Dark Matter and All that Jazz (part 1)

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

8.  Dark Matter and All that Jazz (part 1)

Dark matter as a metaphor offers an interesting way to examine the educational experiences of disenfranchised groups within society, both in terms of the role in educational policy of researchers who may identify as members of a disempowered social group, and in terms of the secret treasure that is promised by the invisibility of disenfranchised experiences of schooling in mainstream curriculum studies.  (p. 143)

Using Chris Raschka’s Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop (1992) and Mysterious Thelonius (1997) as foundations for the discussion of finding the hidden light in the dark matter of children’s books about jazz musicians, Appelbaum questions the presumed authority of the classroom teacher.  In deciding whether Raschka “got it right” in one or both of these books, a classroom teacher in the Platonic tradition of being the knower and presenting knowledge for children to accept without question, Appelbaum suggests that the elements of surprise and humor are missing.  If we (teachers) are reading children’s literature in order to more clearly understand our role as curriculum theorizers, then we need to approach our work as if we are learning alongside our students.  The process of learning alongside and with our students brings a spark to the classroom, a light that may be missing if we operate as the sage on the stage.

Applying rhythm, surprise and humor to mathematics education, Appelbaum describes a basic rhythm of mathematics originated by Georg Polya.

First, one works to understand the problem; second, one devises a plan for working on the problem; third, one carries out the plan; finally, one looks back over what has happened in order to identify a new problem and start the process all over again.  (p. 149)

As the student utilizes Polya’s rhythm, patterns begin to emerge from the phases of mathematical work, “melodic and harmonic progressions of Polya’s questions” (p. 149).  New questions arise.

Does my answer make sense?  What is the meaning of my answer?  Now that I am at this point in my work, can I see another way of working that may have been simpler, more interesting, or otherwise better in some sense?  And then, What new questions do I have at this point, prompted by my work?  (p. 149)

There are other rhythms of working in mathematics that complement Polya’s phases.  John Mason et al. (1982) developed a system of looking at special cases depending upon the problem presented.  From the results of trying special cases within a specific mathematical question, then generalizing for categories or patterns, leads to the goal of inferring or deducing a general statement (p. 151).  As anyone who has ever searched for a mathematical pattern knows, once one solution is found, many more problems or mysteries present themselves.

Authority and knowledge

Using Polya and Mason et al. as models is attractive from a Deweyan point of view.  However, “this is a radical notion of education since it undermines a Platonic sense of knowledge as truth, and apparently shifts authority from the teacher who knows this truth to the student who composes her own version of truths” (p. 151).  However, Appelbaum reinforces that teachers cannot start with the assumption that students can direct their own learning.  Another critical question arises.

What, then, is the relationship between the institutional authority of the teacher and the emergent authenticity of the student?

There is an improvisational process to utilizing the authority of teacher to empower students.  It is a process fraught with starts and stops; attempts to regain control; moments when students shine strongly; and moments when the teacher must step into the middle and meddle.

All a teacher can do is make informed conjectures, only to be surprised by the incompatibility of these conjectures with the latter, jointly constructed meaning.  This, to me, is the parallel jazz of curriculum that accompanies the jazz of learning.  (p. 153)

Mason, J., Burton, L., & Stacey, K.  (1982).  Thinking mathematically.  New York:  Addison-Wesley.

Polya, G.  (2004).  How to solve it.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press.

Raschka, C.  (1992).  Charlie Parker played Be-Bop.  New York:  Scholastic Books.

Raschka, C.  (1997).  Mysterious Thelonius.  New York:  Scholastic Books.

Harry Potter’s World (part 2)

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

6.  Harry Potter’s World (part 2)

Power, wonder, and magic in an acquisitive culture

Power and violence are not always what they seem to be.  (p. 100)

An acquisitive culture is one that acquires; to acquire means to get things.  21st century America is an acquisitive culture, and children learn this acquisition through parents and school, primarily.  Appelbaum finds this troubling.  The corporatization of education is troubling on many levels.  Briefly, it means that kids are trained to purchase certain objects from certain corporate entities without questioning whether those objects are useful, efficient, “good,” or necessary.  Our kids are schooled to acquire.

I would suggest that Appelbaum’s findings from Harry Potter readers (“It is the morality to which they turn in applying ‘lessons learned’ to their own interaction with ‘real people’ in their lives,” p. 102) explain alot about why these books are so popular.  If children are not being taught at home or in classrooms how to distinguish between objects that are necessary and useful, but they do get to think critically in Harry Potter’s world, then these books serve an excellent purpose in readers’ lives.  When readers can distinguish between “fake violence” and gratuitous violence in computer games and movies, a useful purpose is served.  Appelbaum comments, “I suppose the question comes down to whether or not children can tell the difference between the games and the ‘real world'” (p. 102).  However, Appelbaum and others (Provenzo, 1991) suggest that violent images have a different meaning.

That is, the images that children play with tell us more about the fears and fantasies of the adults who provide the images, and the resources for making meaning that are available in our culture, than about what children are becoming or doing to themselves or our culture.  (p. 102)

Appelbaum puts to rest an adult fear that children will become interested in dark arts and magic in general by pointing to other popular television series and video games (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Final Fantasy, and Black and White).

Magic is strongly associated with experiences of wonder.  (p. 103)

Appelbaum points to John Dewey in that “many forms of youth technoculture reach into the realm of wonder in ways that establish these cultural commodities as educative experiences … that … promote growth” (p. 103).  But is it growth in the school-culture sense?  Is school so distinct from the world of wonder?  Should the kinds of interactions among readers that results in mass culture and peer interactions be kept separate from schooling?  “Should we try to create educational encounters that directly mirror the linking of magic, technology and wonder? … Or should educators establish science/technology/wonder as a critical examination of the popular?”  (p. 103).  Do children “gravitate to the wonder where it is” (p. 103)?  And if it is not in the school curriculum, will children find it “elsewhere, outside of school” (p. 103)?

Things dominate the life of children.  (p. 104)

Appelbaum explains, “for young people in the early twenty-first century, commodification [is] the final arbiter of identity and acquisition … intimately entwined with self” (p. 104).  Who has the coolest toy?  Who is the coolest kid?  Things, stuff, decide these questions.  In Harry Potter’s world such things as quidditch brooms, magical pets, and magical treats can determine whether a child is “in” or “out” of the status quo.  In this way the Harry Potter stories mimic the 21st century world (of developed countries).

Harry Potter’s world

Appelbaum emphasizes that his purpose is not to analyze the stories themselves but to make the point that the attraction to Harry Potter has to do with “magic as a commodified technology, just as video games, television cyborgs, and fantasy role-playing games in ‘our world’ treat technology as magic” (p. 105).  In addition, “we must understand morality and technology as mutually constitutive” (p. 106).

What the Potter books do is destabilize the tension between acquisitive coolness and nerdiness, because they take magic and turn it into the techniques that can be learned.  (p. 107)

However, in the information economy of the Potter books “everyone pays a premium rate for narrow expertise and short-lived skills” (p. 107).

Technology, in this sense, is nothing more than a trick, spell, or code:  it lets you do things other people do not yet know about.  (p. 107)

This plays into the ways that technology is an externalization of potential (Macdonald, 1995).

Curriculum and the technologies of morality

Throughout, my main curriculum argument is that educators need to learn from children what it is they are experiencing … children are the translators while adults are keepers of tradition.  (p. 109)

Appelbaum suggests that curriculum should not try to compete with technoculture, but to “develop organized experiences that respond to life in and with technoculture” (p. 110).

It would be more proactive for educators to work toward a biculturalism, and finally for a diversity that embraces both traditions and the multiplicities … [which] includes adult cultures and technocultures, mass and consumer cultures and youth subcultures, and cross-over memberships and participations in multiple cultures all at once.  (p. 110)

Magic provides new beginnings, unlimited and challenging, useful in the lives of the characters outside of school.

Technologies of self:  morality and magic

Appelbaum turns to Foucault’s concepts:  “A particularly powerful element of the Harry Potter books is the unification of Harry’s self-knowledge with his self-care” (p. 111).  As he grows in wizardry, he learns more and more about his family and himself.  He learns his limits, acquires new skills, encounters new challenges, and redefines himself along the way.  In this process Harry not only cares for himself, he values himself, but he cares for others.  His valuing of himself brings out his compassion for his friends.  There is a morality play here, and magic is at the center of it.  The technology of magic brings out the very best in Harry and stretches him to hero status.  Yet, he maintains a humility in the face of great danger and great expectation.

Macdonald, J.  (1995).  Theory as a prayerful act.  New York, NY:  Peter Lang.

Provenzo, E.  (1991).  Video kids.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.

Harry Potter’s world (part 1)

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

6.  Harry Potter’s World (part 1)

The second to the last Harry Potter movie came out about a month ago.  This series is still so popular that the final book had to be split into two movie parts.  Of course, this is probably simply a way to make more money from Harry Potter fans, but having re-read the final volume while viewing the new trailer repeatedly, ending this story is complicated; perhaps worthy of two movies!  The characters are almost “grown” now, and Voldemort has gathered his minions again.  The Ministry of Magic has fallen.  Darkness reigns.

In some ways a return to darkness describes 2010, the year of the dead queer (Lugg, 2010), the year of the tea party (Rayfield, 2010)—back to the 1950’s (or the 1700’s depending on your interpretation; Bell, 1989).  I situate myself as a radical social reconstructionist (Stone, 2003, p. 108), and all I see around me are essentialist ideas being promoted in education.  Where could Harry Potter possibly fit into this essentialist school culture?  “What is it about our culture that embraces the Harry Potter books and has turned Harry Potter into such a phenomenon?” (Appelbaum, 2008, p. 95).  Appelbaum debunks three “presumptions”:

Can we say that consumer culture has trumped all other possible manifestations of liberal democracy? … Do we want to say that children are passive, naive recipients of greedy corporate cultural products? … Can we understand the cultural meanings of Harry Potter stories (or any other popular cultural artifact) as a distance observer?  (p. 95-96)

How do readers utilize these stories to make sense of their lives?  Where does school fit into this process?

In both the Harry Potter books and in children’s lives, school functions to accentuate what constitutes technologies, what constitutes magic and wonder, and, finally, through consumer culture, what it means to become a human being.  In this way, I find the books and the culture that embraces them buttress each others’ postmodern efforts to fulfill an outdated enlightenment fantasy of utopia through technology.

The technoculture of consumer culture in and out of school

For children growing up in and with technoculture, concepts of cyborg imagery, biological monsters, fantasy characters, power, knowledge, magic, and prosthetic extensions of self are not categorical. (p. 97)

Children accept new ideas as part of their world more readily than adults.  Magic may be conceived as science, and vice versa.  Science may be perceived as technological, and vice versa.  Technology may be considered magic, and vice versa.  Knowledge and power are bestowed by each but with fewer boundaries or conflicts in the child’s world.

Technocentric utopianism for many children is really more aptly described as melancholic acceptance of responsibility.  (p. 97)

For Harry magic becomes a technology in the war between good and evil, amplifying human powers as a kind of cultural capital.  Similarly, science and technology function in the school curriculum as “techniques of progress” seldom questioned or interrogated (p. 99).

Educator’s responses

Teachers tend to feign disinterest in childhood experiences of cyberculture.  (p. 99)

School knowledge is assumed to be part of “high-status culture” while popular culture and mass media are considered “low-status,” which teachers want to keep out of school.  “When teachers preserve the in-school versus outside-of-school boundaries, they cut themselves off from relationships with children directly connected with the most pressing issues of self, identity, morality, power, and knowledge” (p. 99).

I suggest that our new technoculture requires teaching practices that facilitate an interrogation of this culture, and the facilitation of self-understanding necessary to unravel the intricacies of self-identity in a post-modern world.  The “new curriculum” should consider alternative visions of technology that move it away from the metaphor of prosthesis. … Curriculum, then, must speak fully to issues of identity and questions of what it means to be human in the face of re-engineering and cultural change.  (p. 100)

In the Harry Potter stories the challenges that matter occur outside the classroom.  Everything Harry and his friends learn help them survive greater and greater difficulties in the outside world.  What if this idea were practiced in school buildings today?  What kinds of paradigm shifts would have to happen for that to be the case?  Would schooling continue to be merely a reproduction of the dominant ideology?  Or could schooling take upon itself an innovative role?  How would that innovation affect the curriculum decisions made inside the classroom?

Bell, D.  (1989).  And we are not saved: The elusive quest for racial justice.  Cambridge, MA:  Basic Books.

Lugg, C.  (2010, September 30).  Bullying, harrassing, and beating queers in hope of self-extermination.  Thinking queerly (blog).  Retrieved from http://cath47.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/bullying-harassing-and-beating-queers-in-hopes-of-self-extermination/

Rayfield, J.  (2010, December 20).  Tea Party founder:  Let’s get rid of the ‘socialist’ Methodist church.  TPMMuckraker (online).  Retrieved from http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/tea_party_nation_founder_lets_get_rid_of_the_socia.php

Stone, F. A.  (2003).  Theodore Brameld’s educational reconstruction:  An intellectual biography.  San Francisco, CA:  Caddo Gap Press.

Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed

Dewey, John.  (1897/2009).  My pedagogic creed.  Pages 34-41 in Flinders, David J. and Thornton, Steven J., eds.  The curriculum studies reader.  3rd ed.  New York, New York:  Routledge; Taylor & Francis Group.  Also online with many errors at http://www.rjgeib.com/biography/credo/dewey.html

Article I.  What education is

Dewey starts with psychology and the child.  He stresses that the child must be involved in his own education.  The teacher must understand what the child is doing, how he/she is learning.   The child is not a passive recipient.  In addition, the end result of education is social service.

Article II.  What the school is

“I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”  (p. 36)

School is a social process, according to Dewey, which arises out of the home and continues the lessons of home life in a simplified fashion.  School is a community and should reproduce community life.  The teacher as a member of the school community is not simply an authority figure but is preparing the child for his/her future community life outside of school.  Grading and discipline should not flow from the teacher but reflect the process of preparation of the child for service.

Article III.  The subject matter of education

“I believe accordingly that the primary basis of education is in the child’s powers at work along the same general constructive lines as those which have brought civilization into being.”  (p. 37)

“I believe that the only way to make the child conscious of his social heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of activity which makes civilization what it is.”  (p. 37)

“I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive activities as the center of correlation.”  (p. 37)

“I believe that the study of science is educational in so far as it brings out the materials and processes which make social life what it is.”  (p. 38)

“I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the present teaching of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form, or is treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that which he has already had.”  (p. 38)

“I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the ideal school curriculum. . . The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests of, experience.”  (p. 38)

“I believe firmly, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.”  (p. 38)

Dewey is subtly, but clearly, criticizing structuralism (which actually came later in its most aggressive form).  In addition, he is objecting to grade levels and subjects being divided up in such a way that a child moves through them sequentially, rather than moving through all disciplines at his level of cognitive ability all of the time.  That is, Dewey wants to see education proceed in a way that is relevant to every child at every age.  He defines education as being constructive and relevant.

Article IV.  The nature of method

Dewey emphasizes action over passivity; images over words; and interests over subjects.  The adult must observe the child to notice what direction the growing child’s curiosity is directing him or her.  Building on those interests is the adult’s responsibility.

Article V.  The school and social progress

“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.”   (p. 40)

“I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”  (p. 40)

“I believe that this conception has due regard for both individualistic and socialistic ideals.  It is duly individual because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living.  It is socialistic because it recognizes that this right character is not to be formed merely by individual precept, example, or exhortation, but rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.”  (p. 40)

“I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.”  (p 40)

Dewey is describing education in which the child is prepared for life within his community but is also developed individually according to his interests.  This child is guided by adults (parents, teachers) who understand this preparation process of learning to live with others and to serve something greater than oneself.

Chapter 5, School as agent of culture II

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

Teaching-Learning and the cultural process

“The preceding chapter tried to show that the key to cultural process lies in Tylor’s term ‘acquiring’ — but that metaculturally the term appears to suggest different things to different interpreters.  Thus the realist essentialist way of acquiring is primarily by means of conditioning, while the progressivist way of acquiring is primarily through inquiring.  In different words, the essentialist presupposes a psychology of learning epitomized in some such term as ‘passive mentation,’ while the progressivist takes a more functional and organismic approach through which acquiring as learning involves active and critical transactions with the cultural and physical environment.”  (p. 74)

“. . . we now see that cultural theory and research afford solid ground upon which to approach these problems with an innovating attitude.  Indeed, the contention of some essentialist educators that the school has no legitimate role as an agent of cultural change fails to stand up in the face of such research.  The attitude of innovation, when consciously and deliberately developed by the teacher within a cultural matrix, not only negates this contention, but it influences the learner if only by the contagion of the teacher’s attitude.   Meanwhile, the classroom itself undergoes alteration:  the enculturative process defined merely as passive mentation is superseded by analysis, criticism, originality, and participation, with all the modifications in learning and teaching that these processes imply.”  (p. 79)

“For the essentialist, because truth is already embodied in the nature of the universe and culture, the chief task of the school is to place the learner in a position of receptivity and then to see to it that he acquires as much truth as he possibly can by direct exposure.  For the progressivist, truth is not already present, awaiting disclosure; it is always in the making, always unfinished, always subject to correction as learners engage in further interactions with their natural and human environment.”  (p. 80)

The Control of Education and Cultural Goals

“Cultural goals actually permeate both the curriculum and the learning-teaching process, while cultural order and process are, in turn, inseparable from the problem of educational control.”  (p. 80)

“What, after all, is the purpose of all these rules and regulations?  In short, what is education for?”  (p. 81)

“To write of the need for ‘well-educated men,’ of ‘critical thinking,’ of ‘responsible citizenship,’ and similar goals is motivated by sincere intentions, certainly.  It fails, however, to tell us what we most require; it fails to place these generalities in the setting of real cultures through which alone they become meaningful.  Indeed, what any controller needs most to know is:  Where is our culture going?  And, above all:  Where ought it to go in the future?  Then, and only then, can he begin to answer parallel questions for the great enculturative agency he represents.”  (p. 81)

“From our earlier discussion of cultural goals, we recall two major ways of approaching them — the one, cultural relativism; the other, cultural univeralism.  We saw, too, that anthropologists seem to be moving toward accord that neither of these ways of looking at the goals of culture is sufficient in its use.”  (p. 81)

“From the point of view of educational goals, the bipolar concept of relativism-universalism therefore means that effective cotrol must be guided, on the one hand, by values that are distinctive to the particular community within which the school operates and, on the other hand, by the wider values of region, nation, and even the world.  A high priority task of the educational leader is to search for and develop a balance of both kinds.”  (p. 82)

“Here, indeed, is the reconstructionist type of approach to the whole problem of educational control.  This philosophy, related as it is to the science of anthropology, finds that participation is a cross-cultural value which, while not necessarily universal, appears from the evidence to be very widespread.  Therefore, administrations influenced by this approach are likely to create every conceivable opportunity for parents to engage in planning the work of the school, for involving teachers in problems of curriculum and learning, and for including students (beginning at a very early age) in their own share of cooperative responsibilities.  At the same time, they take into account the cultural habits of the individual community:  thus, a community where a high degree of religious or familial authority has been traditional can hardly be expected to move as rapidly toward a reconstructed pattern of control as one that has not.”  (p. 82)

“[the perennialist philosophy] In common with reconstructionism agrees that much more serious attention should be given the goals of education than is usually given.  But the perennialist has a special attitude, rooted as his thinking is in a special set of ontological and other metacultural assumptions.  The goals of education — and, indeed, of culture — are for him expressions of the much wider teleological direction of reality as a whole, a direction from the ‘potential’ to the ever more ‘actual.’  In a fundamental sense, the business of education is to become as conscious as possible of this unfolding of reality and so to enlist the schools in the everlasting effort to achieve it.  And yet, because the ultimate end of culture (for many perennialists, certainly) is not within culture at all, but in the afterlife of salvation and eternity, we discover this to be the great magnetic goal that finally shapes both the order of the curriculum and the central processes of enculturation.”  (p. 83)

“In terms of education control it follows that, unlike reconstructionist theory, perennialist education encourages a strong policy of authority in the hands of those who, by virtue of their higher actualization in the alleged order of reality, are also closer to the goal of education than any other members of a school system — than teachers, for example.  Therefore, these leaders are the ones who rightly control school policy and practice.”  (p. 83)

Note:  see pp. 84-85 for a clear summary of this chapter.

Chapter 5, School as agent of culture I

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

‘Internalizing’ the Idea of Culture

“To internalize is to fuse the chief characteristics of that idea with one’s own attitudes, feelings, and daily activities.  Culture becomes important to us as persons and as teachers only to the extent that such fusion takes place. . . . To internalize is to move from a merely intellectual formulation, on the one hand, to one’s own personality (one’s own patterns of behavior), on the other hand.”  (p. 66)

“He [Brameld] is, nevertheless, convinced that any student who approaches, say, the idea of culture seriously and responsibly will in the course of time become a very different kind of person and teacher than he would otherwise be. . . . the school too will begin to undergo transformation.  Every school is, in a genuine sense, the creation of those who operate it.  Thus, the kinds of learning and control that occur are, from one point of view, the fruits of whatever orientation toward life and education has developed among the members of a culture directly responsible for the enculturative process.  Teachers, surely, are among the most important of these members.”  (p. 67)

“What difference does an idea such as culture make to our conception of the school curriculum?  What different does it make to the teaching-learning process?  Finally, what difference does it make to the control of education? . . . . The curriculum is thus considered in relation to cultural order, teaching-learning in terms of cultural process, and the control of education in view of cultural goals.”  (p. 67)

Problems of the Curriculum:  the significance of cultural order

“The concept of cultural order, we remember, enables us to view the total environment fashioned by man in terms of spatio-temporal relations — a shorthand term for the fact that every culture may be viewed both in horizontal and vertical perspective, while yet embracing the past, the present, and the future.  This model of cultural order, when it becomes filled with the rich content that such a science as anthropology provides, may now be conceived as a way to organize the curriculum itself.”  (p. 68)

“What could this concept contribute to a distinctive way of unifying and integrating the curriculum of general education?  One answer lies in a controversial contention — namely, that the central obligation of education for most young people should be basically similar, and that the justification for such similarity lies in the struggles and objectives of human beings themselves.  This kind of education should be concerned first of all with the attempt to provide an understanding by the young learner not only of himself but of his relations to others:  other groups, other nations, and equally of theirs to him.”  (p. 68)

“Recall from Chapter 3 that the central core focuses upon problems of intrapersonal and interpersonal relations; that the next wider circle embraces intragroup and intergroup relations (racial, class, and others); and that the widest circle encompasses the relations of whole peoples, nations, and religions.  Thus, through this conception of order, we are able to see the world as a vast intricate network of human relations, from the most intimate to that most inclusive of ‘complex wholes,’ mankind itself.”  (p. 69)

“But, as also has been earlier pointed out, the merely spatial model of culture is defective as long as it lacks the temporal dimension.  We need to think of the curriculum of general education not only in terms of the present relationships of people, but in terms both of their roots in the past and their directions toward the future.  The latter anticipates the problem of cultural goals, to which we return, but the former suggests the need for intensive study of history . . . .”  (p. 70)

“We can better understand the significance of the study of history in a culture-oriented curriculum if we distinguish more clearly between the essentialist approach discussed in the preceding chapter, and the progressivist, also discussed.  It will be remembered that the essentialist, directly or indirectly reflecting as he does the superorganic view of culture, tends metaculturally to regard the order of culture as something ‘out there,’ already determined and structured beyond the control of individual human beings.”  (p. 70)

“Returning now to the study of history in the school, progressivists aware of the metacultural issue are likely to assert that essentialist history is often hypostatized history as well.  Because, moreover, the past is regarded as something that is irrevocably finished, it follows that the kind of history provided by the conventional curriculum is intended primarily to develop in young people an attitude of acceptance toward the out-thereness and completeness of historical events.  Culturally, such an attitude is likely to encourage a conservative frame of mind toward the social heritage.  Hence it is no accident that the essentialist school is usually regarded as an enculturative agent of reinforcement of patterns of culture that have come down to us in the course of time.”  (p. 71)

“History, understood now as the temporal phase of cultural order, may also be interpreted as an operational discipline — that is, the past is approached not as a forever-finished record of objective events but as a boundlessly fertile opportunity to interpret and reinterpret the course of human evolution.”  (p. 72)

“How, then, would a progressivist include history in general education?  If he is consistently operational, he will not, first of all, segregate history from other dimensions of learning experience anywhere nearly as much as do essentialists.  Rather, he will regard it as a vast, fruitful resource to be drawn upon in attacking every conceivable kind of problem — including problems only indirectly related to human experience, such as those of the physical sciences.  Accordingly, history teachers, in the kind of integrated curriculum suggested by cultural order, become resource persons who constantly and cooperatively work with other teachers.”  (p. 72)

Future of the Science of Behavior at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 32 (pp. 267-276)

What remains to be done?  Well, what do you say to the design of personalities?  Would that interest you?  The control of temperament?  Give me the specifications, and I’ll give you the man!  What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make men most productive and most successful?  Does that seem to you fantastic?  Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally.  Think of the possibilities!  A society in which there is no failure, no boredom, no duplication of effort!  (p. 274)

Frazier continues to propose new areas:  cultivation of special abilities; what makes a child’s mind mathematical?  musical?; making better mathematicians, better artists, better craftsmen; improving social and cultural design; the special qualities of the group (communal science); efficient group structure; the Superorganism!

Walden Two and the Outside World, Freedom versus Determinism

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 24 (pp. 191-196)

The discussion with Frazier veers toward other communities and what Frazier terms, ‘unnatural societies’, such as monasteries and  lamaseries.  In addition, Frazier explains that there are opportunities for the young people of Walden Two to go out into ordinary life and discover some of its qualities.  These outings are completed as exercises or experiments.   Frazier argues that Walden Two does not use propaganda or indoctrination because that would change the experimental nature of the community.

What we are trying to achieve through our cultural experiments in Walden Two is a way of life which will be satisfying without propaganda and for which, therefore, we won’t have to pay the price of personal stultification.  Happiness is our first goal, but an alert and active drive toward the future is our second.  We’ll settle for the degree of happiness which has been achieved in other communities or culture, but we’ll be satisfied with nothing short of the most alert and active group-intelligence yet to appear on the face of the earth.  (p. 194)

We should ruin our whole experiment if we overdoctrinated.  You can’t propagandize and experiment at the same time.  To engineer an attitude in favor of Walden Two would conceal symptoms which are absolutely essential to our psychologists.  Happiness is one of our indicators, and we couldn’t evaluate an experimental culture if the indicator is loaded with propaganda.  It’s no mean achievement to build satisfaction in any way whatsoever; but we want the real thing.  Walden Two must be naturally satisfying.  (p. 195)

CHAPTER 29, (pp. 236-260)

But I [Frazier] did plan Walden Two — not as an architect plans a building, but as a scientist plans a long-term experiment, uncertain of the conditions he will meet but knowing how he will deal with them when they arise.  In a sense, Walden Two is predetermined, but not as the behavior of a beehive is determined.  Intelligence, no matter how much it may be shaped and extended by our educational system, will still function as intelligence.  It will be used to puzzle out solutions to problems to which a beehive would quickly succumb.  What the plan does is to keep intelligence on the right track, for the good of society rather than of the intelligent individual — or for the eventual rather than the immediate good of the individual.  It does this by making sure that the individual will not forget his personal stake in the welfare of society.  (p. 239)

Castle argues that Frazier cannot know the course of humankind.  Frazier argues back that Walden Two as an experiment is in the course of answering the question of the future of humankind.  He adds that he can only do what he is doing now — Castle adds that it is a small minority.

And the majority are in a big quandary [Frazier].  They’re not on the road at all, or they’re scrambling back toward their starting point, or sidling from one side of the road to the other like so many crabs.  What do you think two world wars have been about?  Something as simple as boundaries or trade?   Nonsense.  The world is trying to adjust to a new conception of man in relation to men.  (p. 240)

It’s a little late to be proving that a behavioral technology is well advanced.  How can you deny it?  Many of its methods and techniques are really as old as the hills.  Look at their frightful misuse in the hands of the Nazis!  And what about the techniques of the psychological clinic?  What about education?  Or religion?  Or practical politics?  Or advertising and salesmanship?  Bring them all together and you have a sort of rule-of-thumb technology of vast power.  No, Mr. Castle, the science is there for the asking.  But its techniques and methods are in the wrong hands — they are used for personal aggrandizement in a competitive world or, in the case of the psychologist and educator, for futilely corrective purposes.   My question is, have you the courage to take up and wield the science of behavior for the good of mankind?  You answer that you would dump it in the ocean!  (p. 241)

Castle and Frazier enter into a discussion about the determinants of freedom.  Frazier call them “determiners of human behavior” (p. 243).

One class, as you suggest, is physical restraint — handcuffs, iron bars, forcible coercion.  These are ways in which we shape human behavior according to our wishes.  They’re crude, and they sacrifice the affection of the controllee, but they often work.  Now, what other ways are there of limiting freedom?  (p. 243)

The Narrator answers, “The threat of force would be one.”

Right.  And here again we shan’t encourage any loyalty on the part of the controllee.  He has perhaps a shade more of the feeling of freedom, since he can always ‘choose to act and accept the consequences,’ but he doesn’t feel exactly free.  He knows his behavior is being coerced.  Now what else?  (p. 243)

Frazier describes Castle as neither a good behaviorist nor a good Christian!  “You have no feeling for a tremendous power of a different sort” (p. 243).

It’s what the science of behavior calls ‘reinforcement therapy.’  The things that can happen to us fall into three classes.  To some things we are indifferent.  Other things we like — we want them to happen, and we take steps to make them happen again.  Still other things we don’t like — we don’t want them to happen and we take steps to get rid of them or keep them from happening again.  (p. 244)

. . . if it’s in our power to create any of the situations which a person likes or to remove any situation he doesn’t like, we can control his behavior.  When he behaves as we want him to behave, we simply create a situation he likes, or remove one he doesn’t like.  As a result, the probability that he will behave that way again goes up, which is what we want.  Technically, it’s called ‘positive reinforcement.’ (p. 244)

Frazier explains that the old school made the mistake of believing that by removing a situation the subject likes (or applying punishment that isn’t liked) it was possible to control behavior.

What is emerging at this critical stage in the evolution of society is a behavioral and cultural technology based on positive reinforcement alone.  We are gradually discovering — at an untold cost in human suffering — that in the long run punishment doesn’t reduce the probability that an act will occur. . . . Retribution and revenge are the most natural things on earth.  But in the long run the man we strike is no less likely to repeat his act.  (p. 245)

After much discussion of democracy, the conversation turns to Russia.  (Remember this was originally written in 1945 or so, and revised in 1975.)  Frazier contends there are “only” four things wrong with Russia:  (a)  a decline in the experimental spirit; (b)  overpropagandized both its own people and the outside world; (c) its use of heroes; and (d) the Russian experiment is based upon power (pp. 258-259).

The Russians are still a long way from a culture in which people behave as they want to behave, for their mutual good.  In order to get its people to act as the communist pattern demands, the Russian government has had to use the techniques of capitalism.  On the one hand it resorts to extravagant and uneven rewards.  But an unequal distribution of wealth destroys more incentives than it creates.  It obviously can’t operate for the common good.  On the other hand, the government also uses punishment or the threat of it.  What kind of behavioral engineering do you call that?  (p. 260)

Politics in Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 23 (pp. 179-190)

Government and politics!  It’s not a problem of government and politics at all.  That’s the first plank in the Walden Two platform.  You can’t make progress toward the Good Life by political action!  Not under any current form of government!  You must operate upon another level entirely.  What you need is a sort of Nonpolitcal Action Committee:  keep out of politics and away from government except for practical and temporary purposes.  It’s not the place for men of good will or vision.  (p. 180)

…we aren’t making war!  We have no imperialist policy — no designs on the possessions of others — no interest in foreign trade except to encourage happiness and self-sufficiency.  What is Walden Two but a grand experiment in the structure of a peaceful world?  Point to any internationalist who really knows what sort of society or culture or government will make for peace.  He doesn’t know!  He’s only guessing!  Through the machinations of power politics he may, if he’s lucky, get an experimental test under way, but almost certainly in such a form that the outcome will prove nothing.  He may, through some colossal accident, achieve world peace, perhaps permanently.  But the chance is negligible.  World politics won’t yield the kind of data necessary for a scientific solution of the basic problems.  What do people want?  What will satisfy them?  How can they be made to want what they can get?  Or how can they get what they want without taking it away from anyone else?  I could go on asking questions like that all day.  And who has the answer to one of them?  Not the politicians!  (p. 189)

Historial Utopias and the Good Life at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 19 (pp. 142-145)

CHAPTER 20 (pp. 146-166)

I mean the minimum [of unpleasant labor] which is possible without imposing on anyone.  We must always think of the whole group.  I don’t mean tha twe want to be inactive — we have proved that idleness doesn’t follow.  But painful or uninteresting work is a threat to both physical and psychological health  Our plan was to reduce unwanted work to a minimum, but we wiped it out.  Even hard work is fun if it’s not beyond our strength and we don’t have too much of it.  A strong man rejoices to run a race or split wood or build a wall.  When we’re not being imposed on, when we choose our work freely, then we want to work.  We may even search for work when a scarcity threatens.  (p. 147)

We can freely admit that we like to work.  Can you believe that we don’t need to keep an accurate account of each man’s contribution?  Or that most of us have stored up enough spare credits to take a long vacation if we liked?  (p. 148)

The Good Life also means a chance to exercise talents and abilities.  And we have let it be so.  We have time for sports, hobbies, arts and crafts, and most important of all, the expression of that interest in the world which is science in the deepest sense. . . . . And we need intimate and satisfying personal contacts.  We must have the best possible chance of finding congenial spirits.  Our Social Manager sees to that with many ingenious devices.  And we don’t restrict personal relations to conform to outmoded customs.  We discourage attitudes of domination and criticism.  Our goal is a general tolerance and affection.  (p. 148)

Last of all, the Good Life means relaxation and rest.  We get that in Walden Two almost as a matter of course, but not merely because we have reduced our hours of work.  In the world at large the leisure class is perhaps the least relaxed.  The important thing is to satisfy our needs.  Then we can give up the blind struggle to ‘have a good time’ or ‘get what we want.’  We have achieved a true leisure.  (p. 148)

The Walden Code:

One:  “Don’t talk to outsiders about the affairs of the community.”

Two:  “Don’t gossip about the personal relations of members.”

Three:  “Don’t say ‘thank you’.”?

Apprenticeship Rule:  “Explain your work to any member who is interested.”