The only hospital in Santa Fe is playing hardball with the small in-state insurance provider:

Lovelace insurance patients in limbo as sides to resume talks.  August 24, 2010, SF New Mexican

Lovelace members cut off from care at Christus St. Vincent.  August 20, 2010, SF New Mexican

Though Christus SVH isn’t mentioned in this article, another care provider recently closed its doors:

Santa Fe’s ABQ Health Partners to close doors.  June 28, 2010,  SF New Mexican

Reporters (like Bruce Krasnow in the most recent article) continue to misinform and confuse the public when they parrot the adjectives used by corporate interests like CSVH. Mr. Krasnow refers to “the private, nonprofit Christus.” Christus (more specifically in this case, St. Vincent Hospital, EIN 85-0106941, is incorporated as a nonprofit under U.S. tax law. It is not private in the implied sense that it conducts its affairs outside of public view. Although it’s in the interests of those who manage CSVH to perpetuate the public perception that it’s private, it’s not. CSVH has to file an annual tax form (990) that details some (not all) of its financial status and performance. These tax reports are available online from the Guidestar organization and include P&L, Balance Sheet, salaries of highest compensated employees and directors, and other relevant financial data. Anyone can also request a copy of their latest 990 filing directly from CSVH.

More links and resources regarding CSVH available here.

This started out to be a simple weekly recommendation of five songs that I felt were:

• too good to not know, and
• not generally well known or
• old enough that younger generations might not know them or
• new enough that older generations might not know them.

The impetus for this was recently discovering two great ‘new’ songs by Internet-cident, only to find out they were 7 and 17 years old. As I searched my iTunes for three songs to complement them for this first (supposedly) weekly list of recommendations, one thing led to another and this form that I call Video-Song-Poem (VSP) emerged.

The songs and artists featured in this 5-minute VSP are:

1. “Inside and Out” by Feist from the album Let It Die, (full video here)
2. “Innocent Mind” by Maroon Town from the album Don Drummond, (MySpace page here)
3. “Wheels” by Jamie Cullum from the album The Pursuit, (full video here)
4. “The Systematic Dumbing Down of Terry Constance Jones” by Butterfly Jones from the album Napalm Springs,
5. “I Move On” by Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones from the musical Chicago. (video here)

Episode 10 of the Charlie Rose Brain Series focused on the disordered brain, with discussions about neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, stroke, Huntington’s disease, and spinal cord injury. With series co-host Eric Kandel, the panel included: (from the available transcript)

John Donoghue — his work allowed paralyzed patients to move and communicate using only their thoughts and a machine called a brain-computer interface. He is a professor at Brown University and the cofounder of a company called Cybernetics.

John Krakauer — his work explores how the brain controls movement and how movement is recovered following a stroke. He is an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Columbia.

Nancy Bonini — she studies the genetic basis of neurological disease by performing experiments on fruit flies. She is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Howard Hughes medical investigator.

Mahlon Delong — he is an expert on Parkinson’s disease and a pioneer in the growing field of deep-brain stimulation. He is a professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine.

Some highlights discussed in the 18-minute excerpt below:

• The differences between psychiatric disorders and neurological disorders.
• How Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke were instrumental in demonstrating localization of function within the brain by focusing on language impairments.
• By studying neurological disorders, we gain insight into how the normal brain works as well as treatments for abnormalities, impairments, and disorders.
• Deep-brain stimulation has proven successful in treating some patients with disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, but it doesn’t work for everybody and it’s not a cure. It’s also beginning to be applied to patients with psychiatric problems.
• Fruit flies are being studied and used in experiments with applications to humans as many genes and gene pathways are shared between fruit flies and humans.
• Sophisticated, miniature electrode arrays have been implanted into the motor cortex of paralyzed patients such that their brain activity (action potentials, or thoughts) can be transmitted outside of their nervous systems to control external devices such as (potentially) video screens, robotic arms, etc.
• Traditionally, psychiatrists have not thought in anatomical terms as have neurologists, but there is now a need for more overlap between the two disciplines.

View the full episode online at the Charlie Rose site.

Before reading this,  view the Kenneth Adams mural that’s referenced:

WWbhD?

Per the objectives for this course, I have gained a greater understanding of how educational institutions reproduce social inequalities. I have also studied, and understood to some degree, the severe criticisms levied against these institutions by authors such as Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich and bell hooks. Thanks to Bill Moyers, I’ve become acquainted with the work and accomplishments of Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander School. Having no prior knowledge of any of these educators, their philosophies or their work, and therefore no pre-existing bias or opinion, “openness” was not an issue for me in terms of assessing their views although I don’t concur with or accept all of them.

However, when it was suggested to the class that on this very campus there existed a good example of the white supremacist, racist, male-dominated oppression that has fueled the critical theorists, I bristled. In advance of my own chance to experience and evaluate it on my own, I heard from a figure of authority that there was something on campus — specifically, the mural in the west wing of the Zimmerman Library, funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s — that I was supposed to find offensive. So what if I didn’t find the mural panels racist, or objectionable, or insensitive? What if I determined through my own “openness” of experience and reflection that the mural simply depicted the artistic views of one artist which were inevitably influenced and shaped by his times? Was there room here for an open debate and consideration without resorting to easy, lazy and dismissive labels? Or had it already been decreed that the panels were racist, et al — case closed.  And if that was the case, did that mean there was something fundamentally deficient and wrong with me that I didn’t react with the requisite outrage expressed by one authority figure?

I had to see the murals for myself. Last Friday I made a quick pass through the library, fully prepared to find the murals benign, the artist unfairly maligned, and further evidence of how someone sees what they want to see because it fits the narrative of their own predisposed agenda.

Instead, I had to shake my head and sigh at what I saw. (http://thisisnotthat.com/wordpress/?p=819.) I didn’t even stop to analyze the specifics. As I absorbed the fourth panel, I thought to myself — this is bad. I hurried out and away with questions such as who did this, and why, and more specifically, what were they thinking?

Googling UNM Zimmerman library mural, the first search result returned the library’s own page that described and explained the mural, painted by Kenneth Adams, one of the Taos Society of Painters (http://elibrary.unm.edu/zimmerman/murals.php). The library building, including space for the four panels in the west wing, was designed by the well-known southwestern architect John Gaw Meem and was named a building of the century by the American Institute of Architects (http://elibrary.unm.edu/zimmerman/history.php). According to the mural’s web page, then university president James Fulton Zimmerman envisioned the four panels to depict the Indians as artists, the Spanish contributing agriculture and architecture, the Anglos contributing science and the fourth panel showing “the union of all three in the Southwest.” With his commission from Zimmerman, Adams was given complete artistic freedom to interpret and express this vision.

Upon seeing the mural panels myself, without knowing the history behind them, I based my this is bad response on what seemed to me obvious objections. Each different “race” is represented by stark color differences; the Indians and Spanish are depicted in subservient poses with heads bowed, with women kneeling, men engaged in menial labor wearing “native” work clothes; the fair-haired, blue-eyed Anglo doctor is responsible for delivering life as his identically-fair assistants are seated doing “scientific” work; and then the “union” of the three (male) races made possible by the Anglo in the middle facing outward with full facial features, with the Indian and Spanish now adopting the Anglo’s clothes, joined only through the patriarchial Anglo, both faces in profile without discernible features.

After reading the history of the mural and Zimmerman’s charge to Adams, the deeper issue to me is the underlying presumption that the three “races” had indeed “united,” with the clear implication that this union resulted through mutual and peaceful willingness. There is no hint of Spanish conquest (both through military force and religion) and subjugation of the native peoples, or the wars that Anglos (Americans) fought with the Spanish descendants and Mexicans, or the broken treaties, exploitative native-as-tourist-attraction commercialization of a culture, or the near eradication of that culture through patriarchal and dominating policies such as the Indian schools that the Anglos (Americans) perpetrated upon the proud indigenous peoples who had occupied these lands for over a thousand years.

Both in terms of the presumptions that created the vision, and the artistic expression of that vision onto the panels, I find the mural worthy of offended judgments, sincere objections and harsh criticism, irrespective of its otherwise “artistic” contribution to its historic home.

So … now what? The mural is there. What do we do with it?

Let’s consider a range of actions that are available to critics, perhaps along a continuum from the most benign (a “1”) to the most radical (say “5”). At the extremes, a “1” could be to do nothing, to just maintain the status quo, tolerate it, don’t draw attention to it, and let it be. A radical “5” reaction would reflect the harshest, most visceral offended feelings that might advocate elimination of the offensive material by any means necessary to deface or destroy it. Not surprisingly, I would not advocate either extreme.

A less benign approach (call it a “2”) for critics might be to request a meeting with the university administration to present their concerns about the presumptions and depictions symbolized by the murals. The objective of this approach would be to merely get the hearing, while trusting in good faith that the administration will act with good judgment after duly considering all the factors.

A less-than fully radical approach (“4”) would also include a meeting with administrators, but the objective of this more aggressive approach might be to demand a prescribed action. The demands could themselves be chosen from a spectrum of possibilities, such as to paint over the murals, to commission a more critical artwork to reside in the same room as a counterpoint to Adams’ murals, or to simply mount a small written display that explains to the viewer why the work was commissioned and why some find it objectionable.

The “3” option, per my scheme which reflects my own feelings, would be to dialogue (in the terms of critical theory) with the administration, the objective being to use the context of the murals as an ongoing learning opportunity on the university campus. Rather than scorned and despised by some while ignored by others, the mural could become an educational asset for all. Some examples: it could be a stop for all incoming freshmen during summer orientation with an informative briefing about the mural and its history so that they can interpret it in context, or to allow them to simply experience it for themselves and then discuss their reactions; it could be the source of assigned essays for many different courses from various perspectives (artistic, historical, sociological/cultural, psychological); it could serve as an example of how different our perspectives are now than they were 70 years ago, and as a basis for speculating how the perspectives of those 70 years into the future might differ from ones we hold today.

That’s what I would do about the Kenneth Adams mural. But since I’ve read Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks this week, I’ve wondered … what would bell hooks do? (WWbhD?)

I won’t attempt to seriously speculate an answer to that question, but based on her book, here are some reasons why I believe bell hooks might support my solution. First, she emphasizes throughout the book the importance of not just thinking and thoughts and words, but the resulting actions and behaviors; I don’t believe she would tolerate silence or be content with verbal outrage. Second, she advocates for living in community, which for her goes beyond simple recognition of diversity to what she defines as pluralism, or “commitment to communicate with and relate to the larger world — with a very different neighbor, or a distant community.” She recognizes the humanizing value of living with and among “folks not like us” (my term). Entering into the dialogue I’ve proposed initiates that type of communication. Third, she reiterates that those seeking to advance anti-racist, anti-white-supremacist attitudes (and behaviors) must be willing to accept and expect that change among the racists, et al, is possible, and that change can and must involve learning to unlearn racist, white supremacist, patriarchal ways and views. Therefore I believe that bell hooks would also see the potential for learning and opportunity for community building that the presence of the Kenneth Adams mural provides.

Would something like I proposed work? Does something, anything, even need to be done? What if nothing is done? It seems to me that the worst failing for an educational institution is for it to avoid a learning opportunity or fail to take advantage of a “teachable moment.” I’ve experienced this before. As I wrote in a column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in May 2008, two months earlier the trustees of TCU had run away from hosting an event to honor and feature the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, less than two weeks after then-Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in America, which had been precipitated by video clips from Reverend Wright’s sermons. I asked then, what if Reverend Wright had been permitted to come as planned? What educational value might the TCU students have derived? “This community had an opportunity to go beyond talking about talking about race. We could have started the conversation.” The pressure to thwart that conversation was exerted by white male patriarchs whose primary concern was not educating the students, but rather not offending multi-million dollar donors. Here at UNM, there does not seem to be any existential pressure from either critics or the administration. So perhaps this is simply an essay written to complete an assignment. But it seems to me that someone should be considering if this could be a learning opportunity that’s too valuable to ignore. What matters isn’t the speculation about what bell hooks would do, but the consequences of what UNM does, or doesn’t, do.

The following four photos were taken on June 30 with the permission of the Dean’s office at the U. of New Mexico. They depict the four-panel mural painted by Kenneth Adams, commissioned by then-University President James Fulton Zimmerman in 1939 and funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). According to the student newspaper (The Lobo) in February 1939 (source: http://elibrary.unm.edu/zimmerman/murals.php):

Murals for the new library will be painted by Kenneth Adams. They have to fit into the architectural structure of the building and will be purely architectural decoration. Mr. Adams theme is to get away from the printed word by the use of New Mexican materials. He will present the three racial groups, Indian, Spanish-American, and Anglo, and show the intermingling of their cultures.

The text on that same  UNM Zimmerman Library web page further explains:

The original proposal for the murals was made by President James Fulton Zimmerman who described them in the grant application as:

1. The Indian, showing his work as the artist;
2. The Spanish, giving a general idea of their contributions to the civilization in this area in the fields of agriculture and architecture;
3. The Anglo, with scientific contributions; and
4. The union of all three in the life of the Southwest.

The Zimmerman Library was designed by renowned Southwestern architect John Gaw Meem and also built as part of the WPA, is considered a historically significant building by the American Institute of Architects.

Read my essay about the mural after you look at the images for yourself.

After reading the first chapter of Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society, I felt something like a cheerleader rooting for the home team. With no significant exceptions, I agreed with his characterizations about problematic schools created by and perpetuated within by a problematic society (thinking about the U.S. specifically). I concurred with his analysis and the presentation of his arguments regarding the economic wastes associated with schooling; the cycle of dependency that schools create within the society; the misplaced trust and reliance on credentials or certifications; the instilled presumption that children (and adults) must learn within the context of a school or else “learning” doesn’t take place; the inevitable and inarguable social divisions that schools exacerbate; and, perhaps most indicting, the fact that despite ever-increasing resources and expenditures, the gap continues to widen between the actual performance of schools compared to the expectations of the communities which support them.

However, after standing to cheer Illich for his “victory” in articulating the problems, I found myself dealing with a similar dissolution as I felt with Freire. Once again, I interpreted a major disconnect between the insightful diagnosis of a dire, perhaps intractable, institutional failing, and the resulting grand pronouncements of an ideologically-consistent but pragmatically- unworkable “non-starter” of a prescription. When I read Illich’s admission on page 73 that the “educational institutions I will propose, however, are meant to serve a society which does not now exist,” my inclination was to throw the book to the floor — so why even bother? At what point do these intellectually-gifted but reality-challenged revolutionary theorists acknowledge that they do not have the luxury of starting clean, without the dirty constraints of a real world peopled by real people who continue to act everyday in accordance with an established set of ideals, attitudes, presumptions, beliefs, expectations, and uncompromising demands?

Thankfully, and appreciatively, that point was exhibited yesterday in Bill Moyers’ interview with Myles Horton regarding his Highlander School. Rather than theorize about an idyllic prescription to manifest “the revolution,” Horton chose to take the approach that engineers might call a “prototype” or “proof of principle.” On a small scale, he implemented big ideas. He demonstrated in action the first necessary change required for “the revolution” — that people can learn to think differently from what they have been taught; indeed, they can learn to think for themselves, as themselves.

I don’t recall that Horton talked specifically about changing thinking, but I interpreted this from his comment that (paraphrasing) we’re about people, not institutions, and nothing will change until we change.

I immediately recalled the quote attributed to Einstein, in various forms, that I’ve noted as, “The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.” I believe that Myles Horton lived the principle that Einstein advocated; not only did he change the way he thought about problems, he taught (or facilitated) others to change their own thinking. I also infer from his comment to Moyers that Horton understood the abstract nature of what our language reifies as institutions. Institutions are created, perpetuated, and peopled by people. Therefore to change an institution, you have to change the people who people that institution. And the first step in the change process is to change the thinking.

Two recent experiences illustrate the effects of “institutional” thinking that has not changed because the thinking of individuals has not changed.

Yesterday morning I left my apartment at 6:45a to walk to the Santa Fe Depot to catch the train to Albuquerque. As soon as I stepped outside I heard a low-level humming noise that I first associated with a lawn mower. Within two blocks of the downtown post office, I located the noise source as a worker with a backpack-mounted gasoline-powered leaf blower who was clearing the employee parking lot on the north side of the post office. (I assume stronger-than-usual winds the night before could be blamed for whatever needed to be blown.) My first judgmental reaction was about the early morning noise pollution created by this worker, which caused me to ask myself rhetorically, “why couldn’t you just use a broom?” Not only would that not disturb the neighbors within a three-block radius, but you wouldn’t be wasting gasoline and burning more carbon.

I contemplated this question all the way to the Depot. I came to the conclusion that this worker, and undoubtedly his employer who contracted with whatever governmental entity managed the facilities for the post office, chose to use the gasoline-powered leaf blower because it was the most time- and cost-efficient solution. Assuming the parking lot needed to be leaf-free, the leaf blower might get the job done in a fraction of the time that it would take the same worker to sweep the leaves with a broom. For the contractor, the cost of the gasoline, the emissions, and the noise were insignificant as compared to his out-of-pocket hourly cost for the labor. With the more efficient blower, the contractor could offer the facility manager a good value proposition — for perhaps no more than $20 cost to the manager, the contractor would give her a leaf-free lot (assuming an hour of labor with applicable overheads and profit).

But I kept thinking, why not the broom? If it took the worker an hour with the leaf blower, would it take that much longer with a broom? Which led me to question the need for clearing the lot in the first place; how much was it really worth for the manager to have a leaf-free lot? Would she pay $1,000? Obviously not. Was it worth $50, if that’s what the broom method cost? Maybe, maybe not. So from the manager’s standpoint, there was only value to be gained from the work if the cost for the work was minimal. The leaf blower, powered by a small amount of affordable gasoline, provided the means for this value proposition to be satisfactory to all parties. Except me, of course, and perhaps a few of my sleep-deprived neighbors. What’s there to even think about?

Well, just last week Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” highlighted in brilliant, comedic detail the decades-old institutional thinking that has maintained and assured the value proposition for small gasoline engines — and big ones. The day after President Obama’s Oval Office declaration to the nation that “now is the moment” for this generation of Americans to “seize control of our own destiny” regarding foreign oil dependence, Stewart’s team pieced together video footage from each of the seven presidents preceding Obama who pronounced similar pablum about petroleum. Beginning with Nixon in 1974, who promised to “break the back of the energy crisis, to meet America’s needs from America’s resources,” each decried our dependence on foreign oil and extolled our can-do ability to break that dependence. For Nixon in 1974, the target date was 1980; for Ford in 1975, 1985; for Carter in 1979, 2000; for Bush in 2006, merely a 75% reduction by 2025. (Apparently, good things don’t always come to those who wait.) Each president touted new technologies, new ideas, new know-how, etc. But yet, if we can consider the U.S. demand for foreign oil as a cancerous pathology, rather than an addiction, it would seem the cancer has now metastasized beyond any foreseeable cure that would not, in turn, kill the patient.

I argue that this particular cancer is the result of self-serving, yet collaborative, institutional thinking by corporate entities that are too big to be displaced. Oil companies, natural gas companies, the drilling industries, the refineries, the automobile manufacturers, parts suppliers, and all the businesses, schools, and government tax bases that depend on petroleum cannot allow thinking that obviates their products and services. Without attributing any more nefarious motives to them other than self-interested profitability and desire to maintain the petroleum-based status quo, these corporate interests, together with their governmental accomplices, have facilitated the fallacious thinking that we can just “keep on keeping on” with respect to our “American way of life.”

The success of this institutionalized message/thought control is that, for many (most?) Americans, the post-BP spill national priority ought to simply be a return to “normal” as soon as possible. The thought that this type of thinking could be debated, or even considered, seems … unthinkable.

It’s ironic-to-me that in 1974, when Nixon first proposed energy independence as a national objective, there was nothing known as a “personal computer.” The following year, a small company in Albuquerque built a kit known as the Altair 8800 that was featured on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine. Two friends at Harvard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, bought the magazine and rushed to Albuquerque to convince the Altair’s designer and owner, Ed Roberts, that they could write the software for the Altair. They eventually left to form their own company, Microsoft. In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs formed Apple Computer in California. Thus was born the personal computer industry.

So in the past 36 years, one industry —personal computing — was created and has grown beyond any realistic expectations, while another industry — petroleum — has steadily grown, despite repeated pronouncements by presidents that this cannot be sustained. So while our thinking about computers has changed dramatically, our thinking about petroleum — and all its economical, ecological, and environmental consequences — has not. It would seem that we Americans can adapt our thinking to assimilate new and inventive and innovative discontinuities (like personal computers), but we have a hard time accepting the inevitable discontinuities associated with displacing or obviating long-established institutions that have satisfactorily served us in the past, and at the present.

Therefore initiatives like Myles Horton’s Highlander School are needed now more than ever, with ever-increasing stakes, but for the same purpose — not to promote change that can be believed in, but change in thinking that inexorably necessitates action.

Episode 9 of the Charlie Rose Brain Series focused on major brain/mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. With series co-host Eric Kandel, their panel includes two experts who are also patients: (from the available transcript)

Kay Redfield Jamison is a world renowned authority on bipolar disorder, a disease she has struggled with throughout her adulthood. She is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of Johns Hopkins Mood Disorder Center.

Elyn Saks was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. After keeping the disease private for most of her adult life, she publicly revealed her illness in 2007. She is a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of law and founder of the Saks Institute of Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at USC.

Jeffrey Lieberman studies the neurobiology of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. He is a professor at Columbia University and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Stephen Warren’s research helped isolate the gene responsible for fragile x syndrome. He is now studying the genetic basis of the major psychiatric disorders.

Helen Mayberg uses scanning technology to isolate the brain regions involved in clinical depression. She has performed studies that illustrate the positive effects of deep brain stimulation on depressed patients.

Some highlights discussed in the 17-minute excerpt below:

• Whereas grief is an emotion that virtually every human will experience and is therefore accepted and supported by societies, severe depression is not suffered by everyone and therefore usually results in patients feeling isolated. Grief is a natural human condition that people can normally deal with; depression requires treatment.
• Mental illness continues to carry a social stigma, which is reflected in discriminatory insurance reimbursement restrictions.
• The most effective treatments for mental illnesses are usually a combination of drugs and psychotherapy.
• Recent research confirms that the benefits of psychotherapy result in actual biological changes in the brain, as do pharmaceutical treatments.
• Mental illnesses result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
• The biological effects of depression can be evidenced by brain imaging.

View the full episode online at the Charlie Rose site.

Problem-Posing vs. Problem-Solving

When I was searching the online catalog for an afternoon course to take this term, I knew I’d found something that would resonate with me when I read the description for this course.  The topic of “foundations of educational philosophy” was one that pertained directly to the reason I chose the Educational Psychology program. Then when I read the full Course Description in the syllabus, I immediately noticed the phrases “critical educational philosophy” and “reproduction of inequality.” I couldn’t wait.

I couldn’t wait because what motivates me during this period of my life is a desire to change one aspect of the educational process. But that one aspect — the teaching of language habits that are less beholden to arbitrary conventions and more consistent with what we now understand from the physical and neuro-physiological sciences — is so general that it relates and applies to virtually all subject areas. So in the process of developing my thesis, I am eager to learn about different educational philosophies and modes of thinking which have been proposed, implemented, and evaluated.

I brought a ‘critical’ (to my definition) attitude or predisposition into the course based on three primary factors. The first is based on the experiences I had during the summer of 2001 when, for three months, I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher. After a six-year career in the Air Force and twenty years as a program manager in the defense electronics industry, I knew I wanted something different. Somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to simply teach high school in a small town. However, as I learned more about what “being a teacher” in the Texas public schools meant in 2001, I knew it would be a bad fit for my temperament. My disillusions with the Texas public schools were many, but primarily included their myopic view of academic credentials as competence, insistence and reliance on standardized tests (pre-NCLB), a salary structure that encouraged teachers to leave the classroom in favor of administration, and, of course, pay graduated on seniority that, for a mid-life adult, was not acceptable.

The second critical aspect that contributed to my pre-class views is a bias in favor of science, or more specifically, a bias favoring a scientific approach or attitude. The more I’ve learned about physics, neuroscience, biology, etc., the more I’ve come to appreciate the general application of the scientific method to a broad array of problems and issues, even those that don’t have anything to do with science per se.

The third notion that has been important in my motivations is a phrase used by Jose Ortega y Gasset (mentioned in the Foreword to Pedagogy of the Oppressed). In his Mission of the University (1930), y Gasset summarizes that mission as to enable students to live “at the height of the times.” I find that a reasonably-idealistic objective to aim for, and, unfortunately, one that the current educational system fails to even acknowledge, much less attempt.

So I was eager to get into Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Through Chapter 2, I was generally onboard. While I was still trying to digest the implications of his clear-cut segregation of the oppressed and the oppressors, I was reassured by some familiar terms. He mentioned science, not unfavorably. He wrote about notions from humanistic psychology that I recognized — fully human (also referred to as fully functioning, full humanness, and self-actualizing by Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and others); becoming, here and now. His discussion about the I and non-I were in keeping with the Taoist notion of yin and yang, which the physicist Niels Bohr called complementarity. And Freire characterized the opposites of the “banking” metaphor that are quite consistent with a scientific orientation: not static and unchanging (in other words, process-oriented, dynamic, always changing); not students as objects or receptacles (but as co-human beings); not independent and unattached (but inter-dependent and inter-related); not isolated (but inter-connected within a context or environment).

However, I grew increasingly frustrated through the remainder of the book. I realize that some of the difficulties I encountered and my initial criticisms might be more attributable to the inherent problems of translation and decisions made by the translator, not Freire. Rather than enumerate a list of what I view as inconsistencies or contradictions which might artifacts of translation, I’d like to focus on two inter-related flaws that I discern in Freire’s philosophy.

Despite his professed embrace of science, his writing (hence his thinking) does not reflect an understanding of what that means. When one engages in the practice of a scientific process, one deals from particulars to generalities, from observations to judgments, from data to results to significance. It seems apparent to me that Freire begins with his conclusions (theories, judgments, opinions, etc.) and persistently sticks to those conclusions, without bothering to actually acknowledge real data, observations, or even examples. If he were presenting Pedagogy as merely another philosophical treatise, I’d have no reason (nor interest) to criticize. But in presenting this a methodology, and couching it in science-friendly terms, I believe he’s obligated to adhere to certain minimum standards of critical discourse.

Instead, he resorts to the same rhetorical techniques commonly employed by propagandists. He presents his own evaluative constructions as though they were objective facts; in the same manner as you noted in class that race is a construct, I would argue that the oppressor, the oppressed, society, elites, the revolution and other similar abstractions are all constructs. Once constructed, Freire proceeds to reify and imbue each with all-encompassing, monolithic, unqualified, unchanging and absolute properties that must necessarily conform to his thesis. After so one-dimensionally defining and characterizing these monolithic constructs, Freire then projects his own evaluations and judgments as if they were coming from the oppressor, society, etc. With no hint of reserve or qualification, Freire attributes to them intentions, motivations, reactions, expectations, and general thinking as if he were actually inside their heads. (Save for one instance I found, on the third page of Chapter 4, where he acknowledged “it is my contention …”)

Given these gross, stereotyped constructions, Freire then turns logic on its head and decries, and eliminates by definition, what would normally be seen as dichotomies. For example, on the fourth page of Chapter 4, he explains that “no dichotomy by which this praxis could be divided into a prior stage of reflection and a subsequent stage of action. Action and reflection occur simultaneously.” How does something prior and something subsequent “occur simultaneously”? Freire eliminates the dichotomy by definition: “Critical reflection is also action.”

Therefore in Freire’s constructed world everything is related, but related as monolithic generalizations. This is perhaps the primary reason why Freire seems to advocate that there is no point in solving any one problem unless, in the course of solving that one problem, you solve all problems as he has constructed them, which ultimately results in “the revolution” that eliminates any vestige of the oppressor/oppressed construct.

Bertrand Russell noted that, “The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” To my reading of Freire, this is the flaw — even if one were to accept his gross generalizations as an accurate depiction of “the current situation” (or one of the current situations) he has so convoluted the statement of the problem(s) with his obtuse and (in my estimation) confused and contradictory reliance on “the people” for solutions, there is simply no place to start. He has stated a problem so gargantuan, so historically-rooted, so globally-interrelated, that it would seem folly to even consider possible solution(s).

This is a shame because, despite my critical reaction, I can say that Freire’s ideas have affected my thinking about two current events.

Regarding the BP oil disaster, the big news from yesterday was the apology offered to BP executive Tony Hayward by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). Barton apologized to Hayward and BP for the, in his words, $20B “shakedown” that President Obama had forced on BP. Within four hours of the hearing, however, Barton was forced to backtrack from this apology. But it caused me to think about those individual victims who can be labeled as directly “oppressed” by the oil spill. And who would the “oppressors” be? Just BP? Hardly. Barton’s outburst could clearly be read as representative of a multi-industry, multi-governmental, multi-interested coalition with power to “oppress” everyone outside of that coalition. So what if, rather than focusing on just scapegoating BP, “we” were to take advantage of this opportunity to expose through dialogue the nature of this coalition of oppressors in a limited, semi-Freire-ian approach? I could see the benefit of ‘leveling’ the strata dividing, in this instance, not only the oppressed and the oppressors, but everyone within the context of the global environment.

Likewise, in Santa Fe there is a local controversy that could provide another test bed for a semi-Freire-ian application. On the grounds of the Santa Fe Indian School, now managed by a governing council made up of the nineteen pueblos, the architecturally-significant amphitheater designed by Paolo Solieri over fifty years ago is slated for demolition. The governing council has made it clear, according to news reports, that the amphitheater is too costly to maintain and doesn’t fit into their long-term plans. It sits on tribal land, so the council has sole decision-making authority. However, the tribal land sits within the city of Santa Fe and is serviced by local utilities. Some local officials want to leverage those utilities in an attempt to force the council to reconsider their decision. This also seems like an opportunity to apply Freire’s general approach for dialogue between two parties with different perspectives as to rights, power, culture, and self-determination, because the current dispute arises out of the past injustices. Linking the current dispute to its historical roots would widen the dialogue to address those injustices and their implications for today and the future.

That, to me, would validate at least part of Freire. While it might not end all oppression everywhere, it would go beyond merely posing a problem — it might solve one.

[This is the first of four papers required for a graduate course I'm taking, Philosophy of Education. Posted for no reason other than vanity.]

Born within a generation, living and working within 30 miles of each other, and publishing seminal works within a six-year period, Horace Mann, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau articulated viewpoints about a contentious American ideal that still, after 170 years, stokes and stimulates ongoing tensions. The conflict I’m referring to is that between the professed American celebration of individuality and the far more prevalent behaviors, whether dictated or chosen, associated with conformity.

I first became aware of conformity in high school. After surviving a car accident, I had a “born again” Christian experience and became active in an inter-denominational youth group in my small home town. Within months after my “re-birth” the talented members of the group performed a Christian musical, “Tell It Like It Is.” One of the more emotionally engaging numbers began with a robotic, yet melodic, refrain: Conform. Conform. I simply must conform! The scripture referenced in the song was Romans 12:2 which advised to “be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewal of you mind.”

I took that message to heart. Even though I chose to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy to play football, I didn’t necessarily see a conflict between my individuality on one hand, and the military regimentation and authoritative conditioning to follow orders, do your duty, and conform to the program.

However, by my junior year I began considering this conflict again, prompted by reading Emerson and Thoreau in an American Literature class. Subsequently, I tried to summarize my thoughts in a one-act play titled “The Unveiling of Ourselves.” Set as a Greek morality play, my hero (“YOU”) struggles to find himself and his own identity as he is pulled by the demands of his peers (“THE GROUP”) and the temptations of an attractive seductress (“WAYS OF THE WORLD”, or “WOW”). After surviving a literal tug-of-war between the two, YOU rejects both and, through the course of the play, is determined to exercise his own will and know himself. In the end, he “unveils” himself to the audience by stripping down to a large diaper, labeled “ME”.

What did Emerson and Thoreau have to say about this subject that prompted such introspection by a college junior? The two essays that most influenced me were Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (1841) and Thoreau’s “Walden” (1846).

I found in Emerson a persuasive advocacy for what I would call responsible individualism. His self-reliance opposed conformity. He rejected the idea of accepting any law unless that law was in accordance to his own constitution. He warned about others who seemed to think they knew better for him than he himself. Despising consistency as a near-cousin to conformity, he observed that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” He warned that others will come to expect out of you only what your past has indicated, but you are under no obligation to appease their expectations.

Thoreau likewise advocated against conformity and the status quo of public thought. But the statements from “Walden” that especially resonated with me were those that celebrated the first person “I” and that person’s abilities, if exercised, to experience life fresh and new, without respect to others’ dictates or expectations. He forthrightly proclaimed within the first few paragraphs that he would, against convention, use the first person “I” liberally, reminding the reader that, after all, it’s always the first person speaking. And he acknowledged that all he can really know is himself through his own experiences, therefore his observations would be so limited. He decried the prejudices of the old and appealed to the young to forego them based on their own actual life experiences; “old deeds for old people, new deeds for new.” He advocated that individuals embrace life in all its aspects, to take on what he called the “experiment of living.” And he recognized the consequences of not following such an individually-adopted course in his oft-quoted observation that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Clearly, both Emerson (born in 1803) and Thoreau (born in 1817) were motivated by some urgent passion to advocate a new orientation for living, or world view, that seemingly was a radical departure from the then-current conventional ways of thinking. What type of public mindsets or worldviews were they reacting so strongly against?

I can only speculate, but I believe a case can be made that Horace Mann (born in 1796) can be considered a likely suspect. In 1840, after presiding over the nation’s first public, or common, school for just a year, Mann wrote On the Art of Teaching. While he did not specifically mention conformity, to my reading his words taken as a whole reflect an unmistakable disposition toward conformity as an unstated, yet not unwelcomed, consequence (if not intention) of his recommendations for teachers.  Therefore I find it conceivable that Mann’s writings in 1840 could have at least partially motivated or fueled Emerson’s reactionary thoughts in 1841 and Thoreau’s in 1846.

Consider these four manifestations of conformance as I interpret Mann:

Conformance to Authority (in defining what should be learned and known). Mann presumes a fixed, static and perfectly-knowable body of knowledge, as if all that needs to be learned can be bound by some previously-defined curriculum container (my term).

Conformance to Process and Method. Mann exalts the efficiency and expediency of getting to the right answer in the prescribed manner, in the interests of time management. This attitude disregards the benefits to learners of pursuing and discovering alternative, creative, imaginative, or otherwise unique solutions. He reinforces the stifling and stagnating attitude that there is only one approved solution that we have used, and will always use.

Conformance to Roles and Responsibilities. Mann’s approach completely compartmentalizes the role of the teacher as the dispenser of information, and that of the students as the receptacles for the information. The teacher teaches; the learners learn. Nowhere is this more evident than in his stern admonition to teachers to immediately correct any and every student mistake. Failure to correct, according to Mann, is considered equal to “wrong instruction.” If practiced, this approach denies the student the opportunity to exercise his or her own capabilities to critically discern what others say or write. It reinforces the authority and responsibility of the authority figure and dis-empowers the student.

Conformance to Convention. Not surprisingly, Mann insists that teachers not allow any laxity in enforcing “proper” grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc. While there is some benefit for individuals to comply with commonly-accepted language habits within a society, a slavish attention to the niceties of grammar, etc., — especially without any acknowledgement that every aspect of language is arbitrary at some level — further reinforces the false notion that such niceties possess an inherent “rightness.” This is but one case that illustrates how foolish conformities are justified: we must do it this way because it is (inherently) the right way.

This tension between conformity and individuality continues to play out across the American cultural landscape. While we maintain cultural icons of individuality — the rugged individual in John Wayne movies, the nostalgic romance of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause, or even the recently-deceased Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider —  what perpetuates the icon is the fact that these characters remain the exceptions in our actual culture. For every “rebel” there are millions of [Men] in the Gray Flannel Suit; for every Kerouac there are too many Willy Loman’s (Death of a Salesman) to count. Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” is realized again and again with each new day.

One motivation for a ruling group to appeal for conformity is to avoid dealing with differences. This motivation, I believe, is one factor underlying the recently-passed anti-immigation law in Arizona. Though I’ve heard no analysis that attributes the dispute to conformity, I can speculate that much of the passion that’s driven Arizona lawmakers to enact this legislation arises not from the fact that the undocumented immigrants are illegal, but that they are different. They don’t conform to the way Arizonians talk, they don’t conform to the way Arizonians live and work, and they don’t conform to the way Arizonians dress (according to one lawmaker).

But could this prejudice, or insistence on conformity, be attributable to education? Are such attitudes taught? Are they biologically determined? Are they just absorbed? Can Mann and educators following his course be blamed, or absolved, for our current condition?

That examination must be deferred to another day and another paper. However, as a new UNM Lobo myself, I’ve observed some of the freshman orientation activities on campus this week. It might be worth reminding them that mascots are chosen for reasons. Lobos, or wolves, are one of those animals that can be considered as an icon for individuality, as in the “lone wolf.” Despite the romance of this notion, in the real world lobos and wolves are hunted, trapped, and apparently shot from helicopters because they don’t conform to the rules imposed by humans on their “domesticated” animals. Lobos don’t respect fences, don’t recognize property rights, and they don’t suppress their natural predatory tendencies. They conform to nothing other than their own natures.

Go Lobos.

[Here's a video that relates to the topic.]

“Negative Emotions” is the topic for the 8th in the series, focusing on fear, anxiety, and aggression. With his co-host Eric Kandel, Charlie welcomes the panel:

Antonio Damasio — his work has helped us understand emotion, decision making, social behavior, and even consciousness. He is the Dornsife Professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California and the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute. He’s also the author of several books, including “Descartes’ Error” and “Looking for Spinoza.”

Joseph LeDoux. In the 1970s, he revolutionized his field by showing that emotions could be studied in animals. He’s a university professor at New York University and director of the Emotional Brain Labs at the Nathan Klein Institute. He’s also the author of the books “The Emotional Brain” and “Synaptic Self.”

Kerry Ressler — he studies the genetics and neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder, focusing on the interaction between genes and environment. He is a professor at Emory University.

David Anderson — he studies the neural circuits that control fear and anxiety. He’s a professor of neuroscience at Cal Tech and a Howard Hughes medical investigator.

Here are excerpts that I found particularly beneficial (16:09). You can view the entire episode and read the transcript (as well for all episodes in the series) online at http://www.charlierose.com/view/collection/10702