooled during or immediately fol- tion between reified knowledge and regenera- lowing the Civil Rights movement. According tive knowledge. Regenerative knowledge is to Fordham, peer-proofing in the traditional "created, maintained, and re-created through senseis"internallydisconcerting,forcing the continuous interaction of people in a com- Black students to questiodie value of their munity setting;" it is contextually based, mean- racial identity and leading them to question ing that understanding comes out of the the value of what they were doing and being specific historical context in which students asked to do even though they continued to do are immersed. It is forged in the home and it." community. Regenerative knowledge asserts Fordham ends her research by examining creatii e control over the knowledge produc- the work of Uri Treisman, who helped tion process. Reified knowledge, on the other develop a group-centered approach to learn- hand, is that which, while abstract, is treated ingattheUniversityofCaliforniaat by students as if it were concrete and real. Berkeley. The success of this program,in Like regenerative knowledge, it is created in a Fordham's view,isdue toitsfocuson given historical context butis encoded for strength of the students rather than remedia- transmission and therefore remains decontex- tion of their apparent weakness. Success is de- tualized and static. Sleeter and Grant's study pendent upon their willingness to collaborate in a working-class neighborhood supports the with each other. When this approach was util- idea that students have little ownership or ized at UCB, Treisman reports that Black stu- control over public institutions and public dentparticipantsoutperformedasimilar learning, and hence, regenerative knowledge. group of Asian students. While they have power to create, manipulate, Schools teach Black students that working and understand life,that power isusually in isolation is the way to make it, and most in- restricted to their own localized neighborhood ternalize and distort the peer-proofing mes- or peer group. They write that the students' sages supported by their high school teachers "own cultural knowledge did not simply com- and other school officials. This leads to an un- pete with school knowledge--school knowledge willingness, Fordham claims, to seek support was subsumed within it, and understood as a from white peers whom they often do not set of tasks to do." School knowledge was not trust, or their Black peers,:h whom they so- absorbed by students as a conceptual system cialize with but with whom they do not study. for helping them understand and act on the Fordham maintains--and I agree with !,er-- world--it was compartmentalized within their that traditional measures of peer-proofing own conceptual system and though of as sets Black adolescents' school performance have of activities done for someone else in a par- largely been unsuccessful because in seeking ticular social context. The cultural knowledge to peer-proof the child to fit into the cultural- possessed by students was rooted in their own ly different world of the larger society, school concrete experiences and was divided into

33 41 those events which were controlled personally as not the product of mere chance--some ar- by the students and those which were control- bitrary collision of significations, events, and led by adults. Sleeter and Grant articulate random meanings--but rather as a field of their challenge to teachers as one which calls relations forged within a grid of power, ethics, teachers to connect public knowledge with the and meaning. knowledge and meanings students bring with Let me be clear. I believe that the primary them. No matter who the students are, their referentfortheliberationof oppressed power to learn and act begins with knowledge groups should not be the extent of their generated within their own lived experience. moral, ethnic, gender, or political strangeness What Sletter and Grant advocate is "bridging or displacement outside the boundaries of the school knowledge or public knowledge, and dominant and familiar but rather the estab- student's own cultural knowledge, and thus lishment of criteria which can distinguish encourage students to analyze this internction, claims of moral, ethnic, gender, or political and then use the knowledge learned to take superiority which we exercise as outsiders. I charge of their lives." believe along the Milhevic that the other has These examples by Moll, Fordham, Slet- a hermeneutical privilege in naming the issues ter, and Grant reveal the importance of un- before them and in developing an analysis of derstanding knowledge and meaning as social, their situation appropriate to the lived context historical, and cultural constructions. A criti- in which they are situated. How we ex- cal pedagogy is one in which the personal is perience and place labels on our sense of always understood as social, and the social is reality are the primary referents for construct- always historicized to reveal how subjectiv ing a critical pedagogy. has been produced in particular and select When letzschetalkedaboutgoing ways through interests of gender, race, and "beyond good and evil" he wasn't referring to class as well as other interests. We must not an escape from a world unsullied by ideologi- siinply speak of knowledge but knowledge, cal interest or the binary oppositions which since all knowledge is relational and can only plague the grand narratives of the Western be understood withinthecontextofits metaphysical tradition. Rather, as philosopher production, its distribution and the way it is and theologian Cornell West has pointed out, taken up or consumed by different individuals hewasseekingnewdistinctionsand and groups. The idea I want to stress here is categories of good andevil which would that knowledges are invariably mutable, con- enable the creation of new subjectivities, new tingent,andpartial;furthermore,their social spaces, new communities. We need to authority is always provisional as distinct from follow Nietzsche and Marx at least this far, transcendental. Know ledges may, in fact, pos- and we may surprise ourselves with how much sess the power of truth but in reality they are closer to a deepening of democracy we can historically contingent rather than inscribed by achieve. We don't need to sow future priests natural law; they emerge, in other words, out of deconstruction in the desacralized horizon of social conventions and sometimes in op- on the postmodern scene. Rather, we need to position to the same. transform present social practices and rela- A pedagogy of liberation works by rooting tions because history compel' us to do so, be- itself in the imagination of the oppressed, by cause the present historical juncture in which speaking directly totheir experiences. In- we witness so much human misery and suffer- dividual subjectivity is constantly traversed by ing, necessitates it. History compels us be- contradiction; its positioning within the cul- cause our subjectivities are forged in it;it is tural fieldis always as subjects where the furnace of our will lies buried, ig- enter the struggle over subjectivity from dif- niting both ...ams and desires. For in the ferent historically-given levels of material, cul- iron womb of history we cast the shape of our tural and social endowments. Our formation longings; and to reclaim history is to be fully as individual subjects is therefore understood present in its making.

34 4 2 We need to do more than to redescribe trying to struggle against. We need to stare our--'ves in new ways--although the way we into history's grim visage and assume our nar- seek to imagine ourselves is an important step rative space within the very contours oi its in the struggle for liberationwe need most flesh, a space where we can speak our own pressingly to both reform and transform our stories and dream our own dreams without present waysof contestingthecapitalist the dead letter of burgees ethics weighing like modes of production, with all of their atten- a nightmare on minds still capable of en- dant formsofsocialmystification,tech- visioning, still willing to hope, still intent upon nologies, and hydra-headed bureaucratic net- constructing a space of difference, a space of works. We need to outface the barrenness of possibility. That spate does not wait for us, postmodern culture by employing a discourse beckoning us to occupy it, or thinking that we and set of social practices that will not be con- will one day stumble into it. There is no act of tent with resurrecting a past which can never grace suddenly bestowing the path for us. We be reclaimed, or with redescribing the present require an ultimacy of commitment, an un- by simply textualizing it, leaving in place its bending intent, a continually renewed effort to malignant hierarchies of power and privilege. brush reality against the grain. It is a space For these latter acts only stipulate the lineage that must be fought for and defended, terrain of and give sustenance to those social rela- where hope will remain forever the enemy of tions responsible for the very injustice one is despair.

43 35 Learning in the Social Environment: A Crow Perspective Janine Pease-Windy Boy

The thoughts I would like to share with us when to observe anG listen.It was the you today are some of the ways in which we finesttoolwecouldpossiblyacquire-- have composed, constructed, designed, and medicine and knowledge. created at our own tribal college. It is a bring- One woman that we have heard from had ing together of the ideas from adult and a very important message from a tiny crea- higher learning, anditisone constructed ture--anant.In her tepee, one littleant within the confines of the Crow Reservation crawled in and gave her an extremely impor- as chartered by the Tribal Council of the tant message that did in fact save all her loved Crow Tribe. It was designed and created over ones around her. a period of about 20 years with the good When we looked at where our knowledge wishes of elders who had an idea about our came from, we knew that all of our knowledge own scholarship, our own interest, and our emanated from the Creator whether it was destiny. from messages from our environment or from When we consider the idea of the work each other. The Creator had told us that we we needed to do to get along in society today needed to be a part of a family, and our fami- as Crow Indian People, we start from the very ly ways and our family ties were expressions beginning of where we are in the universe. of the Creator's love and regard and respect Our culture commission met for many, many for us. As Crow:, we have a clan system that hours back in 1962 to talk about the way in follows the mother's heritage line. For every- which learning had come about with people in thing we do and for every achievement or mo- our tribe. In 1962 I was still in high school, ment ofsuccess, we havearecognition but in 1975 I joined that force--that heritage ceremony; thatis, we bring inthe clan's of planning in hope. From the nearest I can people to celebrate along with us. For the tell from the heritage I have, it started from achievement, we do not receive gifts; we give the place where the humar. being is in the gifts to those people who have prayed with us universe. That is that the Creator is amongst all aiong. everyone; elements are in friends and in na- That same spirituality comes about in the ture whetner itis the rocks, the rivers, the frame of our language. In the language we birds, or t:Ie animals, and it certainly lb felt by find no posoessives; that is, the world is not human beings, the sky, the stars, and the, divided up and owned by anyone. Itisa whisper of the wind. A Creator could vest in society anda commurity thathas been the person knowledge--knoMedge in any num- cre.ted and vested wits- life and breath. There ber of things. Knowledge can come from are no coercive verbs such as r 2ve to, you spending time in prayer n.nd fasting, from the mu.st, you should, or you ought to. All of these top of a mountain or the river boaoms, or things do not exist in our frame of language. from a small spirit. There aremyriadsofkinshiptermsto One of ou ,.greatest wisdoms in the Crow describe relationships, such as those for very Tribe is from the chickadee, the smallest bird close relationships in which first cousins say in our environment. The chickadee istne whatever they think interms of first-line major lesson of i rotection to the Crows. We criticism or in which an uncle corrects and are a small tribe. We were always at odds disciplines. Also we find there is no simple with the Sioux; there were thousands of them. past! The past is so real that it is always with The Blackfeet were to the north, and the us is present. We love life. Those were Shoshone and Arapaho were to the south. some of the things that we looked at as the Lots of tribes did not like us, and we did not base of our assumptions as we began to deal like them. Defensively, that little bird taught with the relationship with our learning en-

37 44 vironment. from the Creator, we didn't have to pay for it. We are sort of one of those back water We wanted very much to provide those clas- societies where if we don't care, nobody else ses, those places of learning, at no cost. We cares. For 100 or so years, we just had no one started out with the assumption that our clas- going to college or the formal sort of learning ses could be free to our students--our commh . th'It many in the United States enjoyed. As ment was so complete. The first time we had recently as 1970, we had only 30 of our adult an accreditation review (and we are a college members with college degrees of any sort. In striving for accreditation), we were told that 10 years fre,n 1970 to 1980, we increased cur students would not value what they did not numbers to 200, and that was when the big in- pay for. vestment of the federal money assisted a lot We found how deeply rooted our cultural of us to get there. Then things dropped down sense was in terms of where knowledge comes to the bottom, and absolutely nothing hap- from and how this differs from someone else's pened after 1970. So we really had to make a assumption that somehow knowledge can be decision. boxed, packaged, and weighed orthatit What wasitthatwe wanted? We equals a certain dollar value in the eyes of a chartered a college, but we got there by way student. Being in this back part of the United of tutoring each other in voluntary places like States, we never have ,had a history of wage kitchens on wintery nights. The :dea grew that labor. We work hard in our lives. We care for we could in fact do this on our own; we did our families, but we almost always have 50 to not accept the assumption that we had to im- 80 percent unemployment. The knowledge wt . port teachers from someplace else. Because of acquire is the living of life and living it as well our understanding that knowledge was vested as we possibly can. It may be but mostly isn't in all of us throughout the community, we related to our credit ability. knew this, and we agreed with the Creator So as an institution, we have had to recog- and his greeting on us. We not only had men- nize those knowledges that we want to convey toring systems in our society, but people were to each other. We went to our elders at a mentors in one field and learners in another. tribal meeting with a long list of those things Even in my children's life time, this is so in thattheyrecognizeaselementsof our education. We inheritedallthese ways in scholarship--ttn science of our kinship, the which knowledge could be learned whether it science of our relationship, the sciencP of our is through observation, from listening, from politics, the science of our philosophy and our mentoring, or through very, very meticulous psychology, and the science of our sociology. study. We inherited afaithinour own They knew this. These are not people who scholarship and in the idea of education. have formal degrees, but they have eminent So we began to look at how this would be scholarship. As people who were assigned to placed together. We were convinced we didn't understand what we were putting together, we have to have a building even though people determined we would have the largest depart- said there is where it would be. We didn't ment in our college called Crow Studies and have a building until our sixth year of opera- have it based on that eminent community tion. Even then the building that we had was scholarship. If you look at our catalog today, called submarginal, and lots of people called it you will find 35 chsses in Crow Sliidies. It is a dump. We knew that if we were not in this an interdisciplinary kind of study area. It is building, we would be some place else. Some our knowledge, and it is not taught anywhere people still look at our college and see at it in this universe except at Little Big Horn Col- that way. When we moved there, we pulled lege. That took a tremendous level of commit- together about 60 volunteers; we washed, we ment because when you try to sell American scrubbed, and we knew that it was a place to Indian literature or the oral literature that has be together and do some learning. never been written down but only spoken in We also knew that since knowledge came the most respectful terms to somebody who

4 5 comes through to accredit your institution for minutes; an hour, an hour and a half, two literature in the finest sense, such people say, hours and that is it--we are done. Our stu- "Where is your English literature? Where is dents and people really felt that we needed to your Russian literature?" I say, "They teach look at different sorts of time packaging. that at Montana State University. Our stu- At Little Big Horn College, we also recog- dents can go there and get it and have a fine nize the achievement of our students. We version of whateverisRussian literature. wanted very much to have achievement noted Here we study Crow Indian literature." in ways as among their families. Our gradua- There are seasons for knowledge. There tion ceremony, for instance, is the recognition areseasons when certainclasses can be ceremony of the returning warriors, and we taught. Oral literature for instance is one of have our warrior singers who sing along with them. Our elderly people know that and the teachers and faculty. In the midst of the respect those stories. But they told them only ceremony, we bring in clan representatives to in winter time and when food was served-- pray for our graduates in their success. usually in the evening /hen it was cold and Our school basketball team won the na- snow was blowing around. They are told in tional championship among 22 tribal colleges. such a fashion that all attention is on them. When they came back, we decided to tap into And we do that. Every class time we have our a meLlanism in our community that had been kettle of berry pudding and fried bread, and there traditionally; that was the return of the we sit down with a variety of our scholars, our warrior ceremony. This ceremony is one in students, and study again in this wonderful which a young warrior is paired with 12 com- way--a way in which it has been all along. munity members. There is knowledge in each Another aspect that we looked at was the of the officers of the ceremony. The players oddity that the Creator gave us many chances go out into the community so v.e have to to acquire knowledge; not just one, not two, identifythose 12officeholdersinthe not ten, but as many through our life time as ceremony. We bring the parents and the we wish. We wanted to have a mechanism for players out to the home of this office holder. students to have not one, not two, or not five Planning for this takes about two months. tries but to have as many tries as they wish. There are dances, there are lessons, there are Now you know there are admission standards; prayers, and each officeisdifferent. Our if you fail the first quarter, you are on proba- players were able to acquire this knowledge tion, and if you fail the second quarter, you and to take part in that ceremony. The eve- are suspended. Our regulations do not follow ning that we had it, we must have had 600 of that. We even went so far as to eliminate the our community members come to observe the F because we felt that no one had to bear the tremendous community solidarity that stood burden of failure. We were close enough to out in our success. We were so excited about our students to understand negaing factors this mechanism, this way of conveying unity but also theelementofcompassion. and historical roles, that we wrote it up in our Knowledge can be acquired, and there are accreditation study. It just looked like a circus many mitigating factors. We can have the to them! But to us, it was one of the most compassion aF educators to give our students solid things we ever did to tie to our history, a number of tries. to our recognition system, and to the way in Time packaging was another concern. which there is learning from each other inter- How do you bundle knowledge into time? In genera tionally. some classes our stndents were ready to han- We also believe strongly in political par- dle the regular quartet system, but in others ticipation. If Crows can do anything besides they wanted to take more time--time for dis- basketball, we love our politics. We enjoy cussing, lots of time. Time is a funny puzzling meeting and participating. In our tribal elec- thing, and it is amazing to me how often we tions, we often have 85% participation. In the constrain ourselves to time in lots of different last 10 years, the college has been extremely

39 4 6 involvedinvoterparticipation. We have made us realize our commitment. I was told registrationdrives;wehaveeducational by visitors that because I accepted a really low forums; we have brought enemies together in salary, I was not worth a whole lot. I was also forums where Republicans and Democrats told things by visiting evaluators such as come to present their platforms. We have "minority groups are awfully good with their even had some of the white candidates come hands." Now you might find this a surprising down and talk with the Indians. There are statement in 1986 by a person who held our many things that we do to show our L.:lief destiny in her hands; she took us so lightly! that our people have citizenship, and that has Academic pride is Pour business. The way we not been easy for us. We have been accused feel is that we do what we want to do. Then of many things and have been investigated. I they suggest that we need off-reservation ad- myself have been investigated by the FBI on visors because we really are not aware of what all kinds of accounts. Of course, I am here we want to do! My biggest challenge in life is today, and I have not spent any time before a to contain my ferocious anger. Dr. Tietz, the judge. president of this university and a person I ad- What we aredoingisinvesting our mire greatly, once told me, "Write it out four scholarship in ourselves and that really upsets times. You will then begin to take out the some people. We have learned from our ex- anger and to speak in a language they can un- periences. One thing we learned about our derstand." I can't tell you what a struggle it cultural commitments is that there are things has been, -_xcept to say that we are surviving. that really are our expressions, our scholar- I guess we must be finding some language to ship, and our learning. We are discovering communicate whatitisthat we have ac- more about that everyday. Three of our clas- complished. ses are instructed in the Crow language by Our colleges are struggling. There are six professors who have masters degrees, and other tribal cdeges in Montana, and I am some working ondoctoraldegrees,like proud to see scme of my colleagues and fel- myself, do instruct in that language. low graduate students here becausethey The biggest test has been the scrutiny of shine. The story I told has been experienced those. from mainstream society who have a at Blackfoot Community College, at Salish standard model in mind of what the com- Kootenai College which is our senior institu- munity college ought to be. Our board of trus- tion in the state of Montana, at Dull Knife tees are 12 Crow Indians who have been College on the Northern Cheyenne reserva- electedfrom among people interestedin tion, at Stone Child to the north, and at Fork education. We have gathered together on a Peck and Fort Belknap. The State Commis- hilltop isolating ourselves for about 12 hours sion on Higher Education was not very inter- to decide on our curriculum. When the day ested in us; this year we met with them for was over, we looked over the Big Horn River, the first time in our 20 year history. These are one of the most holy places in our land. It was moments in history. Building or no building, a tough decision to make that sort of commit- we are going to be around educating our mant. Some people cried; I know I did. But people in our way rather than just sitting we also knew that many options were in front around. of us. The scrutiny which we have been put to

40 4 7 From an Adult Educator's Perspective Lloyd Korhonen Chere Coggins Gibson

Lloyd Korhonen and Chere Coggins psyche actually means soul. It doesn't mean Gibson served as members of a reaction soul in the Christian sense of an immortal panel for presentations made by Peter Mc- soul, but rather it means all of you, all that is Laren, and Janine Pease-Windy Boy. you. It is the essence of what a person is. I think what we have creatediseducation Korhonen's Comments without a soul, without an understanding. We have a very wise philosopher in Ok- My fourthreactionissomething that lahoma who once said, "It wasn't what I didn't should give us some pause. We have done a know that done me in. It was what I was so very poor job, or no job at all, of separating certain about that was wrong." Many times I out credentialing from learning. That I pose think we in education t''fame so certain of 'o you as our problem, our problem as what we know that this certainty comes out as academics. We have done a very poor job in truth. I am Leminded of that when I listen to the world of education of pointing out that what is truth, to how truth is understood, and education and learning are not necessarily to why it makes sense. So the first observation schooling ana credentialing. That is something and reaction I had is this:it is not so much we all know, but evidently we have done a what I didn't know that done me in; it is what poor job of conveying it. 1am so certain about that is probably wrong. Those are my four reactions. One hopeful- My second reaction grows out of a whole ly spiritual enough, two hopefully reflective series of impressions I have had over life that enough, and the last one hopefully directional were reinforced by the stories today. A num- enough that we might have something to talk ber of years ago, Pat Mu llens and I used to about. tribesand collectfolklore among Indian Gibson's Comments Mexican American people. I'll relate one story out of that experience and draw my reaction When you are asked to be a reactor, you from it. As we were trying to collect what do one of three things. You can get fully people understood in life, we described things prepared, that is read a lot of good books and in stories to people, and they described things think things through In the second tactic, you to us. We were talking about rocks, but the take voluminous notes, which I do anyway. words they were using for rocks were words Or, one can just sort of react. I think I will used for animate objects. We tried to expiain just react and give you a sense of the things to them that rocks were not alive. At this that I wrote down as others spoke. point an older gentleman asked us if we were. The thingthatstrikes 1115 firstand sure. You know, I really wasn't! I have that foremost is the degree of emotionality that is reaction now as I listen to the stories that I behind the stories we have heard here today. have heard. Any of you who have done community A third reaction is we have attempted to problem solving and research in the area create a science out of what we do in educa- know that you get very caught up in people's tion and learning. It all goes back to an earlier stories and people's victories. It is a very spe- canon. There is a word we use with great fre- cial arena to work in. t!, ency in our study of learning, and that is One of the things that I wrote down was psychology. I was thinkAng of the root word-- "change as norm." Many of us have grown up psyche. Most people translate psychology as thinking that stability is what we aim for. I the mind or the study of the mind. But you think what we need to help people understand can go back to the earliest canons where is that change is what we aim for. Change is

41 4 8 built on an examination of the past and a those who call this another type of education; sense of where we want to go in the future. a type of education that is important because We need to instill that in ourselves, our stu- their lives depend on it. And it really isn't dents, our children, and those around us. another i ind of learning! We know that. We Another point and one that Lloyd alluded need to help people understand that com- to is that it is so frustrating that when we say munity problem solving is an educational ex- education, people automatically tie it to some- perience that results in learning. thing formalized and institutionalized. Thus, When I listened to Janine, I heard her say they devalue their own experience and their again that knowledge comes from variety of reflection on their experience. Also, others sources through a variety of experiences. We name our roles for us if we allow that to hap- learn from the smallest, the chickadee for ex- pen. How important itis to be able to tell ample. We do learn from the smallest, from your own story and once you are able to tell our children for example, and we learn from your own story, to be able to reflect on it, to those smallest experiences. But again, we can't examine it, or to interpret it. I found this in do that unless we take the time to reflect on doing some research on community problem our experience, to examine that experience, to solving. When you asked people to reflect on interpret that experience, and to reaffirm the what they had done as they intervened on importance of our experience. But we hustle their own behalf and to recall the action they along so quickly we don't take that time, and had taken, that kind of reflection allowed we don't help our students take that time. item to reaffirntheir value and to reaffirm As I look at the words I wrote down-- that they really had learned and that they had power, powerful, empowerment, and value-- made a difference. I think that is an arena there is an awful lot of power in the people, that adult educators have failed to do enough but sometimes we fail to help people recog- work in many ways. We have not worked nize the power in themselves. We must help enough in the whole realm of community ourselves and others acquire a questioning at- problem solving, social action, and working titude, a problem-posing attitude at all times. with those who have made such a difference. So often we look for solutions. We need to be As adult educators we have played in safer looking at the problems and posing problems, arenas, and in some ways have cheated our- reflecting and reacting,and learning and selves and others of some valuable learning growing all the while. experiences. One of our speakers spoke of

42 4 9

,ilwit The Arch of Social Dreaming: Teaching Radical Pedagogy Under the Sign of Postmndernity Peter McLaren

Let me share with you this morning, if I sity and permanence. Itaccomplishesthis may, some thinking I have done related to through rituals of the ordinary and the mun- what I sometimes refer to as "the arch of so- dane, by smoothing over and dehistoricizing cial dreaming." Yesterday, Itried to share and defusing fractious antagcnisms related to with you some perspectives on social context relations of class, gender, arr.; ethnicity. Social and some of the aim; and objectives of life and classroom life were similariy articu- educators working with the critical education- lated as constituted by discourses vetich struc- altradition.I was highlighting perspectives ture and delimit the practice of ete possible which could be labelled as post-structuralist, by providing not only constricting internalized and yet these perspectives are shared among norms of intelligibility to social and institu- only a small number of theorists who work tional life but also rituals which order social within thecriticaleducationaltradition,a life and provide students and teachers with comment whichisinno way meantto ways of embodying normative modes of sub- denigratethepoliticaleconomy approach jectivity. Let me now expand on some of these which characterizes the majority of critical points 1 presented to you yesterday. educational work. Both approaches make a One principle which I take as more or less transgressive commitment to challenging exist- definitive in constructing an arch of -ial inginstitutional and social apparatuses of dreaming is that teat.11ers need to draw on the domination and oppression, in giving voice to cultural resources which students bring to the unsaid, in heeding the unacknowledged class in order to understand the categories power relations sealedinto the structured that those students use to construct their own silences of state bureaucracies and sovereign meaning, their own reality, their own location regimes of truth. The post-structuralist posi- in histoiy. Students need to acquire forms of tion, however, is better able to highlight the knowledge, meaning, and literacy which not historically and culturally specific functions of only challenge the discourses of the dominant discourses in maintaining social arrangements culturebutalf.oenablestudentstoap- of power and privilege. This perspective is propriate the codes and vocabularies of dif- able to insist that theories of schooling ac- ferent cultural discourses so that they can pos- knowledge their status asdiscourseand that sess the critical skills necessary to shape and theorists be able to narrate the contingencies transform rather than merely confirm the ex- of the formulations from which they work. istingsocialorder.Adopting what some Similarly,teachersandstudentsareen- teachers calla "balanced" pedagogical ap- couraged to use some of the insights from the proach, one which veers neither right nor left critical tradition to be able to analyze how is, in effect, to perfect and help 7ncrease the knowledge reflects prevailing social arr..nge- resilience of forms of dominatior ments, and how knowledge and experience Constructing an arch of social dreaming ar_ never unmediated but always politically means developing apoliticsof difference interested. Critical educators were portrayed which activelyconteststhe devaluationof as engaged in the act of denaturalizing the so- these whom we have relegated as the "Other." cial and articulating the process of schooling Thediscourseof many mainstreamap- as a form of discursive production, as the proaches to pedagogy recursively constitutes production of not only school subjects but also itself through cultural fictions of the marginal, subjectivities. Further, they.*ere unable to the deviant, the immiserated, the disaffected, uncover the ways in which schooling repre- and the underclass. In complying with such a sents itself as shrouded in an illusion of neces- discourse,we maybeinsinuatingour

43 50 pedagogies into the hostile displacement of essential question for building an arch of so- minorities which celebrates as the privileged da! dreaming for adult education is to ask point of reference of the so-called cultural how we, as educators, can better unravel and evolution of the white, Anglo-Saxon male. In beam comprehend those lived antagonistic the United States, there seems to be a ten- relations that characterize school cultures, and dency of equating difference with deviancy, so how we can better enable students, particular- that the marginalized "other" (e.g., women, ly those students from subordinate classes and minority groups) become the baleful bar- groups, to transform the dominant school cul- barian. My second pointis that educators ture in the interests of d more just society. At need to take a more critical and political role the same time, teachers need to raise the in defining the nature of their own work and issue of how it is that the dominant culture is the ethica ".direction of their own labor, a able to function in such a way that students point whichis strongly emphasized inthe are often rendered voiceless andpowerless. work of Henry Giroux. A third and closely re- The answer to these questions lies, at least in lated point is that students deserve the oppor- part, in putting the myths and the injustices at tunity to question from a critical vantage the very center of the dominant discourses of point their own history and their own voices. teaching and learning 'under erasure" (to coin This means that educators must develop a a popular term within literary deconstruction) pedagogical language that can question issues and in building a critical mode of teaching of public policy an,d redress social injustices, a that refuses to suppress students' histories, voice capable of dismantling the tyranny of that refuses to deny them their claim to sub- the present with the hope of bringing into ex- jecthood. Henry Giroux takes this idea a step istence what is yet to be. My colleague, Henry further by urging educators to engage a vision Giroux, suggests that educators can begin to of community in which students voices define build for a better future by recognizing that themselves in terms of a distinct social forma- knowledge is neither neutral or objective, and tion and their broader collective hopes. instead is socially manufactured and produced Another point which I would like to em- and necessarily embodies particular interests phm,ize in discussi*.g the construction of an and certain selective assumptions. Knowledge, arch of social dreaming for adult educators is if it is to serve a socially transformative func- recognizing that, as teachers, we can never tion, must be linked to the concept of power. speak exclusively for the "other," although we This, of course, suggests that educators must may align ourselves withthe "other" with raise questions about its truth claims as well respect to issues of social struggle and justice. as the interests which suchknowledge serves. While we must abandon the retrograde and Giroux ciaintains that knowledge defined as violentnotionthataswhite,Western such does not become valuable because itis educators, we are ina position to define legitimized by curriculum experts, or adult reality for others, we can--and should--work education experts, but because itis directly with diverse others to deepen their and our linked to the power it has as a vehicle of and understanding of the complexity and transfor- platform for critique, as a means of social mative potential of the traditions, histories, transformation and a medium of self and so- and funds of knowledge which exist in both cial empowerment. So in the terms set forth the school and the surrounding community. by Giroux, knowledge becomes important to And I would also suggest that not only sho...ild the degree that itis able to assist individuals we acknowledge in the school curriculum and to understand not only the assumptions em- in the practice of pedagogical possibility the bedded in particular archival forms based on diverse voices, experiences, histories and com- content,butalsotheprocesses whereby munity traditions which increasingly charac- knowledgeisproduceC, appropriated, and terize urban schooling, but we should also be transformed within specific social,cultural, able to respect the specificity of difference and historical settings. Thus, as 1 see it, one while at the same time articulate "differences"

44 within a politics of solidarity and 'Aeration in deruocracy as simply one big conversation which dreams are given birth and realized where everyone gets his or her turn to speak through the development of communities of and, as Andy Warhol once noted, where it is trust and affirmation. We need to develop a possible to be famous for twenty minutes. i social/critical utopian praxis which calls for believe,incontradistinctiontothis,that ourunconditionalwithdrawalfrom in- democracy needs to be modelled on critical humanity and for our movement towards what dialogue where while evety voice is heard and Agnes Heller calls a "common good." That is, acknowledged, every voiceisalso equally towards a praxis which promotes the goodness rendered problematic. We need to challenge of persons who prefer to suffer wrong than to thosevoicesthatpreachhatred,sexism, commit wrong. racism, dassism, homophobia, and religious In achieving a common good--and we intolerance, that speak the name of truth in should recognize that there is never only one the interests of dominating--not liberating-. common good--educatorsneedtofurther others. So the praxis which I have been refer- develop a language of hope which together ring to over these two days is a praxis which is will allow the oppressed to speak outside the lived in solida ,ith all groups struggling to terms and frames of reference provided by overcome suffering and alienation. The praxis the colonizer, whether this be the teacher, the of solidarity which I am advocating is one researcher, the administrator, or public ser- which seeks ttagage and not simply recover vant. Educators also need a language of history. It is one which confronts history criti- analysis and hope which permits women to cally so as to assist the powerless in locating speak in words outside of "name of the Father themselves in it. We need to situate the chal- vocabularies" and which does not deny ex- lenge of adult education as a task of em- cluded minorities from speaking their narra- powering the powerless from states of de- tives of liberation and desire. pendency to conditions of autonomy as both Several questions come to mind with an laformed movement for revolutionary so- respect to further giving shape to the arch of cial and economic transformation, and as a social dreaming. What are the moral, ethical, means of achieving a state of reflexive or criti- political, and cultural variants against which cal consciousness. This is what Freire, Giroux, we should construct ourselves as social agents and others have been arguing for the last of historical change? If we recognize peda- decade. For instance, we need to recognize gogy and learning as forms of cultural politics, our complicity as teachers in the process of then what are the ways in which educntors un- constituting our own subjectivity against that consciously silence and exclude those ,ifferent of ette "other," who becomes in reality, a crea- voices from dialogue? Here we need to make ture of our own struggle for puwer. This may a distinction between dialogue and conversa- seem utopian in the categorical sense, but I tion.I see a conversation as referring to want to emphasize that I am being utopian in taking turns while speaking to a variety of a provisional sense. I am not imposing any common themes. The concept of dialogue, blueprints here except to argue that we need however, suggests to me a dynamic and to develop a praxis of liberationin which dialectical process in which assumptions are people are able to distinguish genuine needs uncovered which inform the way each par- from the corporate manipulation of their ticipant articulates his or her specific view of desires, and in which they have the power and reality. To participate in a dialogue with sig- autonomy to determine rationally and freely nificant others is,in my way of reasoning, the nature and direction of their U .1'1, both being attentive to the deep structure, the individually and collectively. In achievinb such rhetorical tropes, the relations of power, and a praxis, social theorists and educators alike the gender and class-specific constructions of need to free themselves from what Renato what we are conveying to one another. This is Roksaldo calls "imperialist nostalgia," which whyIdetestthepopular metaphorof refers to a longing for the very forms of social

45 life which have been altered or destroyed, ment whereas desire seems to suggest an end- often in the process of conducting research, a less deferral of fulfillment and in this way, longing for the passing of what they, themsel- desire becomes its nwn object. Madan Sarup ves, have transformed through their supposed talks about the "desire for desire." Desire is "civilizing" mission. We need, also, to remem- what cannot be specified by demand, and ber that the objects of our social analysis and emerges when satisfaction of need cannot be our pedagogies are not just vacant and waiting met. Desire is never free-floating but is always receptacles to be penetrated by and filled with produced in historical and culturally-specific our wisdom--a rather violent and phallocentric ways. Do we have any control over the direc- image with which to construct the basis of a tion of our desiring, and has capitalist society pedagogy--but rather analyzing subjectsor- confused desire with real need? How is the ganic intellectuals--whose perceptions must be construction of desire within late ,apitalism taken as seriously as we take our own. linked tothe instrumentalrationality,the Let me refer briefly to the concept of Eurocentricity, the patriarchal discourses of desire which I have been employing here modernity and postmodernity? duripg the seminar. What has been occupying Desires which students express in school my interest for the past year has been the cannot be understood outside the manner in concept of desire and the process by which which they become institutionalized and so- ideology is grafted into and mobilized by the cially legitimated, without taking into account flesh. Ideology, in this sense, isn't something the ends and purposes for which these desires that is simply lived through some form of ra- have become r ianufactured, both in relation tioncii consensus but is, in fact, something that to established educational discourses and in is lived in and through the body. If we want to relation to economies of power and privilege understand the concept ofideology,par- inthelargersociety. The questionthat ticularly as it relates to Gramsci's articulation should, in my mind, arise here for educators of hegemony, then we need to ask ourselves is ht. w have ow wills and our sense of agency what makes us consent to various forms of as teachers, and the wills and desires of our domination. How does the dominant culture students, become colonized by modes of encourage this to happen? What makes bzing economic and symbolic production within the oppressors comfortable and perhaps even larger society? This amounts to saying that pleasurable? How isit that we can watch a desires are always mobilized by the cont;ngen- music video, for instance, and try to ency of the social, and its particular discourse of courage studentstocriticallyanalyzethe power, which are often tied to the economic production and reception of media discourses, requirements and dominant modesof to ideologically contest the militarism, the materialandculturalproduction.Within sexism, the violence of these television videos, capitalism, modes of desire are invariably yet simultaneously enjoy those very Pultural linked in some way to the production of some forms we are pronouncing as oppressive since form of surplus labor and consumption. somehow our bodies--pleasure's bodies make Grossberg has revealed the manner in a connection with the n usic. On the one which attitudes and moods are organized in hand, it gives us visceral pleusure to feel the historicallyspecificways(e.g.,suchas rhythm in our bodies and we make an invest- Gramsci's"optimismofthe will") as ment in that pleasure with our bodies; yet on economies of affect or impassioned ways of the other hand we abhor the ideological im- relating to the world. By itself, the production plications and ramifications of witnessing the of mood is not ideologically charged but it ar- objectification of women, the militaristic/fas- ticulates itself into ideological systems and cist representations, etc. Ideology is position specific conditions. Whereas libidinal needs ing us in this case through the mobilization of can be satisfied, at least partially satisfied, affect, as Lawrence Grossbcrg has argued. moods are never satisfied, only realized, and Needs presuppose the possibility of fulfill- constitute the investments and commitmonts

46 5 3 made by individuals to the empowerment of to think that the teacher played by Robin Wil- difference. And, as Grossberg notes, what liams is viewed as practicing what my students matters most in the age of postmodernity is feel is critical pedagogy. When this film gets that something specific and different matters. It released as a video, I will no doubt use it in doesn't matter what matters, as long as the class because I think that a lot of teachers will mattering is intense and significant in itself. m'..s the dangers inherent Pa the classroom Structures of power are able to articulate approach used by Williams. For those that themselves through this mobilization of affect. haven't seen the film, I just want to mention a Let me give you an ..xample of what I mean. bit abont the pedagogy used by the central My friend and colleaguL, John Novak ofcharacter who in the1950's returns to a Brock UniversityinCanada,attendeda private, authoritarian ruling-class school for principal's conference in the Eastern United boys he one:: attended as a student. Com- States last year. He was a featured speaker pared to the dictatorial approach ins'olving along with another speaker of an entirely dif- rote learning and severe military-style dis- ferent ideological and pedagogical cast--prin- cipline which is used by most teachers, the cipal Joe Clark (of the movie Lean On Me classroom approach used by WiPiams is very fame). Clark had been featured on the cover innovative--you could call it liberal and not be of Time Magazine with his baseball bat which wrong--and amuuats to shattering mainstream he carried oil patrol through his New Jersey conventions in the school. For instance, Wil- high school to ward off the so-called "thugs" liams hrs the class rip out pages of the rather who were causing trouble. I'm sure most of grim ten used to teach poetry, and has the you here have heard of Mr. Clark and suffice students take turns at standing on his dr;sk so ii to say that John Novak works from a mach that they can see the classroom from a dif- more liberal pedagogical and political orienta- ferent point of view. The students find Wil- tion than does Joe Clark, yet both speakers liams to be quite a refreshing teacher, if not received standing ovations from thelarge liberating, and their curiosity about his history audience in attendance. Novak wanted to find as a former student at the school leads them out why and interviewed a number of prin- to discover that he once belonged to a ;ecrct cipals about why they had applauded Mr. club called the "Dead Poet's Society." Un- Clark. Most individuals remarked that while beknownst to Williams, some students decide they didn't like the values and ideology which to resurrect the club, which began meeting in informed Clark's leadership in his school, they a cave in the evenings and where members admired his commitment and style. I think the recited poetry, painted their faces, and played same thing can be said P. aout the popularity of musical instruments. I won't spoil the movie OliverNorth.Whatmattersto maly for you by giving away the plot, butItrust Americans is that something really matters to you've got the general idea of the pedagogical Joe Clark and to Oliver North, and I think it approach used by the main character. was North's impassioned style rather than his The problem that I have with this form of ideas that stole the show in the TV fanfare pedagogy is that it suggests that self-improve- surrounding Contragate. ment and empowerment can exist without I want to shift gears here because time is callint, tin,. existing social order into question. running out and I feel I've jumped over a lot Issues of doss, gender, and ethnic inequality of areas, and I dare say I have not given suffi- are ne%er raised. In fact, I would go so far as cient attention to any one of them. So let me to claim that this form of liberal, humanist end on a final nott. which I hope will be of in- pedagogy senes to contain the political, to terest. I want to bring the theoretical import discursively police revolt, to equate liberation of what I have been saying to discuss the who the personal over the social, and to mask movie, Dead Poet's Society, starring Robin forms of domination. There's also a repugnant Williams. A lot of students have wanted to sexism that informs this pedagogy, illustrated discuss this film in class, and it frightens me in William's remark that poetry is si-aply a

41 54 device to "woo women." The students are con- those forces it seeks to delegitimate; actually, spicuously not invitedto problematize the it represents a form of resistance which ac- relationship among the authoritarianism in tually compliments the capitalist ethos of pos- the school, the way power works in the larger sessiveindividualism. A criticalpedagogy society to silence certain groups, and its en- must attempt to de-authorize and rewrite the tanglements in social practices which serve the master narratives of liberalpost-industrial rich and powerful. In Jim Berlin's terms, this democracy and the humanist, individualist, illustrates a form of "expressionist rhetoric" and patriarchal discourses which underwrite it which, although it includes a denunciation of whileatthe same time undermine and economic, political, and social pressures to reconstruct the idealized and romantic con- conform--toresisttheinstitutionally-spon- ception of the subject which is structured by sored production of desire, attitude, and be- eurocentric and androcentric discursive power havior--it is resistance in the service of the relations. In Terry Eagleton's terms, privatized ego. As Berlin notes, expressionist Williams's pedagog is a form of moral tech- rhetoric reinforces entrepreneurial virtues of nology which structures modes of desire that individualism,privateinitiative,risk-taking, the society needs in the; era of late capitalism. and subversion of authority. It is the ideolog It teaches what he terms a "bourgeois mode of the unique, private vision of a Donald ofsubjectivity"preciselyinthewayit Trump and devoid of a concern with how the celebrates learning for the sake of learning, material and social constraints prohibit other, which is a mistaken virtue : believe, becat.se less fortunate groups to realize their private learning never speaks for itself and is always visions. It is as if consciousness is somehow inscribed by political interests and supported not connected to the workings of power, or as by certain relations of power. Freedom and if hierarchies of power and privilege are creativity are valued as ends in themselves in natural hierarchies. While Williams as the the discourse of liberal humanist pedagogy teacher attemptstodefamiliarize theex- whereas the critical educator believes that perience which the students have of rote freedom and creativity should be part of a learningandblindobediencetoadult larger pedagogical project, one that poses the authority and the ruling-class economies of crucial question for the students which is: power and privilege, and while he is intent, Freedom and creativity for what? perhaps even insistent, on getting beyond the Mas'ud Zavaradeh's critique of the:beral deformation of the individual as authorized by humanist classroomis,Ithink,very ap- the discourses of tradition and the prevailing propriately applied to the pedagog of the regimes of truth of the time, the end result is Dead Poet's Society. The pedagogy employed the struggle for the uniqueness--perhaps even is one of "fancy"--what Zavaradeh calls a "ped- eccentricity--of individual expression. Jim Ber- agog of p.easure." Here liberation is personal lin describes this kind of subversiveness as and eminently historical and has litfle to do more apparent than real. It is debilitatingly with emancipat-Jn. It is a pedagog formally divisive of political protest becaireiten- "at odds" with the "serious" workaday bour- courages individuals to achieve unique per- geois world but doesn't seriously question the sonhood in antiseptic isolation from any real underlying assumptions or relations of power senseofcollectivestrugglearoundthe which inform it. Questions involving referent of difference and otherness. It is a power/knowledge relationsare Juspended, pedagog which operates without considera- and dangerous memories of human suffering tion of how power works to privilege certain and rebellion are never raised. I leave my stu- groups over others on the basis of race, class, dents with the following questions in relation and gender, and Williams takes no pains to to the pedagogy represented in the film: What narrate the contingency of his own and the vision of the future inheres in the pedagogy of students' race, class, and gender privilege. It is the Dead Foet's Society? What vision of social a soft mode of resistance easily co-opted by justice? What model of the individual subject?

48 55 What suppositions involving democracy? believe that the more we attempt to clarify I have raised the issue of the pedagogy what we mean by "critical pedagogy" the more employed in the Dead Poet's Society as a way opportunities will present themselves for dis- to make concrete some of the theoretical cussing and elaborating the values, supposi- propositions I have been discussing with you tions, and basis for practice which inform our over the last several days. teaching,learning, and researchpractices, Might I say in conclusion that I hope and, perhaps most iffy, mt of all, the vision some of these ideas will provoke discussion of the future which hut Les in them. overthe remainder of the conference.I

49 00r