Only a fifth of UK universities have committed to reforming their curriculum to confront the harmful legacy of colonialism, an investigation by the Guardian has found.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/only-fifth-of-uk-universities-have-said-they-will-decolonise-curriculum
It's a click bait headline since 84 of 128 universities "said they are committed to making their curricula more diverse, international or inclusive." But still, while statues are being toppled, and drastic cuts are being made to higher ed, it does raise the question of what will be supported.
It isn't clear to me what 'decolonising' curriculum means: for example, do we no longer include Plato and Aristotle, who were both for slavery and colonization? Or do we include them but portray them as thoroughly evil? Or do what I do when I discuss them, which is to put them in historical context, highlight the problems with their arguments but also point out their achievements and historical importance?
I've always been pretty critical of the idea of "the canon" and all that stuff, and so I'm very much in favor of revision of the tradition. I am a bit worried about universities making dumbass policy decisions in their attempt to assure social media that they are making a full penance for their former sins.
Quote from: downer on June 11, 2020, 04:09:41 PM
It isn't clear to me what 'decolonising' curriculum means: for example, do we no longer include Plato and Aristotle, who were both for slavery and colonization? Or do we include them but portray them as thoroughly evil? Or do what I do when I discuss them, which is to put them in historical context, highlight the problems with their arguments but also point out their achievements and historical importance?
It means different things in different contexts, but generally, no, it doesn't mean the end of Plato and Aristotle.
What it means where syllabi are concerned is taking time to take stock of the views represented on your syllabus, and asking yourself whether your "greatest hits" model isn't actually leaving out some hits which are just as worth investigating as the canonical ones. So, for instance, you can contrast Aristotelian virtue ethics with Aztec virtue ethics, which emphasizes improving the character of society rather than individual character. Or, indeed, the virtue-theoretical traditions that came out of China and India. Or you could show students how the ethics of care grows out of virtue ethics and tries to do its own, separate thing.
It could mean maybe using the translation of
Metaphysics M and N by Julia Annas or of the
Nichomachean Ethics by Sarah Broadie, rather than the old standards by W.D. Ross; or thinking about assigning articles on those subjects in addition to the originals, and trying to ensure that women are adequately represented there (since, after all, there are lots of excellent female scholars specializing in ancient philosophy).
It could mean having a think about your bog-standard intro ethics course and working to ensure that its meta-ethical framework goes beyond the standard consequentialism vs. deontology duopoly, and represents a wide range of meta-ethical positions. It might mean taking the time to educate yourself, as well as your students, about Indigenous rights and land claims, and taking the time to cover some of these disputes alongside your more standard readings on justice and sustainability.
And yeah, I do think it means being frank about Aristotle's misogyny, Locke's deep-seated interest in slavery, Kant's abject racism, and that Socrates was a real prick who (1) nobody really liked, and (2) actively participated in genocide (to say nothing of participating in the widespread grooming and sexual abuse of children). We can contextualize these things, and show how these behaviours are products of their time, and caution against rushing to judgement purely from a contemporary lens. But we should be upfront about it all.
The idea is not to include these new voices tokenistically, but rather to rethink the way we deliver our courses and their content, so that we can put these voices into productive conversations with the old voices. A course on the pre-Socratics should be about the pre-Socratics (there are real constraints on what you can do there), but it doesn't only have to be about Xeno and Parmenides, or locked 2500 years in the past. But a general introduction to philosophy, for example, doesn't need to follow the standard free-will-mind-God-maybe-some-ethics model, either. Own the content. It's more fun when you do, anyway.
I'd say that most departments already do most of that, or at least have a substantial number of faculty who do that. Why didn't most of the UK universities reply "yes, we are commited to decolonising"?
There is the question of what it means for a university to commit to an anti-racist approach. Does it include telling faculty how to teach their courses? Encourage them to rethink? What form does that encouragement take? Do the retrograde members of the dept who refuse to update or reform their courses have courses taken away from them?
Regarding translations of classic works, it tends to cost students quite a lot of get the new versions, and most prefer to get access to the old free translations you can find at the Internet Classic Archive (including that by WD Ross). So there's a decision to be made: cater to the economic problems of many students, or require them to buy a better translation (Broadie's translation of the Nichomachean Ethics is close to $50 new). Or I could illegally make a PDF of Broadie and put it on the LMS, but that would deprive a scholar of revenue they deserve for students using their work.
Decolonize is one of those buzzword terms that gets thrown around a lot but is not very clearly defined. In my experience the colloquial usage often means something like the inclusion of figures historically marginalized from the canon or including readings on anti-capitalism, indigenous studies, postcolonialism, feminist & queer theory, etc.
The more radical orientation is epistemological: "arguing that reform should involve challenging and remaking the current pedagogy, which was rooted in imperial and colonial ideas about knowledge and learning" (from the article).
This is one of those things that sounds great but again is unclear in meaning. The work of postcolonial theorists that explores the geopolitics of knowledge (like Walter Mignolo and Annibal Quijano) is a great place to start. In my experience in classroom/educational settings however, this line of thinking often manifests instead in really bizarre forms of anti-intellectualism. Aspirations towards objectivity and empirical analysis is seen as rationalist, western, or patriarchal and challenging other's "lived experience" or subjectivity is seen as form of violence. On the one hand I get it because it is a response to the very long history of the hard and social sciences being used in abhorrent political projects, or intellectual darkweb/manosphere types, but shit can still get whacky real quick.
Quote from: downer on June 11, 2020, 05:35:12 PM
I'd say that most departments already do most of that, or at least have a substantial number of faculty who do that. Why didn't most of the UK universities reply "yes, we are commited to decolonising"?
Shrug. Perhaps that marks the difference between "decolonizing the curriculum", which encompasses a broad set of proposals and strategies, and "confronting the harmful legacy of colonialism", which is much, much narrower (and seems to be what 1/5 of universities reported actively trying to do). Or, indeed, maybe it reflects disagreement or uncertainty about the scope of each. Not everyone who understands that dihydrogen monoxide is a colourless, odourless, tasteless compound made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom realizes that it's more commonly known as 'water'.
QuoteThere is the question of what it means for a university to commit to an anti-racist approach. Does it include telling faculty how to teach their courses? Encourage them to rethink? What form does that encouragement take? Do the retrograde members of the dept who refuse to update or reform their courses have courses taken away from them?
I would think it involves many very different things. Some of it certainly involves encouraging faculty to revise their curricula; I'd also imagine that it would mean taking serious steps to ensure that the university's investment portfolio does not help to prop up racist institutions like prisons. And presumably the form it takes is mostly carrots and few sticks; and one of the few sticks is that proposals for new courses should demonstrate this kind of commitment and diversity, to the extent possible, if they're to pass the curriculum committee's review/the faculty Senate. (That's how it works here, by the way. There are plenty of people who grumble about having to answer the question "where's the Indigenous content?" for every new course, but I think they're wrong. It's not a very onerous requirement, and the Senate is fully aware that it's a question that's largely inapplicable in many domains; what they want to see is that you've given it some thought, rather than merely excluded it by default. And, incidentally, the 'content' could include guest speakers, field trips, work-integrated learning, etc. So there's a wide range of things you can do.)
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Regarding translations of classic works, it tends to cost students quite a lot of get the new versions, and most prefer to get access to the old free translations you can find at the Internet Classic Archive (including that by WD Ross). So there's a decision to be made: cater to the economic problems of many students, or require them to buy a better translation (Broadie's translation of the Nichomachean Ethics is close to $50 new). Or I could illegally make a PDF of Broadie and put it on the LMS, but that would deprive a scholar of revenue they deserve for students using their work.
Yup, that's a tradeoff you have to think about. The Broadie is widely considered a superior translation, so that's a mark in its favour, at least. But it's only one thing you can do, specific to a course in ancient philosophy. There's tons more you can do. My colleagues all use textbooks, which I think is (1) boring, (2) inflexible, (3) a waste of money. I just assign articles, which I post to the LMS. And that allows me to introduce students to a much wider range of people and their views than my colleagues. But they do other things which I don't (yet), like bring in guest speakers.
Make no changes, at all. Nothing wrong with the way it is taught now. I am from the older generation before all this BS political correctness diversity began. Nothing wrong with Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Locke, etc. except for their philosophical mistakes in texts. Stop the broad faulty generalizations.
I don't think we should ever, never judge historical figures from centuries ago by today's liberal new standards. Would you want to be judged by the morality in the year 2500? It's ridiculous. Colonialism accomplished a great deal of good, including America.( and it had some evil.) It is all new propaganda against white men (because they are not nice to women, so what?). Many well known names were anti-Semitic, but Jews are not arguing and whining about them.
You are then replacing the bias of the canon with a new bias that is more prejudiced.
Quote from: Myword on June 12, 2020, 07:43:39 AM
Make no changes, at all. Nothing wrong with the way it is taught now. I am from the older generation before all this BS political correctness diversity began. Nothing wrong with Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Locke, etc. except for their philosophical mistakes in texts. Stop the broad faulty generalizations.
I don't think we should ever, never judge historical figures from centuries ago by today's liberal new standards. Would you want to be judged by the morality in the year 2500? It's ridiculous. Colonialism accomplished a great deal of good, including America.( and it had some evil.) It is all new propaganda against white men (because they are not nice to women, so what?). Many well known names were anti-Semitic, but Jews are not arguing and whining about them.
You are then replacing the bias of the canon with a new bias that is more prejudiced.
Maybe you haven't heard about the debates about Heidegger and Paul de Man. Or Nietzsche.
We can definitely admit that these figures were historically important and we go on teaching them. But the common way of teaching them was very often "these are the great thinkers of our civilization and they need to be taken seriously and respected."
I think we should often take their philosophical ideas as seriously as we take their science. We don't promote claims that the earth is the center of the universe anymore or insist that students need to learn this tradition. It is worth including though if we want to understand the ancient worldview and their efforts at theorizing.
Have any schools actually made institutiional decisions to decononize their courses?
First of all, I'm astronomically glad to be in STEM, where it doesn't matter who came up with something, just whether what they came up with fits reality. (And if somebody else comes up with something that fits reality better, it will replace the earlier thing.)
Has anyone interested in "decoloinising" curriculum taken the approach of just talking about ideas without reference to where they came from? In other words, if ideas are discussed which have come from different countries and time periods, why not present them without specifying the geographical or ethnic context? (If some ideas are built specifically on earlier ones, then some chronological order may need to be preserved.) But that would avoid getting into an entire slagging match of who-said-what, and rather would allow ideas to be considered on their merits. There would be no implicit advantage given to some specific culture, which is presumably what "decolonisation" is about.
I think different disciplines have different jobs to do here. Some of the disciplines (philosophy is one example) are so shaped by early acts of 'colonization' that it's hard to imagine them differently.
Plato's Socrates had such a gigantic influence on philosophy's development as a discipline: a conversation among elite males, which can go on forever (Republic) because no one has chores or domestic responsibilities, which should "follow the argument wherever it leads", which enjoys refuting people and shaming them, adores fine verbal distinctions, and is disconnected from the marketplace and its grubby politics. Plunk this down in Oxford or Cambridge today. Or Berkeley or Stanford.
British universities have the shadow of the British Empire to reckon with, as a special challenge. Whole colleges endowed by Cecil Rhodes and his ilk. Museums full of colonial booty. The imposition of stale discipline paradigms shaped by white male supremacy is something we share in the U.S.
I interpret the 'de-colonize' recommendation as rethinking the disciplines to be more culturally aware, inclusive, topical, applied, public, self-reflective and self-critical, and just plain more interesting. I think it's an invigorating time to be an academic person.
Quote from: bento on June 12, 2020, 08:31:52 AM
I think different disciplines have different jobs to do here. Some of the disciplines (philosophy is one example) are so shaped by early acts of 'colonization' that it's hard to imagine them differently.
Plato's Socrates had such a gigantic influence on philosophy's development as a discipline: a conversation among elite males, which can go on forever (Republic) because no one has chores or domestic responsibilities, which should "follow the argument wherever it leads", which enjoys refuting people and shaming them, adores fine verbal distinctions, and is disconnected from the marketplace and its grubby politics.
But how does this have any bearing on the
quality of the ideas themselves? Whether they are internally consistent, and whether the ideas about human society and behaviour play out in practice doesn't depend on that.
Similarly, there may be good ideas from people
outside the historical western canon, but again, by looking at the ideas
themselves, and how they fit reality, they don't have to compete
according to where they come from.
That's an interesting thought, Bento. You don't quite say it but you seem to imply that decolonization of the academy is less of an issue in North America. I'm not sure. Presumably the content of courses in both the US and the UK is pretty similar. So if those different approaches to teaching and curriculum are important in the UK, aren't they just as important in the US?
And it's not just the humanities.
Innoculation in Boston and the UK was first tried because African and Turkish communities had developed protocols which became the basis for Cotton Mather's and Lady Worthly Montague's trials in the early 1700s.
In both cases, more study ought to be done on how and where those efforts began; the Western (UK/US/Euro) studies since there are fairly complete but (in gravestone research done a few years ago) I found it hard to locate much on the developmental issues in African and Eastern Mediterranean areas. (I will say I haven't recently read in this area, so it's possible something has been done in the past decade, but this is still an example of what I mean).
So history of science/history of medicine studies, which directly affect how and what academic science classes teach, are also an area where re-balancing the narrative and digging deeper for non-Western contributions would shift who is credited with certain discoveries and how their findings might be incorporated into the more dimensional knowledge of a topic.
Likewise, today, in the citation wars. How much bias occurs in just getting things to print, having the resources to do in-depth research (do the HBC's have the same level of funding/laboratory equipment/instructional depth, for example?) and publicizing ones results through invited talks, etc.?
Science may think of itself as a thought-thread of ideas, but it's not devoid of bias and colonial views of the findings from other civilizations, either.
It's gotten better, but that's not saying it is where it needs to be.
M.
Quote from: mamselle on June 12, 2020, 09:38:32 AM
So history of science/history of medicine studies, which directly affect how and what academic science classes teach, are also an area where re-balancing the narrative and digging deeper for non-Western contributions would shift who is credited with certain discoveries and how their findings might be incorporated into the more dimensional knowledge of a topic.
As far as students are concerned, most of this is basically irrelevant. As an example, many calculus students may attribute the development to Newton. A smaller, number may also be familiar with Leibniz. (Perhaps in German speaking countries those are reversed.) But only fairly mathematically-inclined people are likely to remember that each of them developed their own notation, and each type of notation gets used in certain situations. And that's about one of the most well-known "origin stories" in physics and mathematics.
I'd welcome anyone to disagree with me, but in my experience, the "history" part of most science courses is barely significant, and rarely shows up on any test. (The main vestige of history is a person's name on a theory, method, or equation. Most people completing a course would be hard pressed to tell you anything about Gauss, except that there's a law named after him. So his national origin, ethnicity, politics or personal habits are completely off the radar, beyond what can be inferred from the name.)
Quote from: Myword on June 12, 2020, 07:43:39 AM
Make no changes, at all. Nothing wrong with the way it is taught now. I am from the older generation before all this BS political correctness diversity began. Nothing wrong with Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Locke, etc. except for their philosophical mistakes in texts. Stop the broad faulty generalizations.
There's plenty wrong with them, as with anyone. And to pretend they were really nice nerds who wished no harm to anyone is to whitewash history and sanitize their ideas in exactly the kind of "politically correct" way you decry.
More importantly, however: to teach some classes along the "greatest hits" model is simply irresponsible. Take aesthetics: one long-standing way of teaching it is as a Plato-Hume-Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche-Heidegger class. And that is
grossly incompetent (especially since the most important work in philosophical aesthetics took place from 1968 onwards). Similarly, you could teach an Aristotle-Aquinas-Mill-Kant-Moore course in ethical theory, but it would be lazy and incompetent (though perhaps not quite as incompetent as the aesthetics class above). You could have a BA organized entirely around the history of philosophy, if you wanted to; but that, too, would be incompetent and thoroughly inadequate.
Yet, in many quarters, this is exactly how things were done for a long time, and continue to be done (although it's true that this has changed a lot in the last ten or fifteen years).
And, FWIW, sometimes a thinker's political and personal failings are relevant to their ideas. I think it makes a great deal of difference to the ancients that their talk of freedom and rationality only applied to (male) citizens. I think it makes a big difference to understanding Locke and his account of liberalism to understand the role he played in administering the slave-owning colonies, and how his thinking on the issue changed over time. And it sure as fuck makes a big difference to understanding Heidegger to understand that he was a Nazi, and that his ideas were inextricably tied to that party, its ideology, and his own anti-semitism. Heidegger in particular has been sanitized for middle-class consumption for far too long, and his actual role in the Nazi party and the extent of the importance of anti-semitism to his work has been systematically minimzed (indeed, suppressed, as we saw with a recent controversy over his black books). If anything is "political correctness",
that is--although, to be clear, I think the term is basically devoid of content, unless its content is something like "liberal ideas" (which is clearly bullshit).
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I don't think we should ever, never judge historical figures from centuries ago by today's liberal new standards. Would you want to be judged by the morality in the year 2500? It's ridiculous. Colonialism accomplished a great deal of good, including America.( and it had some evil.) It is all new propaganda against white men (because they are not nice to women, so what?). Many well known names were anti-Semitic, but Jews are not arguing and whining about them.
You are then replacing the bias of the canon with a new bias that is more prejudiced.
You know that most ethicists and meta-ethicists are moral realists, right? (Actually, the same looks to be true of most Americans.) If you're a moral realist, then it
absolutely makes sense to judge historical people and peoples for their moral failings, in exactly the same way that it makes total sense to make fun of Herodotus for thinking there were ants in Asia that were cat-sized and which dug up gold, or to recognize that Ptolemaic astronomy was wrong, or to judge people negatively for believing, just thirty years ago, that non-human animals had no inner lives or were incapable of thought. That's not to say we should make such judgements without first properly contextualizing them. But it's perfectly legitimate to judge.
Even on most anti-realist meta-ethical views, it makes sense to judge in this way. I'll also note that note that moral relativism has been widely discredited since at least the time of Mary Midgley, and most articulations of it are clearly incoherent.
It's not about replacing the canon. It's about understanding how the canon was built, and striving to build a better canon.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 12, 2020, 08:07:34 AM
First of all, I'm astronomically glad to be in STEM, where it doesn't matter who came up with something, just whether what they came up with fits reality. (And if somebody else comes up with something that fits reality better, it will replace the earlier thing.)
Well, STEM isn't immune to these sorts of problems, even in disciplines that don't grant much truck to their own histories. (Although that, too, seems like a problem, since this kind of ignorance of their history and sociology leads scientists to make all sorts of stupid claims about things like the aim of science, or its objectivity, or the value of various disciplines. To my mind, a good scientific education would include some coursework on the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. But that's a separate issue.)
It seems useful and important for engineers, for instance, to know about Aboriginal Title and the Crown's history (including its recent history!) of violating its legal and treaty obligations. If you want to be involved in the construction of mega-projects, then Indigenous-Crown relations are directly relevant, and understanding why Indigenous peoples are often opposed to these projects can go a long way towards helping you and your team to obtain their consent for your project. Just look at the controversy over the TMT's construction in Hawai'i.
It also seems useful and important to understand the impacts such projects have on such communities. When Manitoba Hydro constructed the Moose River dams, for example, it completely destroyed local subsistence economies, thereby worsening the plight of local populations which could no longer supplement their meagre incomes in the usual ways. That happened in part because subsistence-level activities don't get counted as gainful employment, and so are largely invisible to project planners, developers, etc. And concerns pertaining to these activities get dismissed as tree-hugging, or simply wanting to take part in some historical ritual, rather than actually supplementing other local economic activities.
I'm not in STEM, so I don't have a good perspective on what decolonizing can look like. But I do know that the call is broader than you seem to credit it with being, and involves more than just looking at syllabi and counting names. It also pertains to things like hiring, to revising instructional methods to accommodate the needs of non-traditional students, to delivering meaningful land acknowledgements, etc.
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Has anyone interested in "decoloinising" curriculum taken the approach of just talking about ideas without reference to where they came from? In other words, if ideas are discussed which have come from different countries and time periods, why not present them without specifying the geographical or ethnic context? (If some ideas are built specifically on earlier ones, then some chronological order may need to be preserved.) But that would avoid getting into an entire slagging match of who-said-what, and rather would allow ideas to be considered on their merits. There would be no implicit advantage given to some specific culture, which is presumably what "decolonisation" is about.
I don't think what you're saying makes much sense for the disciplines you're targeting. I mean: I can talk about consequentialism without talking about Bentham and Mill, if you want. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so, because they have particular takes on it--and, more particularly, on its utilitarian articulation--that are distinct from other articulations of the concept. It's useful to do so as a general introduction, but if you want to understand how utilitarianism works, you really do need to get into the specifics of different articulations, and what they prioritize at the expense of what, and why. Otherwise, not only will our conversation be very short, it will also be entirely insubstantial. Likewise, the Aztec conception of virtue ethics is a really useful foil to the Greek conception, because it takes it in a totally different direction; and it matters that almost everything written on the subject is in thrall to the Greek conception. Forgetting about these contexts would be... well, stupid.
Nor is this about conferring advantages to some specific culture. It's about noticing the ways in which our conventions and
status quo bias prioritize some ideas, and some thinkers, over others, for no good reason beyond convention and
status quo bias themselves.
This is what I love about Linda Nochlin's seminal essay, "Why have there been no great women artists?" What she demonstrates so persuasively is that the art historical canon is not a construct which reliably tracks skillful artistic depiction or vision (which you might have expected it to be); instead, it tracks all kinds of much more contingent factors, such as which kinds of images are
popular at particular times, who has the right patrons, who has access to the right conditions to develop their skills and interests, etc.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 12, 2020, 10:48:55 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 12, 2020, 08:07:34 AM
First of all, I'm astronomically glad to be in STEM, where it doesn't matter who came up with something, just whether what they came up with fits reality. (And if somebody else comes up with something that fits reality better, it will replace the earlier thing.)
It seems useful and important for engineers, for instance, to know about Aboriginal Title and the Crown's history (including its recent history!) of violating its legal and treaty obligations. If you want to be involved in the construction of mega-projects, then Indigenous-Crown relations are directly relevant, and understanding why Indigenous peoples are often opposed to these projects can go a long way towards helping you and your team to obtain their consent for your project. Just look at the controversy over the TMT's construction in Hawai'i.
This is all important, and would be relevant in a "professional practice" course or something like that. Along with all kinds of other situations where governments, corporations, or individuals have not fulfilled their legal obligations.
Discussing the minutiae of the ethnicity, politics, and lifestyles of all of the individuals involved, on the other hand, is immaterial.
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It also seems useful and important to understand the impacts such projects have on such communities. When Manitoba Hydro constructed the Moose River dams, for example, it completely destroyed local subsistence economies, thereby worsening the plight of local populations which could no longer supplement their meagre incomes in the usual ways. That happened in part because subsistence-level activities don't get counted as gainful employment, and so are largely invisible to project planners, developers, etc. And concerns pertaining to these activities get dismissed as tree-hugging, or simply wanting to take part in some historical ritual, rather than actually supplementing other local economic activities.
You'd probably find the same kind of things happen in other countries where the small, isolated communities aren't "indigenous"; it's much more about poverty and invisibility than simply ethnicity.
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I'm not in STEM, so I don't have a good perspective on what decolonizing can look like. But I do know that the call is broader than you seem to credit it with being, and involves more than just looking at syllabi and counting names. It also pertains to things like hiring, to revising instructional methods to accommodate the needs of non-traditional students, to delivering meaningful land acknowledgements, etc.
STEM subjects don't typically include "names" in syllabi; it's not about "Newton, and what he thought" or anything like that. A person is only mentioned as long as their theory has value. (Can anyone in STEM name a medieval alchemist???? There were probably some who were widely known then but they were WRONG so who cares?????)
As for "land acknowledgements", there are lots of places where archeological evidence indicates that different groups occupied the same areas at different time periods during the centuries before Europeans arrived. Should all of those groups be acknowledged?
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Has anyone interested in "decoloinising" curriculum taken the approach of just talking about ideas without reference to where they came from? In other words, if ideas are discussed which have come from different countries and time periods, why not present them without specifying the geographical or ethnic context? (If some ideas are built specifically on earlier ones, then some chronological order may need to be preserved.) But that would avoid getting into an entire slagging match of who-said-what, and rather would allow ideas to be considered on their merits. There would be no implicit advantage given to some specific culture, which is presumably what "decolonisation" is about.
Likewise, the Aztec conception of virtue ethics is a really useful foil to the Greek conception, because it takes it in a totally different direction; and it matters that almost everything written on the subject is in thrall to the Greek conception. Forgetting about these contexts would be... well, stupid.
The fact that "almost everything written on the subject is in thrall to the Greek conception" is not nearly as interesting as
comparing the two concepts. If there are societies which exhibit characterisitics of one or the other which can be compared then that would be great, without having to get bogged down in who got more publicity.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 12, 2020, 11:55:56 AM
This is all important, and would be relevant in a "professional practice" course or something like that. Along with all kinds of other situations where governments, corporations, or individuals have not fulfilled their legal obligations.
Discussing the minutiae of the ethnicity, politics, and lifestyles of all of the individuals involved, on the other hand, is immaterial.
Sure. I don't think anyone is really arguing otherwise. Gauss's role in the development of non-Euclidean geometry is cool and interesting, but a course on non-Euclidean geometry should focus on his theoretical work, not his day job as a surveyor.
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You'd probably find the same kind of things happen in other countries where the small, isolated communities aren't "indigenous"; it's much more about poverty and invisibility than simply ethnicity.
There are going to be different ways of satisfying the request. If you can do so adequately through another lens, I don't think most people are against that.
That said, the Indigenous component can be relevant all on its own. Here in Canada, for example, treaty obligations and Supreme Court decisions (like Delgamuukw) are supposed to govern Indigenous-Crown relations with respect to land use. Those are specific obligations tied to Indigenous peoples and their lands (treaty lands and unceded alike), and their obligations which the Crown has a very long (and recent) history of failing to respect. Acknowledging the ways in which the Crown has failed in its legal obligations and violated Indigenous trust is often a pre-requisite to getting these projects off the ground. One of the Crown's obligations is to conduct 'meaningful consultation'; and what we've seen time and again is that consultation which does not take Indigenous concerns seriously is not at all meaningful, and does not discharge the Crown's obligation. Likewise, purely monetary 'compensation' (at levels set without due consultation!) does nothing to ease tensions. (A great case study on these issues is what happened with the Moose River Basin dam expansions in Ontario.)
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STEM subjects don't typically include "names" in syllabi; it's not about "Newton, and what he thought" or anything like that. A person is only mentioned as long as their theory has value. (Can anyone in STEM name a medieval alchemist???? There were probably some who were widely known then but they were WRONG so who cares?????)
I know
that. I'm simply saying that the notion of 'decolonizing' the curriuculum goes beyond syllabus tinkering, and can manifest itself in different ways in different parts of the university. I don't know what the best of doing so are for most STEM subjects, but I trust that it doesn't take a huge imaginative leap to find some such ways. In fact, I'm sure that appropriately-informed others have already given it some thought, and I'm happy to defer to their judgement (since it is, after all, better-informed than mine is).
(But also, FWIW, plenty of medieval alchemists were right about all sorts of things. Just not transmutation into gold, or the philosopher's stone. They were basically just chemists.)
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As for "land acknowledgements", there are lots of places where archeological evidence indicates that different groups occupied the same areas at different time periods during the centuries before Europeans arrived. Should all of those groups be acknowledged?
Land acknowledgements recognize historical treaty obligations and lands which are not covered by treaties but which are the traditional and ancestral lands of some people, and which were in their possession when Europeans came and encroached on it. They recognize historical and contemporary Indigenous presence.
Borders are and were not static. So, yes, it's customary to acknowledge all of the different peoples who lay claim to the relevant lands. Where I'm from, that's a single tribe; where I now reside, it's five different bands (well, one where I live, but five for the land my university is located on).
Quote
The fact that "almost everything written on the subject is in thrall to the Greek conception" is not nearly as interesting as comparing the two concepts. If there are societies which exhibit characterisitics of one or the other which can be compared then that would be great, without having to get bogged down in who got more publicity.
You can't perform an adequate comparison of the two without noting that virtually all of the historical and contemporary scholarly work on virtue ethics derives from the Greek conception. That's because a lot of people have given a lot of thought to the different problems facing one approach to the core idea, and have suggested different ways of articulating it in response to those problems. But on the other side of the coin, the scholarship is extremely under-developed. So you aren't really comparing apples to apples. Or, you are, but you're comparing the merits of a variety that's been domesticated and cultivated for hundreds of years, with all the tweaks involved, to a variety which isn't. And when you do that, it's very easy to give the impression that the wild variety is worthless or inherently inferior--or, where ideas are concerned, not worth pursuing. And that's simply false (especially the 'inherent' bit, since you're actually comparing cultivated to inherent properties). It just means that there's more work to be done to properly situate it in the discourse.
A professional will see that pretty easily. It's what we do, after all. A disinterested undergrad, however, is not likely to see or understand the difference without guidance. Which is how you end up with misguided people who think that something like the art historical canon is a compendium of the greatest artworks ever made.
^ Agreed.
QuoteA disinterested undergrad, however, is not likely to see or understand the difference without guidance. Which is how you end up with misguided people who think that something like the art historical canon is a compendium of the greatest artworks ever made.
Which is exactly why I began teaching Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese art (and requiring museum visits, since the school I was teaching at, at the time, had a great collection right nearby) as well as African and South American in addition to the usual "western canon" early on.
The importance of this was underscored in the first midterm I gave, in which, on a map component, students put France in Finland, Greece in India, etc.
They'd never had geography in HS, it's not taught except as a "non-college track" course, and their history classes had all been in western Euro/US history, so they had almost no idea of where in the world they even lived.
M.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 12, 2020, 12:36:18 PM
That said, the Indigenous component can be relevant all on its own. Here in Canada, for example, treaty obligations and Supreme Court decisions (like Delgamuukw) are supposed to govern Indigenous-Crown relations with respect to land use. Those are specific obligations tied to Indigenous peoples and their lands (treaty lands and unceded alike), and their obligations which the Crown has a very long (and recent) history of failing to respect. Acknowledging the ways in which the Crown has failed in its legal obligations and violated Indigenous trust is often a pre-requisite to getting these projects off the ground. One of the Crown's obligations is to conduct 'meaningful consultation'; and what we've seen time and again is that consultation which does not take Indigenous concerns seriously is not at all meaningful, and does not discharge the Crown's obligation. Likewise, purely monetary 'compensation' (at levels set without due consultation!) does nothing to ease tensions. (A great case study on these issues is what happened with the Moose River Basin dam expansions in Ontario.)
One of the basically intractable problems is that Indigenous communities essentially have
two independent systems of government. There are the elected band councils, and the hereditary chiefs. Each effectively has a veto. So a negotiation supported by not only the band council, but by a majority or residents, can be derailed by the hereditary chiefs, and media will always sympathize, no matter how extensive the negotiations with the community. (On top of that, if a few members of the community object, potentially without the support of
either the band council or the hereditary chiefs, and a formal blockade of a road or railway is initiated, it can continue for a long time because no-one wants to be charged with racism. A similar blockade by non-Indigenous people would be
quickly followed by arrests with likely no media sympathy.)
In other words, ANY kind of dissent, no matter what kind of negotiations and agreements preceeded them, will essentially have veto power.
The irony is that this means that the ignoring of negotiated agreements formerly engaged in by the governement can now be undertaken by members of the the Indigenous communities. It may be karma, but it means that economic development opportunities largely supported by communities are going to be scuttled by a small minority. Eventually any sort of projects will stop being proposed in the first place.
Just to note that whenever anyone wishes to discredit the objections of someone else, without actually addressing the content of those objections, they frame it as "whining." That's why I know that when I see the word "whining," I'm reading the comments of someone who doesn't really want to grapple with the ideas; they just want to ridicule. It's like a little red flag that says "I operate by contempt, not by ideas."
"But," I hear you say, "those people really are whining!"
No — they're raising objections, and you're making clear that you have contempt for those people rather than speaking about the content of their objections.
"Yeah, but if they're going to be contemptible, then I can't be expected — "
Oh yes you can, and you will be.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 12, 2020, 10:08:16 AM
I'd welcome anyone to disagree with me, but in my experience, the "history" part of most science courses is barely significant, and rarely shows up on any test. (The main vestige of history is a person's name on a theory, method, or equation. Most people completing a course would be hard pressed to tell you anything about Gauss, except that there's a law named after him. So his national origin, ethnicity, politics or personal habits are completely off the radar, beyond what can be inferred from the name.)
Sure, although I'd argue that this isn't necessarily a strength of sciences, and often leads scientists to think that they are impartial and objective, when in fact they are reproducing cultural ideas. One of the best examples of this is eugenics, which at one point was a respected branch of science, promoted by all kinds of eminent scientists. My impression is that lots of scientists think that this changed because eugenics was disproven, but that is a distortion of the history. The thing that really made eugenics disreputable was the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s. The scientific consensus that eugenics was a pseudo science came after this, not before.
Without much grounding in this history, it seems to me like it encourages scientists to not consider the ways in which their own cultural beliefs aren't objective and grounded in "reality."
Quote from: Caracal on June 14, 2020, 04:57:05 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 12, 2020, 10:08:16 AM
I'd welcome anyone to disagree with me, but in my experience, the "history" part of most science courses is barely significant, and rarely shows up on any test. (The main vestige of history is a person's name on a theory, method, or equation. Most people completing a course would be hard pressed to tell you anything about Gauss, except that there's a law named after him. So his national origin, ethnicity, politics or personal habits are completely off the radar, beyond what can be inferred from the name.)
Sure, although I'd argue that this isn't necessarily a strength of sciences, and often leads scientists to think that they are impartial and objective, when in fact they are reproducing cultural ideas. One of the best examples of this is eugenics, which at one point was a respected branch of science, promoted by all kinds of eminent scientists. My impression is that lots of scientists think that this changed because eugenics was disproven, but that is a distortion of the history. The thing that really made eugenics disreputable was the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s. The scientific consensus that eugenics was a pseudo science came after this, not before.
Without much grounding in this history, it seems to me like it encourages scientists to not consider the ways in which their own cultural beliefs aren't objective and grounded in "reality."
Understanding how scientists really worked in the past, and how ideas developed is extremely useful if one wants to do science effectively. We all learn the protocols needed to do particular experiments, and sometimes the rigorous experimental design to make evidence-based progress. But that is far from enough.
The Eugenics movement was a pathological one, where many otherwise rigorous scientists ignored big holes in the reasoning in what seemed like an effort to better mankind. Something similar can easily happen again, so it is more valuable to study how the eugenicists evolved through that movement than it is to demonize them from the outset.
One area of science where I see practitioners ignoring established science to make unlikely claims is where venture capital money comes into play. I run into it will smaller inventions that might have commercial potential. But some highly visible examples are Theranos, where the technology claims were unbelievable, some things out or the MIT Media Lab lately. These are not stupid or credulous people, but the are convince of their nonsense because the VC environment reinforces the alternative reality.
Quote from: Hibush on June 14, 2020, 05:20:26 AM
The Eugenics movement was a pathological one, where many otherwise rigorous scientists ignored big holes in the reasoning in what seemed like an effort to better mankind. Something similar can easily happen again, so it is more valuable to study how the eugenicists evolved through that movement than it is to demonize them from the outset.
One area of science where I see practitioners ignoring established science to make unlikely claims is where venture capital money comes into play. I run into it will smaller inventions that might have commercial potential. But some highly visible examples are Theranos, where the technology claims were unbelievable, some things out or the MIT Media Lab lately. These are not stupid or credulous people, but the are convince of their nonsense because the VC environment reinforces the alternative reality.
Even in these examples, it's not really about science
research; it's about the
application of science. (In the case of Theranos, my understanding is that they chose backers and board members who were
not from a science background, so the unsupprotable claims weren't as carefully scrutinized as they would likely have been by people who specialize in science ventures.)
Probably a bigger threat to scientific
research objectivity comes from things like publication bias, where negative results are less likely to get published than positive ones. And in that case, the consequence is mostly going to be wasted resources in pursuing avenues that have already been found to be fruitless.
I would like to hear of any example of any scientific model, produced by research influenced by a particular funding source, which was accepted as basically sound for a significant period of time, which was eventually shown to have been entirely without merit. I'm not denying it happens, but I think it's relatively uncommon, and it's certainly
much more likely to be influenced by profit than by any sort of social ideology.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 14, 2020, 06:14:24 AM
Quote from: Hibush on June 14, 2020, 05:20:26 AM
I would like to hear of any example of any scientific model, produced by research influenced by a particular funding source, which was accepted as basically sound for a significant period of time, which was eventually shown to have been entirely without merit. I'm not denying it happens, but I think it's relatively uncommon, and it's certainly much more likely to be influenced by profit than by any sort of social ideology.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that eugenics would qualify. Both Rockefeller and Carnegie money supported eugenics research and programs. Even beyond eugenics, all sorts of racial science was fully mainstream in the 19th century and it was supported by all sorts of government and private money.
Quote from: Caracal on June 14, 2020, 07:35:33 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 14, 2020, 06:14:24 AM
I would like to hear of any example of any scientific model, produced by research influenced by a particular funding source, which was accepted as basically sound for a significant period of time, which was eventually shown to have been entirely without merit. I'm not denying it happens, but I think it's relatively uncommon, and it's certainly much more likely to be influenced by profit than by any sort of social ideology.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that eugenics would qualify. Both Rockefeller and Carnegie money supported eugenics research and programs. Even beyond eugenics, all sorts of racial science was fully mainstream in the 19th century and it was supported by all sorts of government and private money.
Where does the line get drawn between "racial science" and
genetic research? Some of the cutting edge research in things like cancer treatment are based on therapies that are based on an individual's DNA. There are all kinds of health conditions that have genetic factors. To avoid considering any kinds of treatments which take those factors into account would be a big setback for medicine.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 14, 2020, 08:57:55 AM
Quote from: Caracal on June 14, 2020, 07:35:33 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 14, 2020, 06:14:24 AM
I would like to hear of any example of any scientific model, produced by research influenced by a particular funding source, which was accepted as basically sound for a significant period of time, which was eventually shown to have been entirely without merit. I'm not denying it happens, but I think it's relatively uncommon, and it's certainly much more likely to be influenced by profit than by any sort of social ideology.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that eugenics would qualify. Both Rockefeller and Carnegie money supported eugenics research and programs. Even beyond eugenics, all sorts of racial science was fully mainstream in the 19th century and it was supported by all sorts of government and private money.
Where does the line get drawn between "racial science" and genetic research? Some of the cutting edge research in things like cancer treatment are based on therapies that are based on an individual's DNA. There are all kinds of health conditions that have genetic factors. To avoid considering any kinds of treatments which take those factors into account would be a big setback for medicine.
By racial science, I mean scientific ideas based around the notion that white people, or sometimes northern European people, were superior. The belief was that the concept of race was not social, but biological. That isn't the same thing as studying human differences. That said, I'd argue that geneticists would do well to know something about this history and have an understanding of the ways in which race and racism have played a role in their discipline.
We might acknowledge that history is not equally important in all disciplines.
For the humanities, and I think for the liberal arts in general, a reckoning is very important.
Science, maybe not as much. I do wish scientists and engineers had a deep background in ethics, however, which is where history comes in. The benefits of science are overt, but so are the monstrosities and liabilities.
"Decolonising the curriculum" has been a trend in my field for a while, and I'm deeply skeptical of its outcomes. From what I've seen in indigenous groups, the decolonisation they want to hear about involves getting their land back, not changing the reading list of a grad seminar at some tony college.
The loudest advocates of it (at least in my area) are white people, generally patting themselves on the back. In a really "decolonised" curriculum, they wouldn't be teaching that class.
Quote from: bacardiandlime on June 16, 2020, 04:59:56 AM
"Decolonising the curriculum" has been a trend in my field for a while, and I'm deeply skeptical of its outcomes. From what I've seen in indigenous groups, the decolonisation they want to hear about involves getting their land back, not changing the reading list of a grad seminar at some tony college.
The loudest advocates of it (at least in my area) are white people, generally patting themselves on the back. In a really "decolonised" curriculum, they wouldn't be teaching that class.
No doubt there is a whole lot of virtue signalling going on regarding curriculum reform, and I also wonder how far up the list of priorities this should be in opposing racism and overcoming the effects of colonization. But the virtues in question do seem to be good ones. So regarding the outcomes, wouldn't they at least be improvements in the curriculum?
Adding more non-white authors to a reading list? Sure that's great.
But calling it "decolonisation" is ridiculous. A white prof telling white students to read Chinua Achebe isn't decolonising anything.
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 05:14:32 AM
Quote from: bacardiandlime on June 16, 2020, 04:59:56 AM
"Decolonising the curriculum" has been a trend in my field for a while, and I'm deeply skeptical of its outcomes. From what I've seen in indigenous groups, the decolonisation they want to hear about involves getting their land back, not changing the reading list of a grad seminar at some tony college.
The loudest advocates of it (at least in my area) are white people, generally patting themselves on the back. In a really "decolonised" curriculum, they wouldn't be teaching that class.
No doubt there is a whole lot of virtue signalling going on regarding curriculum reform, and I also wonder how far up the list of priorities this should be in opposing racism and overcoming the effects of colonization. But the virtues in question do seem to be good ones. So regarding the outcomes, wouldn't they at least be improvements in the curriculum?
The problem with virtue signalling isn't that the virtues aren't good; it's that signalling doesn't have much correlation with actions in the real world. (For Christians, the apostle Peter is the best example; "Lord, even if everyone else abandons you, I won't". Within a few hours he had blown that all to pieces. Was it a noble sentiment? Sure. Did he mean it? Sure. Did he have the slightest idea what it would require?
Not. A. Freaking. Clue.)
If a child were trapped in a burning building, I'd like to think I would be willing to risk my life to save her, but unless and until I'm in that situation, no-one
including me can say what I would actually do. How many stories have you heard about the "male feminist" who turns out to have been cheating on his wife, or sexually harassing female coworkers, etc.
Talk is cheap. And that's what virtue signalling is. (Even a protest is basically virtue signalling.) Remember
Kony2012?
Slacktivism is the religion of the 21st century. If you supposedly care about homeless people, volunteer in a shelter, don't go in some stupid march.
To paraphrase an old expression, "virtue is what you display
when no-one else is watching."
Justin Trudeau got all kinds of virtue signalling points for having a "gender balanced" cabinet, "because it's 2015". (Whatever that means.) Two female cabinet ministers eventually left the party to sit as independents. One was his justice minister, because he pressured her to not investigate a large company. So how many "virtue signalling" points does he deserve?
If you want to know whether soemone is a racist, forget about whther they wear a BLM t-shirt; talk to their neighbours, colleagues, students, etc. and
see how they treat actual people.
What they advertise is inconsequential.
Remember the trope of the used-car salesman, e.g. "Honest John's Used Cars". If they put "honest" in the name, hang on to your wallet, and don't blink.
If we think that curriculum is important, then it's worth thinking about how to make it better. That involves discussion. Of course people have egos and they want to get credit, but that doesn't mean the project is worthless.
As faculty, rather than as private individuals, what other efforts can we make to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past? There's research and writing of course, and that may have some long term effects. But as teachers, maybe there's not much else to do apart from made some changes to the curriculum.
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 05:52:42 AM
If we think that curriculum is important, then it's worth thinking about how to make it better. That involves discussion. Of course people have egos and they want to get credit, but that doesn't mean the project is worthless.
As faculty, rather than as private individuals, what other efforts can we make to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past? There's research and writing of course, and that may have some long term effects. But as teachers, maybe there's not much else to do apart from made some changes to the curriculum.
One thing which would be much more useful is to point out how
human beings consistently fail to uphold the ideals they have, and how we are all flawed. So even the "heroes" of today, and the noble sentiments we have now will be looked at askance by our descendants.
So, for instance, looking at the American constitution, and the idea that "all men are created equal", it's reasonable to point out that there was a noble ideal behind that, and eventually people realized that it should include women, non-white people, etc.
AT THE TIME it was written, IN THE CONTEXT of monarchies and aristocracies all over the world, it was a big step forward. The fact that some of the framers owned slaves indicates that they were flawed human beings, but the insight they had enabled LATER generations to EXPAND the ideas.
(And on the other hand, remember that the slaves in the North Atlantic slave trade were captured and sold by OTHER Africans. Every culture has its atrocities and blind spots.)
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:05:42 AM
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 05:52:42 AM
If we think that curriculum is important, then it's worth thinking about how to make it better. That involves discussion. Of course people have egos and they want to get credit, but that doesn't mean the project is worthless.
As faculty, rather than as private individuals, what other efforts can we make to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past? There's research and writing of course, and that may have some long term effects. But as teachers, maybe there's not much else to do apart from made some changes to the curriculum.
One thing which would be much more useful is to point out how human beings consistently fail to uphold the ideals they have, and how we are all flawed. So even the "heroes" of today, and the noble sentiments we have now will be looked at askance by our descendants.
So, for instance, looking at the American constitution, and the idea that "all men are created equal", it's reasonable to point out that there was a noble ideal behind that, and eventually people realized that it should include women, non-white people, etc.
AT THE TIME it was written, IN THE CONTEXT of monarchies and aristocracies all over the world, it was a big step forward. The fact that some of the framers owned slaves indicates that they were flawed human beings, but the insight they had enabled LATER generations to EXPAND the ideas.
(And on the other hand, remember that the slaves in the North Atlantic slave trade were captured and sold by OTHER Africans. Every culture has its atrocities and blind spots.)
That seems like a starting point for a point of view in assessing the past actions of people. It might be part of a debate on whether, for example, we should erect statues of those people, or keep the old ones.
I'm not so clear on what that would accomplish in terms of what I asked - the goal to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past.
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 07:29:38 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:05:42 AM
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 05:52:42 AM
If we think that curriculum is important, then it's worth thinking about how to make it better. That involves discussion. Of course people have egos and they want to get credit, but that doesn't mean the project is worthless.
As faculty, rather than as private individuals, what other efforts can we make to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past? There's research and writing of course, and that may have some long term effects. But as teachers, maybe there's not much else to do apart from made some changes to the curriculum.
One thing which would be much more useful is to point out how human beings consistently fail to uphold the ideals they have, and how we are all flawed. So even the "heroes" of today, and the noble sentiments we have now will be looked at askance by our descendants.
So, for instance, looking at the American constitution, and the idea that "all men are created equal", it's reasonable to point out that there was a noble ideal behind that, and eventually people realized that it should include women, non-white people, etc.
AT THE TIME it was written, IN THE CONTEXT of monarchies and aristocracies all over the world, it was a big step forward. The fact that some of the framers owned slaves indicates that they were flawed human beings, but the insight they had enabled LATER generations to EXPAND the ideas.
(And on the other hand, remember that the slaves in the North Atlantic slave trade were captured and sold by OTHER Africans. Every culture has its atrocities and blind spots.)
That seems like a starting point for a point of view in assessing the past actions of people. It might be part of a debate on whether, for example, we should erect statues of those people, or keep the old ones.
I'm not so clear on what that would accomplish in terms of what I asked - the goal to achieve a more equal society that is not scarred by our colonial past.
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human. Every human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
What is much more important than casting blame is
humility; the realization that good intentions can still lead to awful outcomes, and some of our most well-intentioned actions will have consequences which will be judged by posterity to be horrible.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:38:36 AM
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human. Every human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
What is much more important than casting blame is humility; the realization that good intentions can still lead to awful outcomes, and some of our most well-intentioned actions will have consequences which will be judged by posterity to be horrible.
So if your answer is a reply to my question, then you are saying that the best way to promote equality is by teaching humility and not blaming the slaveowners?
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 07:54:00 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:38:36 AM
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human. Every human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
What is much more important than casting blame is humility; the realization that good intentions can still lead to awful outcomes, and some of our most well-intentioned actions will have consequences which will be judged by posterity to be horrible.
So if your answer is a reply to my question, then you are saying that the best way to promote equality is by teaching humility and not blaming the slaveowners?
How about everyone pull out their iPhones, and then Google Foxcon. Look at the tags on all of our clothes for where they're made, and so on. THOSE WHITE PEOPLE who owned slaves were not as much different from ALL of us as we would like to think. Bothered about climate change? How about turn off your air conditioning AND give up your Internet and cell phones. (There's a MASSIVE amount of infrastructure needed to support the lifestyle we take for granted. Look up the environmental harm related to the rare earth materials in smartphones as a very simple example.)
Quote from: bacardiandlime on June 16, 2020, 05:26:15 AM
Adding more non-white authors to a reading list? Sure that's great.
But calling it "decolonisation" is ridiculous. A white prof telling white students to read Chinua Achebe isn't decolonising anything.
I'm not very worried about what it's called, just as I'm not very worried about whether it's tactically wise to loudly call yourself a democratic socialist. Wringing my hands about that sort of thing just seems like a convenient excuse, rather than a substantive issue.
But it's worth emphasizing that (1) this isn't an organized movement with a few clear goals (which, of course, makes it harder to effect change), and (2) I don't think anyone thinks diversifying reading lists is sufficient on its own. To my mind, (2) is especially important. Just adding Chinua Echebe isn't going to do much of anything; but if you do the usual lit thing of contextualizing his work, of teaching students about the history and politics in which his work is embedded, that seems to me like a valuable contribution worthy of the name 'decolonization'.
Similarly, teaching students about Indigenous history; about their forced assimilation through residential schools (what you guys more commonly call 'Indian boarding schools' or 'Indian day schools') and how that differs from anti-Black racism in America; if you teach them about land claims and the history of Indigenous-government relations with respect to resource development (including, e.g., engineered famines to force Indigenous people off land they occupy so that it could legally be claimed for settlement); or even just teaching them about Indigenous conceptions of their cultural context, or the idea in some Indigenous cultures that stories--and other cultural artifacts--are
family, rather than public, property... those are the kinds of things they're not likely to learn about it much detail elsewhere, and it seems to me that would constitute more than just a token nod towards decolonization.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 05:34:32 AM
Talk is cheap. And that's what virtue signalling is. (Even a protest is basically virtue signalling.) Remember Kony2012?
Slacktivism is the religion of the 21st century. If you supposedly care about homeless people, volunteer in a shelter, don't go in some stupid march.
To paraphrase an old expression, "virtue is what you display when no-one else is watching."
[...]
If you want to know whether soemone is a racist, forget about whther they wear a BLM t-shirt; talk to their neighbours, colleagues, students, etc. and see how they treat actual people.
What they advertise is inconsequential.
There are many different ways to contribute to change, and protest absolutely has its place. What we've seen a number of times, including in recent history, is that protest, when large enough, can effect real change--it can even topple a government. You can look to the civil rights era in the US, of course, or the gay rights movement; closer to home, you could consider the Indigenous uprising in response to the treatment of the Wet'suwet'en just before coronavirus hit (or, indeed, the similar uprising at Oka in 1990), the student protests in Québec in 2012 (or the series of similar protests with the same goals in prior decades), or the protests against the second Gulf war in 2002. Protest is inconvenient, and it doesn't always work, but it's one perfectly legitimate tool for communicating widespread dissatisfaction with governance.
I would also point out that quite a lot of the people at any protest, but especially in the current protests in the US, really
are doing something about it other than protesting in their ordinary lives. It's not like everyone has to choose between, say, community activism and protest. You can do multiple things at the same time, and doing one doesn't preclude the other.
EDIT: I forgot to add, with respect to the last quoted statement, that it seems to me that that's one of the least important, interesting, or informative questions we could ask about someone. Who's going around trying to determine whether people are racist? Nobody I know.
Quote
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human.
They're not necessarily tied to that colonial past, nor are they necessarily tied to the Enlightenment or to Christianity. The principles of human equality, and all the rest, predate both those things, and they've cropped up a number of times in different parts of the world. The focus on the Enlightenment and Christianity as the source of these values (and the attendant mantra of "Judeo-Christian values" or "Athens and Jerusalem") is itself part of the same narrow-minded and historically-blinkered problem that proponents of this kind of curriculum reform are worried about.
QuoteEvery human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
This smacks of a straw man to me. At the very least, it's incredibly uncharitable, especially in the context of a discussion taking place on a forum for academics, where you can reasonably expect the discourse to be at a higher level than the local pub.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 08:10:17 AM
How about everyone pull out their iPhones, and then Google Foxcon. Look at the tags on all of our clothes for where they're made, and so on. THOSE WHITE PEOPLE who owned slaves were not as much different from ALL of us as we would like to think. Bothered about climate change? How about turn off your air conditioning AND give up your Internet and cell phones. (There's a MASSIVE amount of infrastructure needed to support the lifestyle we take for granted. Look up the environmental harm related to the rare earth materials in smartphones as a very simple example.)
I don't understand. Wouldn't all that just be "virtue-signalling", according to what you said upthread?
More broadly: the fact that there are serious problems in the world around us shouldn't prevent us from reckoning with our past, especially when the negative legacy of that past is still on prominent display today. Learning about Foxconn is important, and working to stop that kind of exploitation seems like an important goal. Similarly, learning about our own individual contributions to climate change, and learning how to scale them back, is important and laudable too, although even if every individual did so it still would not suffice to address the problem at this point. But none of that makes it any less useful or important for us to reckon with the past and its legacies. And to suggest it should is really just a red herring; it's classic what-aboutism, and looks more like an excuse for inaction than anything else.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 08:10:17 AM
Quote from: downer on June 16, 2020, 07:54:00 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:38:36 AM
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human. Every human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
What is much more important than casting blame is humility; the realization that good intentions can still lead to awful outcomes, and some of our most well-intentioned actions will have consequences which will be judged by posterity to be horrible.
So if your answer is a reply to my question, then you are saying that the best way to promote equality is by teaching humility and not blaming the slaveowners?
How about everyone pull out their iPhones, and then Google Foxcon. Look at the tags on all of our clothes for where they're made, and so on. THOSE WHITE PEOPLE who owned slaves were not as much different from ALL of us as we would like to think. Bothered about climate change? How about turn off your air conditioning AND give up your Internet and cell phones. (There's a MASSIVE amount of infrastructure needed to support the lifestyle we take for granted. Look up the environmental harm related to the rare earth materials in smartphones as a very simple example.)
I thought it was a yes or no question.
Maybe you are saying that we should not aim to promote equality though our teaching?
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 16, 2020, 08:21:21 AM
Similarly, teaching students about Indigenous history; about their forced assimilation through residential schools (what you guys more commonly call 'Indian boarding schools' or 'Indian day schools') and how that differs from anti-Black racism in America; if you teach them about land claims and the history of Indigenous-government relations with respect to resource development (including, e.g., engineered famines to force Indigenous people off land they occupy so that it could legally be claimed for settlement); or even just teaching them about Indigenous conceptions of their cultural context, or the idea in some Indigenous cultures that stories--and other cultural artifacts--are family, rather than public, property... those are the kinds of things they're not likely to learn about it much detail elsewhere, and it seems to me that would constitute more than just a token nod towards decolonization.
I'm not sure who "you guys" are, but I refer to the schools as "residential schools", since that's the term people recognize. Since I have relatives from India, I don't use "Indian" to refer to North American indigenous people. "First Nations" I think is mostly a Canadian term, so "Indigenous people" seems to be fairly universal and respectful on here.
And were there any elements of Indigenous concepts that modern people would find problematic? If they don't get mentioned then that sounds kind of like a "token nod towards" diversity. (Indigenous groups had war before the Europeans came along. The Europeans cranked that up for their own ends.)
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There are many different ways to contribute to change, and protest absolutely has its place.
If we're talking about peaceful protest, I totally agree. But when a white protester smashes a window, loots and torches a store owned by a black person, I have trouble seeing how that brings justice for the black community.
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The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human.
They're not necessarily tied to that colonial past, nor are they necessarily tied to the Enlightenment or to Christianity. The principles of human equality, and all the rest, predate both those things, and they've cropped up a number of times in different parts of the world. The focus on the Enlightenment and Christianity as the source of these values (and the attendant mantra of "Judeo-Christian values" or "Athens and Jerusalem") is itself part of the same narrow-minded and historically-blinkered problem that proponents of this kind of curriculum reform are worried about.
My original point is that many of the problems stem, not from an absence of good intentions, but from a failure to live up to those intentions and/or see how they should be more broadly applied.
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Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 08:10:17 AM
How about everyone pull out their iPhones, and then Google Foxcon. Look at the tags on all of our clothes for where they're made, and so on. THOSE WHITE PEOPLE who owned slaves were not as much different from ALL of us as we would like to think. Bothered about climate change? How about turn off your air conditioning AND give up your Internet and cell phones. (There's a MASSIVE amount of infrastructure needed to support the lifestyle we take for granted. Look up the environmental harm related to the rare earth materials in smartphones as a very simple example.)
I don't understand. Wouldn't all that just be "virtue-signalling", according to what you said upthread?
Easy test for virtue signalling: If its value depends on other people seeing
you do it, then it's virtue signalling.
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More broadly: the fact that there are serious problems in the world around us shouldn't prevent us from reckoning with our past, especially when the negative legacy of that past is still on prominent display today. Learning about Foxconn is important, and working to stop that kind of exploitation seems like an important goal. Similarly, learning about our own individual contributions to climate change, and learning how to scale them back, is important and laudable too, although even if every individual did so it still would not suffice to address the problem at this point. But none of that makes it any less useful or important for us to reckon with the past and its legacies. And to suggest it should is really just a red herring; it's classic what-aboutism, and looks more like an excuse for inaction than anything else.
Climate change is the perfect example of what I'm trying to say. No-one set out to destroy the planet; all of the environmental degradation is because of
unintended consequences. Blaming all of the problems resulting from colonialism on essentially genocidal maniacs makes it easy to think that
this generation won't make egregious mistakes with horrific consequences. But hindsight is always 20-20.
In pre-partition India, and Yugoslavia, there were ethnic and religious communities who lived in relative harmony for generations
until the religious and/or ethnic divisions got whipped up, at which point they began slaughtering one another.
There are countless historical examples of that. Demonizing specific groups never ends well.
On the other hand, being reminded how unintended consequences may bring about the opposite of what we want may help us be a bit more careful and humble in our actions.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 07:38:36 AM
One thing which would be much more useful is to point out how human beings consistently fail to uphold the ideals they have, and how we are all flawed. So even the "heroes" of today, and the noble sentiments we have now will be looked at askance by our descendants.
The very principles of human equality come out of that "colonial past"; i.e. values of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Society is scarred by human nature; the evils of colonialism are human. Every human society has problems, and to pretend that "colonialism" is the sole source of the problems, and if somehow we could "erase" that past, everything would be fine, is ridiculous and dangerous.
What is much more important than casting blame is humility; the realization that good intentions can still lead to awful outcomes, and some of our most well-intentioned actions will have consequences which will be judged by posterity to be horrible.
Y'know Marshy, one of the things we try to teach freshman writers is to avoid the obvious blanket statements ("human beings are flawed and sometimes good intentions go bad") because, hey, we already know these things---there's no point in pointing that out. And we try to teach them not to think in simplistic, diametric terms ("the principles of equality come out of a colonial past")----it's a wee bit more complicated than that.
Rather, focus narrowly and with references. For instance: Do the statues of slave owners serve the best interests of our current world? Could we change what we teach to represent broader ideas that include the slaves as well as the slave-owning class so we can look back on the good and the evil in our past?
Have you ever taken comp 101? (That's rhetorical, BTW. No need to answer.)
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 16, 2020, 08:21:21 AM
There are many different ways to contribute to change, and protest absolutely has its place. What we've seen a number of times, including in recent history, is that protest, when large enough, can effect real change--it can even topple a government. You can look to the civil rights era in the US, of course, or the gay rights movement; closer to home, you could consider the Indigenous uprising in response to the treatment of the Wet'suwet'en just before coronavirus hit
I must concede this is definitely a vestige of colonialism. Agreement was reached with the elected leaders of all of the Wet'suwet'en groups affected by the piepline, but the hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en objected. It is undeniable that the colonial powers have rejected the authority of their own hereditary rulers in favour of the decisions of elected leaders, so we can't escape the blame on that one.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 11:01:35 AM
I'm not sure who "you guys" are, but I refer to the schools as "residential schools", since that's the term people recognize.
'You guys' = Americans. I was addressing bacardiandlime, who I think is American (and my apologies if I've traduced you, bacardiandlime!). I've heard residential schools called all kinds of things in the US, and have been asked about the term 'residential school' by a number of American colleagues unfamiliar with the term (but familiar with whatever the local term was). I just wanted to be clear.
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And were there any elements of Indigenous concepts that modern people would find problematic? If they don't get mentioned then that sounds kind of like a "token nod towards" diversity. (Indigenous groups had war before the Europeans came along. The Europeans cranked that up for their own ends.)
Oh, I'm sure, including the status of women and the practice of slavery. I don't know enough about such things to talk about them in any detail, however. One thing I do know a little about is the myth of the ecological Indigenous person, which piggybacks on some decidedly racist 19th-century interpretations of Darwin and glorifications of 'primitivism', but which was embraced and promulgated by a number of Indigenous groups in a failed political gambit to assert title to their lands and win sympathy for the cause. Like all myths, there's a kernel of truth in there, but it's been seriously distorted, and the distortions persist to this day.
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Climate change is the perfect example of what I'm trying to say. No-one set out to destroy the planet; all of the environmental degradation is because of unintended consequences. Blaming all of the problems resulting from colonialism on essentially genocidal maniacs makes it easy to think that this generation won't make egregious mistakes with horrific consequences. But hindsight is always 20-20.
Well, a fair bit of that degradation is deliberate and in spite of full knowledge of the consequences (just look at the treasure trove of recent documents which show not just that Exxon and other oil majors knew about climate change and their role in it in the 1970s, but that they deliberately and explicitly worked to undermine public belief in climate change). Likewise, consider the engineered famines of John A. Macdonald, which cleared southern Saskatchewan and Alberta for the CP railway's construction, or engineered famines and forced migrations in the US, for the purpose of legally claiming reserve land by making it 'uninhabited'.
Bad intentions certainly aren't necessary. But they're sufficient, and they
are sometimes there to be seen.
Quote from: marshwiggle on June 16, 2020, 12:45:29 PM
I must concede this is definitely a vestige of colonialism. Agreement was reached with the elected leaders of all of the Wet'suwet'en groups affected by the piepline, but the hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en objected. It is undeniable that the colonial powers have rejected the authority of their own hereditary rulers in favour of the decisions of elected leaders, so we can't escape the blame on that one.
Let's not forget that the Supreme Court granted heriditary chiefs jurisdiction over unceded land, too. I mean... really, it seems like the problem lies with the structure of the Indian Act. It was an improvement over a bad situation, sure, but it's still not a very good document. That should have been obvious just from the discriminatory way it outlines 'status' and its transmission, whose predictable result was the erasure of entire generations (part of what is aptly called cultural genocide).
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 16, 2020, 06:35:15 PM
I mean... really, it seems like the problem lies with the structure of the Indian Act. It was an improvement over a bad situation, sure, but it's still not a very good document. That should have been obvious just from the discriminatory way it outlines 'status' and its transmission, whose predictable result was the erasure of entire generations (part of what is aptly called cultural genocide).
Legislation (including the Indian Act) is stuck with trying to square the circle of Indigenous people being both "Canadian" and "Indigenous". The transmission of status issues (such as women who marry non-Indigenous men losing it in the past) reflected what was probably the norm at one time; i.e. that women were more likley to leave the reserves and live like non-Indigenous Canadians than Indigenous men who married non-Indigenous women.
Taxation is one of those problematic issues as well. Centuries ago, the idea that Indigenous people could freely carry their goods and trade without taxes made sense in the context of a more-or-less subsistence lifestyle, where people were basically supporting their own families. However, the situations now with reserves on both sides of the border, with big businesses in things like tobacco, create a situation completely different than what was originally envisioned.
Land on reserves being collectively owned rather than privately owned is another thing that is a reflection of that same previous era. As Indigenous people choose lifestyles more like non-Indigenous people, more of the legislation relating to Indigenous people seems out-of-place, but will be hard to change unless and until Indigenous people can come to a consensus.