Mind, Culture, and Activity

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Matters of participation: notes on the study of dignity and learning

Manuel Luis Espinoza , Shirin Vossoughi , Mike Rose & Luis E. Poza

To cite this article: Manuel Luis Espinoza , Shirin Vossoughi , Mike Rose & Luis E. Poza (2020): Matters of participation: notes on the study of dignity and learning, Mind, Culture, and Activity, DOI: 10.1080/10749039.2020.1779304 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2020.1779304

Published online: 21 Jul 2020.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hmca20 MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2020.1779304

Matters of participation: notes on the study of dignity and learning Manuel Luis Espinozaa, Shirin Vossoughib, Mike Rosec, and Luis E. Poza d aUniversity of Colorado Denver; bNorthwestern University; cUniversity of California at Los Angeles; dSan Jose State University

ABSTRACT Meaningful participation (i.e., substantive involvement in socially vital activ­ ities) and educational dignity (i.e., the multifaceted sense of a person’s value generated via substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one’s mind, humanity, and potential) are vital and interrelated social phenomena. Conceptually, the two are salient for research related to learning and educational rights. Accordant with a cultural- historical framework, we have adopted and modified a social interactional methodological approach that allows us to set forth indicia of meaningful participation and educational dignity. To achieve these ends, we examine two information sources: 1) audio recordings of a 1962 voter registration workshop in the Southern United States; and 2) audio-video recordings of a college preparatory program for high school-age migrant students in California during the early 2000s called the Migrant Student Leadership Institute. Close examination of interactions in both spaces reveals the moment-to-moment unfolding of meaningful participation and educational dignity.

Introduction If this essay outlining a method for the empirical study of dignity and learning in educational activity were a musical composition, this would be its recurrent riff: the quality of dignity may inhere in the person, but the experience and sense of dignity are wholly contingent. Decisive in its distinctions, this nineteen-word thesis is also deceptive in its simplicity. Typographically, it spans 109 characters including spaces; historically and socially, the distance it indicates cannot be precisely measured. Though continually proclaimed – e.g., Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 1789; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007 – the institutions entrusted with creating environments where dignity should be inviolate face intractable obstacles. Hand-in-glove with these issues, the people that are expected to embody the imperatives of dignity are still being knit. The enactment of dignity consists of a collection of “in progress” and fragmentary global phenom­ ena. Yet, out of this inchoate normative fact – from the Latin norma, carpenter’s square – our species has crafted an array of dynamic cultural-historical artifacts: emancipatory political arguments, trans­ generational human rights languages, and a repertoire of everyday dignity-generative actions that broaden the definition of the human family. Thus, our methodological notes ask little of the phenomena of dignity, but demand much of our social imagination. Grammatically, dignity is a noun, but conceptually, we call it forth as a social verb. Conscious of the tendency to treat the meanings of dignity as self-evident, we direct our attention toward the “inter­ action order” (Goffman, 1967, p. 14) to describe how the experience and sense of dignity are made manifest and thwarted in educational activity. Throughout this work, we hold fast to the expectation of

CONTACT Manuel Luis Espinoza [email protected] University of Colorado Denver, CO 80204 © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL. new music beyond the recurrent, tension-producing riff above: despite its inherent and inalienable quality, dignity is a precarious social accomplishment. Matters of dignity are indivisible from the learning that does or does not take place within an environment (Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014). Previously, we examined African slave narratives and first-persontestimony in landmark desegregation cases to show the ways dignity was accomplished (or negated) through intellectual activity in the shadow of sanction and suppression (Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014). Treating that work as a cornerstone, we outline here a methodology for studying “meaningful participation” and “educational dignity.” We submit the following questions as guides:

● What does meaningful participation in educational activities look, sound, and feel like? ● What are the social consequences of meaningful participation for the individual? ● How, if at all, does meaningful participation prefigurethe social interactional accomplishment of educational dignity?

This article is divided into four major sections: 1) we definemeaningful participation and dignity in relation to educational activity; 2) we outline a first-, second-, and third-person analytic approach to the study of educational dignity. We then test those perspectives by examining a pair of distinct segregation-era educational experiences; 3) we apply the same approach to two “sister spaces” – environments separated by historical era and locale but embodying parallel values – a voter education workshop in 1962 and a migrant education program in 2001 to analyze how meaningful opportunities to participate and learn are organized; 4) we consolidate our analytical approach and discuss its usefulness for educational research.

Defining meaningful participation and dignity in educational activity Creating dignity-affirming educational environments requires an understanding of participation rights or fundamental democratic powers that “equate to being seen and heard” (Todres & Higinbotham, 2016, p. 33). However, without continuous opportunities to exercise those participation rights, the meanings of noble declarations may never be transformed into the felt presence of dignity and rights in the conduct of everyday life. Consider how hollow the preamble of the U.S. Constitution – “We the People . . .” – can sound to those treated as second-class citizens. We define meaningful participation as unambiguously effective involvement in socially vital activities structured by dialogic social relations – e.g., having a say in government, acting as a decision- maker in health matters, exercising one’s voice across an educational career. Educational dignity is the multifaceted sense of a person’s value generated via substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one’s mind, humanity, and potential. Both meaningful participation and educational dignity are generated by linguistic and interactional moves that can be charted and analyzed. The sense of fuller “humanness” resulting from such encounters is in line with discussions of dignity in the human rights literature (Barak, 2015; Hunt, 2007; McCrudden, 2013; Sachs, 2009; Waldron & Dan-Cohen, 2012). Typically, the subject of dignity is treated deductively according to religious principles or tenets of formal logic while educational activity, broadly construed, is examined inductively via direct observa­ tion. We propose a social interactional approach that bridges those modes of inquiry by treating the face-to-face environment as a site for the social accomplishment of the grand imperatives of dignity. This approach resonates with the value cultural-historical theories of learning and development place on interpersonal social relations as a crucible for the realization of human potential (Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1990; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Vygotskiĭ & Cole, 1978). While dignity has been a tacit concern of this tradition, it has seldom been examined empirically as a central phenomenon of interest. However, recent work has argued that attunement to the interpersonal expression of politics, power, and ethics is essential for a comprehensive understanding of learning (Bang, et al., 2016; Esmonde & Booker, 2017; Politics of Learning Writing Collective, 2017; Vossoughi et al., 2020). MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 3

A staple concept of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), dignity is “an expression, perhaps the most prominent in the history of man’s [sic] self-reflection, of self-evaluation” (Rotenstreich, 1983, p. 9). When embodied and enacted, dignity equalizes by granting to all people the highest rank and status possible (Waldron & Dan-Cohen, 2012). In the United States, the use of dignity as a precept in constitutional interpretation is extensive (Brennan, 1977; Meyer & Parent, 1992; Paust, 1984). Socially, it is a “symbol of demand” (Paust, 1984, p. 147), a conceptual tool used to argue for the presence of certain kinds of treatment and the absence of others. Politically, dignity has been defined as “the particular cultural understandings of the inner moral worth of the human person and his or her proper political relations with society” (Howard & Donnelly, 1986, p. 802). As a cornerstone value (Barak, 2015), dignity can transform the ways we design and animate educational environments and ought to be a central tool for educators, learners, advocates, policymakers, and researchers. Intriguingly, substantive discussion of education is nearly nonexistent within the field of dignity literature. Across two critically recognized volumes, Understanding Human Dignity (McCrudden, 2013) and Dignity, Rank, and Rights (Waldron & Dan-Cohen, 2012), containing numerous contribu­ tions by judges, theologians, and philosophers, there is no chapter on education. Across nearly 1,000 combined pages, education appears six times in the indices. The single reference of consequence is to a portion of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, entered into force in 1976):

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms . . . (Article 13, Section I). As a single cell can generate a narrative of our biological history, this portion of text carries bountiful information regarding the ways humans think about dignity and rights. If you set out from the premise that dignity is inherent – religious and secular viewpoints converge regarding the supreme value of the person – but its social accomplishment is contingent, the logical structure of the passage is illuminated: Education may be a right pertaining to all, but it is not the source of human dignity. Rather, meaningful participation in educational activities can transform abstract understandings of dignity into living meanings. The presence of the future-oriented “shall” signals that the social orders enacting the imperatives regarding the human personality and respect for fundamental freedoms are under construction.

Traveling across meaning perspectives: outlining a first-, second-, and third-person analytic approach We submit that a first-, second-, and third-person analytic approach can allow us to travel “where the action is” (Goffman, 1969) – i.e., places within streams of experience that help us understand the meaning of participation to the people involved. (For antecedent and complementary approaches, see Burke, 1945; Sfard & Kieran, 2001; Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Four principles guide our method: a) the everyday accomplishment of dignity relies on meaning-oriented, social action (Carozza, 2013; Maritain, 1948; Neuman, 2013; Waldron & Dan-Cohen, 2012); b) the ethical, cognitive, and pedago­ gical aspects of human action are reflexive and inhere in one another (Bang et al., 2016; Cazden et al., 1972; Erickson, 1982; Espinoza, 2009; Greene, 1973; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Lee, 2001; Rose, 1989; Scheffler, 1985; Vossoughi, 2014; Zavala, 2018); c) mental labor and learning are fundamentally, though not solely, cultural and social endeavors (Cole, 1996; Engeström, 1990; Luria, 1968; Rogoff, 2003; Valsiner & Veer, 2000; Vygotskiĭ & Cole, 1978); d) meaning-making is an intersubjective, dialogic process through which thoughts and worldviews can be shared without the necessity of agreement (Bakhtin, 1981; Dewey, 1916, 1938; Matusov, 1998; Mead & Morris, 1934; Rogoff, 1990; Rommetveit, 2003). Attention to the “interaction order” (Goffman, 1967, p. 14) entails analyzing the “function and force” (Dewey, 1938, p. 42) of experience, which means lending close attention to interaction among 4 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL. diverse components of an environment. To garner a sense of how settings could foster “development in a particular line [towards] continuing growth” (Dewey, 1938, p. 36), one must attend to “the total social set-up of the situations in which a person is engaged” (Dewey, 1938, p. 45, emphasis in original), which includes:

what is done by the educator and the way in which it is done, not only words spoken but the tone of voice in which they are spoken. It includes equipment, books, apparatus, toys, games played . . . the materials with which an individual interacts. (Dewey, 1938, p. 45)

This kind of analysis requires serious regard for students’ subjective experience of the manifest curriculum – i.e., the ways students perceive what is deliberately taught, how they communicate what is learned or not learned (Erickson et al., 2007; Erickson & Shultz, 1982) – in order to gauge claims regarding meaningful participation and educational dignity. A “firstperson” is anyone with direct experience of an educational environment or an event therein. First-person analysts are meaning-oriented beings with the capability to convey the subjective experience of their participation (Erickson & Shultz, 1982; Erickson et al., 2007). Regarding injury or affirmation, first-person narratives are the alpha and omega of a dignity claim. Put differently: people are “living indicia” of dignity as a normative fact. First-person narratives regarding the character of learning within an environment are vital information from the learner herself regarding the quality of participation. The exercise of a cultural right to narrate strongly implies, though does not guarantee, a receptive audience. First-person narratives grow in social power when people listen and exercise their right to be empathetic.1 A “second person” is anyone with direct experience of an educational environment who bears witness to the experiences of others. Across the world’s monotheistic faiths, cosmologies, and philosophical systems, the second person – e.g., you, Thou, my other me – holds an exalted place in guiding human conduct. When a second person conveys a narrative about the experience of another individual, both are brought into sharper relief. Our capacity for intersubjectivity – the making and sharing of meaning with others through communication – serves as a foundation for both human and humane understanding (Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Rommetveit, 2003; Talero, 2008). Though the choice to act as a second person implies a deep consideration for the ideas, words, and feelings of others, it does not require agreement (Matusov, 1998; Rogoff, 1990). A “third person” is anyone who examines an educational environment but was not a participant. For example, the authors of this article are third-person analysts. We also think that the reader – You – is a kind of third person. The absence of direct experience can provide the intellectual breathing room to scrutinize the narratives of participants and may bring novel questions to bear on the understanding of an environment. This breathing room should not be mistaken for objectifying distance. Rather, it is a place from which our capacity to experience vicariously can be cultivated. Third persons rely on first- and second-person accounts, as well as retrievable records (e.g., audio-video recordings) as primary information sources. When a third-person analyst can travel via these perspectives, she increases the likelihood of producing a report with “descriptive validity” (Erickson, 1979) – a multivoiced chronicle that gives a sense of the social organization of activity in a face-to-face environment. Together, the first-, second-, and third-person analytic stances can generate a resonance between vantage points that helps us more fully understand the meaning of participation in an educational activity to the people involved. Surprisingly, those stances can foster bonds between analysts and those who animated an environment. Through the creation of historically grounded vignettes that relate both the interactional play-by-play and “an adequate functional theory of the game as a whole” (Erickson, 1979, p. 10), researchers can develop a mediated sense of solidarity. Cultural communion of this kind entails an understanding of the communicative activity of others as “inherently mean­ ingful” (Rommetveit, 2003, p. 212) because all hold an equal share of humanity. We now offer a preliminary illustration of how these analytic standpoints can be used. MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 5

Our approach exemplified: strange and humiliating Photo 1 was taken in 1948 and shows George McLaurin attending class after his admittance to the University of Oklahoma. It is an image that is impossible to reconcile with any substantive under­ standing of justice. Complying with a writ of mandamus – a command from a court ordering a person to perform a statutory duty – issued by the U.S. Supreme Court and fearful of a mandate to desegregate, the Board of Regents opened their doors. Once through, in accordance with state law, McLaurin was promptly segregated. In previous work, the examination of McLaurin’s segregation helped us establish the principle that matters of dignity are always at stake in educational activity (Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014). We posited that the above image was of historical, legal, and social interactional importance because it showed what a violation of the 14th Amendment looked like. Using court transcripts from the National Archives, we reported McLaurin describing the experience as “strange and humiliating” (Testimony of McLaurin, p. 24). We also showed how Thurgood Marshall and a three-judge panel – all third- person analysts – determined that those events were a form of state action “so odious and so humiliating as to deprive him of the equal protection of the law or equal facilities” (Testimony of McLaurin, pp. 72–73). This photo exemplifies how first- and third-person perspectives converge to convert experience into testimony, transmute narrative into fact, and firmly establish proof of invidious state action resulting in indignity. To clarify, McLaurin did not “lose” any dignity due to the absurd arrangement. Rather, he was subjected to an experience that did not recognize his inherent worth and injured his sense of dignity. McLaurin’s first-personand Marshall’s third-person presence stand in clear relief. Where, however, is the second-person viewpoint? Though the historical record suggests not all of McLaurin’s classmates supported segregation, published statements of this kind are scant. Though there may be a paucity of second persons per se, what matters across the perspectives is the choice to enact a moral duty by

Photo 1. “White students in class at the University of Oklahoma, and G.W. McLaurin, an African American, seated in anteroom”]. 6 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL. providing a faithful chronicle of events. Neither Marshall nor the judicial panel were seated next to McLaurin, but we deduce that they acted empathetically through the serious consideration given to his testimony. Across stances, the exercise of the intersubjective power to experience vicariously is a paramount feature of our analytic strategy.

Hands, eyes, and minds on the prize A visual counterexample to the humiliation recounted by McLaurin may be found in Photo 2, taken in 1959 on Johns Island, South Carolina, and named: “citizenship education class” (Kasher, 1996, p. 40). It preserves a moment that occurred nearly a century after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The scene is backlit by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955) decisions and marred by the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi. What do the hands, eyes, and facial expressions suggest about the minds in play? While we were not able to identify the names of all those in the room, we know the bespectacled woman seated in the center is educator Septima Poinsette Clark. Standing next to Clark, pencil in hand, is her cousin Bernice Robinson. The woman seated leftmost, Anna Vastine, learned to read at the age of 65 in this kind of environment (Phenix, 1985). The photo shows attention being paid to subject matter and one another, as well as a readiness and intensity, people exerting themselves in the act of study. Though we cannot hear what the group was discussing, as third-person analysts exercising our right to be empathetic and activating our capacity to experience vicariously, we can treat the eyes, hands, and faces as signposts and posit that the participants were enacting a caring regard for one another. If not definitive proof, then perhaps reasonable indications of meaningful participation and educational dignity.

Sister spaces: embodiments of parallel values In the preceding section, photographs and legal testimony were used to illustrate the ways a first- , second-, and third-person analytic approach could establish the presence or absence of educational dignity. With the aid of archival audio and audio-video recordings, we now examine two educational environments: 1) a six-day voter registration workshop organized in 1962 by the Southern Christian

Photo 2. “Citizenship education class” by Ida Berman. MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 7

Leadership Conference and the Highlander Research and Education Center in the southern United States; and, 2) a summer college preparatory program for high school-aged migrant students, held in 2001 at an elite public university in California. Though distinct regarding era and locale, the environ­ ments are “sister spaces” because they embody the parallel value that learning is a kind of humanizing activity. The accounts that follow are of people working together to learn and make history in a perilous world. We place an analytic focus on the phenomenon of meaningful participation to help us arrive at an understanding of how the experience and sense of dignity are socially accom­ plished in educational activity. We use tools of interaction and discourse analysis to examine audio recordings of the voter education workshop and audio-video recordings of the summer college-bridge program for migrant youth. Given the circumstances and information available, we emphasize the third-person perspective in the case of the voter education workshop. With respect to the college- bridge program, the participation of Espinoza and Vossoughi as designers and educators allows us to hone the first- and second-person perspectives. As analysts who did not participate in the program, Rose and Poza make a third-person angle possible. Next, with guiding questions in mind – What does meaningful participation in educational activities look, sound, and feel like? What are its social consequences? How, if at all, does meaningful participation prefigure the social accomplishment of educational dignity? – we focus now on the environments and interactions through which participants expressed their sense of worth as intellec­ tuals and historical actors.

Highlander as cornerstone Founded by, among others, Myles Horton in 1932 near Monteagle, Tennessee on land donated by educator Lilian WyckoffJohnson, the contributions of the Highlander Research and Education Center (née Highlander Folk School; hereafter, simply Highlander) to American democratic life have been indispensable. Highlander’s citizenship education efforts helped power and sustain the mid-20th century civil rights movement in the United States (Charron, 2009; Clark, 1962 (p. 149); Clark & Brown, 1986; Garrow, 1986; Horton, Kohl, & Kohl, 1990). From 1961, the first-yearcitizenship schools were administered by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, through 1965, an aggregate number of 1,600 teachers were trained, 25,000 students taught, and more than 50,000 new African American names added to the voter registration books in the South (Charron, 2009). Communicating as both first- and second-person Horton et al. (1990a, 1990b), Clark (1962), and Clark & Brown (1986) provide vivid testimony regarding the quality of participation across the citizenship education programs. Ranging from helping people learn how to fill out money orders to analyzing the national Constitution, Clark (1962, p. 149) gives us insight on the transformative power of these curricular experiences:

One other helpful thing the Fort Jackson [South Carolina] men had learned was how to read the names of the buses going out to the fort. And in the same way our Johns Island folks would learn things that would be of much help to them, things that we hadn’t thought of in planning our teaching program. That is one of the great things about learning and the learning process; knowledge seems to overrun itself and spill over into accomplishments not contemplated . . . perhaps the single greatest thing it accomplishes is the enabling of a man [sic] to raise his head a little higher; knowing how to sign their names, many of those men and women told me after they had learned, made them feel different. Suddenly they had become part of the community; they were on their way toward first-class citizenship.

Note the link drawn between learning and self-respect: learning as attitude (knowing how to sign their names . . . made them feel different) and altitude (the single greatest thing it accomplishes is the enabling of a man [sic] to raise his head a little higher). Although the notion that “Suddenly they had become part of the community . . .” troubles us because we imagine the participants as full-fledged members of the community from the outset, the perception of sudden transformation draws attention to the human being before and after certain kinds of pedagogical experiences. 8 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

Highlander’s legacy as a democratic cornerstone is premised on a connection between tangible results – e.g., increasing the number of African Americans on the voter rolls – and intangible (often, invisible) transformations of conscience that occur when people find the space and trust to think and act. Consider the words of civil rights worker Victoria Gray on the fruits of participation: “Some people were in the movement, and that was wonderful. But for those people who the movement was in them, once it gets in you, it’s there forever” (Charron, 2009, p. 344). How was “the movement” made indwelling? What kinds of pedagogical talk and interaction helped create the opportunities to reshape one’s moral and political conscience?

Like listening to a ghost In 2016, we procured 50 cassettes from the Highlander Folk School Audio Collection. We were informed that digital recordings could be produced, but the cost was prohibitive. Administered by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, the Collection contains recordings of organization activities from 1953 to 1963. Accounting for 18 of the 25 hours on tape was a six-day 1962 voter education workshop. Our initial excitement waned as hours of listening to analog recordings of degraded originals yielded minutes of spotty transcript. We learned that the original, pliable vinyl discs had been created by a Gray Audograph Dictaphone, a device ill-suited to record the beehive of talk in an educational environment designed to help people learn how to organize a voter registration event in the white supremacist American south. Scouring a university directory for help, Espinoza set a meeting with Dr. Leslie Gaston-Bird, professor of music, and Josh Kern, graduate student in recording arts. Upon hearing the faint voices, Gaston-Bird remarked: “This is like listening to a ghost.” We took heart, though, in their technological expertise and intellectual playfulness. When Espinoza called the recordings “sonic bone fragments,” Gaston-Bird began brushing clay from an imaginary fossil. Extracting intelligible stretches of talk from this corpus of information has been taxing, time- intensive labor. By asking the same question of a different person on a different day, we later learned that digital versions of the voter registration workshop did exist. We immediately purchased them. The salient differencebetween the analog and digital versions is that the latter can be “cleaned up” with audio engineering software. We also have used transcription software, but this typically renders only a few minutes of a thirty-minute recording. On occasion, however, the software detects words which provide clues regarding the larger puzzle of conversation. Typically, producing a draft transcript of a 30-minute audio file takes three or four people working together about eight to ten hours, which may stretch out over two to three weeks.2 We have found that this synchronous experiencing – multiple ears in the same place at the same time, viewing a transcript being created, all while the audio is being “washed” to increase intelligibility – allows us to generate “accurate-as-humanly-possible” transcripts. As valuable as a complete transcript, the analytic prize for our research group is the formation of a process for reaching consensus regarding the plausible meanings of talk-in-interaction. After considerable collective effort, we were able to extract two kinds of information from the recordings. One allowed us to create detailed transcriptions for minutes at a time and the other offered up information to produce event descriptions that went a step beyond what was in the archival catalog. Together, they produce a promising glimpse into the humble past of a community-organized educa­ tional space with a prophetic vision for its participants: full citizenship and unqualified personhood.

Twice whetted With diligent effort, the audio recordings allow us to document objective and subjective factors of educational experience – what people say and how they say it, how ideas and disagreements gather force, how understandings and purposes are chiseled – which allow us to show how meaningful participation and educational dignity are accomplished in social interaction. Citizenship education MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 9 programs were created to help African Americans pass literacy tests mandated by Southern state governments to impede voter registration. However, in practice, the programs seemed to outpace this initial aim. The June 1962 workshop took place during an era of substantive victories in civil rights that were characterized by White segregationists as a Second Reconstruction. The first 30 minutes features participants singing freedom songs. We draw attention to the group’s rendition of “Oh Freedom,” a song whose origin has been traced to the post-bellum Reconstruction era (Lovell, 1972). LaDamion Massey, musical director with the Denver-based Bennie L. Williams Spiritual Voices, points out a critical advantage of the oral heritage of spiritual and gospel music – its flexibility (Personal communication, July 20, 2018). For example, here is a verse adapted to issues of the time:

N-o-o-o more Jim Crow N-o-o-o more Jim Crow N-o-o-o-o-o more Jim Crow over-r-r-r-r-r m-e-e-e/Over m-e-e-e-e-e And before I’d be a sl-a-a-a-ve I’ll be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be fr-e-e-e-e-e The collective singing of freedom songs was intended to shape experience “downstream” and establish a kind of spirit across the multi-day workshop. Though many of the songs are laced with references to “God” and “Lord,” we cannot say with certainty which participants3 were people of faith, but we think it safe to suppose that all were committed to pursuing equality through the franchise. A fusion of the sacred, secular, and political, the singing of freedom songs indicates a kind of humanizing creativity and suggests that participants made a clear moral connection between voter registration and the holiness of the person. Holding in mind St. Augustine’s reading of the Psalms, we can say that singing is like having a sword “twice whetted,” it opens the soul to light and provides light itself.

And it’s cold: the context of voter registration activity Though a comprehensive treatment of the six-day workshop is not possible here, we can make an argument for specific kinds of pedagogical interaction as illustrative of the dignity-generative quality of the environment. As a way of showing the health of this environment, we offer an example of a somewhat contentious exchange that highlights the centrality of disagreement in democratic education, and the way discord can lead to rich participation and the clarification of collective ideals. The fifthday of the workshop begins with participants4 being asked to create an outline for a plan to organize a voter registration event the following month. For reasons of space, we present here an abridged account. Charles M. Sherrod5 is introduced as workshop leader – at the time, we believe that Sherrod, age 25, was a Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – and so we identify him simply as “Leader” (see Excerpt 1). We chose this way of labeling speakers for three reasons: 1) we know the names of some, but not all, of the people who participated in the workshop; 2) identifying people by voice alone is too imprecise; and, 3) descriptors seemed more helpful in conveying our sense of the action. In some cases, we use a strong descriptor (e.g., heckler) and, in others, a more basic word (e.g., participant). Excerpt 1 01 Leader: Everybody got a pencil in their hands? 02 otherwise we aren’t ready to work 03 Heckler: What if we have good memory? 04 Leader: First thing 05 what would be the first thing comin’ in the program? 06 what you think would be the first thing comin’ in the program? 07 would you think that the purpose would be the first thing? 08 Participant: The title 09 Leader: The title of what? 10 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

10 Participant: The format 11 [unintelligible] the workshop 12 Leader: That would be the first thing 13 title be the first thing 14 Participant: Yeah 15 Leader: OK 16 title 17 so you wanna put a title down 18 what title do you have? Uh 19 those things [unintelligible] good 20 “Preparin’ the Flock” 21 what title do you have over there? 22 Participant: [unintelligible] 23 Leader: Everybody 24 get one 25 you gotta get a title In Excerpt 1, the workshop leader sounded a bit brusque, but we cannot state with certainty that this is how his utterances were received or construed. To provide a sense of the richness of the workshop, we draw attention to a momentary breach of the social order (line 03): “What if we have good memory?” The participant answered a standard instructional query with a question that was more a heckle. With this flash of “underlife” (Goffman, 1961) – i.e., the social life that blossoms in contradistinction to the “official” course of action – we are reminded that despite the high stakes and the presence of people who likely saw themselves as historical actors, citizenship education still occasionally resembled sixth- period, high school English composition. About four minutes into the recording, a difficultyemerges. Perhaps sensing that more explanation is needed, another participant, perhaps a Highlander educator, gives an overview – a “guide” as he phrased it – of the day ahead: a group session followed by quiet individual work on the “general outline” of a workshop for a particular community. By program, the workshop designers mean a written guide for an event that participants will organize that summer, one that contains sections on “purpose,” “aims,” and “content.” The lack of a distinction between aims and purposes plays a role in the social interactional friction that follows. In creating an outline for a plan of action, participants need to hold two kinds of places in mind: the actual Albany, Georgia and the hypothetical “Chitlin’ Switch, South Carolina,” as one participant put it. The Highlander method was to lift people out of their context for a brief period and help them learn how to organize a workshop for a specific rural or urban area. Participants would also pool their ideas and forge generalizable models to guide future action. At this point, a young woman we call “questioner” states that she needs a “constructive reason” to participate further because the work required her to be away from her son (and, perhaps, her partner, as we heard her add, “and him too, I love you”). She then says, “I have great skills that I think would be an improvement on the program.” Is she being brash? Simply confident? Regardless, a call for a “constructive reason” to participate is in play (see Excerpt 2): Excerpt 2 26 Leader: What program you talkin’ about? 27 Questioner: He say he wants me to write one 28 [unintelligible] 29 and I just don’t think 30 [unintelligible] 31 Leader: What program are you tryin’ [unintelligible]? 32 Questioner: [unintelligible] let me tell you somethin’ MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 11

33 Leader: Whose program? 34 Questioner: The program I’m gonna be working for 35 Leader: The point is that there’s no program see In Excerpt 2, the leader, Sherrod, appears to be growing impatient with the young woman because he cuts offher speech twice (lines 26, 31). Perhaps it is an adverse reaction to such a bold proclamation of talent. Gender and age may also play a role in the tenor of his response. Regardless of the rationale, a degree of tension seems to now exist. Over the next minute, the Leader meets the young woman’s disagreement with patience. Such subtle moments of repair may offer windows into the norms that guide social actors within an environment. In Excerpt 3, the Leader acknowledges the value of her perspective by trying to incorporate it into an elaboration for the benefit of the group (lines 36–42). The young woman continues to press the issue and the two continue talking past one another: Excerpt 3 36 Leader: The point is that there’s no program see 37 first of all we assume that there is no program 38 and if there’s no program then then there’s nothing to be improved on 39 and any thoughts that you get down see 40 after we after we take your thoughts 41 your thoughts your thoughts your thoughts and your thought 42 then we put it into one big program 43 Questioner: No, that’s not what we gonna do 44 Everybody’s gonna write a program for himself 45 Leader: Yeah but you see there’s not gonna be one . . . 46 program ultimately 47 after all is said and done 48 Questioner: No, no, that’s my point 49 you’re gonna have a program for Albany 50 he’s gonna have one for Cleveland . . . 51 There’s gonna be as many different programs as there are people in here 52 Leader: There’s gonna be as many different programs as uh projects 53 projects you mean really 54 projects as there are places 55 Questioner: Yes 56 Leader: But, but you see, after we, after your ideas are put down 57 after his ideas and their ideas are put down 58 the best ideas 59 the best principles for workin’ 60 the best methods 61 all of those general principles 62 are gonna be laid down 63 in a program that can be used 64 anywhere 65 all over the country Without taking a side in this disagreement, we draw notice to the young woman’s use of the word “No” as a kind of indicator species of the health of the environment. Through her bid to have a say in this vital social activity, she is putting her participation rights to use. Whether she will be heard or seen is still being negotiated. 12 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

Next, a skilled educator we believe to be Bernice Robinson (Explainer), a former hairdresser who was said to have been an expert listener, takes a turn at thinking with the young woman’s question and makes a bid to re-focus the group: Excerpt 4 66 Explainer: Well now if you haven’t been assigned a community yet 67 you still can write out a program of your past experiences 68 in fact most of you gonna draw on 69 you gonna have to draw on some of your past experience 70 in order to write out what you think you’re going to do you see 71 so even if your past experience has been in the city of Atlanta 72 there will be others who will be working in urban areas 73 so when these writings are all combined 74 you’re gonna have a combination of urban and rural programs 75 [unintelligible] 76 so that the next individuals running the SNCC6 behind you 77 will not have to stumble and find the way 78 like you’re stumbling and finding the way 79 it will be something with some guidelines 80 you’re gonna always have to, you know, be flexible 81 they’ll always have to put in some ideas of their own 82 something that’s gonna be made up on right on the spot so to speak 83 but there will be some guidelines 84 whether they are working in city or in the country 85 so all this will be used behind you 86 it’s coming into SNCC um from after you’ve 87 gone Building on the Leader’s point (Excerpt 3) that the “best” ideas and methods would be used to develop a program that could be broadly implemented, Robinson positions the group’s present “stumbling” (line 77–78) as a generative investment in those coming “behind you.” Though we cannot know for certain, it is fruitful to speculate whether Robinson deciphered a layer of meaning that did not garner much notice: the young woman’s plea for a constructive reason to participate is also a plea for an explanation regarding the sacrifice she is being asked to make on behalf of the movement – precious days apart from her son to work in perilous conditions. In Excerpt 5, a participant we call “Veteran” because of his earnest talk attempts to clarify the meaning of their collective work: Excerpt 5 88 Veteran: We’re being selfish in that 89 in that we’re writing out a program that we’re gonna be working on this summer 90 and it’s not gonna be like role-playing 91 it is gonna be real 92 it’s gonna be it 93 it’s gonna be what we gonna be doing this summer 94 be dealin’ with when you go back 95 and get up the next morning and get at it 96 so listen in what we have written out 97 as a guide 98 otherwise when will we have a chance to do this? 99 when we have the collective thinking and experiences of this group? MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 13

100 because when we get back to Podunk 101 they there 102 and it’s cold 103 and ain’t nobody there who thinks the way we thinkin’ 104 and ain’t nobody gonna really stop and say “Now, what do you think about this?” 105 it’s gonna be all us 106 so now is the most valuable time we have to do it With Veteran’s chilling warning – “because when we get back to Podunk/they there” (lines 100–101) – we think it helpful to recap the action. A male workshop organizer and a young female participant enter into a disagreement. She presses for a “constructive reason” to engage in the task of outlining a plan of action. Workshop leaders and peers attempt to clarify and explain the purpose of the undertaking. Alongside flashes of impatience on the part of the workshop leader, there are efforts to treat the young woman’s inquiry as relevant to the group’s understanding. Overall, her concerns are taken seriously and lead to a rich discussion regarding process and purpose. The intellectual yield: meaningful participation can be perceived in joint, harmonious action, but it can also be understood in periods of dissonance and tension. After another explanation of the logic of the Highlander model, a participant whose voice emerges for the first time in this recording reminds us how multiple streams of experience exist within the interactional order. Robinson continues as the Explainer in the excerpt below. Excerpt 6 107 Explainer: Wouldn’t everybody’s aim be the same? 108 wouldn’t everybody’s the aim be just about the same thing? 109 now the way you go about reaching those aims 110 but everybody here I thought aimed at a message of one thing 111 to get negroes registered in new ways and get ‘em to vote 112 well now that’s everybody 113 but the way you go about them will differ 114 Participant: I was tryin’ to give uh 115 give uh a general outline as to how each of us 116 could write this out and you know 117 and give it a formal uh report 118 but in personal reasons 119 uh for my purpose I have uh: 120 “To help negroes have a better appreciation of themselves 121 by becoming registered voters 122 and their duties of being a citizen of the state of Mississippi 123 and a constitutional form of government.” This participant attempts to re-focus the group by sharing a draft of his statement of purpose. Though the workshop leader spoke most sharply, this mellow-voiced young man spoke the loudest. The Explainer positioned voter registration as the primary aim of the workshops, yet the participant asserts a broader end: collective self-determination through political participation. Again, knowledge over­ running itself. Born of group effort to address a young woman’s question seriously, his assertion may have contributed to how she and others understood the higher purpose of their work, an under­ standing we imagine to be consequential to their subsequent interactions with prospective voters in the workshops. We do not have information from the young woman herself regarding how she experienced this portion of the workshop. However, we submit that the conscientious exploration of a young person’s viewpoint, the ensuing debate among elders, and the production of multiple narratives regarding the significance of civic work are manifestations of meaningful participation. 14 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

As practitioners of creative nonviolence, the participants were heading into peril. The work­ shop took place two years before the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner near Philadelphia, Mississippi. When a participant warns “They there” (line 101), he means the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Councils; when he remarks “And it’s cold” (line 102), he means cold-blooded. To the white supremacist, Black political mobilization and education signaled the death of White rule, which justified murderous resistance. The voter registration workshop is an exemplar of people imagining and enacting a radically different political world than the one they inhabited.

Migrant education and the idea of a “beautiful future” Since the early 1900s, the schooling of migrant children has been marked by primitive struggles over the times and spaces governing their growth as human beings (Donato, 1997, 2003; Gonzalez, 1990; Hendrick, 1977; Theobald & Donato, 1990): seasons for harvesting strawberries or semesters for acquiring letters; lemon groves under an unrelenting sun or classrooms punctuated (albeit sparsely) with meaningful opportunities to learn. Organized during the time of Propositions 1877 and 2278 in California, the Migrant Student Leadership Institute (hereafter, the Migrant program) operated from 1993 to 2006 under the guidance of Dr. Kris Gutiérrez. Espinoza and Vossoughi served as program designers, instructors, and researchers; Rose’s research and counsel played a central role in shaping the program’s approach to writing instruction. An explicit goal of the program was to prepare students for admission to and academic success at post-secondary institutions with a focus on the University of California system. Thus, the residential and academic components were designed to foster the intellectual growth and leadership abilities of the high-school-aged children of California’s itinerant labor force. Youth were enrolled in Humanities, Social Science, and Science courses that met daily for a month to five weeks. Upon completion, students received four units of credit, the equivalent of an undergraduate-level class in the UC system. However, the Migrant program was more than a “college bridge” effort. It was a teaching and learning experiment designed to help students a) cultivate expansive scholarly thinking and social action through reading and writing, and b) analyze the historical and political dimensions of their existence as adolescent members of a migrant community (For more on the frameworks that guided the organization of the Migrant program see Gutiérrez, 2008; Tejeda et al., 2003). To further our understanding of meaningful participation and educational dignity, we draw from an extensive audio- video record to examine the talk and interaction that constituted this environment. To provide a sense of the spirit or ethos of the Migrant program, we draw attention to an expression used by some parents to describe a destiny for their children that excluded migrant work and included secondary and post- secondary educational achievement: un futuro bonito, a beautiful future. Every summer, a small group of migrant parents would work as residential assistants, helping to foster the familial quality of the program. Working alongside those parents, we learned that the desire for these beautiful futures was cultivated years before students participated in the Migrant program. Typically, as parents recounted their experiences, those present fell silent and listened intently. One mother spoke about working in Bakersfield under a relentless sun, peering at the sky, and then carrying on because she wanted her children to never know that occupation. A father and truck driver from Santa Maria spoke of visualizing high school and college graduations en route to Los Angeles to deliver produce. For students, parents, residential assistants, and instructors, the experience of living together on campus generated opportunities to bond with one another and form community. Espinoza and Vossoughi note that the blossoming of tenderness nurtured intellectual life within the classroom. The flowering of vulnerability between students and teachers created emotional and cognitive condi­ tions that facilitated the sharing of histories and testing of ideas. MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 15

Doing school differently In the opening moments of the 2002 program, Espinoza states that the intellectual goals of the Social Science and Humanities components are to help students use texts to “think historically and in a progressively more complex manner” about social life. Espinoza emphasizes that the readings are difficult and makes a promise on behalf of the instructional staff that seeks to differentiate the environment from the more familiar public school contexts: “If you fall, we fall/and we’re gonna be right there next to you holding your hand.” Lead instructor Dr. Carlos Tejeda (CT) then elaborates the tension between “doing school” and “doing school differently”: Excerpt 7 124 CT: As you think about this reader [holding it above his head with both hands,walking towards front row, voice booming] 125 we also want you to be thinking about your lives in conjunction with this reader 126 junto 127 together with this reader 128 this reader is gonna seem like you’re talking about things that are out there 129 maybe two hundred years ago that happened in history 130 and in a way they are 131 but they’re also about things that are you 132 we want you take yourselves and place yourselves 133 the way I place this chalk 134 [walks to lectern, picks up chalk, claps it down on lectern] 135 on this podium 136 I want you take yourself 137 and place yourself 138 in the history 139 in the narrative 140 in the themes 141 in the topics 142 that this this will present to you Tejeda’s actions are “thick with symbols” (Turner, 1974, p. 85), one-man historical and pedagogical pageants. In his mind, distributing “school supplies” meant providing the symbolic equipment (i.e., expectations, assurances, narratives, definitions, and explanations) that participants need in order to flourish. Minutes later, Espinoza asks Tejeda what students should do if they get lost. Receiving the cue, he turns to the students and repeats the query. Then, a young woman answers “You ask for help.” Tejeda affirms her response, walks toward the front row, kneels with his palms together in prayer, and says “You all know what this means, right?” With the room silent, he implores students to “please, please, please, please, please ask for help.” His improvised supplication is meant to allay the anxieties that might preclude students from asking for help and, again, show what the social order of the Migrant program could be.

Midwives of the question The frequency, length, and quality of exchanges between instructor and learner can serve as indicia of meaningful participation. In school environments, the Inquiry-Response-Evaluation discourse pattern (Cazden et al., 1972; Cazden, 2001; Mehan, 1979) reigns and tends to unfold this way: teacher asks known-answer question, student responds, teacher indicates whether answer was correct or incorrect. 16 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

In the Migrant program, multivoiced interactional episodes featuring multiple turns-at-talk were common. On occasion, episodes would extend over the course of days (even weeks) and alter the course of instruction. About an hour into the seminar that began in Excerpt 7, we encounter an odd species of speech event: a “student-initiated, indeterminate-answer question,” a contemplative interaction about a fundamental concern featuring verbal participation between a student (Ana Allende, pseudonym) and three members of the instructional team: Excerpt 8 143 CT: Any questions? 144 no hay ni una? [not a one?] 145 sí [yes] 146 [walking toward front row] 147 AA: It’s kind of off topic but 148 CT: Doesn’t matter [backing away, cupping his hands near his mouth as he fixes his gaze on AA] 149 AA: What happens if you umm like 150 what happens if someone doesn’t care 151 about their history or their sociality 152 and they’re more and they don’t have themselves labeled 153 like what happens 154 if you don’t label yourself 155 or if you just 156 like if you’re 157 if you’re careless 158 what does that make you? 159 what does that mean? With Tejeda’s “Any questions?/No hay ni una” (lines 143–144) it seems as though the seminar will move on to the next topic. Allende’s “It’s kind of offtopic but” (line 147) and Tejeda’s “Doesn’t matter” (line 148) combine to create an opportunity for her question to bloom. In a few moments, humanities instructors Evelina Brooks (EB) and Gloria Sonora (GS) would also contribute to the meaning- making. Tejeda responds first: Excerpt 9 160 CT: You could be real happy depends 161 if you were born into a rich family 162 with a lot of resources 163 you don’t have to give a damn about anything 164 but ‘Do I go to this tennis camp this summer’ 165 you’ll see a lot of those kids over there [referencing the various cheerleader and tennis camps on campus] 166 at the dorms 167 if I had three million dollars in the bank right now 168 do you think it would matter that I’m dark-skinned 169 I wouldn’t care 170 I know I’m not answering your question but because 171 the best answer I could give you is it depends 172 who you are 173 it’s up to you 174 to think about where you’re at MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 17

175 where you’ve been 176 where you need to go 177 and then to ask 178 should this be important to me [pointing to “historicality” written on the board] 179 should this be important to me [pointing to “sociality”] 180 and more importantly 181 what happens when I don’t make these important things 182 for me to think about Tejeda’s “answer” is an exploration of the question through a hypothetical (lines 160–162). The presence of “depends” and “if” index both the contingency and complexity of his response. To our minds, what is most salient is his respectful evasion of a definitive answer. The next turn is taken by Brooks, one of the humanities instructors: Excerpt 10 183 EB: I love that question because it’s probably one that 184 I mean that I 185 it’s one that I think about all the time like 186 should I care that certain people are gonna put a label on me 187 or should I just say ‘You know what 188 forget all those labels 189 I’m just gonna be me, you know’ 190 and we all I think in an ideal world 191 I want the freedom to just say 192 ‘you know what I just wanna be Evelina, you know 193 I just wanna be Evelina today’ 194 but then I also have to balance that with this stuff [pointing to the words “historicality” and “sociality” on the blackboard] Shifting from the key of “you” to that of “I,” Brooks explores the difficultyof living life as one’s own self (lines 191–192) with an eye on the historical and social aspects of existence. If Tejeda’s response was a brisk walk through a hypothetical before returning the query to its originator, Brooks posits a way of living in tension with the question. Finally, another humanities instructor Sonora, provides a response that most approximates a direct “answer,” but without imposing finality on the discussion: Excerpt 11 195 GS: If you’re gonna select a certain label 196 or whatever 197 then you need to know why 198 and I would say if you’re gonna choose to not 199 identify with a particular label 200 if you’re just gonna not identify yourself 201 then you should also know why 202 you’re not identifying yourself and be able to articulate 203 this is why 204 I understand this history 205 but this is why I’m choosing to not do that 206 and I think the other thing too 207 to think about 208 if you’re not gonna label yourself or if those [unintelligible] 18 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

209 if not understanding your historicality or sociality is not important to you 210 other people will label you for you 211 and there’s consequences to that 212 other people will write your history for you To our minds, Sonora’s response is a translation of an ancient verity – know thyself – into a premise for authoring one’s own history. The next day, Brooks and Sonora bring up Allende’s inquiry in class. Allende elaborates that the query was “Something I’ve been thinking about for months.” Thus, this was not a case of a young person’s intellectual lungs being filled by a stirring narrative and then exhaling a question. Rather, it was an example of how actors in a pedagogical drama – a production structured by detailed planning and moment-to- moment improvisation – could establish an environment capable of midwifing a pressing philosophic concern. Akin to the unfolding of dialogue in the voter registration workshop, the birth of Allende’s question, its reintroduction, and its serious and careful treatment by elders in the setting (themselves marked by the experience of injury, self-doubt, and renewal) constituted an early instance of the emergence of “epistemic co-responsibility” (Rommetveit, 1991) – an offbeat and alluring term in which cognitive and moral action conjoin. An inquiry that had been incubating for months could have ended up in the morgue. Instead, it was given to light, altering ever-so-gently the history of the participants in the setting, amending ever-so-slightly the history of the social group to which she belonged.

Evidence of educational dignity in first-person testimony To understand how migrant students remembered the program, Espinoza traveled across California in 2004 and interviewed six students who were either one or two years removed from the experience. When asked about the difference between the act of reading in the Migrant Program and his high school, a young man from Thermal, California named Lalo Cardenal (pseudonym) stated that the interaction between teacher and student was “mucho más fuerte/much more powerful.” He then spoke about the texts themselves and the collective act of reading: Excerpt 12 213 LC: acá las lecturas que nos daban/over there the readings that they gave us 214 uno le salía del corazón, del alma, leerlas/it came from the heart, the soul, to read them 215 porque al mismo tiempo que uno estaba leendo esas lecturas/because at the same time you were reading the readings 216 uno se identificaba/you identified 217 con lo que decía/with what it said 218 y a muchas veces era dificil seguir leyendo/and a lot of times it was difficult to continue reading 219 yo me acuerdo cuando nos poníamos a leer/I remember when we would sit down to read 220 yo miraba mis compañeros leyendo con lagrimas en los ojos/I’d see my friends reading with tears in their eyes 221 porque uno siente en carne propia lo que el escritor ha escrito/because you feel in your own flesh what the author wrote 222 y lo que uno vivio/and what you lived Speaking of himself and his “compañeros,” Cardenal’s words affirm the power of first- and second- person accounts in understanding the meaning of educational activity. A learner’s poetic descriptions of somatic experience – porque uno siente en carne propia lo que el escritor ha escrito – are primary texts regarding meaningful participation and educational dignity, offering insights into aspects of educational life they consider deserving of artful reflection. MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY 19

Conclusion: through interaction, dignity Our notion of educational dignity – the multifaceted sense of a person’s value generated via mean­ ingful participation in substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one’s mind, humanity, and potential – rests upon a cornerstone premise: recognition of the inherent dignity of all people is coalescent with an understanding that dignity relies on social action for its manifestation. Multifaceted analyses are necessary for understanding how meaning-oriented organisms foster the growth of dignity in educational settings. (On moral action in everyday and educational life, see Bang et al., 2016; Durkheim, 1915; Erickson, 2004; Espinoza, 2009; Goffman,1967 ; Gutiérrez et al., 1995; Kant, 1981; Lee, 2001; Rose, 1996; Vossoughi, 2014). Our examination of interactions in two sister spaces reveals the moment-to-moment unfolding of meaningful participa­ tion and educational dignity. To generate descriptive and analytic power, we put forth first-, second-, and third-person observational stances that attend to the subjectivities of participants immediately engaged in the interaction, those bearing direct witness, and those, like us, reconstructing meaning from afar. In concert with close attention to people’s words, we focus on the ways learners’ minds are taken seriously by elders and peers. Specifically, the ways substantive intellectual engagement finds expression through efforts to understand the meaning-perspectives of participants: recursive pedago­ gical “looping” that involves archiving and returning to participants’ concerns, the treatment of disagreement as an opening for collective growth, and poetic talk and interaction that generates a sense of communion and solidarity. We imagine the theoretical and methodological approaches outlined here could help us attune to the ways educational dignity manifests in interaction. To emphasize the oneness of dignity and the human person, we ask for momentary license to personify: dignity does not abandon, nor does it stray. An indelible quality of personhood, it cannot be bestowed by fiat or withdrawn by whim. Were dignity susceptible to wandering or vulnerable to exile, its hue and cry would fall soundless, leaving the person with scant resources for defense and flourishment.Across terrain and era, we live out, with resolve amidst calamity, the history that bridges proclamation and embodiment. Our epoch’s recurrent riff – the quality of dignity is inherent and inalienable, yet dependent on social action for its manifestation as experience and sense – has not found receptive audience within all modes of thinking and ways of feeling. Yet, if we still our minds and attend to the multitude of social practices through which dignity is made manifest, a portrait of the human family, with every person keenly rendered, can be summoned. Across centuries, we can imagine these practices constituting a tracery of the dignity-bearing human, one capable of guiding our pursuit of what is splendid in the design of educational environments. Human experience continuously illuminates the idea of dignity, demonstrates its generative quality, and signals where it does not reach. Adapting the language of Merton (1968), the descriptions of the voter education workshop and the Migrant program are social interactional parables that show how the human capacity for social learning – our capability to learn through, from, and alongside others – makes experience the social reliquary of dignity. Our accounts show what the interactional order can look like when people and minds are taken seriously, when educators embrace wondering and dissent in ways that matter to learners (Shotter, 2015). Together, they show how social dreaming – e.g., a desire for un futuro bonito, a future with exercisable rights, a society that nourishes ethical relations – begins to find everyday expression through asking a question and having it explored, finding a reason to disagree and having it taken seriously. Over the life course, meaningful participation in educational activities resulting in learning creates a series of incandescent and inextinguishable links to a person’s experience and sense of dignity. Transmuted, these links can serve as conceptual torches that guide our everyday actions in educational environments. Phrased differently, the realness of experience and sense allows us to treat educational dignity not only as a matter of participation, but as a matter of fact. The existence of environments that function as the interpersonal fora where dignity and rights find social expression makes space for inquiries regarding the obligations owed to a person by virtue of the enactment of educational dignity. 20 M. L. ESPINOZA ET AL.

Through these kinds of examinations, we position ourselves to learn more regarding the bliss and thrill of learning, how the fruits of learning are made indwelling. A fundamental right to education is composed of an armamentarium of capabilities or exercisable social powers such as plying one’s imagination or forging empathetic relations with others (Nussbaum, 2011). Rights are fundamental not because of the unassailable quality of the legal theory that explains and justifies their existence; rather, the perdurable quality of essential rights rests in the deep-seated features of human experiences and the development of capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011). As alluded above, a person with the capability, the power to dream socially, owns the means to conduct appraisals and make demands of life, put forth a claim on the future. Across eras and cultures, the persistence of the argument that education is a fundamental right relies on the human capacity to learn to dream again, to compose, out of sorrows unspeakable, a thrumming song.

Notes

1. We thank Ricardo D. Montoya, a Chicano Vietnam War veteran, for the insight regarding a “right to be empathetic.” 2. The Right to Learn Undergraduate Research Collective, directed by Espinoza at the University of Colorado Denver, is responsible for the bulk of the transcription work. They are Tania Soto Valenzuela, Amanda Wong, Maria Sanchez Velasco, Arliss Howard, Diego Ulibarrí, Raquel Isaac, Frida Silva, Adria Padilla-Chavez, Charla Agnoletti, Soraya Latiff, Lema Alali, Kimberly Acosta Rodriguez, and Taylor Smith. 3. The archival catalog lists the following participants for this day of the workshop: Bernice Robinson, Hosa Williams, Edna Smyre, Lewis Jones, and many references to “student.” 4. The archival catalog names only Bernice Robinson and Charles Sharied [sic] as participants on this day. 5. In an oral history interview conducted for the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian National Museum on African American History and Culture in 2011, Sherrod stated that before arriving in Albany, Georgia in 1961 to help organize the local movement, he spent a month in jail in Rockhill, South Carolina on a chain gang as a consequence of his civil rights work. 6. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 7. The 1994 “Save Our State” ballot initiative was crafted to “establish a system of required notification by and between . . . agencies to prevent illegal aliens in the U.S. from receiving benefits or public services in California.” 8. The 1998 English Language in Schools ballot initiative required all public school instruction, with limited exceptions, to be conducted only in English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by The Spencer Foundation [Discretionary Grants].

ORCID

Luis E. Poza http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6775-8719

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