255 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2020
  2. www.e-flux.com www.e-flux.com
    1. endless

      They could be finite, due to human finitude?

    2. might

      might (more qualification)

    3. might

      might

    4. At its best, education forms collectivities—many fleeting collectivities that ebb and flow, converge and fall apart.

      Education can be the grounds to collectivise, but you can learn well atomised too (desert monks). There's a normative praise for fleeting collectives here (= lasting collective are bad). This was something of an unwritten artworld rule by the 00s.

    5. unexpected and momentary conjunctions

      How was it 'unexpected'? It was, literally, called Summit! 😂

    6. academics, art world citizens, union organizers, activists

      i.e. 'people like me'

    7. the broadly defined field of “education.”

      I don't think this is a broad definition of education. The list of people here have an active stake in education either as professional teachers (academics) or as consciousness-raisers (citizens, trade unionists, activists). A broad definition would need to include people with no idea of what their stake in education might be.

    8. and many others

      in practice (since they are unnamed) meaning, no others.

    9. is by definition

      By what definition? Education hasn't been defined in this text. Nor have we been referred to any such definitions.

    10. shared curiosities, shared subjectivities, shared sufferings, and shared passions

      It's good to share, but the list of things that are shared here is perhaps unrealistic (shared subjectivities)? You can be a paragogue, pool resources and support your peers without having to all do and feel and suffer the same way.

    11. Because, with Bologna and all its discontents

      It's interesting that in Europe, Bologna is pitched as the driving force behind the turn - the DIT movement. In the USA the driver of the DIT movement is not Bologna (no political jurisdiction or academic influence there) but the cost of higher education, specifically graduate education. It's just too costly. Viewed from the US, the EU Bologna system - free education and financial support for mobility - is a garden of roses.

    12. the site of shrinkage and disappointment

      These are good words to describe how a lot of educationalists feel - this is clearly based in lived experience, but it needs to be a bit more fleshed out to engage those who haven't known or felt this.

    13. etc.

      etc. lazy, says it all. None of this is really worked out. It's a 'voice of endless complaint' that isn't backed up with why the complaints are legit. The problem here is that Rogoff is assuming the reader knows and shares this view. While this is likely (e-flux) it still needs to be fleshed out more.

    14. If education is forever reacting to the woes of the world

      Is education forevcer reacting to the woes of the world? How so?

    15. its constant commoditization, its over-bureaucratization, its ever-increasing emphasis on predictable outcomes, etc

      Repeating the same accusations, again, sans evidence.

    16. self-organized, activist initiatives

      False dichotomy. Such initiatives are still forms of institutional practice. See Mary Douglas - How Institutions Think

    17. questions

      Does anybody have any questions?

    18. The seminar class, the think tank, the government department, the statistician’s bureau are sites for the production of questions, but we were suggesting others born of fleeting, arbitrary conversations between strangers, of convivial loitering and of unexpected lines of flight in and out of the museum as in the Ambulator project (Susan Kelly, Janna Graham, Valeria Graziano)

      I gotta lotta questions for you people! It's all questions so far. It's easy to ask questions. What about some answers? (see, that was really easy).

    19. “What can we learn from the museum?”

      Not a very good question (surely)?

    20. aimed at eliciting the unseen and unmarked possibilities that already exist within these spaces

      So, this is really about allowing the museum to breathe, to pause it's routine of generating a display/spectacle, and dig deeper. This is a valuable exercise for any institution.

    21. Similarly, they allow us to think of “learning” as taking place in situations or sites that don’t necessarily intend or prescribe such activity.

      Yes, good point. Learning can happen anywhere.

    22. such processes

      such processes ... suggests that education is a process contined within spaces/activities. This needs to be fleshed out. Is education is a process? How so? (It could be, but this is simply asserted here).

    23. individual subjectivities

      ? calling subjectivity 'individual subjectivities' tends to distinguish it from 'social processes'

    24. More importantly, it must always include within it an element of fallibility—the possibility that acting will end in failure

      Why does it have to include this? Rogoff here is, unwittingly, advocating Jean Piaget’s principle of accommodation, one that underpins constructivist educational theory: wherein pre-existing knowledge schema no longer function and have to be reframed to accommodate new learning. (Piaget 1952) Accommodation requires the partial unlearning of schema that have “failed” us. This is a mantra repeated constantly in art education - fail again, fail better. etc. It is possible that Piaget is wrong and that all of the Piaget influence (which Rogoff has absorbed here) is fallacious too.

    25. such official assessments of how learning can be evaluated and appreciated

      Bologna? Still hasn't told us what Bologna was, or how it would prevent potentiality and actualization.

    26. monitoring and outcome-based culture

      Again, where's the evidence that this is the culture? There are two cultures in academies. The quality assurance culture (which is imposed upon academies) and the scholarly culture which tends to shrug its shoulders at at the quality assurance culture and get on with what actually interests it.

    27. professionalization

      Professionalization is what academies have always been concerned with. They codify practices, teach them to students, and accredit students to certify their professional competence. This is why we can trust our dentist to give us a filling.

    28. activities and principles you can take with you and which can be applied beyond its walls to become a mode of life-long learning

      Now this could have been lifted verbatim from the Bologna Accord (lifelong learning is a key EU educational objective). The idea that learning has to be applied is utilitarianism - something that most educationalists would reject.

      Of course it is completely ludicrous to suggest - as this does - that academies haven't thought that what they teaching might relate to what goes on outside of the academy.

    29. vital principles and activities

      What are these 'vital principles' we are hearing about in this essay? All sounds like an empty promise; a tagline.

    30. cademies often focus on what it is that people need to know

      Really (evidence)? How do academies know what it is that people need to know?

    31. tension between the question of what one needs to know

      ??? tension between what one needs to know...

    32. a generative moment in which a new horizon emerges in the process—leaving behind the practice that was its originating point?

      The various turns in academe and art are often turns against, rather than away from, a dominant paradigm. For example, the material turn is a turn against many of the cherished ideas associated with the social turn.

    33. the museum to open a place for people to engage ideas differently

      Differently to what?

      Museums - in 2008 - were open places for people to engage ideas (at least those that did not charge entrance fees).

    34. beyond what it sets out to teach us

      Again, this seems to really misrepresent museums. It's a caricature of the museum. Museums aren't didactic (at least not in 2008), they do not 'set out to teach us'. Museums care for the things that they host; they conserve. Museums also do significant research.

    35. producing perfectly trained, efficient, and informed workers for the cultural sector

      Not really what Bologna was aiming for - it was actually about enabling students and scholars to learn from their Wanderjahre. This really is something deeply routed in European learning, it dates back to the early middle ages, to before the era of nation/states. Bologna was trying to rekindle this.

    36. actualization

      actualization - vague

    37. actualization

      Lots of actualization here. Not much actualization of clarity.

    38. Let’s really politicize education.

      Again, it already was politicised and can't really not be.

    39. a broader range of institutional activities

      Very vague. Institutional activities sounds a bit sinister!

    40. the principles we cherish in the education process

      What exactly are the principles we cherish in the education process? Doesn't tell us what they are. Assumes that we all cherish the same principles.

    41. unexpected politicization of the discussion around education

      This is telling. Since when has the discussion of education been anything other than politicised?! Education is fundamental to the class structure for staters.

    42. with their emphasis on quantifiable and comparable outcomes

      This is testimony to a lack of engagement with educational research in Europe. Firstly, the general approach to learning outcomes in Bologna (constructivism) was very very well established in K-12 schooling (pedagogy) and FE/HE (andragogy) globally. The EU was really catching up here. Secondly, the EU was aiming to improve the Erasmus+ exchange programme with the goal of ensuring mobility in each cycle (UG>PGT>PhD). The Erasmus+ exchange programme has been one of the great success stories of the EU and the attempt to create a very basic linga franca to enable it was a highly ambitious grand project that challenged the kind of neorealist educational politics that hindered Europe for so many centuries.

    43. can surpass their current functions

      What vital current functions? We need to know what they are before we know if they can surpass them (or if they are worth surpassing, they might be okay as they are.)

    44. these questions ask

      This is the pathetic fallacy. Questions don't ask anything, people ask questions.

    45. How might we also perhaps apply them to our institutions?

      Apply the vital principles? But the academy is an institution. This is circular.

    46. speculation, expansion, and reflexivity without the constant demand for proven results

      This is pitching 'speculation, expansion, and reflexivity' against a straw man. The straw man is the idea that academia is constantly demanding proven results. Academia is preoccupied with speculation, expansion, and reflexivity. Proven results = completed research. Academia isn't interested so much in that. The demand for proven results is thus more likely a sideways swipe at educational constructivism, specifically the Bologna Process an oven-ready Bogey Man in discussions about education in Europe. In art/education discourse, the Bologna Process is a bit like neoliberalism; it's blamed for all ills but never defined or elucidated.

    47. as a moment of learning within the safe space of an academic institution

      This is a bit confused. If an academy is time-based (a moment of learning) why does it have to be in an academic institution? A moment of learning could happen anywhere. It doesn't have to occur in an instition at all, never mind an academy. It's also not the case that academic institutions are safe spaces; the battle to make them safe spaces still rages.

    48. the museum sets out to show or teach

      This begs the question... what exactly is it that the museum sets out to show or teach? There are lots of museums doing different things with different things, many modalities. This is quite a vague question that seems to suggest museums are monolithic entities that can only support a limited range of learning styles. Most museum curators (and educational officers) would contest this!

    49. threaten to harden into a recognizable “style,”

      Art criticism, since the end of the '70s at least, is always suspicious of style. Style = bad. Style without substance. It's true that there are lots of examples of artworks that have an edu-style, much as, say, there were lots of art works that had an 'administrative aesthetic' during the heyday of Conceptual Art in the '60s and '70s. But I don't buy the idea that style = bad. It seems to be bias that design theory and cult studs got over long long ago.

    50. “knowledge economies”

      Yup. This is the kind of flattening language of management culture that imagines knowledge to be just another a commodity that's produced and 'delivered' (deliver a programme; post content).

    51. Although quite different in their genesis, methodology, and protocols

      Yes, they are different disciplines and have their own practices and ways of seeing.

    52. address education

      It didn't really address organised education (K-12, FE, HE) since that wasn't artistic or sexy enough. Nor did it tend to have any enagement with educational research (beyond fairly dated radical pedagogy). It was more concerned with platforming something akin to consciousness raising.

    53. an active movement

      Of course, there has been an active movement to engage with education by activists per se (e.g. Workers' Ed Movement, Consciousness Raising, Ragged Schools, etc.). So it's likely that there is going to be something tangible here.

    54. an aesthetics of pedagogy

      This would be producing works of art or curating exhibitions that are representations of what 'teaching' looks like/of how it is practised. They remain representations of learning rather than learning practices.

    55. reading one system—a pedagogical one

      This is an interesting idea - we take a method from one discipline and use it to read, or gain a different insight into, another. This is called 'extradisciplinarity'. Art is notoriously extradisciplinary.