Funny story: it was the Fresher's Fair weekend at the start of the academic year and I was walking around Oxford, every so often hearing about a decolonisation history tour, or a society to decolonise this or that, or someone advertising a decolonisation march -- and it was an American accent, every single time. I am forced to accept that literally Tumblr is the transmission vector for these things in British academic culture.
I was having a conversation about this with a sinologist at my college last term (he was previously at SOAS and repeated to me essentially all of your complaints, from the perspective of faculty!) and we agreed that the solution is
-become billionaire and then be an activist donor with philanthropy conditional on rigorous maintenance of standards
It would definitely be interesting to chart the passage from America - it used to be similar at SOAS and now the biggest proponents of it on campus are (IME) international students from developing countries, mostly South Asia. Think there's going to be a natural pushback from students who find it unenriching, it might just take a generation. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act might have solved aspects of it in the UK, eg. by forbidding mandated EDI statements for academic job applications
As a molecular biologist who has wandered into this Substack, I'm just horrified by that "Epistemology of Science" section. Like, if somebody had a week to learn about the Russian Orthodox Church, you wouldn't give that person three readings on the Hare Krishna movement and one on Tibetan Buddhism. Even if you think those are better religions, they are just not relevant to the subject at hand.
I've read or done science for a large fraction of the waking hours of my adult life. The influence of "indigenous knowledge systems" in most areas of science is precisely nil. Every now and then in organismal biology you see some peripheral tidbit. Stephen Jay Gould has a nice essay on how species classifications by biologists frequently overlap those of indigenous people, showing that the academic classifications are not arbitrary, but we're really talking about ~0.01% of scientific thinking here. So in "Epistemology of Science" they teach three readings on indigenous knowledge systems and one on feminism? Is there something I'm missing here? How can anyone justify this?
Really interesting. I graduated from Essex in the late seventies and I'm well out of touch with much of the actual experience here, but I think various questions around cultural democracy and representation which have, of course, always been there, are heading towards a crunch point. Your work reminds me (and this is meant as a compliment) of Camille Paglia.
It’s interesting to read this as an American student, whose liberal arts school is not facing this problem (maybe due to the degree of control given to the professors to teach what curriculum they want, and one that is flexible by the year).
It also seems that this DtC thing is a misapplication of Freire. To be a bit reductive to his work for a moment, student involvement in the understanding and working with pedagogical process is not just important, it is the backbone of what he is arguing for. Also, much of his discussion was about working with people who do not have certain western tools of subjecthood and have internalized their oppression. The goal would be to help overcome the parent-child relationship between professor and student. The DtC program as you describe it is missing the point.
Here are a few quotes from the very beginning of the book. The author of the introduction, Donaldo Macedo, writes “Unfortunately, in the United States, many educators who claim to be Freirean in their pedagogical orientation mistakenly transform Freire's notion of dialogue into a method, thus losing sight of the fact that the fundamental goal of dialogical teaching is to create a process of learning and knowing that invariably involves theorizing about the experiences shared in the dialogue process.”
Freire himself writes that the “leftist-turned-sectarian goes totally astray when he or she attempts to interpret reality and history dialectically, and falls into essentially fatalistic positions.”
You can tell the document writers read this as they say they’re against binary thinking like “we hate all white people.” But they’ve the way they apply white fragility REALLY engages in that type of dialectical reduction. I also think the white fragility book also contributes to the phenomenon it critiques, but I digress.
Anyways, check out Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It’s also interesting in terms of the canon discussion as it is not pretending that it doesn’t engage with the ‘canon’ (whatever that is). He quotes Hegal on the second page.
Freire is a fairly Orthodox Marxist in many ways, and Marx is nothing if not a creature of the canon.
It’s not possible to implement Freire “faithfully” in the UK/US university system. The university is an investment vehicle first and a credentialing gatekeeper second.
So whether you think the following ideological framework is a coherent position or gobbledy-gook, it’s just a fact that the universities’ institutional structure is directly opposed to teaching eg South American laborers that they must come to know their revolutionary class position in order to overthrow capitalism.
Funny story: it was the Fresher's Fair weekend at the start of the academic year and I was walking around Oxford, every so often hearing about a decolonisation history tour, or a society to decolonise this or that, or someone advertising a decolonisation march -- and it was an American accent, every single time. I am forced to accept that literally Tumblr is the transmission vector for these things in British academic culture.
I was having a conversation about this with a sinologist at my college last term (he was previously at SOAS and repeated to me essentially all of your complaints, from the perspective of faculty!) and we agreed that the solution is
-become billionaire and then be an activist donor with philanthropy conditional on rigorous maintenance of standards
-until then, vigorously quote Dead White Men at graduate seminars, and namedrop Martha Nussbaum (https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody) whenever someone namedrops Judith Butler
It would definitely be interesting to chart the passage from America - it used to be similar at SOAS and now the biggest proponents of it on campus are (IME) international students from developing countries, mostly South Asia. Think there's going to be a natural pushback from students who find it unenriching, it might just take a generation. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act might have solved aspects of it in the UK, eg. by forbidding mandated EDI statements for academic job applications
Don’t know they’d forbidden mandated EDI statements. The best news I’ve heard today.
Labour blocked the implementation of the bill shortly after coming into power, so nothing is happening for the time being
As a molecular biologist who has wandered into this Substack, I'm just horrified by that "Epistemology of Science" section. Like, if somebody had a week to learn about the Russian Orthodox Church, you wouldn't give that person three readings on the Hare Krishna movement and one on Tibetan Buddhism. Even if you think those are better religions, they are just not relevant to the subject at hand.
I've read or done science for a large fraction of the waking hours of my adult life. The influence of "indigenous knowledge systems" in most areas of science is precisely nil. Every now and then in organismal biology you see some peripheral tidbit. Stephen Jay Gould has a nice essay on how species classifications by biologists frequently overlap those of indigenous people, showing that the academic classifications are not arbitrary, but we're really talking about ~0.01% of scientific thinking here. So in "Epistemology of Science" they teach three readings on indigenous knowledge systems and one on feminism? Is there something I'm missing here? How can anyone justify this?
Really interesting. I graduated from Essex in the late seventies and I'm well out of touch with much of the actual experience here, but I think various questions around cultural democracy and representation which have, of course, always been there, are heading towards a crunch point. Your work reminds me (and this is meant as a compliment) of Camille Paglia.
Thank you! She reads my stuff on occasion and is very supportive, we've been in contact since I wrote about her for the Spectator last April
Agree. I think Ella’s is the best young social commentator we have.
It’s interesting to read this as an American student, whose liberal arts school is not facing this problem (maybe due to the degree of control given to the professors to teach what curriculum they want, and one that is flexible by the year).
It also seems that this DtC thing is a misapplication of Freire. To be a bit reductive to his work for a moment, student involvement in the understanding and working with pedagogical process is not just important, it is the backbone of what he is arguing for. Also, much of his discussion was about working with people who do not have certain western tools of subjecthood and have internalized their oppression. The goal would be to help overcome the parent-child relationship between professor and student. The DtC program as you describe it is missing the point.
Here are a few quotes from the very beginning of the book. The author of the introduction, Donaldo Macedo, writes “Unfortunately, in the United States, many educators who claim to be Freirean in their pedagogical orientation mistakenly transform Freire's notion of dialogue into a method, thus losing sight of the fact that the fundamental goal of dialogical teaching is to create a process of learning and knowing that invariably involves theorizing about the experiences shared in the dialogue process.”
Freire himself writes that the “leftist-turned-sectarian goes totally astray when he or she attempts to interpret reality and history dialectically, and falls into essentially fatalistic positions.”
You can tell the document writers read this as they say they’re against binary thinking like “we hate all white people.” But they’ve the way they apply white fragility REALLY engages in that type of dialectical reduction. I also think the white fragility book also contributes to the phenomenon it critiques, but I digress.
Anyways, check out Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It’s also interesting in terms of the canon discussion as it is not pretending that it doesn’t engage with the ‘canon’ (whatever that is). He quotes Hegal on the second page.
Freire is a fairly Orthodox Marxist in many ways, and Marx is nothing if not a creature of the canon.
It’s not possible to implement Freire “faithfully” in the UK/US university system. The university is an investment vehicle first and a credentialing gatekeeper second.
So whether you think the following ideological framework is a coherent position or gobbledy-gook, it’s just a fact that the universities’ institutional structure is directly opposed to teaching eg South American laborers that they must come to know their revolutionary class position in order to overthrow capitalism.