Category Archives: about Teachers College

On grades as statements: to whom?

Ray McDermott and Jean Lave once told me that they asked Rancière whether his writing influenced his teaching.  As they tell it, he looked surprised and answered something like “not at all!”  A reader of Successful Failure once asked me whether I still gave grades.  Besides stuttering, I said something like: “I am required to (by my university and New York State)” and/or “students would not accept my not giving them grades.”

Continue reading On grades as statements: to whom?

Is this blog “property”?

Is this blog “property”?  If so, whose? And who controls the answers to these questions (and the consequences thereto attached)?

Once upon a time (let’s say about three months ago), I thought the answers obvious enough: “in America,” this blog is “mine.” It is expression which I could transform it into property if I decided to commercialize it and/or sell it.  It all had to do with “freedom of expression” and particularly “academic freedom,” privileges granted by the Constitution to individuals.

And then I was taught by PtBs at Teachers College about “work for hire laws.”  As summarized in a work for hire document written at the request of a corporation developing a “policy on intellectual property” (note the word “property,” not “knowledge”) the law says:

Under the Copyright Law, the copyright to a work created by a person in the course of his or her employment is Work for Hire, which belongs to the employer rather than to the individual creator.

Continue reading Is this blog “property”?

In Memoriam Professor George Bond

Many will agree that George was “formidable”–both in the American and French (quite different) meanings of the qualifier.

He could also play in that British way when one does not quite realize a joke is being told, or one’s leg is being pulled.   For example, he started one of his major paper by telling us that what he had to say “must be considered as tentative, subjective, personal, and strictly confidential.  I had thought of writing in Tumbuka or, even better, a language without a script” (1990: 273).  George was playing here with much: confidentiality, subjectivity, writing without scripts, etc.  He was playing lightly perhaps in this paper, but with matters of deep concern for him, as well as for his friends and acquaintances who were playing much more deeply with his writing to shift their own status in the leadership of Zambia.

Continue reading In Memoriam Professor George Bond

Sorting out how the Powers-that-Be yield their power by watching local wardens

Those who follow this blog may remember that I had to contribute my two bits to a discussion about “promoting diversity” in our department, programs, teaching, etc. (February 25, 2014).  I may also heave mentioned a while back that I was charged to write an “Assessment of Learning Outcomes” report for the programs in anthropology.

Note the passive voice in “I had to…,” “I was charged.”  I started the diversity entry with a reference to the “Powers that Be” (PtBs).  Those, of course, are Latourian black boxes.  But that is not saying much, yet.  Actually, the particular acts that triggered my own activity where made by various individuals (deans, department chairs, etc.) who were very specifically told to tell me that I no choice but to perform the tasks whether as faculty member (for the diversity thing) or a program coordinator (for the assessment thing).  Still, none of these individuals originated the requirement that I do “it.”  As they all said, apologetically often, is that they were “passing on” the requirement from higher (? The right metaphor?) up.

This could be a call to “follow the network” of particular people told to ask other particular people to do the specific things (and they are very specific indeed).  I tried to do something like that once (2007).  It could also be a call to reveal the “bricolage” (to put it as blandly as possible) that “Those Who are Told” (TWaTs [?!]) must engage in to produce what the PtBs will accept as good enough for the current purposes.  Jill Koyama (2010) did some of this in relation to administrators, teachers, and parents, in the local worlds NCLB produced.
Continue reading Sorting out how the Powers-that-Be yield their power by watching local wardens

what is to constitute that a conversation is “about promoting diversity”?

Powers-that-be have asked our department to produce a “Diversity Report” on our practices “promoting diversity.”

Not that there is anything wrong about that—though we may not have produced such a report without of formal request from the Powers.  The Powers also told us that earlier reports were not adequate.  We were asked to discuss our practices and propose changes in these practices over the next two years.  This post is one of my statements in this discussion.  Students and colleagues are welcome to comment, in the spirit of transparency.

Famously, discussions about “diversity” are difficult (Lin 2007; Pollock 2004, 2008).  At some point in the discussion someone will ask: what “counts” as diversity: LGBT status? Disability status?   Others may whisper: Religion? Age?  National origin? Nationality? One of our colleague in the College once argued that, as the only Skinnerian behavior modification person on the faculty, he, a white male, might be the most “diverse” person there.

Continue reading what is to constitute that a conversation is “about promoting diversity”?

How, when, about what, and with whom, can faculty in a school of education govern?

(Part 2 of the blog posted on June 12, 2013)

In one way the questions are easily answered for Teachers College by a quick look at the statutes

The Faculty of Teachers College play a central role in determining the standards, the values, and the character of the institution. Members of the Faculty provide the instruction, conduct the research, and perform the professional services necessary to accomplish the purposes of the College. The Faculty, subject only to the control reserved by the Trustees, have ultimate authority to establish requirements for student admission, programs of instruction, and student academic progress, and to recommend the conferring of degrees and diplomas. The Faculty also make recommendations to the President and the Trustees concerning its own welfare. (My emphasis Governance and Organization of the College Section 3, page 2, retrieved June 17, 2013).

Note the capital ‘F’ in “Faculty,” the word “ultimate,” and the absence of any mention of an administrative structure in the relationship between “Faculty” and “Trustees.”  Note also the absence of any mention of Columbia University, New York State, or the Federal Government—all of whom are intimately involved in all these matters and significantly Faculty authority.  And note, of course, the absence of any mention of unauthorized power and, by implication, resistance, bricolage, etc.

Continue reading How, when, about what, and with whom, can faculty in a school of education govern?

On applying anthropology to faculty governance in a school of education

[This was triggered by ongoing controversies at Teachers College regarding various decisions made by top administrators, responses by various people including students and faculty.  What can current anthropological analyses contribute to the recurrent calls for shared governance?  What can faculty govern?  How?  For those in the know, I will be mixing Weberian via Geertz, Foucauldian, and Latourian metaphors, along with others inspired by de Certau and Garfinkel]

One of the first thing I heard when I started graduate school in 1968, and associated with “America,” was that “government is best which governs least” and that “the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world” (Thoreau, Civil disobedience).  And yet, if democracy is government “by the people,” then there is no democracy without work by this people who must be concerned with it and bestow at least some thoughts to it.  And yet …, around and around.

Continue reading On applying anthropology to faculty governance in a school of education