Notes on Teaching Resistance by John Mink
We have encountered the ongoing assault on academic freedom: from the imposition of “standardized syllabi” that “inform” the consumers (the students) what to expect from the product (the course) to the influence of “for-profit” schools promoting “marketable skills and degrees” that continue to undercut and otherwise call into question the “value” of the humanities and fields of inquiry such as Ethnic Studies, LGBT Studies, and so on, and from the ever increasing demand for educators and students to adhere to the corporate benchmarks of productivity, efficiency, and accountability, buying in to the belief in the authority of the market itself to the continued devaluation of the “labor” of educators as educators and to the promotion of educators as merely distributors of useful information (that is, to be more useful in and to the labor market). P289
My notes: It is very authoritarian to make students produce certain fixed outcomes. I also don’t like the utilitarian way of doing education. I don’t think education should be ‘goal-oriented’ or all about employability. I am investigating whether students should be able to write essay in their own languages and then translate into English in order to meet the submission requirements. If we only look at education with a very utilitarian perspective, then the students can claim that as long as they can meet the requirements, who cares what language I write the essay in.
Notes on Disengagement from Education by Lynne Rogers
Young people who have not acquired good levels of literacy and numeracy are more likely to become frustrated and disengaged with their learning. In England, one in six children leave primary school having failed to master basic reading skills (DfE, 2012a). Ordinary day-to-day teaching generally does not enable children with literacy difficulties to catch up with their peers. Many young people arrive in secondary school without the necessary literacy and numeracy skills (OECD, 2012a). P19
My notes: Poor levels of literacy or language make a big impact on whether students are become frustrated and disengaged with their learning. This is a very important note.
Demographic factors: Much research, though not all, indicates that dropout rates are higher for males than for females (Cedefop, 2010; Dale, 2010). Young people from certain groups are more likely to become disengaged from education. In the US, this includes black and Hispanic young people (Chapman et al., 2010) and young people from Mäori backgrounds in Australia (MBIE, 2013b). Often, though, differences can be explained by other factors such as family background or educational performance. In Hungary, there is a tendency to place children from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly Roma children, in special education institutions that are often characterized by low expectations and staffed by teachers who are insufficiently trained to work in multicultural classes (Szira and Nemeth, 2007). Studies have explored immigration status as a risk factor contributing to disengagement, although this tends to be compounded by language proficiency. P21
My notes: Students with certain minority ethnic backgrounds or gender are more likely to become disengaged from education. At times, the disengagement is related to the language proficiency as well. This is a key notion and highly related to my research.
Notes on Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida
This is why writing will never be simple “voice-painting” (Voltaire). It creates meaning by and enregistering it, by entrusting it to an engraving, a groove, a relief, to a surface whose essential characteristic is to be indefinitely transmissible. P13
My notes: Knowledge is highly related to the languages that contain it. Certain knowledge may only exist in a certain language. Writing is also a way to transmit and expand that knowledge. I am thinking whether it’s important to write in a certain language.
Notes on The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
Nationalism was therefore very much the product of industrialization and the democratic, egalitarian ideologies that accompanied it. … But they were also the deliberate fabrications of nationalists, who had a degree of freedom in defining who or what constituted a language or a nation. P269
My notes: Language can be used to deliberately create nationalism. Is asking the students to write in English actually a way to promote nationalism/ Eurocentrism?
Notes on The Aesthetics of Global Protest by Umut Korkut, Olu Jenzen, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Aidan McGarry, Itir Erhart
The US national anthem was sung in Spanish as was the Mexican anthem. If we were to ask the question: what makes for a non-nationalist or counter-nationalist mode of belonging? … It’s not just that many people sang together – which is true – but also that singing is a plural act, an articulation of plurality. If, as Bush claimed at the time, the national anthem can only be sung in English, then the nation is clearly restricted to a linguistic majority, and language becomes one way of asserting criterial control over who belongs and who does not. In Arendt’s terms, this would be the moment when a national majority seeks to define the nation on its terms and even sets up or polices norms of exclusion deciding who may exercise freedom, since that exercise depends upon certain acts of language. P58-59
My notes: As a form of protest, the Spanish speakers sang the American national anthem in Spanish. This act of singing/writing in a minority language is also an act of rebellion. Who determines that essay can only be written in English? Is this also a form of discrimination against the linguistic minority?
References:
Derrida, J. and Bass, A. (2001). Writing and difference. London: Routledge.
Fukuyama, F. (2006). The End of History and the Last Man. New York, N.Y. ; London: Free Press.
McGarry, A., Erhart, I., Eslen-Ziya, H., Jenzen, O. and Korkut, U. (2020). The Aesthetics of Global Protest Visual Culture and Communication. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Mink, J. (2019). Teaching Resistance : Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom. Oakland, CA: PM Press.
Rogers, L. (2015). Disengagement from Education. London: Institute of Education Press.