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Caliifornia State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 31, 2001
Latest Update: September 4, 2001
E-Mail jeannecurran@habermas.org
E-Mail takata@uwp.edu

Lecture and Reading Notes
from Week of September 3, 2001: Week 2

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors: August 2001. "Fair use" encouraged.

Concepts:

  • Kibbutzim.

    • The Hebrew plural of the word Kibbutz. A Kibbutz is a collective form in Israel on which the members of the Kibbutz share communally the kitchen and dining areas, the recreation areas, and the child raising efforts. The children live in their own quarters and are raised by members of the Kibbutz assigned to that specific task. The adult members of the Kibbutz work collectively on the economic support for the group, farming, animal raising, etc.

    The Kibbutzim led to much discussion and consideration of collective child rearing.

Teaching essays:

  • Eight Questions on Kibbituzim on ZNet. Answers from Noam Chomsky. Questions from Nikos Raptis.

    1. Where can one trace the roots of the kibbutz idea?

      Chomsky traces the roots to European, libertarian, socialist doctrine that fit the peculiarities of Jewish communities distorted by their exclusion from many traditional civil activities. thus he invokes the concept of no Jewish working class families. Note his emphasis on Israel as a project of colonization.

      Note also that Chomsky recognizes the role of art, in this case fiction, in capturing a new vision of the imaginary that breaks out of the traditional constraints of dominant discourse: "some of what I've read in current Hebrew fiction seems to me more like what I experienced than what I read in the social science-type literature."

    2. As an experiment is the kibbutz considered, by the number of members, a small scale one?

      Chomsky describes the movement as small, but reminds us of the structural context in which it existed: that of a social organization based on inclusion and collective participation and reward. In another answer he reminds us also of the hostility of the surrounding structural context. What does the climate of hostility offer as an advantage to the beleaguered group? Consider "out group" hostility as creating "in group" solidarity.

      "The inclusion, collective participation, and reward depended however on the Eurupean libertarian and anarchist roots, growing from pogroms and revolutions in which these same people had been legally, politically, and economically excluded from most life-worlds. That exclusion, and the group's turning inward to build a viable and livable community resulted in strong ties to this alternative "in-gorup" and would have strengthened "out-group" hostility in favor of "in-group" solidarity. Consider also the different cultural responses to individual achievement and to the acceptance of authority.

      If "out group" hostility helps create "in group" solidarity, what does the inner city gang situtation share with war/peace conflicts? Consider the many signifiers we use to tell people they are excluded: pejorative epithets, increased personal space, scowls, denying their existence by choosing neither to see nor hear them.

    3. What was the role (if any) of religion in the kibbutz?

      Chomsky describes the role of religion as minimal. How could this be so when so much of today's conflict pits Muslim against Christian/Jewish? Consider that as in group solidarity is enforced and supported, the group's orthodoxy tends to increase in the nation-state form, so that the adversarialism on all fronts will enforce the antagonisms between the "in group" and the "out group."

    4. Is the family and the raising of children in the kibbutz radically different than that in an industrialized western "democracy", say the US?

      Chomsky sees the most important difference as one of quality time allowed during the day for children to spend with parents and siblings when there are no other duties for either parents or children. Chomsky sees the setting aside of family time as crucial, but believes that things have changed very much since the time he was familiar with the kibbutzim.

      What are the kinds of duties that take us away from one another when we might have family time. Now, this is where you need to keep in mind what Abel said about the exploitation of workers in the case where employers provide gyms, lunches, whatever, but then expect those same workers to give "loyal" and long service. Consider the situation in Japan, where this structural context kept women at home. And then consider who benefits the most from this arrangement. What would you need to know to decide if these conditions were most beneficial to the worker or to the employer.

    5. Is there a great difference between the kibbutz of the '50s, that you knew, and the present one?

      Chomsky suggests that the kibbutzim have become richer, more like suburbs. Does the website of Kibbutz Ein Gedi substanatiate that conclusion? Explain.

    6. As an anarchist community, can one see the kibbutz as separate from the Israeli state?

      Chomsky's answer is very helpful in understanding the "unstated assumptions" that operated to keep the kibbutzim intimately bound up with the Jewish state. His answer here also helps explain the paradigm shift from subsistence farming groups on the frontiers of

    7. Now, in 1999, do you consider the kibbutz experiment as a successful one?

      "Hard to answer. There are too many dimensions on which one can measure "success." Shortest of all the answers. Illustrates Chomsky's recognition of and respect for the perspective of the Other. Chomsky voices that same respect in his answer to the 9th question. Can you quote it? That might be a good measure of learning for this reading.

    8. Are there any lessons that we have learned from the history of the kibbutz?

      How does Chomsky explain the colonialization/settlement of Israel theoretically? Does this give you a different perspective on Edward Said's position on colonization and settlement of Israel Teaching essay to go up shortly on this. Nag me if I forget. jeanne September 7, 2001.

Relevant References:

  • Ein Gal - Polyurethane Elastomer: Kibbutz Ein Gedi 86980, Israel. "Polyurethane Elastomer is a rubber-like material, but superior to rubber in many important aspects. . . . Ein Gal offers products and technical solutions in many industrial fields such as textile, paper, wood, plastics, metal, chemical, mining, mechanical engineering, automotive industries etc."

    Kibbutz Ein Gedi offers economic production that goes way beyond farming.

Concepts:

  • The Cognitive and Affective Domains of Learning

  • The two volumes of Bloom and Krathwohl's learning theory came out in the early 70's and was popular at UCLA, where Bloom taught. One volume was devoted to cognitive theory in which Bloom classified learning in stages:

    • Quick and oversimplified definitions:

      The Cognitive Domain of Learning. think of a multiple choice test, and you will quickly be able to understand Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain. There are some classroom paper and pencil tests in which you can tell the answer if you can recognize it as the correct choice among several wrong choices. But in other tests, say a fill in the blank test, you have to "recall" the answer. Recall means you've learned the concept to a slightly higher level than "recognition."

      Then there are tests where the multiple choice answer is confusing because it requires you to do something with the information you recognize or recall to get the answer. For example, there might be four answers to choose from in deciding which of the following theorists, Foucault, Weber, Marx, or Durkheim would come closest today to believing that control is social, not individual. To decide, you would have to have a general idea of Foucault's position on power, surveillance, and incarceration or exploitation and exclusion. You would need to have a general idea of Weber's iron cage of bureaucracy and his pessimism that bureaucracy would eventually overcome us. You would need to have understand Marx's concern over commodification and the exploitation of the worker, and his dream of a proletariat revolution. And you would need to grasp the importance of Durkheim's social fact in differentiating social facts from facts that are controlled by the individual. Notice that the answer requires you to analyze the knowledge you have acquired to select with assurance the correct answer.

      Then there's the problem that most of you could at this point give a plausible argument that Foucault, Weber, Marx, and Durkheim all placed great emphasis on social over individual control. So in a postmodern or in a critically self-reflexive world there is no right answer. Which means that there will always be ambiguity, confusion, and malaise attached to tests that assume that there is "a right answer." The more we learn in any field, the more we recognize that we do not "know" all the answers. The earth was once flat, but is now round. What does that tell us of right answers? And what does that tell us of the validity of tests that are normed nationally, to be sure that "most people" come up with the "right" answer when they know the information we're testing for. Recall that dominant discourse is "normative" and that it constrains the imaginary of those who see a different result. What does that tell you about most tests? These are the hierarchical steps that Bloom includes in the cognitive domain, as I recall them from thirty years ago. Paper and pencil tests can be designed in very complex ways to measure the higher levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, but it is costly and time consuming to do so. And nothing I know of other than internships and residencies can measure validily how well I can integrate that cognitive knowledge into the socio-emotional life-world in which the knowledge will come into play.

      • recognition
      • recall
      • analysis
      • synthesis
      • evaluation

      The Affective Domain of Learning:

      The second volume of the series was on the affective domain. I don't have the affective domain in my head to list for you as I could the cognitive domain above. There's a good reason for that. I was getting my Ph.D. in education at the time, and our institutions of learning have for a very long time emphasized the cognitive domain over the affective domain.

      What Krathwohl included in the affective domain were the feelings we have about our learning.

      • Once we learn something we're proud of that newly acquired knowledge, and we become emotionally involved if someone tells us we're wrong. This is what's usually referred to on employment rating forms as "takes correction well." Notice that it's assumed that correction is something you should "take well," completely ignoring what learning was required of you, or to what mislearning you were subjected in trying to accomplish the required tasks.

      • We associate learning with formal authority. So when mother or daddy show us how to do our math homework, they are surprised when the next day we are angry that they don't know anything, because that's not the way "teacher" does it. "Teacher" has the formal authority and title of SCHOOL.

      • Having learned simple oversimplified definitions for many new concepts, we experience anger when we realize that those definitions really are over-simplified and we have to learn a lot more.

      • We experience cognitive dissonance when we understand a problem situation intuitively and "know" instinctively that we are right, while "authority" continues to arrogantly insist that "it knows best." So at times we come away knowing that we are "smarter than" our supervisors or teachers. But soon after we take a roller coaster ride into depression when we hear that same teacher or supervisor rattle off some concept we don't know and don't understand. It's hard to realize that our learning is spotty. It takes lots of disciplined effort to clear up the lacunae in our knowledge, and most of us disrespect such lacunae as meaning that the Other doesn't know anything. This will give you some sense of how full of affect learning is. We need to understand that if we are to listen to the Other in good faith. Arrogance and learning do not go together.

      • Quick and oversimplified definitions:

        • The affective domain is that component of emotional learning that goes hand in hand with cognitive learning. (Bloom and Krathwohl.)

      • Teaching essays on the affective learning domain:

  • Yet to Come:
    • Postcolonialism
    • Praxis