Discipline and Punish, Part Three, panopticism, 3.2

Foucault, Michel.  (1995).  Discipline & Punish:  The birth of the prison.  [Trans. A. Sheridan, 1977.].  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.

pp. 195-228, 3.  Panopticism (continued)

Within the panopticon the person in the central watch tower can see every cell.  This meant that it was possible “to avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses” (p. 200) found in confinement.  The watcher can see but the one watched cannot.  The individual is “the object of information, never a subject in communication” (p. 200).  Applied to schoolchildren, there would be “no copying, no noise, no chatter, no wasting of time” speculates Foucault (p. 201).  The individual is visible (s/he can see the watch tower) but unverifiable (s/he cannot tell if anyone is watching).  This architecture of individuality could be applied to prisons, to schools, and to workplaces.  The panopticon had several functions.  Foucault says “it automatizes and disindividualizes power” (p. 202) meaning that anyone, no matter their rank, can stand in the watch tower; but someone must at all times.  Another function is as a laboratory of power.  Conditions could be changed for some individuals and not for others.  Over time the consequences of changing conditions could be noticed.  Foucault summarizes these functions.

It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons.  (p. 205)

The power relations are embedded in the structure itself rather than added on from outside.  The structure produces the functions.  Function follows form.  Discipline moves from external application through confinement, arresting, punishing to generalized surveillance.  This movement was part of larger processes.

1.  The functional inversion of the disciplines (p. 210).  “The disciplines function increasingly as techniques for making useful individuals” (p. 211).

2.  The swarming of disciplinary mechanisms (p. 211).  The disciplines were broken down into “flexible methods of control” (p. 211).

Thus the Christian School must not simply train docile children; it must also make it possible to supervise their parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals.  (p. 211)

Disciplinary procedures were spread through smaller institutions such as religious groups or charity organizations.  You could say that neighbors spied on each other in the name of God and goodness.

3.  The state-control of the mechanisms of discipline (p. 213).  Private religious groups gave way to a centralized police (pp. 213-215).  The spectacle had given way to surveillance.

The importance, in historical mythology, of the Napoleonic character probably derives from the fact that it is at the point of junction of the monarchical, ritual exercise of sovereignty and the hierarchical, permanent exercise of indefinite discipline.  (p. 217)

Foucault offers three broad historical processes to which the formation of the disciplinary society is connected:

1.  economic:  (a) to obtain the exercise of power at the lowest possible cost; (b) to bring the effects of this social power to their maximum intensity and to extend them as far as possible; and (c) to link this growth with the output of the apparatuses, thereby increasing the docility and the utility of all of the elements of the system (p. 218).

2.  juridico-political:  (a)  the formation of a parliamentary, representative regime;  (b)  establishment of an egalitarian juridical framework; and (c) bourgeoisie become the political dominant class in the eighteenth century (p. 222).

Moreover, whereas the juridical systems define juridical subjects according to universal norms, the disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate.  (p. 223)

The prison is the place where “the codified power to punish turns into a disciplinary power to observe” (p. 224).

3.  scientific:  (a)  the hospital, the school, and the workshop become “apparatuses such that any mechanism of objectification could be used in them as an instrument of subjection; and (b) which led to the formation of “clinical medicine, psychiatry, child psychology, educational psychology, and rationalization of labour” (p. 224).

The eighteenth century invented the techniques of discipline and the examination, rather as the Middle Ages invented the judicial investigation….The investigation procedure, an old fiscal and administrative technique, had developed above all with the reorganization of the Church and the increase of the princely states of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  (p. 225)

The investigation was “an authoritarian search for a truth” and “the sovereign power arrogating to itself the right to establish the truth” (p. 225).

In fact, the investigation has been the no doubt crude, but fundamental element in the constitution of the empirical sciences; it has been the juridico-political matrix of this experimental knowledge, which, as we know, was very rapidly released at the end of the Middle Ages.  (p. 225)

Foucault points out that “in Greece, mathematics were born from techniques of measurement” while “the sciences of nature, … were born … at the end of the Middle Ages, from the practices of investigation” (p. 226).  The investigation describes, establishes “facts,” creates a written record, describes a methodology, and reinforces the examination.  Foucault summarizes this chapter in the following two questions:

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality?  Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?  (p. 228)

Discipline and Punish, Part Three, panopticism, 3.1

Foucault, Michel.  (1995).  Discipline & Punish:  The birth of the prison.  [Trans. A. Sheridan, 1977.].  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.

pp. 195-228, 3.  Panopticism

Foucault takes us in this chapter from the era of the sovereign, the spectacle, the world of the community punishment, to the era of the state, the bourgeoisie, the world of the individual and micro-penality.  He approaches this story both from the point of view of the larger shift from kingship to statehood, but also from the point of view of community norms and expectations to those administered both by the state in the form of the military, the hospital, the school and the prison, but finally, from the point of view of the gaze upon the individual.  This is where the panopticon comes into play.  Sean Tiner applies the panopticon to the Internet (http://seantiner.blogspot.com/2008/04/web-20-version-of-jeremy-benthams.html).

Sean Tiner's adaptation of the Panopticon to the Internet

No matter where you are, the person in the middle can see you (if you are online).  In the original design by Bentham (http://www.rhizomes.net/issue7/cunning.htm), it was whoever was in the central watch tower.  And anyone could be in the central watch tower.  It could be a privileged place or it could be such that anyone might show up, making the person in the watch tower also watched.

Schematic of Bentham's original design

But let’s return to Foucault’s narrative.  Foucault actually starts off explaining how the plague led to the concept of the disciplined society which underlies panopticism.  During the bubonic plague in Europe (14th century) an estimated 75 million people (30-60% of the European population) died.  Since bubonic plague is spread by fleas, there were regular outbreaks into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  When the plague appeared in a town, “strict spatial partitioning” was implemented where individuals were forced to remain in their homes.  Three levels of surveillance were employed to manage the streets and sections of town believed to be infected.  The inside of a home was set on fire after perfume was distributed in the belief that the smell would remove the pathogen.  Guards were in place at the level of the family, the street, and the town gates, although those who dealt with the corpses could move almost unhindered.  The gaze was everywhere (p. 195).  Names were taken down and daily inspections served to report whether anyone had taken ill or died.  “Everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked—it is the great review of the living and the dead” (p. 196).

This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead—all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism.  (p. 197)

This reminds me of lunch in a middle school.  Girls on the left, boys on the right, the teacher marches her students into the lunchroom.  Students eat quickly, and then are marched back to their classroom.  The gaze never ceases.  Every name is known.  Every action is under surveillance.  Teachers are never far away.

Foucault explains also that the festival grew up out of the plague characterized by “suspended laws, lifted prohibitions, the frenzy of passing time, bodies mingling together without respect, individuals unmasked, abandoning their statutory identity … allowing a quite different truth to appear” (p. 197).  The plague brought about a shift from “rituals of exclusion” where individuals, such as lepers, were confined in a separate community to “multiple separations, individualizing distributions” that characterize the disciplined society (p. 198).

The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies—this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.  (p. 198)

All mechanisms of power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him, are composed of those two forms from which they distantly derive.  (p. 200)

Discipline and Punish, Part Three, the means of correct training, 2.3

Foucault, Michel.  (1995).  Discipline & Punish:  The birth of the prison.  [Trans. A. Sheridan, 1977.].  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.

pp. 170-194, 2.  The means of correct training (continued)

The examination

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement.  It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish.  It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. (p. 184)

The examination is ritualized.  It is a ceremony of power.  The examination objectifies the subject and imposes both power relations and knowledge relations upon the individual.

Think of the way standardized testing is privileged in the United States.  Weeks before, teachers are threatened, coerced, to have their students practice for the test.  On the day of, children are given breakfast, promised rewards, extra credit points, yet told not to worry about their performance (“to do the best you can”).  Teachers are judged and evaluated based upon the performance of their students on these tests which are highly prejudicial and biased towards White dominant culture.  When the test results come out, school districts rise or fall based upon how well their students performed; schools that do not meet or exceed the previous year’s performance are punished with labels like, “corrective action” and “restructuring.”  Principals are hired and fired based on building performance.  Teachers may lose their jobs or get salary increases based upon their students’ performances.

Foucault tells us that “The Brothers of the Christian Schools wanted their pupils to be examined every day of the week:  on the first for spelling, on the second for arithmetic, on the third for catechism in the morning and for handwriting in the afternoon, etc.” (p. 186).  “From 1775, there existed at the Ecole de Ponts et Chaussees sixteen examinations a year:  three in mathematics, three in architecture, three in drawing, two in writing, one in stonecutting, one in style, one in surveying, one in levelling, one in quantity surveying” (p. 186).  The repeated examinations and preparation for examinations became the science of pedagogy.   Foucault elaborates three mechanisms by which a type of knowledge was linked to an exercise of power.

1.  The examination transformed the economy of visibility into the exercise of power (p. 187).  The examination provided a means by which the individual was always seen.  The examination regularly exerted its normalizing, judging power over the individual.  Foucault explains that infinite examination led to compulsory objectification (p. 189).

2.  The examination also introduces individuality into the field of documentation (p. 189).  The examination requires the individual to be seen, to be subject to constant, repeated surveillance where the “power of writing” constituted a mechanism of discipline.  Besides schools, hospitals were sites of documentation and the advancement of documentary procedures.

I found this idea of “the power of writing” to be really compelling.  As an aspiring academic, I have already instituted a “reading and writing” day.  In my case, as a graduate student, this day has to be carved out of my week with no compensation.  I do not get paid to read or write (yet).  At least not directly.  My reading and writing activities are paying into the future.  However, if I am successful enough to get published while a graduate student, I am more likely to be hired into a tenure track position at a major university.

Writing in the modern world confers privilege at many levels.  For one thing, if you cannot write, it is unlikely that you can read as well.  Therefore, reading and writing become entryways into education at all levels.  In particular, if you are an adult who cannot read or write, many employment doors are closed to you.  If you are a non-English speaker living in the United States, and even if you can read and write your home language fluently, you will be locked out of employment opportunities.  This is most ironic in light of the fact that many Americans are monolingual.  Yet the U.S. expects immigrants to become almost instantaneously with their arrival, proficiently English speaking.

3.  The examination, surrounded by all its documentary techniques, makes each individual a “case” (p. 191).  A case “constitutes an object for a branch of knowledge and a hold for a branch of power” (p. 191).  Individuals could be described, judged, measured, compared to others, trained, corrected, classified, normalized, or excluded based upon the examination and the documentation.  Description becomes “a means of control and a method of domination” (p. 191).

We see this at work in modern schools, especially in gifted and talented programs and in special education.  Many parents refuse to have their children tested because once a child gets a label, there is a certain stigma attached.  The other children and other adults now know something special about the child, and it is used to differentiate, to sort, to track, to move; and not always with the best of intentions.  Even the benefit of government funding provided is not always enough of an incentive for a parent to choose this path for their child.

It is the examination which, by combining hierarchical surveillance and normalizing judgment, assures the great disciplinary functions of distribution and classification, maximum extraction of forces and time, continuous genetic accumulation, optimum combination of aptitudes and, thereby, the fabrication of cellular, organic, genetic and combinatory individuality.  (p. 192)

The culmination of normalizing, examining, and individualizing is the disciplinary society.

Discipline and Punish, Part Three, the means of correct training, 2.2

Foucault, Michel.  (1995).  Discipline & Punish:  The birth of the prison.  [Trans. A. Sheridan, 1977.].  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.

pp. 170-194, 2.  The means of correct training (continued)

Normalizing judgement

1.  Discipline brought with it a ceremonial, penal system.  One example was the Chevalier Paulet, an orphanage, where “judicial privilege with its own laws” (p. 178) reigned.

The workshop, the school, the army were subject to a whole micro-penality of time (latenesses, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behavior (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency).  (p. 178)

Punishment was accomplished through minor deprivations, petty humiliations, confusion, coldness, indifference, questioning, humiliation, and removal from office.  Students lined up every morning in military formation, organized by units, where there were appointed leaders at several scales.  Losing one’s leadership position served as severe a punishment as deprivation.

2.  Discipline brought with it a specific way of punishing.  Non-conformity is punishable; in other words, that which is not observed becomes punishable within the military and within the Christian Schools.  Within the schools, the duration of an apprenticeship, time taken to perform an exercise, and level of aptitude are observed.  Failure to perform adequately means being put on the bench of the ignorant.  This was shameful in itself.  Therefore, Foucault emphasizes that “in a disciplinary regime punishment involves a double juridico-natural reference” (p. 179).

3.  Disciplinary punishment reduces gaps; it must be corrective.  Therefore, punishments were frequently some form of intense exercise, trainings that were repeated.  For children in school who had not written what they were required to write, would write even more and repeatedly as a punishment.  “To punish is to exercise” (p. 180).

4.  Discipline involves gratification and punishment, related to training and correction.  First there is the separation between good and evil.  “The Brothers of the Christian Schools organized a whole microeconomy of privileges and impositions” (p. 180).  Privileges could be used to receive exemption from a penance related closely to the Church’s system of indulgences.  This reminds me in some ways of the modern approach to tracking of students based upon ability.  Students are “marked”–gifted, talented, special.  Gifted students are exempted from certain kinds of assignments, but given others more consistent with their level of aptitude.  Poorer (both in performance and socio-economic level) students do exercises at their level, but rarely are allowed to advance to the exercise of the gifted or talented students.  Poorer students (socio-economically) are not allowed to take Advanced Placement courses, even if their academic performance is high.  In this way a kind of hierarchy of ability is maintained within the modern classroom that is similar to the way that medieval classrooms were subdivided.

By assessing acts with precision, discipline judges individuals “in truth”; the penalty that it implements is integrated in to the cycle of knowledge of individuals.  (p. 181)

5.  Discipline rewards based upon qualities, skills and aptitudes, while marking gaps and ranking individuals.  “This classificatory penal distribution was carried out at short intervals by the reports that the officers, teachers and their assistants made, without consideration of age or grade, on ‘the moral qualities of the pupils’ and on ‘their universally recognized behavior'” (p. 181).  Even clothing, military insignia, marked the “good” from the “bad”; wearing sackcloth marked, for instance, the mediocre individuals.  The “art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power” brings five operations into play:

[1] it refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed. [2] It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule:  that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected or as an optimum towards which one must move.  [3]  It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchizes in terms of value the abilities, the level, the ‘nature’ of individuals.  [4]  It introduces, through this ‘value-giving’ measure, the constraint of a conformity that must be achieved.  Lastly, [5] it traces the limit that will define difference in relation to all other differences, the external frontier of the abnormal.  (p. 182-183)

The perpetual penality that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes.  In short, it normalizes.  (p. 183)

Since the eighteenth century, the concept of The Norm (p. 184) has joined with other powers—”the Law, the Word, the Text, Tradition” (p. 184)—to coerce or to establish standards of behavior, of expectation, of certification, and of punishment.  In education this concept is best exemplified by the establishment of Normal colleges or teacher training colleges.  In this way discipline imposes homogeneity through normalization and with a focus on measurement.  The individual is measured against a standard by which s/he is judged.

Heather has two mommies, Leslea Newman (1989, 2000, 2009)

“Heather has two mommies” is perhaps the most well-known children’s book on same-sex parents.  I lived in Vernon, Texas when this book became the center of controversy in Wichita Falls.  My pastor was part of the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the City Commission which, led by a Southern Baptist Pastor, wanted to censor this book in the public library.  The ACLU won the court case; the First Baptist Church in downtown Wichita Falls built a million dollar youth center based upon the publicity generated by the case.  The 2009 version I was given as a gift is the 20th anniversary edition.  The Wichita Falls lawsuit occurred in 2000.

The curricular theorizing issues around this book seem obvious, but let’s see if we can make them explicit.  First of all, I have to ask the same question the author asks in her Afterward:  Why is a book like this needed?  Why has this book ignited such firestorms of controversy as if reading a book will make a child gay?  That is just silly.  Yet it is the cornerstone of the “militant homosexual agenda” referred to by Newman and created by the fundamentalist right.

The story itself is about Heather going to daycare and finding out that there are all sorts of families.  The daycare provider has each child draw their own family.  Some children have two mommies, some have two daddies, some have only one parent, some have siblings, and some are foster children.  The moral of this book is that families come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.  It seems like a pretty non-controversial subject for the late 20th, early 21st century.

As usual, I have questions:  Could this book be useful in a classroom?  What purpose would this book serve in a classroom?  I’m not sure the answer is “yes,” but I am sure it belongs in a public library.  This, to me, is the kind of book that parents should be reading to their children.  For me, this is a book that should be read in Sunday School because for many families church is the center of family life and the understanding of how families operate comes from church life.  But that’s just me.  I think it would be very interesting to ask pre-service teacher educators where they would envision this book being used most appropriately.  A discussion of this book could open minds or reveal prejudice.  It could go either way.  Reflection by pre-service teacher educators on such a discussion could really lead to some productive outcomes for preparing prospective classroom teachers.

A Tale of Two Daddies, Oelschlager (2010)

As I contemplated Peter Appelbaum’s use of children’s literature in curriculum theorizing, I wondered if I could apply his concepts to books about same-sex parents.  “A Tale of Two Daddies” is about a little girl with two daddies, Poppa and Daddy.  It is a very simple story of who does what narrated by her friend. We don’t ever get the name of the little boy who narrates, but the care of the little girl rotates between the two dads, or may exclude them (she can match her own socks!), or may include both of them.

I think the lessons here are obvious if we only want to use this text as curriculum.  However, if we want to consider this story in terms of theorizing, then we need to ask more questions:  Why is there a need for such a book?  What occurrences in the author’s life prompted her to write this book?  Who do these characters represent to the author?

The author, Vanita Oelschlager, wrote this story for her grandchildren, she says on the fly page, and all proceeds will go to the multiple sclerosis society in honor of her husband.    It would be interesting to know what other children might draw from this book.  What kind of back story would elementary children write from reading this book?  What questions would come up for other children after reading this book?  The little boy claims that someone named Lincoln said she had two daddies.  Who is Lincoln?  Why is Lincoln needed to give credence to the questions he has for his friend about her two daddies?

Prietita and the Ghost Woman, Gloria Anzaldua (1995)

“Prietita y La Llorona” is illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez, who, unlike Gloria Anzaldua or Consuela Mendez, grew up in Oregon spending much of her childhood in the wilderness.  We return to the story of Prietita, who now spends alot of time with the healer (la curandera) tending her garden and learning remedies.  When Prietita’s sister comes to get a remedy for her and Prietita’s mother, the healer tells her she is missing one plant—the rue plant—which grows on the King Ranch.

As a child I was filled with wonder at the King Ranch.  My parents and I visited once, and I considered going to college in Kingsville.  I have a strong memory of the stallions in their pens and the beautiful dark red Santa Gertrudis cattle.  I’ve squeezed through alot of barbed wire in my life, but when I read that Prietita squeezed through the barbed wire onto the King Ranch after being warned by the healer not to do so, my heart skipped a beat.  You have to understand.  The King Ranch represents everything White and male and dominant in Texas folklore.  In Texas folklore Texas was not stolen from Mexico.  In Texas folklore the King Ranch would be considered land resurrected from barrenness and made profitable and productive.  Therefore, when Prietita squeezes through the barbed wire onto the King Ranch, she is breaking many rules and ignoring significant boundaries.  She knows that she is doing something she was told not to do, but she does not understand the significance of it, I don’t think.

Prietita gets lost in the woods looking for the rue plant.  She asks a deer, a salamander, a dove, a lightning bug, and a jaguarundi to help her, all the while hearing in the distance a crying sound.  The crying sound turns out to be La Llorona, the ghost woman, who guides her to the needed rue plant and to the boundary fence, where her friends are waiting to take her home.  The herb woman promises to show Prietita tomorrow how to make the remedy needed by her mother.

Fortunately for Prietita, no one notices she is on the ranch collecting herbs.  The fear and trembling associated with crossing the boundary fence is mitigated by the fact that La Llorona helps her find the rue and the fence again.  But, like the previous story, I am left with many questions:  What if a cowboy or station manager had found little Prietita wandering the woods, lost?  Would she have told them what she was doing?  Would they have believed her?  Looking for healing herbs is considered by White Texans to be a direct anti-thesis to Western traditional medicine.  Would they have laughed at her?  Taken her home?  Gotten her into even more trouble?

We will never know because Anzaldua does not offer any clues in this respect.  But the history lesson, I believe, is clear.  Land does not belong to anyone the way Whites consider land ownership.  The rue plant was growing in a woods close enough for Prietita to find it and pick enough for her mother’s remedy.  She found the plant and helped herself to it.  Before fences and land ownership, native peoples utilized the resources available for healing as needed.  Prietita and the herb woman were acting on a belief thousands (perhaps millions) of years old—that you take what you need from Mother Nature and leave the rest.

Friends from the Other Side, Gloria Anzaldua (1993)

In considering Peter Appelbaum’s use of children’s stories for curriculum theorizing, I checked out two of Anzaldua’s children’s stories from the library to see if I could theorize from her writings.  Anzaldua writes in both English and Chicano Spanish.  Her children’s books are beautifully illustrated by Consuelo Mendez.  Both books are about Prietita, who lives on the Texas side of the Mexico-U.S. border, the Rio Grande River.  I suspect Prietita is a pseudonym for Gloria herself or for her and her playmates as a child.

Right away, we know a couple of things.  Anzaldua is addressing the common practice of women and children walking across the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas.  While contemporary news is full of examples of coyotes (men who transport families across the border for a fee) ripping off those moving across the U.S. Border of Arizona and California, the Rio Grande is easily crossed at towns like Lajitas in the Big Bend National Park area of Brewster County.  Most of the water of the river has been confiscated by the state of New Mexico and by Texas farmers close to El Paso by the time it reaches the border of Brewster County, the largest county in Texas.  It trickles along, sometimes a muddy stream, but only in the spring when there is rain.  The economics of West Texas and of Northern Mexico are similar—tourism.  The border towns on the Mexico side thrive on the daily stream of tourists visiting and purchasing; border towns on the Texas side wax and wane with the weather and with the tourists, spring breakers, and snowbirds who spend the winter in the warmer climate.  There is no industry in Brewster County.  Towns are small.  Sul Ross State University fills niches for teacher education, ranching and wildlife management.  Public school students ride the bus an hour or more each way to their high school in Alpine, Texas.  But if you like desert grassland, if you like rugged individualism and rugged terrain, Brewster County cannot be matched.  The Terlingua Chili Cookoff in October attracts thousands of visitors every year.

I spent two years in Alpine, Texas, separated by a 20 year span.  I was a freshman at Sul Ross during the 1969-1970 school year, and I was a graduate student during the 1989-1990 school year.  In 1970 we were called communists for gathering in the quad of the college to celebrate the very first Earth Day.  The sponsor of the Rodeo Club and a local veterinarian who later became the chair of the Range Animal Science department told us in 1970 that he didn’t agree with not killing eagles (they had just made it onto the list of endangered species) because they killed baby lambs.  There is no evidence anywhere to substantiate his viewpoint since eagles are scavengers; if a lamb is already dead, the eagle will scavenge; but there is no evidence that eagles swoop down out of the sky, killing lambs.  His views were typical, however, of White men in Alpine and surrounding areas in regard to wildlife and their endangerment.

But perhaps I need to get back to the story itself.  Joaquin comes to the gate with a bundle of firewood and wearing a long-sleeved shirt.  He and his mother crossed the river to live on the Texas side so that his mother could find work.  But there was no work to be found.  Joaquin had sores on his arms covered by the long-sleeved shirt, and Prietita hoped to take him to the healer once she gained Joaquin’s trust.  Prietita’s friends made fun of Joaquin and called him a “wetback,” a common slur for those who cross the river to find a better life.

One day the Border Patrol came to their small village, and the herb woman gathered Joaquin and his mother hiding them in her house under her bed.  Once the Border Patrol van left the neighborhood, the herb woman showed Prietita how to prepare a paste for Joaquin’s sores.

This children’s story takes us into the culture of the Mexican American living on the borderlands of West and South Texas.  We learn that economically, many Mexicans cross the Rio Grande to find work in Texas, but end up living in shacks where the Border Patrol expect their neighbors to rat them out.  We learn that these neighbors band together to hide their illegal neighbors, and to share their healing knowledge.  I am left with alot of questions:  Is it summertime?  If not, why aren’t Prietita, her friends, and Joaquin in school?  Where is the closest doctor?  Why hasn’t Joaquin been seen by a doctor?  If you live in Terlingua or Lajitas, on the northern border of Big Bend National Park, the closest doctor is in Presidio, 100 miles away.  With Joaquin’s mother not working, there probably isn’t any money for a doctor, so the local herb woman is his best bet for healing the sores on his arm.  How often does the Border Patrol come by?  When will Joaquin be able to go to school?  When will his mother get a job?  These are the questions that I’m left with that I believe have curricular significance.

Here’s why:  School districts are required to school all children, whether they are legal or illegal.  In addition, if Joaquin speaks only Chicano Spanish, then he needs an ESL classroom.  If his mother has no work, it will be difficult for her to purchase school supplies, shoes, and shirts for Joaquin to attend school.  Even if Joaquin starts school, if his mother decides to go back to Mexico, he will be yanked out of school and not be able to learn English.  What provisions do American schools have for illegal Mexican American children?  How do the overwhelmingly White female teachers view illegal Mexican American children?  Is the typical teacher interested in Joaquin’s story?  Could Joaquin’s classmates learn from him, his mother, Prietita, and the herb woman?  Is there a healthcare story here?  Is there a civics story here?  Is there a history story here?  Is there an economics lesson embedded within this story?  I claim that the answer to each of these questions is “yes.”

But that is just my point of view—a middle class White native Texan female point of view.  What would be the point of view of Joaquin’s or Prietita’s classmates?  How could we use this story to elicit other stories?

Zoom / Re-Zoom

Appelbaum, Peter.  (2008).  Children’s Books for Grown-Up Teachers:  Reading and Writing Curriculum Theory.  New York, NY:  Routledge.

11.  Afterword:  Zoom / Re-Zoom

Istvan Banyai’s (1995) books, Zoom and Re-Zoom, can be used to understand ratio and proportion or they can be used to re-think how we see the world of the mathematics classroom.  I am reminded of my first contact with chaos theory and fractal geometry.  If you look at a coastline on a map with poor resolution, you miss the additional lines that show up on a map with a high resolution.  I was fascinated by this changing point of view.  As we dive into a perspective, the perspective changes, shifts, morphs into something else.

Criteria and Ways of Working (part 2)

Appelbaum, Peter.  (2008).  Children’s Books for Grown-Up Teachers:  Reading and Writing Curriculum Theory.  New York, NY:  Routledge.

10.  Criteria and Ways of Working (part 2)

Use popular culture in the classroom

While teachers may already be using popular culture in the classroom, Appelbaum challenges the reader to dig deeply into the implications and benefits of using popular culture.

Popular culture as entertainment and motivating force

Almost every student teacher I observed in secondary science and math (from 2006 to 2009) used the Jeopardy game at least once during their internship semester. Playing Jeopardy was the most popular reward and the most common end-point of the student teacher’s unit.  For the most part it was fun for both teachers and students, and the game could be structured as a review before the summative unit exam.  Only once in seven semesters did I witness a Jeopardy game created by the students.  The teacher was overwhelmingly the creator, the decider, and the arbitrator of disputes.  Prizes of candy were common.  A well-crafted Jeopardy game could take up to 90 minutes, perfect for an entire block class period. What’s wrong with this picture?

Appelbaum suggests that Jeopardy and other similar games are add-ons; that is, they are intended to either reward the student for participation or to get students motivated for new material, rather than being part of the content itself.  It is the donkey and carrot approach.  Take away the carrot, and the donkey stands still.  Students, too, will stand still when they are trained to be rewarded for performance, but the reward isn’t there.  The use of popular culture in this way is teacher-driven, although it could be student-driven if the teacher could get out of the way.

Popular culture as connection to the real world

Appelbaum contributes the example of the principal wanting a website for the school.  Students are recommended to participate in an after-school project.  The use of popular culture occurs outside the classroom.  In this example the use of popular culture is also representative of the principal’s wants and needs, not students’ want and needs.  This example of popular culture use within a school is administration-driven.

Popular culture as a unit of study

In this example an English teacher organizes the study of graffiti.  He knows that his students are fascinated by what is meant by graffiti.  Students investigate graffiti as a form of literature.

Popular culture as critical literacy

Appelbaum provides several examples of teachers using popular culture for comparison and analysis within their content area.  He cautions, however, that teachers must reflect upon their own value judgments, allowing students to have their own opinions.

The practice of everyday life in the classroom

Appelbaum brings in the notions of teachers as ethnographers and as professional amateurs.  Each of these ideas places the teacher in a learning role with students.  Each approach avoids the deficit model of teaching, where the student is an empty vessel.  The teacher opens the student’s head and pours in her knowledge as if there was nothing there to begin with.  This deficit model discounts all youth knowledge, culture, and experience.  I would say that the deficit model discounts everything a child brings from home; thereby discounting family culture and language culture.  We need to get away from this in American education.

Millennial children?  Millennial curriculum!

Appelbaum describes millennial children to a tee and then proposes a five-part structure for consideration (p. 232).  He also describes in detail how to apply this structure to mathematics (p. 233).

Weirding and poaching

The common uses of popular culture that we have outlined—as entertaining and motivation, as connection to the “real world,” as a unit of study, and as social critique—continue the typical practice of weirding the content in order to attract students’ attention, rather than weirding the curriculum.  In contrast, the five-part investigation weird the curriculum as it maintains an ordinary, standards-based set of content objectives; it does so by taking advantage of teckhne, the reasoned habit of mind in making something.  (p. 234)

Ways of working

We strongly suggest the use of “classic good problems” like Romagnano’s box volume problem as examples for academic literacy work within mini-clinics on ways of working. (p. 238)

Language and being:  a pedagogic creed

I believe we should strive to design learning environments where students and teachers act as poachers.  We should sanction poaching in curriculum theorizing; in doing so we would thereby sanctify time.  (p. 240)

I believe we should weird curriculum and not the content of curriculum….When we weird curriculum, we unrest rather than preserve categories and binaries.  (p. 241)

I argued for a shift from thrownness to using the material and tools at hand to do something that one can positively value at the heart of the design process, both in terms of our conception of the student and the teacher in the teaching-learning process, and in leading to the pedagogical notion of criteria for the ways of working.  (p. 242)

Criteria for the work that is valued, and explicit discussion of ways of working as a mathematician, writer, scientist, and so on, weird curriculum rather than content, making the instructional act a design process….What we can plan is the gap into which the new thing will fit.  (p. 243)