Reflections on the Social Studies Conference

October 23, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

On Oct. 21 I attended the annual conference held by the BC Social Studies Teachers’ Association. Given how touchy everyone is about Pro-D, I thought I should mention that I spent my time wisely!

The theme of this year’s conference was a familiar one – “21st century learning”. In the sessions I attended, the tone of the presenters and the audience ranged from cautious optimism to deep hostility. Here are some thoughts about the conference:

  • The motives underlying much of the corporate support for “21 century learning” are certainly suspect. Nevertheless, Roland Case, in the opening keynote panel discussion, reminded us that we should not “poison the well” against corporate leaders who are pursuing educational reform. The problem with this plea for fairness is that motives often have a direct bearing on future outcomes. IF the motive is based on assumptions and a particular worldview – and Bill Gates’s belief in technology may genuinely drive his love for education reform – then we should indeed focus on these assumptions rather than the person. However, IF the motives are self-serving and pecuniary, then these personal motives are entirely relevant to a discussion about reform. Eric Jordan, the former chair of the Premier’s Technology Council (PTC), claimed in the keynote discussion that education budgets are so barren that there isn’t enough money to render his form of involvement self-serving. Unlike some other teachers in attendance, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, self-interest does seem to be evident in the United States, where the “21st century” agenda is more advanced than BC’s. Katie Ash, writing for Education Week, argues that “[w]hile producers of print-based curriculum and instructional materials are struggling, companies that are focused on technology-based instruction and tools for data collection and analysis are thriving in the K-12 market”. Even in BC, companies like Pearson, IBM and Telus are making serious money on education initiatives. [Check out Tara Ehrcke’s excellent account of the corporate involvement in BC’s education system.]
  • Roland Case’s argument that critical thinking can only happen within a body of content was absolutely “bang on”. As I have said elsewhere, much of the content in our curricula is indeed quite stable, and needs to be mastered (and internalized) before any real critical thinking can occur. The distinction between skills and content is simplistic. Yes, they are conceptually distinct, but any experienced teacher knows that skills are taught within a particular realm of content. Knowledge, as I see it, is the exercise of intellectual skills within a field of study. In courses like English 12, English Literature 12 and History 12, for example, detecting bias is an extremely important skill. So how do we teach students this skill? To begin with, we examine content and compare it to other content. So students need to “know their stuff” before critical comparisons and detection of differences can illuminate potential bias. You need to think critically about something.
  • In the first breakout session I attended – the Social Studies Roundtable – a lot of concern was evident for the future of the discipline. For example, the PTC document argues that

    [i]nstruction should more consistently focus on the skills required to find and use relevant content rather than on the delivery of pre-determined content…. Content will have to evolve constantly, not only to remain relevant but so students are ready to deal with how rapidly information changes in a knowledge-based society. Students must play a greater role in discovering their own content…

    In a content-heavy discipline like social studies, what is its future when secondary students decide what is relevant for their education? Not to be too flippant, but how is anything in social studies relevant when Snooki’s adventures on Jersey Shore are a student’s prime concern? And what happens when a student’s interests don’t coincide with prescribed learning outcomes? In my mind, relevancy and content need a more honest discussion before we surrender control.

  • I attended an interesting session on student blogging. I’m interested in this innovation myself, but after the session I still have concerns. If a teacher links his/her classroom blog to separate student blogs (which may or may not be connected to a school-controlled system), doesn’t the teacher commit him or herself to a 24/7 job as moderator? With a family and many private obligations, I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’ll have to consider the issue further, I suppose.
  • It’s becoming pretty clear that the challenges facing public education in this province come from a larger wave that is sweeping North America. The wave can be described loosely as “neo-liberal”, a hyper-capitalist (and globalist) ideology that largely eschews social conservatism, but still clings to an economic Darwinism that is centuries old. Toby Steeves, in my final session at the conference, emphasized an important point that is almost forgotten: in dressing itself up in the guise of 21st century efficiency, neo-liberalism is really not much different from Adam Smith’s economic doctrines of the 18th century [except it ignores Smith’s vital theory of human sentiments]. At the heart of neo-liberalism is a wave of pro-corporate policies that have dominated the Anglo-American world since the late 1970’s. In a bid to overcome stagflation and reverse the postwar neo-Keynesian consensus, the corporate world and it allies began a concerted campaign to re-introduce a low-tax, low-regulation business environment similar to the era before the Great Depression. This campaign succeeded, and since then we’ve seen almost every regional and national political entity substantially reduce business regulations and corporate taxation. At the state and provincial government level, governments have cut back their corporate revenues and social expenditures – particularly in relation to GDP – in a bid to be “competitive”  [which is a charitable euphemism for a more accurate metaphor, “racing to the bottom of the barrel”]. BC has been particularly susceptible to this, though it has abated in the last few years… now that we have some of the lowest business tax rates on the continent.

In general, this was one of the better PSA conferences that I have attended. I’ll be happy to return next year!

Posted in BC Politics, Economic Issues, Education, Global Issues | 1 Comment

Some thoughts on consumer debt, inequality and taxes

September 10, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

A recent report from Transunion, a Canadian credit agency, shows that consumers in B.C. carry the largest debt load in Canada. This debt includes credit card debt, but not mortgage debt. Given the real estate prices of urban British Columbia, it’s doubtful that adding mortgage debt would improve B.C.’s debtor status.

This status, of course, is not surprising. B.C. leads the country in inequality, particularly when we compare the richest quintile of families to the poorest. Like we’ve seen in the United States, B.C.’s consumer debt is being used as a temporary tool to overcome an imbalance in wealth.  But something has to give. Either average British Columbians regain a larger share of the GDP pie, or unpaid bills will start coming due. I shudder to think what would happen if interest rates went up; borrowing against one’s mortgage to pay consumer debt is a common way to stave off the inevitable. (Thankfully, the Bank of Canada is resisting a rate increase.)

The Transunion study also concludes that Canadians, including British Columbians, are actually lowering their overall credit debt exposure, if only slightly. This again parallels the recent American experience and historical trends. Like our American neighbours, we are facing an uncertain economic future; the rational behaviour is for households to pay down debt, particularly if its members are still gainfully employed.

But this in turn points to a weakness in the doctrine that general income tax cuts are an effective tool for economic stimulus. Generally speaking, when people are paying down debt (and saving more, as in the United States), tax cuts are usually added to this “pay down”. So in an economic downturn, tax “stimulus” is not injected back into the economy. The money is essentially wasted, and government debt spirals upward. Moreover, the cuts generally benefit those who can take the most advantage from the cuts (i.e. the top quintile), and offer little to the poor and unemployed (because they’re close to the basic exemptions already found in the tax code). So the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer… all in the name of tax-based stimulus.

Posted in American Politics, BC Politics, Canadian Politics, Economic Issues | Leave a Comment

Power and History: Essential Readings for Tonight

August 30, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

If you have a free hour tonight, may I suggest two excellent articles?

1. “When the rich and powerful overplay their hand” – The Canadian writer James Laxer provides a brief but thought-provoking history of the French Revolution, and the parallels it might have for modern American politics. Before the revolution of 1789, Laxer explains how the French state was hobbled by a revolt from the nobility, which refused to pay its share of taxes to a debt-ridden imperial government. The nobles brought the French government to its knees, but precipitated a much wider revolution that fundamentally changed the nature of France… and wiped out the nobility as a class.

2. “The Power and the Glory: Myths of American Exceptionalism” – This is an older article (from 2005) by one of my favourite leftists, Howard Zinn. It is a searing indictment of an American foreign policy that predates the creation of the country. Zinn’s essential point is that the Bush Doctrine is not new; it is part of a centuries-old policy continuum that justifies the brutal exercise of imperial power on the basis of a supposed moral imperative.

Posted in American Politics, Global Issues | Leave a Comment

A Lament for the Provincial Exams

August 30, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

I’ll be honest: I’m a dinosaur.

Or at least that’s what I’m labeled by the progressives who make so much noise in the field of education. To them, teachers like me are throwbacks, anachronisms, conservative reactionaries, Sisypheans who roll the rock of futility up (and, like me, over) the hill. I also suspect we might be targets if “21st century learning” becomes more than just a fad.

All of this I’ve learned to live with. I’ve learned to live with the disconcerting discrepancy between my larger political views (as a social democrat) and a teacher-centered education philosophy that is championed by right-wing think tanks and American anti-labour education reformers. I’m still figuring out how a teacher-centered approach is necessarily conservative – Why would they want to empower teachers? – but that’s how things have developed in the last few decades. In any case, I carry on as a teacher who’s embraced education and technology and created student-centered lesson plans, but who also believes that 21st century learning is unlikely to gain wide adoption (and might also be a con job).

So what does this have to do with provincial exams? Well, two weeks ago the B.C. government announced that the optional Grade 12 academic exams would no longer be offered. This was the final stage of a multi-year plan to phase out the Grade 12 “provincials”: first they were made optional for graduation, then they became optional for university entrance, and then they withered into irrelevancy as nobody wrote them. Though many progressives (especially in the Twittersphere) have welcomed the official demise of the exams, I am saddened by their passing. To me, the Grade 12 exams were an important bastion of education standards; their loss is a loss for all of us who believe that intellectual criteria and academic rigour are more important than the current reductive obsession of modern education, high school completion. As a dinosaur with lots of fight left, I offer the following as specific reasons for lamenting the loss of the provincials:

  • They were good exams – I have taught three courses that featured provincial exams: History 12, English 12 and English Literature 12. Over the decades, these provincial exams were written, marked and updated with the help of hundreds of teachers throughout the province. Not only was this an excellent form of professional development, but it also led to well-written and balanced assessments that accurately reflected what was going on in the classroom. I firmly believe that these exams, especially History 12 and English Literature 12, were excellent forms of assessment. They combined reading, writing, critical thinking and content in a very effective manner. They included balanced multiple choice questions, paragraphs, essays, and primary document analyses. [History 12, for example, included a conceptual essay, three paragraphs, and multiple written responses to primary sources. Combined, these were worth more than the multiple choice.] Were they perfect? Of course not. But they were probably the highest quality assessment that students would encounter in their schooling. So I had no problem “teaching to the test”, because if my students did well on the exams, they had clearly learned a great deal about the particular discipline. It is therefore lamentable that the exam for English 12 (arguably the least rigourous of the three courses) is the only one that remains.
    • I think the current Grade 10 (science, math and English) and 11 (social studies) provincial exams, worth 20% of the course mark, have yet to find their “balance”, though they may in the future. Their focus on multiple choice questions, a notable lack of exemplars, and the absence of widespread teacher input remain their greatest weaknesses. And I wonder if it makes any sense to move the pressure from Grade 12 to Grade 11 and 10.
  • They were a hedge against grade inflation and lower standards: It already started to happen once the exams became a voluntary part of high school graduation, and especially once they were no longer a mandatory part of university entrance. Now the pressure on teachers to inflate grades, and to reduce the demands of these “exam” courses, is palpable. I can offer no definitive evidence, but I’ve received an overwhelming amount of anecdotal feedback from high school teachers and university professors that these problems have greatly intensified. As both a high school teacher and a sessional university instructor, I can tell you that this is my own experience, too. In History 12, for example, I’ve started teaching students (mostly males) who, in the past, would not have taken the course. I’m all for inclusion, but these same new students are angry – quite literally, outraged – that they have to write so many essays (four) in the course.* They don’t like writing essays, and they’re not going to university, so why should they write essays??? Some of the recent emails I’ve received from students (and their parents) would amaze you. At this point, I’m still holding the fort. I’m stubborn, and I still perceive the course as university preparation. But time will tell if I wilt… like other teachers who have admitted to such pressure.
  • They assessed something valuable and stable – The exams were a stark reminder of something we seem to be forgetting: content matters. I’m sorry, I know I’m going to offend some people, but the idea that content doesn’t matter is utter twaddle. I’m shocked by how many times I have heard the argument, especially from administrators and education “experts”. The Premier’s Technology Council explains this point of view quite succinctly: “The system must place greater emphasis on the learning of skills over the learning of content. The content relevant to a student’s interests is constantly changing and growing so students will have to continue learning new things throughout their life. Instruction should more consistently focus on the skills required to find and use relevant content rather than on the delivery of pre-determined content.” Let’s think about this. I have no doubt that much information and data has changed and will change over the coming years. But have the classics of English Literature changed greatly? Are the techniques of rhetoric, argumentation and grammar suddenly different? Are the histories of Fascist Italy and Germany, or any history for that matter, merely random and subjective? Are the elements of Confederation or the Constitution Act (1982) so unstable as to be worthless fields of study? How about biology, physics and chemistry? Have the contents of these disciplines changed so drastically in the last few decades that we should just Google them when needed? As an educator, I see myself as a guardian (and interpreter) of something incredibly valuable: a rich cultural and intellectual inheritance that we all share as Canadians and global citizens. Of course, this legacy can change and evolve, but this evolution is usually fairly slow; the topics above are not “constantly changing”. And before they do, this legacy not only defines us as citizens, but also allows us to have a common conversation; if we only allow for “content relevant to a student’s interests”, are we not encouraging a highly fragmented society in which pop culture is the only thing we have in common?

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  • Important skills were taught, within a necessary realm of content -I find the distinction between skills and content fairly juvenile. Yes, they are conceptually distinct, but any experienced teacher knows that skills are taught within a particular realm of content. Knowledge, as I see it, is the exercise of intellectual skills within a field of study. In the three courses above, for example, detecting bias was (and is) an extremely important skill. So how do we teach students this skill? To begin with, we examine content and compare it to other content. So students need to “know their stuff” before critical comparisons and detection of differences can illuminate potential bias. You need to think critically about something. Or, as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham reminds us, ” The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge).” It also helps to have a common knowledge base, so dialogue between learners can have meaningful points of reference.
  • They built confidence – In an age where a student’s self-esteem appears to be based on endless praise and the avoidance of failure, the old provincial exams built confidence in the time-honoured manner: students earned it. The exams, and the courses designed to prepare students for the exams, were challenging and demanding, just like real life. The exams were worth a significant percentage – 40%. Nevertheless, for students with decent academic skills and a good work ethic, the exams were entirely reasonable. It was a privilege to work hard for students who themselves were working hard, because they realized there was no substitute for a good effort. We didn’t have lots of fun, but we did have a great degree of satisfaction. And, at the end of the year, the students’ sense of satisfaction from a job well done was an incredibly rewarding experience for me. I knew they had the knowledge and the confidence to move to the next phase of their lives.

There are probably other reasons to lament (or celebrate) the demise of the Grade 12 exams, so I’d like to hear your thoughts.

-Colin Welch

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*These are the same kind of students who are now angry that they have to read – gasp – 3 chapters a week in my 1st year political science classes.
Posted in BC Politics, Education, Experiences | 24 Comments

Questioning Progressive Education’s Sacred Cows

August 28, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

As someone who blogs, tweets, wikis, flickrs and youtubes [and turns nouns into verbs], I suppose I’m a fairly modern teacher. But I’m also very suspicious of “student-centered learning” and the sort of unyielding optimism that its adherents seem to possess. Maybe I’m just an old crank, but modern education seems consumed by a cheery Pollyanism that appears both uncritical and self-serving. Part of the progressive ethos that I find so unnerving is a whole set of assumptions that are repeated like mantras. Rarely – actually, never – do I hear people questioning these sacred cows of progressive education. So I’ll take a crack at some of them…

1. Don’t teach to the test: If a test is well written, and covers skills and content effectively, why wouldn’t I teach toward it? “Teaching to the test” can only be bad if the test is poorly written. And if that’s the case, the onus is on the teacher to write a better test. Moreover, almost every book on “best practices” in education argues that effective teachers create their assessments first, and then build their units around them. This is the essence of “backward design”. So I do teach to the test, and am proud to do so. I should add that standardized tests can be problematic if they are designed, marked and revised by people outside the profession. That’s why I’ve always believed that teachers must be deeply involved in this process, like they were for British Columbia’s well-designed Grade 12 provincial exams of the past.

2. All learning must be relevant to the student: If much of the life of teens is consumed by pop culture, shopping, video games and socializing, isn’t teaching what’s irrelevant a virtue? If our students claim that algebra, the history of Confederation and comma splices are irrelevant, must we collapse over ourselves and surrender to these youthful experts on curricular relevance? Any education system governed by the preferences of adolescents is a system where adults have abrogated their role as adults, and is a system (well, more like a warmed-over Rousseauian philosophy) that I will resolutely oppose.

3. Teachers mustn’t lecture: But have you noticed that a “mini-lecture” is OK? Of course, if a  certain pedagogical practice is unacceptable, then why does a certain measure of time make it acceptable? And have you noticed that teachers always seem to face unremitting lecturing from progressive “experts” during pro-d days?

4. “I never teach from the book!” Really? Never? Aside from reinventing the wheel and exhausting yourself, is your stuff always better? I’m not advocating the exclusive use of the textbook, but let’s be adults here: textbooks are a vital and crucial educational tool. So let’s give them the due they deserve.

5. We must emphasize cooperative learning: But if the primary goal of learning is to stimulate thinking, then it stands to reason that an emphasis on cooperative learning leads to an emphasis on cooperative thinking. So my question is this: Why is cooperative thinking so important? Shouldn’t we want children to think for themselves? How do we build autonomy and self-reliance when our students look to someone else for the answer? In my professional experience as a dock worker, retail manager, insurance adjuster and educator, thinking for one’s self is a critical and perhaps decisive foundation for a successful career… and a successful life. To think otherwise is, to me, a total absurdity. And for children who prefer to think for themselves – especially introverts – a classroom that focuses on cooperative learning means that they can’t hear themselves think. I wonder if this is the cause of so many problems in the classroom, particularly at the elementary level.

6. Content doesn’t matter; we should only teach skills: According to the Premier’s Technology Council, “The content relevant to a student’s interests is constantly changing and growing so students will have to continue learning new things throughout their life. Instruction should more consistently focus on the skills required to find and use relevant content rather than on the delivery of pre-determined content.” Are you kidding me? Are the rules of grammar completely arbitrary? Is the logic of balancing equations a matter of taste? [And aren’t they both content and skill at the same time?] Is the role of federalism in Canadian politics, the increasing complexity of animal phyla or the key formulas of geometry simply a jumble of random factoids that we can look up in Google? I shudder to think that anyone who is serious would say yes to any of these questions. Most of the content in our curricula is indeed quite stable, and needs to be mastered (and internalized) before any real critical thinking can occur. As more and more researchers are finding, skimming for information is not the same thing as deep thinking. Moreover, this content helps create a pool of common knowledge, and this commonality helps advance a national identity and cultural conversation beyond the latest fashion faux pas of Kim Kardashian. Content provides both the building blocks of thinking, and the glue that holds together a common heritage.

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Have I missed anything? Am I Mr. Crankypants, destined to line the landfill of Luddite reaction? Please let me know!

Posted in Education, In A Philosophical Mood, Modern Culture | 3 Comments

Some surprising conclusions regarding creativity and innovation

August 20, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

Howard Gardner is well known for his theory of multiple intelligences. He is less well known for a fascinating book on creativity.  [This is obviously anecdotal, but I don’t know a single educator who has even heard of this book.] In his Creating Minds (1993), Gardner explores the lives of seven famous persons from the 20th century – Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, and Mahatma Gandhi – from the point of view of their creativity and innovation.

Gardner finds at least three commonalities amongst his seven subjects, and concludes that these factors are necessary, though certainly not sufficient, to explain the emergence of a creative and innovative mind. One of the factors is not surprising, but at least one other is.

Factor 1: Personality and Temperament – No surprise here; innovators must, from an early age, show a natural inclination to take risks and explore new options or places:

Individuals who ultimately make creative breakthroughs tend from their earliest days to be explorers, innovators, tinkerers. Never satisfied simply to follow the pack, they can usually be found experimenting in their chosen métier, and elsewhere as well… Often this adventurousness is interpreted as insubordination, though the more fortunate tinkerers receive from teachers or peers some encouragement for their experimentation. (32)

Factor 2: A Sheltered and Supportive Middle Class Life – This is more surprising. Being “bourgeois” is usually the epitome of dullness and conformity, but Gardner’s Fantastic Seven show distinctly bourgeois, middle class values. So much for adversity being a touchstone of creativity!

It was into an increasingly uncertain and unsettled world that the seven modern masters were born in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Interestingly, and perhaps revealingly, most were born in smaller communities outside the great urban centers and led youthful lives that were at least somewhat sheltered from the most punishing aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Their families were at least moderately comfortable, and, while in some instances personally religious, they generally showed tolerance toward “free thinking.” They embodied and passed on to their children the bourgeois values of hard work and high achievement. (393)

Factor 3: Repetition, Mimicry and Mastery – This is the most surprising conclusion, since Gardner is considered a godfather of student-centered reform. What Gardner has found is a “10 year rule”. Essentially, a creative, innovative person does not start out as a creator and innovator. He or she must pay his or her dues. And that means carefully, often painstakingly, studying the masters and often copying their work. To be a student is not to be creative, but be respectful of tradition… a decade before you turn it on its head:

… at least ten years of steady work at a discipline or craft seem required before that métier has been mastered. The capacity to take a creative turn requires just such mastery, before a decade of sustained activity has been accomplished. Even Mozart, arguably the exception that proves the rule, had been composing for at least a decade before he could regularly produce works that are considered worthy of inclusion in the repertory. (32)

The prodigy tends to work in ignorance of what is going on at the forefront of the domain and, while often extremely gifted in mimicry, cannot be expected to go beyond conventional practices. Indeed, the prodigy will focus on his or her own interests, on pleasing “significant others,” or on mastering the common code of the domain, rather than engaging in a genuine dialogue with the leading innovators of the time, or with exemplary figures drawn from history. (139)

At a time when my province’s Premier’s Technology Council announces that creativity and innovation* are centerpieces of a 21st century economy, one has to wonder if people have really considered what it takes to turn young people into creative and innovative citizens. Gardner’s book suggests that an economically secure populace and a content-rich curriculum that focuses upon mastery learning might be essential building blocks for young learners. And the pedagogical emphasis on  “critical thinking”, moreover, may be somewhat premature.

One wonders if such “traditional” conclusions are the reason why the educational cognescenti celebrate something else from Gardner’s body of work.

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  • “Creativity and innovation allow one to generate ideas and concepts, to see information in a different way from others, and to approach issues from a different direction…. Such a society is well educated, and relies on the knowledge of its citizens to drive the innovation, entrepreneurship and dynamism of that society’s economy.”

 

 

Posted in Books, Education, In A Philosophical Mood | Leave a Comment

Examining Paul Veyne’s Foucault: Chp. 2

August 18, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

One of the strongest objections to Foucault’s philosophy is that his theory of discourse appears to resemble an old sociological perspective: structural functionalism. Structural functionalism is a sort of biological approach to understanding society: all parts of society work together to allow that society to function. The emphasis is on equilibrium, harmony and interdependence (though not equality). In Veyne’s analysis of Foucauldian “discourse”, we can detect the same sense of a whole that is greater than its parts (albeit in a more decentralized manner), a whole that is governed by a set of immanent, interconnected and yet undetected assumptions that both create and are created by the discursive apparatus, or “set-up”.

So what’s the problem? As with structural functionalism in general, Foucault’s discourses appear to emphasize the status-quo. What is, is meant to be. This sort of naturalistic fallacy assumes that what we see today is the natural function of society (perhaps via evolution). In terms of Foucault’s discourse theory, you could argue that the logical outcome of this approach is a palpable conservatism. Far from resisting discursive power, human beings are unaware, as Veyne points out, “of the limits that it imposes” and, as such, they appear more like cogs in the proverbial wheel. As Neil Brenner has commented, “one major implication of Foucault’s genealogical distance from the problem of human agency is an objectivist, functionalist mode of analysis which cannot adequately distinguish power from resistance.”

___________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2

[W]e can escape from our provisional fishbowl only thanks to the pressure exerted by new events as they happen, or else when someone or other invents a new ‘discourse’ that is well received. However, even then, we shall leave one fishbowl only to find ourselves trapped in a new one. In short, this fishbowl or ‘discourse’ is ‘what may be called a historical a priori ‘. To be sure, that a priori, far from being an unmoving law that tyrannizes human thought, is constantly changing, and we ourselves eventually move on to a new one. But we are not conscious of this: those who live at the time have always been unaware of the limits that it imposes, just as we ourselves, today, are unable to perceive our own limits. (27-28)

Far from being lying ideologies, ‘discourses’ map out what people really do and think, without realizing it. Foucault never did establish a cause-and-effect link working in either direction between ‘discourses’ and the rest of reality; the set-up and the plots that unfold within it exist on the same level. (29)

[I agree with Veyne’s point that Foucault saw “ideology” as an inherently negative concept (like Marx). But then I’m reminded of Roy Macridis’s functionalist definition of ideology: Without ideology, we are almost without a conscience, without law and order, without an anchor and a port. Without ideology, we can have no vision of other worlds we want to sail to. Ideologies fashion our motivations, our attitudes, and the political regimes under which we live. They not only shape and consolidate values; they also command change and movement. Except for the last part, doesn’t this sound a lot like “discourse”?]

The ‘discourse’ itself is immanent in the set-up that models itself upon it … and that embodies it in society. The ‘discourse’ determines the singularity and strangeness of the period, and the local colour of the whole set-up. (31)

So why was Foucault so adamant in insisting that he was not at all close to Weber? Because, in Weber’s thought, he found no recognition of the principle of singularity and he believed that what Weber was looking for were essences. I am sorry to say that his idea of Weber was incorrect. He did not see that Weber was just as nominalist as he himself was. (35)

[Hmmm… I have to agree with Foucault on this one. Does the following passage from Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism sound like nominalism? One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born – that is what this discussion has sought to demonstrate – from the spirit of Christian asceticism.]

[S]ince a ‘discourse’ is immanent in historical facts and in any set-up of which it is, itself, the ultimate formulation, it does not carry history along with it, rather it is carried along by history, together with its inseparable set-up. [A set-up is sometimes called a dispositif or apparatus. In Power/Knowledge, Foucault says, “What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogenous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements.”] (35)

And given that ‘discourses’ do not succeed one another in accordance with any dialectical logic, they do not supplant one another for any good reasons, and they are not judged by some transcendental court, but are only related by what is the case, rather than what should be the case, they supplant one another and their relations are those of strangers, or rivals. Thought thrives on conflict, not reason. (36)

……………

 

Foucault: His Thought, His Character (Chp. 2)
By Paul Veyne

Veyne, Paul. Foucault: His Thought, His Character. Malden, MA: Polity, 2010. Print.

 

Posted in Books, Critical Theory, In A Philosophical Mood, Language | Leave a Comment

Examining Paul Veyne’s Foucault: Chp. 1

August 16, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

Paul Veyne's FoucaultOne of the most celebrated philosophers of the 20th century is Michel Foucault. At once both vilified and lauded, Foucault is a fascinating and demanding thinker. He certainly proved to be a challenge when his conception of the Self became the centerpiece of my Master’s thesis.

Yet I’ve always maintained that his philosophy (or should I say, philosophies) is much more accessible than commonly believed. He is not the radical relativist and nihilist that some people have argued. What he is, I believe, is a member of a small but recurring tradition within Western thinking: a skeptic who eschews complex beliefs and judgments, grand narratives and Rational Truth. Like Francis Bacon or David Hume, Foucault reminds us to be cautious and to build our knowledge from the particular and the local. In other words, his philosophical arguments are informed by a historian’s manner of examining the world.

Nevertheless, Foucault’s thought goes well beyond the cautious empiricism and skepticism of Bacon, Hume and modern historians. Foucault is primarily concerned with the conditions of truth. By this I mean the conglomerations of particular “knowledges”, skills, problems, institutions and power relationships that he called discourses. Within each discourse – he studied but a few, including madness, sexuality and criminality – is a set of particular assumptions that provide the conditions for distinguishing truth from untruth. But, of course, Foucault would argue that truth (and its other, untruth) is a historical artifact. It is contingent and variable and fluid and local. And it only makes sense within a web of discursive elements that are usually hidden, tacit and implicit.

So Foucault’s quest, if I can call it that, was (and is, for his followers) to uncover the layers within each discourse and lay bare those implicit assumptions that allow us to make pronouncements of true and untrue, right and wrong.

What follows are notes from the opening chapters from a recent book on Foucault by Paul Veyne. I plan to go through this book chapter by chapter, and eventually add my own comments to the quotation notes that I’m taking with my C-Pen. So far, I think Veyne’s book has been one of the clearest and most accurate discussions I’ve ever read of Foucault’s thought. If you’re adventurous, please follow along with me, and feel free to ask questions. Maybe I can provide a coherent response. Maybe.

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Foucault: His Thought, His Character
By Paul Veyne

Veyne, Paul. Foucault: His Thought, His Character. Malden, MA: Polity, 2010. Print.

……………

Introduction

He was something that, in this day and age, is rare, a sceptic thinker who believed only in the truth of facts, the countless historical facts that fill the pages of his books, never in the truth of ideas. For he acknowledged no transcendent principles as the foundation of truth. Yet he was not a nihilist; he recognized the existence of human liberty… and he did not think that, even when set up as a doctrine of ‘disenchantment’, the loss of all metaphysical and religious bases ever discouraged that freedom from having beliefs, hopes, indignations and revolts… (1)

Foucault’s philosophy is, in truth, an empirical kind of anthropology with a coherence of its own, the originality of which is founded on a historical critique. (2)

 

Chapter 1

For Foucault, as for Nietzsche, William James, Austin, Wittgenstein, Ian Hacking and many others, each of them with views of their own, knowledge cannot be a faithful mirror to reality. No more than Richard Rorty does Foucault believe in that mirror, or in that ‘specular’ concept of knowledge. According to him, the object, in all its materiality, cannot be separated from the formal frameworks through which we come to know it, frameworks that Foucault, settling upon an ill-chosen word, calls ‘discourse’. That, in a nutshell, says it all. (6)

Sexuality and madness are things that certainly exist; they are not ideological inventions. However much one speculates, the fact remains that a human being is a sexual animal, as physiology and sexual instinct prove… However, we are not in possession of a truth that corresponds to things, since we can only reach a ‘thing in itself by way of the idea that we have constructed of it in each different epoch (an idea of which its ‘discourse’ is the ultimate formulation, the differentia ultima). So… had there been no ‘discourses’, object x that has successively been seen as divine possession, madness, insanity or dementia, and so forth would nonetheless exist, although, in our minds, we would be unable to place it. (11)

Works on history and physics that do not communicate through general ideas are assuredly full of truths… In every age, contemporaries are thus trapped in ‘discourses’ as if in a deceptively transparent glass bowl, unaware of what those glass bowls are and even that they are there. False generalities and ‘discourses’ vary from age to age. But in every period they are taken to be true… the ancient and recent past of humanity constitutes a vast cemetery of now dead great truths. (14)

[Foucault] takes history as his starting point and selects from it samples (madness, punishment, sex) in order to make explicit the underlying ‘discourse’ and infer from this an empirical anthropology… The instrument that Foucault used, namely hermeneutics, the elucidation of meaning, is something people use every day. This everyday practice was not affected by the skepticism that undermines general ideas. (15)

Foucault’s fundamental method is to understand as well as possible what the author of that text wished to say in his own time.

Foucault favours a kind of hermeneutic positivism: we can know nothing for certain about the self, the world or the Good, but between ourselves, whether living or dead, we can understand one another. Whether our understanding is correct or mistaken is another matter… but we may, after all, end up understanding one another. (16)

…a ‘discourse’ – a collection of real practices… (17)

‘Discourses’ have ‘remained invisible’ and constitute ‘the subconscious of, not the person speaking, but the thing said‘ (my italics), ‘a positive subconscious of knowledge, a level that eluded the consciousness’ of the agents and that they used ‘without being aware of doing so’.

Obviously, the word ‘subconscious’ is no more than a metonymy; there is no subconscious, Freudian or otherwise, except in our brains; so, instead of ‘subconscious’, read ‘implicit’. (18)

The task of a historian who follows Foucault is to detect those ruptures that are concealed by misleading continuities. (20)

… Foucault the philosopher simply practices the method adopted by all historians, that of tackling every historical question on its own merits and never as a particular case of a general problem, let alone of a philosophical question. (21)

 

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An Economic Pessimist’s Nod to Karl Marx

August 14, 2011 | Author: C. Welch

Watching the  interview below with Nouriel Roubini is a worthwhile effort . Roubini is a mainstream economist from New York University’s business school, and well-known for his pessimism prior to the latest economic implosion. Much of his analysis is fairly mainstream, but he does emphasize the volatile role of commodities (especially oil and food) at least as much as the volatility of real estate securitization. in addition, Roubini understands that inequality is at the core of our current problems. Also interesting is his reference to Karl Marx, whose analysis of the self-destructive contradictions within capitalism are now being taken seriously – even by the the Wall Street Journal journalist conducting the interview. Funny what an economic slump and some riots will do to resurrect the reputation of an old communist!

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