[NLA] Re: Toward a "Foundational Understanding"

[Catherine B. King]

Hello Eileen:

I agree with you that the college was "closing ranks" at the
expense of its mission.  You say, ". . . the example we're
discussing is a 'micro' level example of an issue that exists
on many levels in adult,  family, and workplace literacy."

In the micro-situation, your situation reveals a common but
unnecessary power play among people and groups involved
in an interchange.  However, in the macro-situation, the
theoretical fields in the human sciences and education, as they
stand now, tend to solidly support the imbalance of power, the
maintenance of the "wall" between dialogal partners (students,
teachers, administrators, etc.), the obfuscation of the
"dialogal space" between the teacher and student in the
classroom, not to mention the lack of self-inspection on the
part of those who influence both research and policy.

The unwillingness to address the foundations that underpin both
programs and researchers, and the naive acceptance of a kind of
epistemological, ethical, political and spiritual provincialism that
de facto informs researchers' and administrators' views--varied
as it is--is the fundamental source of conflict in the human
sciences and education--a conflict that the natural sciences do not
share (because their data is non-conscious) and the statistical
sciences endeavor greatly not to avoid, though the field of
statistics, because it deals with human activities, is rife with the
problems of a fundamental mismatch between method and the
full order of the data.

The difference, of course, is that, in the human sciences and
education, the data under review is conscious, creative, self-
correcting and self-ordering, and therefore historical.  An
expectation of complete predictability, one of the legitimate
aims of the natural sciences, in education subverts not only the
intrinsic order of the data (other human beings as dialogal,
dynamically self-directing and potentially creative), but it equally
subverts the researcher.

That is, the researcher is involved in a set of questions that rest
on the assumption that we do not yet understand.  The
researcher's reach into the future unknown is itself dependent
on the prior assumption that they do not know yet, and that
knowledge of complete predictability will serve to end all
new research.

Further, the legitimate aim of any theoretical field is understanding;
however, the further underlying aim of complete predictability,
when applied to the various human fields, first in research and
then in policy, brings an air of authenticity to the researchers',
and then policy-makers', unauthentic need for dogmatic or even
pathological control over the data and the outcomes.  Human
beings are a bane for those whose love of order is not balanced
with a love mystery, or of what is not yet known.

And, human beings do not act like non-conscious data.  And for the
naïve researcher working under the auspices of the natural
science paradigm, this fact presents a continuous and
aggravating problematic.  In research, it sets up the conditions
for the researcher to rule out of court anything that cannot be
counted, contained, predicted or controlled.  Hence, human
dialogue, creativity, and depths of valuation do not "fit" into the
research paradigm.  Therefore the very existence of vision or
questions in others is not a part of the reality of research.

This underlying notion also "bleeds down" into the field of policy
and, further, into concrete applications.  It manifests at the level
of daily activities as a continuous conflict between "factory-type"
bureaucratic closure, e.g., rule-following rather than freedom or
self-direction at the level of action, stultifying rather than
supportive systems, a disregard of, or even punitive action
against, the quest for dialogue and the raising of questions,
rather than the creation of a culture human interchange.  In brief,
the naive appropriation of the natural science paradigm makes
it easier and easier for those in  power to become more like
demigods than democrats.

Coupled with capitalism defined as greed, this distorted notion
of science becomes embodied in politicians to cut to the quick
of democratic principles.

Though scientific method is appropriate to ALL study, paying
attention to the data under review (a tenet of all legitimate
science), requires that, for the study of human beings, the aim of
complete predictability does not match the data that is
conscious and historical.  Further, the aim of understanding
need not lose its critical edge; however, in human studies it
must remain remote; and it must include understanding
human data as de facto ordered around the dialogal, around
value and the ethical, political, the spiritual and the religious.
These are all orders of human concerns that don't lend
themselves to the natural science paradigm.   That paradigm is
woefully inadequate, and even dangerous, to employ in any
study of human beings.

As you suggest, the micro is connected with the macro.
And the confusion at the level of foundations will continue
to define and systematize the problem of power imbalance
that exist in the democracy we all live in and will
continue to affect our attempts to afford education to
the adults in our culture,  as well as those of us who
work in K-12  (see the Washington Post's recent articles
on education www.washingtonpost.com.)

Regards,

Catherine King
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Education
National University
San Diego, CA

----- Original Message -----
From: Eileen Eckert <eileeneckert at hotmail.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 5:36 AM
Subject: Re: [NLA] Re: Toward a "Foundational Understanding"


> Catherine and others,
> I continue this conversation because I think the example we're discussing
is
> a "micro" level example of an issue that exists on many levels in adult,
> family, and workplace literacy.
>
> Responding to this excerpt:
> >Eileen: "This is one incident in a larger context, and that same dean
> >told my immediate supervisor that I was 'disloyal' to the
> >college."
> >
> >Catherine: Perhaps you were disloyal to the college as a self-enclosed
> >bureaucracy, but not to the education that the college is supposed
> >to be involved in?
>
> I didn't even see it as disloyalty to the college. If ABE/GED students
have
> a good experience, they are more likely to go on to enroll in credit
courses
> once they've finished the GED. And, it's not disloyal to ask the college
to
> meet the needs of its students. Administrators were making their decisions
> based not on real knowledge of student needs but on their perception of
what
> student needs were--which, conveniently, allowed them to do what they
wanted
> to do! They were acting on mistaken assumptions about our students when
they
> decided to relocate the program and not make parking available (they
assumed
> our students all rode the bus or walked to class). I could have spoken on
> behalf of the students, but the administration could easily tell me "no".
My
> "disloyalty" came in my refusing to be the wall between the students and
the
> administration. They had to meet face-to-face with students, speak to them
> directly, and explain their decision. Given this direct contact, they had
to
> consider what the students were saying to them, rather than considering
> their perception of students' needs and saying that was the same as
> considering their real needs.
>
> I think each of us could probably find an example at the classroom,
program,
> organizational, and policy levels where someone had a choice of whether to
> make decisions and act on "real needs" (i.e., needs that are defined with
> learners based on a critical examination of assumptions and circumstances)
> vs. perceived needs (i.e., needs defined by someone other than the learner
> and based on unexamined assumptions).
>
> I also think that we've directed attention away from the relationships
> between students, teachers, tutors, and administrators by adding layer
upon
> layer of bureaucracy and accountability measures that fail to do by proxy
> what we now do not have time to do directly--that is, make sure students
are
> getting what they need by checking with them directly!
>
>
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