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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 1, 2004
Latest Update: June 1, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

The Notion of Space that Remains Behind the Distinctions between Academia/Society

This piece is in response to a post on the CASA listserv by Octavi Comeron of Barcelona. Octavi suggested that there was a difficulty with critical thiinking on how to bring the academy and the community closer to integration, as well as the similar problem of integrating theory and practice, and acting/spectating. I hadn't thought of those three together in quite that sense before. But his thoughts are particularly of interest to us, because we are closer than most academics to the actual attempting of the integration. We = myself, a semi-retired faculty member, and Pat Acone, a retired staff member, who shares this project with me. Project consists of four classes in the Fall, no classes in the Spring, Exhibits of visual exhibit on social issues in Fall and Spring, extension of program into community as it grows.

Octavi speaks of "building bridges and crossing boundaries." I need to think on precisely which bridges and boundaries, as they relate to our initial attempts to delve into the process in real terms, in real time, in real communities. One bridge I see right now is that between student and person. The student seems to give up all rights to critical thought in personhood as the school authorities impose inflexible patterns of behavior and learning. We have tried to build a bridge there by collaborating with the student as a learner and refusing to test as authorities (being Prof. Emeritus helps - younger teachers may have more difficulty with the system), developing a "professional" standard, instead of a "student" standard. We have also begun to explore answerability in the sense of providing at least a minimum forum in which students can voice their thoughts, questions, and concerns. By providing our own expertise in theory and methodology to collaborate with learner efforts at answerability we strengthen their voice, and their learning of skills to use that voice effectively. And we do this in the middle of the formal academy, (although largely ignored by the rest of the academy). Notice also the change in language from "student" to "learner."

Boundary we're crossing: We offer a visual sociology exhibit of our work each semester at the university: ,curator example. conflict in fast-paced world where labor, politics and rules of the game are constantly changing. Michael, our curator in his 50's (at least has a gray pony tail) - back in school - probably closer to desire for real liberal arts education than most of our 20-year-olds. But there are times when life intercedes, and he's not around. Wayne's (colleague) remark on "Can't you get him to work harder?" No. Not in this world where preparing for a United Nations Conference is valuable, but on a lower priority than some of the other demands of his life. Wayne's question would be "what can I depend on him for?" And my answer would be "not the same things you once depended on your traditional students for. So we handle it by recognizing what he did do, what he was there for, in our first exhibit. That dictated that he should be curator of the next exhibit. We didn't see him for a few weeks. No problem, we were retired and weren't on campus for a couple of weeks. We emailed any important info, and left the choices of what was and wasn't done by him up to him. That meant some loss of control over the end product. We had to trust him as an equal in this learning process.

That was, by the way, his comment about the first exhibit in December 2003. "None of us knew what was going to happen; but it turned out beautifully." Trust. In ourselves; in each other.

We didn't buy into the neo-conservative language that says we must plan and implement detailed processes and results for our semester exhibit. Instead, we left an open goal: exhibit, and accepted that, if we were all behaving professionally, we would have a professional, if not predictable, result. Dewey would have insisted that this process, in its realism, was a far better learning process than any tests we could have devised. Not only that, the fact that it was collaborative was more suited to the real world, to which it becomes a bridge. Professionals do not all handle every task with equal efficiency. In the workplace they learn to supplement each others' strengths. And we learn not to hand out judgments and labels like grades for every task performed. Corporate management recognizes and incorporates "satisficing" on an everyday basis. And it doesn't claim an artificial and unsound normative curve for doing so.

As I understand it, Octavi is saying that the language of the neo-conservative is instrumental, aimed at going directly after the desired effect in its audience/customer. The custormer, in this case the student, is expected to react to the language of the neo-conservative in one of a limited set of prescribed behaviors. And the power of the neo-conservative movement at the moment is such that it can persuasively shepherd most costumers into one of its prescribed behaviors. What we are trying to do by crossing the boundary from "customer" to "co-equal" is to take the limits off on prescribed behaviors and replace them with professional standards, but standards that do not include the debasing approach of forcing the professional to reassert his/her competence with every action. In crossing the boundary to professional we are inviting the learner, in this case, to an "ascribed status as learner" in which tesing is no longer essential to a measure of work and contribution to the less prescribed end-product.

Somehow I think this should take us to a more appropriate language for our own critical analysis of the system - but I'll go there later.

Handling time and space: We chose to keep the exhibit on campus to emphasize the legitimacy of our link with the university and to encourage community entrance to the campus. Because we present the exhibit as an art show the space becomes a gallery, and acquires an identity of its own constructed of all the projects created for it. The space also fits into virtual extension, since a gallery exhibit is prepared and preserved on the Dear Habermas website. This Spring learners in Wisconsin were able to participate in the exhibit through power point presentations of their work submitted by email. So also were artists from the global community able to include some of their work that fit into social issues we addressed.

One piece, from our High School student arrived late and missed the gallery show. But that won't permit her later inclusion in the online exhibit. In this way we can make even our time limits flexible, closing off one online exhibit from submissions only as we open the next. jeanne Jeanne Curran, Ph.D., J.D. Professor Emeritus of Sociology California State University, Dominguez Hills jeannecurran@habermas.org