If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is. Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden (2016)

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In this very brief opinion piece submitted to the New York Times Opinions page in 2016, the authors argue that one of two changes ought to come to the exceedingly high number of philosophy departments around the United States and Canada that have no specialists in any field of philosophy outside of those written by European and American men.

In the first paragraph, the authors go into statistical detail about the lack of departments offering classes in more diverse fields of philosophy than the standard European and American classes. They draw particular attention to the lack of representation of philosophers who are Chinese, African, Indian, Islamic, Latin American, or Native American. Having pointed out these glaring deficiencies, the authors go on to say “the present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as a good educational and research training practice.”

In the following paragraphs the authors go on to argue what I have to imagine they know to be a losing point; that departments who fail to diversify their curricula ought to specify their name. Rather than being the Philosophy Department, the authors suggest they be called the Anglo-European Philosophy Department.

The next few paragraphs are the authors effectively exchanging justifications and refutations with an imagined opponent of such a change, but the end result, as is the case when anyone debates someone who isn’t there, is that the authors win out.

I don’t imagine Garfield and Van Norden thought any department would undergo such a name change as they suggested, but their rhetoric did effectively expose a critical contradiction in the logic of those philosophy departments, something I’m sure philosophers can’t stand.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Pgs 72-86) Paulo Freire (1968)

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It’s easy to understand why this is the first piece of reading a teacher might assign. The topic discussed is the failings of the educational system with regards to the freedom of thought left to students after they’ve completed their studies. The text begins by addressing the dichotomy of teacher and student, then spends quite a deal of time describing the current common mode of teaching, what the author calls the “banking concept of education”, followed by what the author suggests as a replacement to that method.

The relationship among teacher and student, Freire argues, is a strict vertical hierarchy. The teacher is in a roll that grants them authority and value, and their responsibility is to recite information to the students. The student is valueless without the teacher, because the teacher is the one who gives them information. The transaction is such that at the cessation of the relationship, the student should have memorized the same things the teacher has with regards to the subject of the class. Freire poses an alternative relationship where in there is not a teacher and many students, but rather a teacher-student and many student-teachers. In this new mode of organization value can be shared and moves in all directions rather than in a strictly vertical teacher-to-student direction. The teacher-student then becomes the person who has the most information or experience on the topic at hand, but always leaves room for more depth of understanding to come out of interactions with the student-teachers.

Freire criticizes the current mode of education as too impersonal, prescriptive, rigid, and transactional. Using the banking analogy, the teacher deposits information into the student, who is otherwise an empty vessel. Freire describes the banking concept of education by ten rules, including; the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it, and, the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students. The result of this style of education is the stripping away of the creativity, kindness, and free-thought innate in humankind, and, by extension, the mechanization of the people. Freire then states that a person’s natural vocation is to become human through the exercise of their own will.

As an alternative to this style of education, Freire suggests the “problem-posing” method. In the problem-posing method of education, each lesson becomes a discussion among peers. The teacher-student may decide the topic of discussion and guide the discussion from going too far astray, but should not set strict limitations. Through this method there will naturally be a great deal of exchange and evolution of thought. Not only does each student-teacher instruct the teacher and their peers, but they must also examine more closely their own opinions before giving them voice in a room of other free thinkers. This is what Freire calls “libertarian education”; education that sets one free.

Freire’s theories on education suggest that the mode in which one is educated is responsible for the way one lives their life. An education wherein one is taught to memorize and repeat information leads to a rigid, docile, easily-controllable population. A libertarian education is one that demonstrates a dynamic, changeable world in which the “students” are actors and who may affect its course. As Freire was a Marxist, he argues that any revolutionary society must adopt a liberatory educational system or risk becoming reactionary themselves. The influence of Marx is also clearly visible in the idea of a discussion based class, the focus on dialectics being the path to true knowledge.

I was excited as I read this piece and if it is an indication of what this class has to offer then I look forward to starting class in a few days.

 

The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms. Arthur Tansley (1935)

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Throughout this essay, Tansley argues for the standardization of the definition of several temrs commonly used in the discussion of vegetation and ecology. I will herein define in my own words what those terms are as well as discuss several of Tansleys arguments for them and some of my own thoughts on the essay.

Succession: A series of changes in the life cycle of a plant, quasi-organism, or eco-system. Each change leading to the next. The change is continuous, but can be categorized into successional phases.
Autogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by the actions of the plant life on their environment. E.g. A reduction in soil quality due to leeching leading to less growth.
Allogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by factors other than those actions of the plant life on their environment. E.g. A forest fire.
Anthrogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by the actions of humans on the plant life and its environment. E.g. The clearing of forest for grazing land.
Retrogressive Succession: Tansley argues that retrogressive succession is an ill-suited, though others ( use it to mean “regression” from a “higher” to “lower” form of vegetation (No clarification is given as to what higher and lower here mean) Tansley seems to say that retrogressive isn’t the correct term because the plant life is still adapting in a forward direction given the conditions of its environment at any given time.
Quasi-Organism: A mature, well-integrated plant community having enough of the characteristics of an organism. A community of plants that reaches a dynamic balance. Others use the term “complex organism”, which Tansley objects to on the grounds that an individual plant or animal is a complex organism and a network of complex organisms ought to have another name. (I initially took quasi-organism to mean the same as my understanding of an eco-system until eco-system was defined later in the text)
Climax: Permanent of apparently permanent condition reached when vegetation is in equilibrium with all Incidental factors. (There are arguably many sub-types of climax e.g. “mowing climax” a climax wherein the plant life is in a state of balance with its frequent mowing, where it doesn’t over-grow, or die off as a result of this action)
Ecosystem: The exchange among a quasi-organism and its environment. Components of which are both organic (plants, animals) and inorganic (soil, climate).
Two terms which were not defined in the text but which I found useful to look up are
Edaphic: of or relating to soil
Sere: A series of ecological communities formed in succession

My first impression of Tansley is that a contemporary reader likely would have either found him very funny or very annoying. He refers to himself twice as someone who was a heretic or who did not keep the “faith” of popular belief among ecologists of the day, instead challenging their ideas and definitions. I was intrigued by his thought on “retrogressive succession” and whether all change was necessarily “forward”, as well as the times he referred to minute and constant change in an ecosystem or quasi-organism and whether those two beliefs are related. In my notes, I likened the constant minute changes to the movement by the driver of a steering wheel on a straight road; the direction of the vehicle is always forward but the steering wheel is always being slightly turned to maintain that status. There is also the question as to whether human action can be considered part of nature, Tansley doesn’t clearly give his opinion, though through the addition of the definition of anthrogenic succession, seems to imply that humans are too great a variable to count among allogenic successions. I agree with this descision, because unlike all other animals and plants, humans don’t have to be at balance with their local environment to survive. Humans are at liberty to radically change their environment because of their ability to transport resources from afar.

Overall, I found the reading itself interesting, though, as it was my first reading of this kind, it will take me some time to be able to more fully digest its meaning and implication.

[Meta] Formatting and Intention

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This blog hasn’t got a purpose as of yet and I struggle to find one for it. In the past I’ve heard people recommend that one keeps a “Read List”, a list of all the books, excerpts,poems, essays, etc. that they read throughout college (and throughout the rest of their life too, I suppose) along with a brief summary of each. I’ve decided to dedicate this blog, until a better purpose comes along, to serve as that list for me. Today, I completed my first official writing assignment of my college carreer; to read and critique an essay by 20th century ecologist Arthur Tansley. That critique, along with the previously completed reflection of Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” will serve as the beginnings of this endeavor.

My intention in this project is not only for my own records, but also to encourage discussion among my peers or anyone else who may have read the works I have. I recognize the possibility that someone may read my critiques and reviews, copy them, and pass them off as their own, and for that reason I will only be posting my thoughts after turning in any related assignments. If someone at that point decides to copy me, so be it, there are plenty of reviews of all sorts of literature, if they couldn’t copy from me they would copy from someone else.

The formatting of my reviews and reflections won’t always be the same. If they are related to an assignment they will be in the format prescribed by that assignment, whereas if they are simply for myself, they will take whichever form I feel is best suited, though I will make sure I include the title, pages (if applicable), author, and year of publication as the title of each post going forward.

Common Reading 2018: The Best We Could Do

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Thi Bui’s family memoir and graphic novel “The Best We Could Do” seems to have been written to answer one singular question the author has carried their whole life, “Why am I this way?” It doesn’t seem to have a positive or negative connotation, but rather the curiosity of someone who doesn’t feel at home. To answer this central question, Bui spends some time investigating her own life, but far more delving into her family’s history, going back as far as her paternal great-grandfather.

The book contains a multitude of comparisons and contrasts among the author and her parents, from directly addressing why she has a hard time investigating her mother, “Writing about my mother is harder for me, maybe because my image of her is so tied up with my opinions of myself,” (131) to less directly saying the second generation is “lame” (29). There are times when the author even stops telling a story about her parents, and begins telling from their point of view.

The investigation Bui made into her family began shortly after a 2001 family visit to the city where she was born in Vietnam. Writing about the vacation, Bui says that while her elder sisters were able to recount specific memories from their childhood, she, only three years-old when the family fled, and her younger brother “documented [the vacation] in lieu of remembering.” (182)  In the illustrations of this section of the book, Bui has a blank expression and a camera. I’m familiar with the look on her face, I’ve felt it before when I’ve seen something or been in a situation which I knew should mean more  to me, but couldn’t conjure the feelings within myself. Taking into account this strange feeling of loss, it’s no wonder Bui sought out a sense of remembering through the experiences of her family.

What is ”Family” to Bui? The first instance of the word in this novel, as Bui is gazing at her newborn son, is spelled in all-caps, “FAMILY is now something I have created, not just something I was born into.”(21) Later in that chapter, a caption at the top of a page reads, “These are the people I come from.” The following two tiers are labeled illustrations of first her parents and then the author and her siblings. At the bottom of the page the illustration is of the author standing with her husband, Travis, and their son between them, with both parents looking at their child, with the caption, “I’ve figured out more or less how to raise my little family.”(29) These are two instances provide the reader with the author’s definition of family using two distinct. The first is that in both quoted instances of the use of family the author is referring to her son, explicitly in the first case and by implication of the focus of the figures in the second. Family wasn’t created by love, or by marriage, but by birth. The second and supporting clue as to what family is in this novel is the phrasing of, “These are the people I come from.” These are the people I come from, these are the people who made me who I am, these are the ones who influenced my decisions; the inclusion of every immediate blood relative and no one else secures the definition of family as blood.

In my opinion the rigidity of the idea that one must accept all blood relatives as part of their family and, by extension, part of themselves, in conjunction with Vietnamese diaspora were what led to at least some portion of the isolation and feeling of loss Bui experienced on the family trip in 2001. Cut off from an immense source of what could have been personal identity in Vietnam by distance and in the United States by traditionalism and strict parenting, Bui was left yearning for herself. Though she eventually moved to New York in 1999 with then boyfriend Travis, they moved back in 2006, a year after the birth of their son, “trading the life we had built and loved in New York for a notion I had in my head of becoming closer to my parents as an adult.”(31) Though Bui had had space and time enough to find herself somewhat, there was still something missing, and that missing piece couldn’t be found without returning to the source; the people who made her.