Teaching As Dialogue

Posts related to my book “Teaching As Dialogue”

A Vision: The Idea of a University in the Present Age

January 22, 2010 in Next Places, Nietzsche's Prophecy, Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

[Download the PDF version or read the full text below. Updated from previously published version in Organization, May 2001; vol. 8: pp. 403 - 415.]

Abstract. My vision for the future university acknowledges the facts of rapid change in the world. It attempts to conserve the idea of the university as structures and process by centering the university on a study of changes as they are redefining knowledge. As vision, it asks that faculties join in Centers for the Study of the Present Age to discuss, teach and attempt to shape the futures of Science and Technology and their ramifications. Key words. future university; new vision; re-center the university; study of present age

The vision: when I speak and think of the university, I have in mind the largest institution, the greatest number of students at all levels, professional as much as academic; graduate and postgraduate, as well as undergraduate.

The curriculum is at its maximum: some 150 subjects/disciplines in which one can garner a PhD. I have in mind, then, the largest public research universities, especially those which (also) educate their students to serve their states in the traditions of Land Grant: including agriculture and the mechanical arts.

While there are ample reasons to describe a private (research) university of fame or privilege as the descriptor of the university – say, the top of the pyramid of American universities, an Oxbridge or a Berlin – I think it important for our understanding of the present toward the future to consider the university serving the interests of the widest public or publics. In this setting, I intend to focus on the structure-processes of the institution, but particularly on how the idea of a university will intersect with, even help to define, the nature of the future.

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Seeing Somebody There

January 18, 2010 in Language and Human Nature, Next Places, On Human Nature (WIP), Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

“What scientists do when a paradigm fails is, guess what, they carry on as if nothing happened.”

After watching this TED video of Elaine Morgan, updating us about the latest evolutionary research supporting the hypothesis that we evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats and the connection between nakedness and water in mamals, I thought I’d share my unedited essay on Elaine’s other examined ideas about m/other-child interaction from her book “The Descent of the Child: Human Evolution From a New Perspective“. Many paradigms need updating these days!

So, first the TED video updating on how we evolved, followed by my essay updating how we become somebody (interested folks might also like to see my (shorter) post about this.)

 

Seeing Somebody There

Introduction

The broader context of this essay explores the fact that we humans are socially interactive creatures: “bodies-in-interaction.” Our individuality, the development of the self and/or the I, is an “emergent” aspect of the human condition.

Fact is italicized since the history and current thinking about the human and how we are, think, know…has managed to omit this fact. Why so, and what differences it makes in how we think about the human, the world…are at the heart of this discussion.

The human has been characterized as each (physical) individual, essentially separate or independent of others – at least early on in life. The individual has been characterized in terms of knowledge or mind: the individual is taken to be an embodied mind. The mind – how we know or have knowledge – is the factor of our being which is raised to the status of definition of our being.

In my experience, thought, and observations, this is not an accurate characterization of the human. Though it has been the completely dominant idea of the human – particularly in Western thinking – it leads us away from the experience and truth of our being – tends to focus on certain of our (presumed) abilities as definitional – and mis- or under-estimates many others. The facts of our faces being central to our being, for example, has been hardly studied or much considered in thinking about what is the human.

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General Semantics Conference, NYC 9/11-13

September 10, 2009 in Language and Human Nature, Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

I’ll be going to NYC this weekend for a conference on “General Semantics” – seems there’s a growing interest in Media Ecology, my former teachers who contributed to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman – and I’ll be giving a talk exploring my interests and my teachers in the context of a review of Edward T. Hall (buddy of G.L. Trager – my teacher). Meeting with Dan Latorre (especially), a former student of mine continuing in extended conversations about the media, especially.

“The 57th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture & Dinner and 3-Day International Istitute for General Semantics Conference”
Conference Schedule (PDF)

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COPS

August 4, 2009 in Foundations Project, Language and Human Nature, On Human Nature (WIP), Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

Who are cops…the police? Mostly guys, mostly white. In the past few decades a few women, more and more “ethnic” persons: some African-American, in Minneapolis-St. Paul they reflect the recent immigrations…somewhat…as far as I know. Not too many Hmong persons, a few Latinos from various countries…

Who are we…in thinking about the police – wondering how they think about us, and what they’re “up to?” How many of us would like to be cops? Do police “like” being cops, or filled to various levels of…fear, import, wondering about each next person, in each approaching moment?

How do they get to be cops? I mean what’s inside their heads, their thinking, that we might get to understand in their terms – more than in our reactive minds?

Also important – maybe very important is the fact that they dress in “uniforms.” Uniforms seem to take individual identity and help make them all into police – cops. (Where has their “individuality” gone?)

More signs: their cars, bright flashing lights, rear seats which can be made very separate from the front ones; painted black and white (in lots of places). Quite obvious. (Except that we might forget to notice them when we’re driving a bit too fast: over the speed limit. And they can make really loud siren noises which instill us with fear and the immediate reaction to stop, and pull over.)

All this to say that the police have quite a “presence” in the world: in many/most senses they are all “alike.” Uniform…has several meanings and even more connotations. (The differences between police and the military? – has gotten a bit complicated and confusing especially in these moments driven by war, terror, fear… (Observing the RNC meeting in St. Paul last fall: the police “looked” remarkably like military – faces obscured, wearing odd/different uniforms, carrying threatening looks and clubs. Whatever it takes to “keep the peace” said the mayors!)

Sargeant Crowley and that “Uppity Professor” (from Harvard no less), “Skip” Gates. What were the exact circumstances? Never totally clear: perhaps so “obvious” to many of us, that the moment-to-moment “facts” don’t seem very important to the situation.

A white cop (likely with some ethnic background which might still be “important” – was very important a couple of generations ago – Irish Catholic? Boston, a long history of Irish Catholics bathing in money and power. But we should remember the movie, “Gangs of New York” pitching the Irish immigrants against the (then) white Protestant majority to taste those senses of their history. Tough (mostly) guys? Ethnics, culture: what sorts of culture do the police have? “White ethnicity: gone entirely or some residuals?

And an African American, in many ways “the African-American Professor” in these times when being “Black” is taking on some “new” meanings, especially as Barack Obama is our President. And Harvard: In “spite” of being at Harvard, Gates is probably the most important historian/critic of what is African-American. Read the rest of this entry »

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My Teachers, Part 4: Lessons from My Teachers

August 2, 2009 in Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

(Further notes after my first “My Teachers” post.)

Lessons from My Teachers:

Observe, observe, try to see in every moment, context, persons, relationships…I now call myself an “Anthropologist of the Ordinary.” (My sense is that many Anthropologists are more anthropologists of the …Exotic!)

Go to the field – live there for extended periods of time – take a “vacation” and return to the field, and not what (more) I see than I had before.

Went to U. Chicago for PhD – studied with linguist, N. McQuown who was supervisor in Mayan studies. U. of C. became a kind of experiential fieldwork for my own experience examining the University (“the” University). Daughter born in Chicago. Then to Mexico.

Return home (big fieldwork to Mexico was for 2 years – with J. and 5-month-old Amy). Life is a “study” of society, politics, homes, money: rich and poor, and…and…

Return home after 2 years was amazing – arrived just before Bay of Pigs, with no sense that all this was about to occur (living in Chiapas-Mayan Highlands – no newspapers, no TV, hardly any radio,  not much knowing of the world.

Whew! Life is a “whew” – mainly from Birdwhistell. Read the rest of this entry »

My Teachers, Part 3

August 1, 2009 in Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

(Further notes after my first “My Teachers” post.)

It was at Buffalo where I began to study with George Trager, Ray Birdwhistell, and Henry Lee Smith. They arrived there in the fall of 1956: I was one of their first two students. As Trager was the essential co-author of “The Silent Language,” I include E.T. Hall’s work and thinking in my education (and current re-reading).

I continue to be their student, over 50 years later.

Ray Birdwhistell is probably the one whose ideas and practices continue to shape me most. He was the originator of “Kinesics,” the study of the Body-in-Interaction. He was a trained dancer, the best observer I have ever met: observer of the very wide contexts in which humans…are. He also tried to describe in symbols what he was seeing: arms, faces, always in-interaction. A challenging task. The body…and the mind – who and how we are.)

Teachings: how to see people (always including oneself…seeing, being, and body movements); how to note that “presence” of anyone entails (from his other student, Erving Goffman: “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”) the facts that we appear as we do in the company and contexts of others…and ourselves. There is much more to study: behind the scenes, in private alone and with others…Think about other bodies (other species) interacting socially; the power(s) in any/every relationship. And the study of context, in always broadening senses: how we know “when” we are, just to begin. (I wrote about this in the “Foundations Project.”) Different cultures (and subcultures). Read the rest of this entry »

Teaching As Dialogue Book Review by Maarten van Schie

July 31, 2009 in Teaching As Dialogue by Harvey | View Comments

[From Nick Maxwell's current Friends of Wisdom Newsletter No. 5 (PDF)]

TEACHING AS DIALOGUE:
A TEACHER’S STUDY
By Harvey B. Sarles
University Press of America: 1993
ISBN 0-8191-8897-2
REVIEW by Maarten van Schie

I’ll give you my opinion forward and frank: I think this is a good book. What I have been reading the past month has been a book about teaching. I have read a few books on teaching, and most of them are full of theories and techniques to teach effectively, with standard presentation tricks like “Say what you are going to say, say it, and then say what you have said.” These books are usually written in the manner of a college textbook, authorative and impersonal.

The book that I have read and am reviewing now writes about teaching in a very different manner. It is, first and foremost, a very personal book. Harvey B. Sarles has written about his vision on what teaching is and what a teacher does and instead of writing about teaching as a job he writes about the teacher as a human being. From this perspective he explores the role of a Teacher, which is “the person who becomes Teacher to one’s students: entering their spirits in some depth”.

I admit I was at first a little put off by the ambitious metaphors of this kind in the beginning of the book. But Harvey Sarles has in his book distilled from the concept of teaching, which may be muddled up in “The Present Age” (Kierkegaard), the purely human and social aspects. And as he puts it, Teaching is not just about transferring knowledge, it has the potential to shape minds and ideas and to inspire. Read the rest of this entry »

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