(no subject)
More good things about living at Quarry St: there is a Tyrepower shop across the road. Perfect for when you get a flat tyre. Which i got.
Today I was productive in several unproductive ways. I should have been practicing my teaching accred. pieces, figuring out some sounds for two Carl Fox songs, and looking through the grade 3 theory books. Instead, I practiced my Dutch, figured out how to play some jazz standards on the accordion (not always easy when its designed to play only major, minor, 7th and diminished chords - i.e. folk music, not jazz), and read some more of a book by Ranciere called The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. It's pretty interesting to me, but maybe because i'm a pedagogy geek. Could i choose a geekier thing to geek over?
Anyway, if your interested in ideas about teaching and intelligence and how to teach things that you don't know yourself, and how everyone is intellectually equal, it's a good read. The main premise is the idea of intellectual "stultification" and "emancipation". Ranciere uses 'stultification' to describe how people are conditioned - through family, society, educational structures, etc - to believe in an intellectual hierarchy. We think of ourselves existing somewhere, maybe cleverer than most, or maybe stupider. We tend to believe that we are capable of a certain amount of intelligent activity (this includes manual activities as well as 'academic' ones). "Emancipation", on the other hand, is the belief that everyone is equally capable of learning. An emancipated master will not think themself to be more capable than the student - in fact, the less the master knows, the better their ability to emancipate the student, which is, to make the student realise everyone's potential to learn anything.
Another idea that i think is great is Ranciere's idea of how the relationship between master and student involves four points - the student's will, the student's intelligence, and those of the master. A stultifying relationship is where the master imposes both their will and intelligence on the student's. Thus the student does not exercise their own intelligence, and assumes that the master is more capable than themself. An emancipated relationship is where the master imposes their will but NOT their intelligence on the student. Thus, the master tells the student to think, but does not tell the student WHAT to think. The student therefore recognises that they are neither intellectual subordinates OR superiors - the master considers the student to be their equal.
It's interesting i tell you! I didn't really explain it as well as the book does. You have to read the book. Actually there is a big rant in there about how people rely on explanations of explanations of explanations of facts, and how this is another way of reinforcing intellectual hierarchies, because people are told that they're too dumb to understand something on their own without it being explained to them. So i will stop explaining things here and just say, read the goddamned book.
Today I was productive in several unproductive ways. I should have been practicing my teaching accred. pieces, figuring out some sounds for two Carl Fox songs, and looking through the grade 3 theory books. Instead, I practiced my Dutch, figured out how to play some jazz standards on the accordion (not always easy when its designed to play only major, minor, 7th and diminished chords - i.e. folk music, not jazz), and read some more of a book by Ranciere called The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. It's pretty interesting to me, but maybe because i'm a pedagogy geek. Could i choose a geekier thing to geek over?
Anyway, if your interested in ideas about teaching and intelligence and how to teach things that you don't know yourself, and how everyone is intellectually equal, it's a good read. The main premise is the idea of intellectual "stultification" and "emancipation". Ranciere uses 'stultification' to describe how people are conditioned - through family, society, educational structures, etc - to believe in an intellectual hierarchy. We think of ourselves existing somewhere, maybe cleverer than most, or maybe stupider. We tend to believe that we are capable of a certain amount of intelligent activity (this includes manual activities as well as 'academic' ones). "Emancipation", on the other hand, is the belief that everyone is equally capable of learning. An emancipated master will not think themself to be more capable than the student - in fact, the less the master knows, the better their ability to emancipate the student, which is, to make the student realise everyone's potential to learn anything.
Another idea that i think is great is Ranciere's idea of how the relationship between master and student involves four points - the student's will, the student's intelligence, and those of the master. A stultifying relationship is where the master imposes both their will and intelligence on the student's. Thus the student does not exercise their own intelligence, and assumes that the master is more capable than themself. An emancipated relationship is where the master imposes their will but NOT their intelligence on the student. Thus, the master tells the student to think, but does not tell the student WHAT to think. The student therefore recognises that they are neither intellectual subordinates OR superiors - the master considers the student to be their equal.
It's interesting i tell you! I didn't really explain it as well as the book does. You have to read the book. Actually there is a big rant in there about how people rely on explanations of explanations of explanations of facts, and how this is another way of reinforcing intellectual hierarchies, because people are told that they're too dumb to understand something on their own without it being explained to them. So i will stop explaining things here and just say, read the goddamned book.