Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Twenty: The School as the Embodiment of Character Formation Versus the School as the Embodiment of the Three R’s

This is a continuation of a series of posts on summaries of articles, mainly on education.

When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I started to provide a summary of the article along with the article. I placed the summaries along with the articles in a binder (and, eventually, binders), and I placed the binder in the staff lounge.

As chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for Lakeshore Teachers’ Association of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS), I also sent the articles and summary to the Ning of the MTS (a ning is “an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks”).

As I pointed out in a previous post, it is necessary for the radical left to use every opportunity to question the legitimacy of existing institutions.

The following post refers to John Dewey; Dewey was one of the major philosophers of education of the twentieth century.

The attached article for the ESJ Ning is prefaced by the following:

Hello everyone,

I sent the attached article to the ESJ Ning. I prefaced it with the following:

Ian Westbury, in his article “ `The Educational Situation as Concerns the Elementary School’: Implications for our Time,” uses Dewey’s own title from an article that Dewey wrote in order to point out that we face the same problems that Dewey faces today. Rational curriculum and other educational reforms, he argues, will not be a result of mere theorizing about the problems.

Dewey argued that we need to address not only the theoretical and practical issues of what constitutes education and how that concept of education is to play itself out in curriculum, in pedagogy and in teacher-student interactions. We need to address, on a practical level, the inertia of the present school structure and the inertia of communities who define education in the old way: the three Rs (and, later, when high schools arose, the teaching of separate disciplines, such as science, mathematics and social studies without a mechanism that leads to their integration).

Dewey pointed out that theoreticians could repeat until they were blue in the face about ideal educational conditions and how schools do not embody such ideal conditions—and school bureaucrats would ignore such criticisms. Theory and practice stood at loggerheads, but practice actually won since practice was the site of schools—not universities (except, of course, as school sites themselves—but that is another story).

The problem for Dewey was defined in terms of the inadequate understanding of how schools needed to be organized in order to perform their educational function. The public and the school bureaucracy considered that the essential nature of education was embodied in the traditional three Rs (and, it can be added, the separate disciplines, such as mathematics, science and social studies). [Dewey, however, was quite naïve in considering that conservative forces did not contribute to the inertia of the organization or structure of schools.]

Many educators agree theoretically that character formation should take priority in education, that the concrete should be the point of departure for an understanding of the abstract rather than vice versa, and the real take priority over the symbolic. On the practical level, on the other hand, character formation was left to the “hidden curriculum,” the abstract took precedence over the concrete and the symbolic dominated the real.

To be sure, new studies were added to the curriculum, such as music and drawing, but they were add-ons rather than integrated into the traditional studies. Simply adding such activities to the traditional curriculum of the three Rs led to no rational relation of such add-ons to what was considered to be “real education.” The original organization of the school centered on symbolic learning (the three Rs). The inclusion of later studies was merely grafted on to this structure as frills, with the centre of school organization still being the three Rs (and later, the separate disciplines with no integrative mechanism).

The conflict between the old and the new studies, Dewey argued though, is not inherent to the studies themselves. Both old and new studies should be capable of integration in the form of a new curriculum structure, but the old school organization, based on the old three Rs model (and, later, the separate, unintegrated disciplines), the graded school, the graded curriculum with the division of curriculum according to grade and subject prevented the creation of a rational, integrated curriculum. The old school structure was what the public itself defined as education. Deviations from that model were considered to be non-educative.

There was a major problem, then, for educational reform: to gain legitimacy, educational reform would have to conform to the organization embodied in school institutions, but those institutions were organized according to rigid or fixed model of the three Rs (and the separate, unintegrated disciplines). Reforms that contradicted that school organization may be added to the curriculum, but more as add-ons or frills rather than as integrated components. The “real” curriculum was still considered the three Rs (and the separate, unintegrated disciplines).

As a consequence, teachers had their role already defined by the school organization—as executors of a given fixed curriculum structure.

To overcome this situation, it would be necessary to engage in educational practice rather than in continuing to focus exclusively on theory. New experiments in school organization would be required in order to test new theories and to provide evidence of the advantages of different organizational forms of schools. It would be through such experiments at the local level that large-scale change would emerge—and not through continued developments in theory alone. The public would have to be convinced by practice and not just by more theory development.

Westbury notes that Dewey’s call for the reform of school institutions through, initially, small-scale experiments in different forms of school organization has not been realized in the twenty-first century. Indeed, what Dewey warned of—the development of theory without any corresponding development of experimental embodiment of such theory in different forms of school organization—has been repeated in relation to Dewey’s own theory and practice. University professors may be well-versed in Dewey’s theory and practice, but they have remained aloof from attempting to realize in practice his theory (unlike Dewey, who did try to realize his educational philosophy in the University Laboratory School in Chicago between 1896 and 1904). Teaching practices still operate in what is largely the same organization of the school and the same curriculum structure, and the public’s image of what education involves is still tied to that old, fossilized school organization.

Curriculum theory, rather than just being a theoretical exercise, needs to become a practical endeavour of experimentation as the organizational level of the school as well as a mobilization effort of the public to support such innovations in school organizations.

Westbury, however, denigrates a vision of what real education involves. Although theory without practice undoubtedly spins around itself, practice without theory will be blind.

Another limitation of Westbury’s article is his unrealistic evaluation of the difficulty in overcoming the inertia of school organization. The dogma of school bureaucrats will not be overcome by setting exemplars of experimental schools; Dewey’s own exemplar at the University Laboratory School has all but been forgotten.

What is needed to overcome the inertia of the deadening school organization is a struggle on multiple fronts, both inside and outside schools. That will also require a struggle to overcome wider social organizations and structures that weigh on people, such as the hierarchy at work both for private and public employers.

The creation of a school organization that children and adolescents deserve will not arise without such a struggle. Equity and social justice demands such a struggle—objectively.

School Rhetoric: Ideological Use of the Concept of Social Justice, Part One

Social justice has now become a buzzword these days. There is social justice this and social justice that, here a social justice, there a social justice, everywhere a social justice. This buzzword forms the ideology of the social-democratic left, for example, as well as the conservative right. After all, who is against social justice?

The winter 2015-2016 edition of Leaders & Learners (the official magazine of the Canadian Association of School Administrators, or CASS) has as its title “Social Justice and Social Responsibility.” The content of that particular journal expresses the limited definition (and views) of its middle-class authors.

Let us look at the most radical article in the publication: “The ‘Great (Un) Equalizer’: Using the Bourdieuian Lens to Understand ,the Paradox of Education,” Victor Brar uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital,” among others, to criticize schools. Brar argues that academic achievement is a function of the individual’s cultural capital, which is accumulated as a child experiences the world to form their habitus–the specific way of looking at the world and responding to it. This world, however, is not unitary but riveted by separation through the existence of social classes. Individuals belonging to different classes will have different kinds of cultural capital and different habituses.

In schools, some kinds of cultural capital and habitus will be treated as more valuable than others, forcing those who lack the characteristic cultural capital and habitus of the school system to conform to external requirements–which leads to symbolic violence.

Brar then uses more specific categories of class to criticize the school system. Those children who lack the cultural capital and habitus of schools are “from low SES [socio-economic statu] backgrounds” and will, in a vicious circle, fail to achieve relatively to those students who do possess the cultural capital and habitus of the school; the lower SES students will thus remain in the low SES.

Brar specifically uses the socio-economic status criterion for determining the nature of the lower and middle classes, page 35:

This achievement gap, if further compounded by the fact that because schools are unfairly oriented towards middle class dispositions, then the children from higher SES backgrounds perform comparatively better, thereby widening the achievement gap between themselves and their low SES peers.

Using levels of income (SES) to define class may be useful in some circumstances (for example, in deciding the likelihood of support for certain socialist policies related to housing), the use of levels of income is a social-democratic method of excluding most people from the working class.

The absurdity of classifying people as middle class on the basis of income can be seen from one article on distribution of income in some so-called Third World countries. This article refers to earning $2-$4 a day (presumably in American dollars) as the lower end of the middle class in Guatemala and $6-$10 a day to be the upper end in Guatemala. They justify such a classification in the following manner. From Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 22, Number 2—Spring 2008, page 5:

In what sense should people living on between $2 and $10 per day be called “middle class”? These households are still very poor by developed country standards; the poverty line in the United States in 2006 for someone who lives in a family of five, for example, was $24,385, which when divided by five people in the family and 365 days in a year, works out to be about $13 per day.

On the other hand, the middle class in these countries are clearly much better off than the poor, who live on less than $1 or $2 a day.

This definition of middle class is purely in terms of relative level of income and takes no account of how this so-called middle class obtains its money. It is a definition based on a “standard of living” concept–a consumerist concept.

Consider the situation of my wife. She was born in Guatemala and earned around 2,800 Quetzales a month–around $373 US a month, or $12,44 US a day. How can anyone call her a member of the middle class? Her last job in Guatemala was a salesclerk in Guatemala City. Before that, she was a receptionist (earning about the same amount), but the company downsized and consolidated positions, throwing her out of work. She was unemployed for several months afterwards, with no income. In all her jobs, she had a boss who evaluated her performance and ultimately controlled her work and indeed whether she would work at all (power to fire). This is the situation of a member of the working class.

This does not mean that there is no such thing as the middle class. My sister-in-law’s husband is a doctor in Guatemala and has his own practice. He sets his own hours, fees and so forth. His work life is much more independent than was the work life of my wife. He can be considered part of the Guatemalan middle class.

Using levels of income or SES to define class implies that everyone can become middle class in a capitalist economy. Thus, if only everyone could achieve a level of income above the poverty line, then there would be no “poor” or working class.

Compare this view with the Marxian definition of class. In the Marxian definition of class, classes are mainly defined in an antagonistic fashion: one class emerges at the expense of another class through control over the conditions of work. One class gains what the other class loses, and the class that loses often tries to regain what it has lost, so there is a class struggle that only ends when either the two classes mutually ruin each other, or the lower class defeats the ruling class and creates a new form of society (with or without classes).

In the context of modern society, it is not the level of income but the fact that most workers have to work for an employer that characterizes class relations. Brar, by defining class in terms of levels of income, fails to develop an analysis that looks beyond the relationship of employer and employees; indeed, his definition of class according to levels of income actually hides the real class relations by excluding a concept of class that involves the exploitation of one class by another.

Even apart from the issue of exploitation, there is the additional issue of treating workers as things to be used by others. In a capitalist society, class power relations are linked to control over things–human beings are controlled through control over things that have social power (such as money, but also machines, buildings and so forth). Things gain human-like power, and human beings become thing-like (see The Money Circuit of Capital). Brar’s use of level of income as the basis for defining class not only fails to capture the need for class exploitation but also fails to capture the need for treating human beings as things and the need for things to gain human-like powers (what can be called commodity fetishism, money fetishism–treating things such as beer, money and means of production as possessing inherent social powers independently of human beings).

It is true that there are members of a middle class in modern society, but they should be seen as related to the two other antagonistic classes. Thus, just like my brother-in-law, doctors can usually be considered part of the middle class, but not just because of the level of income but because they control their own work, on the one hand, and they lack control over many workers lives on the other. Supervisors and lower-level managers could also be considered part of the middle class in that part of their function is to control the work of workers while, on the other hand, they themselves are hired workers who depend on a wage or salary to live. Superintendents undoubtedly can be considered part of the middle class.

Principals may also be considered part of the middle class, but approach perhaps more closely to the position of the working class since they are further down in the dictatorial hierarchy. On the other hand, the extent to which principals function as oppressors of members of the working class also needs to be taken into account. On a practical level, whether a principal is a member of the working class or the middle class would have to be determined organizationally–whether in fact they oppose the working class or support them.

Despite these limitations, Brar’s characterization of lower SES and higher SES does have some usefulness in characterizing school experiences. Some parents who are members of the working class do see schooling (what they call education) as an investment in the future of their children and seek to ensure that their children have the wherewithal to be successful as defined by school authorities. Other parents of the working class do not. Similarly, some children of the working class do identify with such expenditures whereas others do not.

This view of schooling as investment is, however, characteristic not of the middle class per se but of what Hadas Weiss (We Have Never Been Middle Class) calls middle-class ideology. The ideology functions as a competitive belief in “investment,” whether it is in schooling, housing, pensions, stocks and bonds, etc., with the expectation that the sacrifice required for the expenditure will pay off in the future. The fact that those who make such sacrifices have to work for an employer is simply ignored. Such an ideology, another words, papers over the need for members of the working class to accept their subordination to the class of employers if they are to be “successful” in this social world.

This ideology has undoubtedly served to limit the class struggle of the working class since workers then are prepared to subordinate themselves to the power of employers in the present in hopes of reaping rewards in the future.

Since the level of sacrifice needed in neoliberal times has been increasing and the returns for the increasing levels of sacrifice have been diminishing, this middle-class ideology is being threatened.

Returning to Brar’s article, Brar, rather than exposing the limitation of middle-class ideology and criticizing it, relies on the distinction in order to criticize schools. He does not question whether those who have higher levels of income are in fact members of the middle class or not. He assumes that they are. His criticism of the school is therefore limited. His implicit concept of social justice remains entirely bound to the present social order of a class of employers, on the one side, a class of employees on the other, with another class–the middle class being neither one nor the other. The middle class, then, cannot be determined except in relation to the two dominant classes in a capitalist society.

If Brar’s article, which is the most radical article in the superintendents’ journal, forms an inadequate basis for criticizing schools, then all the articles referring to social justice are bound to form an even more inadequate basis for criticizing schools–as we shall see in future posts.

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Six

The following is the sixth of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French.

I provided Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts, followed by my reflections (response). In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades was distributed over three posts.

Further posts followed that included performance evaluation criteria for Domain I (Professional Responsibilities) and Domain II (Educational Environments), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).

For the context of the “clinical evaluation,” see the post A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Eight.

As a teacher, I was earning around $85,000 a year at the time. Undoubtedly, according to the social-democratic or social-reformist left, it was a “good job,” “decent work,” and other such clichés. Being under clinical evaluation or supervision, however, was in effect legal torture. Did the collective agreement between Lakeshore School Division and Lakeshore Teachers’ Association prevent such legal torture? Was the collective agreement a “fair contract?”

I responded to Mr. MacNeil’s clinical evaluation with an initial 43-page reply, with the then Manitoba Teachers Society (MTS) staff officer Roland Stankevicius (later General Secretary of the MTS) providing edited suggestions that reduced it to about 30 pages.

Mr. Stankevicius remarked that the evaluation reflected negatively–on Mr. MacNeil:

You have provided a very scholarly response but it needs to be shortened. I hope you agree with my suggestions. …

You have made your points here. NM [Neil MacNeil] does not look good in a lot of how he states his observations (in my opinion).

This commentary by the union rep was made in December, 2011. However, two months later, in February 2012, I was to be evaluated again–this time on “intensive supervision”–under the direct supervision of the superintendent of Lakeshore School Division, Janet Martell. Since I was seeing a counsellor for the Manitoba Teachers’ Society, Degen Gene, under the Employee Assistance Program, he recommended that I go on sick leave. A math teacher at Ashern Central School (where I worked) also suggested that. In February, Mr. Stankevicius (the MTS union rep), Janet Martell, superientendent, Leanne Peters (Assistant Superintendent) and I had a meeting to discuss the issue.

Mr. Stankevicius, the MTS lawyer and I subsequently met. The lawyer indicated that the issue was grievable (I could claim that they had breached the collective agreement), but that in the meantime I would still have to undergo intensive clincial supervision–and that despite Mr. Stankevicius’s earlier claim that Mr. MaNneil’s evaluation reflected badly on him rather than on me. I was already experiencing extreme stress due to the legal harassment of the principal. I also knew, both from experience as a union steward at another place of work and from a course I took on arbitration, that the process of grievance handling could take months if not more than a year before being addressed and a judgement handed down. The implicit power of management’s right to direct the workforce granted the superintendent the right to harass me legally–despite a collective agreement–the principle of following the directives of management and grieving later–hardly expresses any fair situation. I decided to go on sick leave, and I resigned at the end of June 2012.

This post deals with the performance evaluation criteria of Domain III (Teaching and Learning), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response). (The final post in this series will be about performance evaluation critiera for Domain IV (Professional Relationships), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).

When I refer to “see above” in some of the posts, it refers to previous posts (in the actual response to the principal’s performance evaluation, it was to what I had written earlier).

The radical left should expose both what management does and how it does it. Discussion of the situation that various kinds of employees face need to be openly discussed, but to do that it is necessary to expose, in a transparent way, managerial behaviour.

The radical left (and even many self-proclaimed Marxists), however, these days rarely discuss in any detailed way issues that oppress workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers.

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Domain 3: Teaching and Learning

3a. Communicating instruction

3b. Questioning and discussion techniques

3c. Student Engagement

3d. Effective feedback for students

3e. Flexibility and Responsiveness

Administrator’s Comments

Students are often confused about what they should be doing during classes, and how they should be doing it. Almost all instructions in the observed classes have been giving orally, and as there appears to be very little desire on the part of the students to take part in the activities or learning being asked of them, they are often not listening to these oral instructions. Even when instructions have been presented on paper, as for the family tree assignment in the grade 7 class, Fred and the students engaged in something of a battle as they attempted to focus on the second part of the page, dealing with the actual assignment, while Fred kept insisting that they redirect their attention to the first part of the page – which they never did appear to do. This tug-of-war went on for several minutes.

Any flow in the question and answer sessions between Fred and his students was disrupted by Fred’s continued admonishments of student who were not behaving appropriately in the class. Both I and the students had trouble seeing the point of these sessions due to the interruptions. The sessions at the beginning of classes where personal questions were asked and answered were, as previously noted, devoid of any evidence of progressing in competency in French, or in creating effective relationships between Fred and the students in these classes.

There was little effective engagement during these classes. Through much of the classes, students were looking elsewhere, had their heads down, and/or were engaged in other activities than those Fred wanted them to be engaged in. These other behaviours included such things as braiding their own or others’ hair, doodling, reading other materials, making paper airplanes, walking around the class, sharpening pencils, etc. Students’ body postures appeared in many cases to be “slumped” in their chairs, looking elsewhere rather than at whomever might be speaking at any given time. During the most recent observation (grade 8), 3 of the 5 girls taking the class were overheard by myself saying the same three words, “I hate French”. Students would routinely insist that they were unable to carry out the tasks Fred requested of them, or to respond to the questions he posed to them.

Fred appeared to be either unwilling or unable to be flexible in terms of responding to cues from students during the observed classes. For example, in providing students with a handout about their family tree assignment (grade 7), he attempted to go over the goals of the assignment, while they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page. They would ask questions about this second section, to which he repeatedly replied, “I only want questions about the first section.” A discussion of the learning goals never did transpire, and the class eventually moved on to the requirements of the project. Fred had previously decided (evidently) that students could use “imaginary” family members instead of their real families. This led to questions about possibly using cartoon or other characters in the family tree, and Fred himself suggested that they might include aliens. While this might alleviate some discomfort that some students might feel about using their own family members, it led to a breakdown in the attempted discussion as students began to speculate about the imaginary characters they might use.

Teacher’s Reflections

Re: “Students are often confused about what they should be doing during classes, and how they should be doing it. Almost all instructions in the observed classes have been giving orally, and as there appears to be very little desire on the part of the students to take part in the activities or learning being asked of them, they are often not listening to these oral instructions.”

I have tried to write a general outline of what we are going to do on the board. I have also been writing the purpose of the lesson on the board for about a week now.

Re: “Even when instructions have been presented on paper, as for the family tree assignment in the grade 7 class, Fred and the students engaged in something of a battle as they attempted to focus on the second part of the page, dealing with the actual assignment, while Fred kept insisting that they redirect their attention to the first part of the page – which they never did appear to do. This tug-of-war went on for several minutes.”

I will admit that I should have separated the two parts of the paper into two papers (see attachment). The characterization of what transpired as a tug-of-war is, once again, inaccurate. There were perhaps two or three students who wanted to know about the family tree. Most questions, though, were focused on the first set. There was no tug-of-war. I simply reminded students that we would deal with the second set afterwards. I did not “insist,” as if I were struggling to have them focus on the first set. Such a characterization is simply inaccurate. We did discuss the learning goals, and I reviewed some of the vocabulary of the family and the possessive adjectives. We also, for example, reviewed avoir with age since it is a frequent English mistake to use etre rather than avoir. One student made that mistake, and I corrected the student.

In the grade 7 class, there were, perhaps, 10 to 15 questions by students with their hands raised. They were certain listening to the answers that I was providing and were evidently participating in the formulation of questions in order to clarify the goals and the expectations of the family tree.

Re: “Any flow in the question and answer sessions between Fred and his students was disrupted by Fred’s continued admonishments of student who were not behaving appropriately in the class. Both I and the students had trouble seeing the point of these sessions due to the interruptions.”

Again, I am not sure if the administrator is referring to the grade 6, 7 or 8 classes or to all of them.

I have given several students detention when they have persisted in misbehaving.

Re: “There was little effective engagement during these classes. Through much of the classes, students were looking elsewhere, had their heads down, and/or were engaged in other activities than those Fred wanted them to be engaged in. These other behaviours included such things as braiding their own or others’ hair, doodling, reading other materials, making paper airplanes, walking around the class, sharpening pencils, etc. Students’ body postures appeared in many cases to be “slumped” in their chairs, looking elsewhere rather than at whomever might be speaking at any given time. During the most recent observation (grade 8), 3 of the 5 girls taking the class were overheard by myself saying the same three words, “I hate French”. Students would routinely insist that they were unable to carry out the tasks Fred requested of them, or to respond to the questions he posed to them.”

As I said, I have tried to address the issue with the grade 8s by breaking the process into more manageable (analytic) parts.

Re: “Fred appeared to be either unwilling or unable to be flexible in terms of responding to cues from students during the observed classes. For example, in providing students with a handout about their family tree assignment (grade 7), he attempted to go over the goals of the assignment, while they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page.”

I certainly agree that “they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page.” The students are, in accordance with Deweyan theory, more interested naturally in the concrete ends rather than in the means to the end. I had misunderstood what the administrator required; I thought that he had meant that it was necessary to review the learning goals before going on.

As for not being responsive, I tried to follow what I thought the administrator required for learning goals.

Re: “Fred had previously decided (evidently) that students could use “imaginary” family members instead of their real families.”

This suggestion was a suggestion from one of the students.

“This led to questions about possibly using cartoon or other characters in the family tree, and Fred himself suggested that they might include aliens. While this might alleviate some discomfort that some students might feel about using their own family members, it led to a breakdown in the attempted discussion as students began to speculate about the imaginary characters they might use.”

I am uncertain how the spontaneity of the students’ imagination led to a breakdown in the discussion. Some students were enthusiastic and expressed themselves without raising their hand, probably. It seems, then, that good classroom management requires the absolute mediation of the teacher for students to express themselves. If that is indeed considered good classroom management, I will comply with such a view, but I then wonder about the issue of spontaneity and the effect that will have on student interest.

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Five

The following is the fifth of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French.

I provided Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts, followed by my reflections (response). In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades is distributed over three posts.

The previous post referred to the first area of peformance evaluation criteria (Domain I, Professional Responsibilities), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).

This post deals with the performance evaluation criteria of Domain II (Educational Environments), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).

Two further posts will follow in the future that include performance criteria for Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships), Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (responses).

Some of my responses will make sense only in conjunction with my responses in earlier posts (such as when I refer to something that I mentioned “above.” I invite the reader to read earlier posts in this series to better understand the context.

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Domain 2: Educational Environments

2a. Creating an environment of respect and rapport

2b. Establishing a culture for learning

2c. Establishing and maintaining classroom procedures

2d. Managing student behaviour

2e. Organization of physical space

Administrator’s Comments

Grade 6 French is being taught in the grade 6 classroom. Grades 7 and 8 French are being taught in a classroom provided to Fred at the beginning of the second quarter (mid-November). Fred has been encouraged by me to make the classroom an engaging and invigorating environment for students, and some suggestions were provided to him a month ago, especially in terms of keeping the room organized. At this point, he has put 8 – 10 posters up on bulletin boards in the room, although these are not well situated for use by students, nor have they been seen to be utilized by students during the observations. Some older posters (e.g. a written alphabet) and a map continue to be present at the front of the room. There are tables arrayed across the front of the room, in front of the whiteboard. These appear to impede Fred when he writes on the whiteboard, and would block any shorter students from being able to do so (although that has not happened). There is a variety of materials scattered across these tables, elsewhere in the room, and on Fred’s desk which usually appear to be disorganized and scattered. This lack of organization has been previously identified by both Fred and previous administrators as something requiring remediation, as far back as three years ago.

Students did not demonstrate any significant respect for, nor rapport with Fred during observed lessons. There were many instances where Fred seemed to be striving for their attention and interest, and they would instead seem to ignore or actively disrupt what he was doing. Students will put their heads down, doodle, speak with one another, and otherwise indicate a lack of interest in the lesson. Fred will often respond by telling students to pay attention and/or to cease the behaviour indicating their lack of engagement. They will respond either by completely ignoring the request, or complying for a moment and then quickly resuming the behaviour. e.g. Lifting their head from the desk, and then putting it down again in a few seconds. Stopping their doodling, and then resuming when Fred turns around. Getting up and walking around the class, and then continuing as though they haven’t heard Fred tell them to sit down again, as Fred goes back to trying to continue with the lesson.

After three months of French classes, many students still come to class without their binders or other resources. Fred has remonstrated with them, but the situation continues. Other procedures appear to be enforced/reinforced sporadically, and students have not yet learned to follow them. For example, Fred will at times tell students that they must raise their hands to speak, and at other times allow them to speak without doing so. He will tell them that they must not interrupt him, but sometimes respond to their comments or questions when they do interrupt him without insisting upon not doing so. As we have discussed appropriate methods of establishing classroom routines and managing student behaviours, Fred has alternately maintained that he believes he is doing an appropriate job of doing so, and that he needs to become a better disciplinarian. In any event, Fred has indicated that these negative behaviours are a result of not having been “hard enough” on the students, and has not observed that the behaviours are a result of any want on his part in terms of generating and maintaining appropriate student engagement in the subject. At the end of each observed class, there was no summation of the class’s learning during the period, and students moved on to other activities or preparing for recess while ignoring Fred’s last words about what might happen next class (said in a low voice while he was walking out of the room).

Teacher’s Reflections

Re: “Grade 6 French is being taught in the grade 6 classroom. Grades 7 and 8 French are being taught in a classroom provided to Fred at the beginning of the second quarter (mid-November). Fred has been encouraged by me to make the classroom an engaging and invigorating environment for students, and some suggestions were provided to him a month ago, especially in terms of keeping the room organized. At this point, he has put 8 – 10 posters up on bulletin boards in the room, although these are not well situated for use by students, nor have they been seen to be utilized by students during the observations. Some older posters (e.g. a written alphabet) and a map continue to be present at the front of the room. There are tables arrayed across the front of the room, in front of the whiteboard. These appear to impede Fred when he writes on the whiteboard, and would block any shorter students from being able to do so (although that has not happened). There is a variety of materials scattered across these tables, elsewhere in the room, and on Fred’s desk which usually appear to be disorganized and scattered. This lack of organization has been previously identified by both Fred and previous administrators as something requiring remediation, as far back as three years ago.”

This is true. I have since addressed the immediate issue of the tables by separating them somewhat. It organization will be a continuous work in progress for me.

Re: “Students did not demonstrate any significant respect for, nor rapport with Fred during observed lessons. There were many instances where Fred seemed to be striving for their attention and interest, and they would instead seem to ignore or actively disrupt what he was doing. Students will put their heads down, doodle, speak with one another, and otherwise indicate a lack of interest in the lesson. Fred will often respond by telling students to pay attention and/or to cease the behaviour indicating their lack of engagement. They will respond either by completely ignoring the request, or complying for a moment and then quickly resuming the behaviour. e.g. Lifting their head from the desk, and then putting it down again in a few seconds. Stopping their doodling, and then resuming when Fred turns around. Getting up and walking around the class, and then continuing as though they haven’t heard Fred tell them to sit down again, as Fred goes back to trying to continue with the lesson.”

I was unaware of certain misbehaviours—as I indicated above. The administrator abstracts from the judgement of the previous teacher of the grade 6 class as well as the teacher who was present during the observation. Some in the grade 7 class did not pay attention, but many asked questions and raised their hand to do so. The grade 8 class, on the other hand, is indeed disengaged. As I have said, I am trying to address that issue.

As for respect—it is earned, not imposed. True respect emerges through sharing in common goals and concerns. It is a process that takes time—especially when children live in impoverished conditions and may have a difficult time trusting adults—as many students in the grade 6 class probably do.

I indeed made a major error in accepting the behaviour of certain students in French in the past; however, I think there is a difference between shenanigans (throwing a paper airplane) and insulting a teacher. I have learned that certain behaviours by children are disrespectful and require firm measures that I am working to further develop and employ as a more mutually respectful classroom.

Re: “After three months of French classes, many students still come to class without their binders or other resources. Fred has remonstrated with them, but the situation continues.”

The use of the adverb “still” implies that the students have persistently not come to class with their binders. Some, at the beginning of the school year, did not come with needed supplies, so I instituted a system of detention. That stopped for awhile. Since some did not bring their binders to class (the change of rooms might have been a factor), I reminded them to do so. The administrator, as usual, interpreted the situation in the most negative light possible.

Re: “Other procedures appear to be enforced/reinforced sporadically, and students have not yet learned to follow them. For example, Fred will at times tell students that they must raise their hands to speak, and at other times allow them to speak without doing so. He will tell them that they must not interrupt him, but sometimes respond to their comments or questions when they do interrupt him without insisting upon not doing so.”

I admit that I might have to be more consistent in this area, but as I indicated above, a rigid adherence to rules seems to be counterproductive. Furthermore, if I tried to “insist upon adherence to the rules,” the administrator would probably criticize me for that as well—as he did above.

Re: “As we have discussed appropriate methods of establishing classroom routines and managing student behaviours, Fred has alternately maintained that he believes he is doing an appropriate job of doing so, and that he needs to become a better disciplinarian.”

The administrator did suggest, constructively, that I differentiate instruction for one student in grade 7. When I asked him for other suggestions about other situations, he stated that it was the responsibility of the teacher to come up with a solution.

Re: “In any event, Fred has indicated that these negative behaviours are a result of not having been “hard enough” on the students, and has not observed that the behaviours are a result of any want on his part in terms of generating and maintaining appropriate student engagement in the subject.”

I did believe that the methods I was trying to use were “higher order” methods of learning. If there are other, superior methods that can be recommended, I am willing to try them. I certainly see the need to adapt my pedagogy in the case of the grade 8s.

My reference to not being “hard enough” is simply a recognition that sometimes I have not established or followed rules when I should have done so.

Re: “At the end of each observed class, there was no summation of the class’s learning during the period, and students moved on to other activities or preparing for recess while ignoring Fred’s last words about what might happen next class (said in a low voice while he was walking out of the room).”

That is a useful observation. I should sum up the lesson and be more firm before the end of the class.

Socialism, What It May Look Like: The Series

I have written a number of posts as series rather than just one long post. This is due to a number of reasons. To work out a view requires elaboration and time, and posting as a series permits such elaboration over a longer period of time. Also, I have many interests (which correspond in part to my own experiences as an oppressed and exploited worker, oppressed father and so forth).

However, I thought it may be useful to some readers to string series that I may not expand further into one long post in order to present more content on the same theme. I will not edit the series to make it more like one long essay; readers can pick and choose the posts that interest them.

I will probably do this with various other series on this blog.

Socialism, Part One: What It May Look Like

“My wife asked me what other kind of society could we live than the one we are living now. I suspect that most people have the same kind of question. It is difficult to imagine another kind of life than the life that we have experienced all our lives.

There are, of course, no magic answers. The answers will be experimental, with some failures and some successes, and not in ideal circumstances, of course.

However, some ideas can still be provided about some possible ways of living that provide an alternative vision–a vision so obviously lacking among the so-called left these days.

Tony Smith, in his book Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), provides a description of some aspects of a possible future kind of society. He borrows his model largely from David Schweichart’s model of economic democracy in After Capitalism (2002) (which I have not read). He adds three modifications of his own.

I will cut and paste short pieces from this work. He paints various aspects of a socialist society that need to be incorporated into a socialist society. There are undoubtedly other aspects, and his own account may have to be modified.

I will not pursue the topic week after week after week until the topic is exhausted since there are other topics which I consider relevant–above all a critique of the power of the class of employers, but also a critique of the social-reformist left and the so-called radical left that do not question the power of employers as a class.

From Smith’s book, page 303:

The model Schweickart defends has the following essential elements:

(i) Production and distribution are primarily undertaken within worker
collectives. Workers are not hired as wage-labourers by capital; they instead
join worker collectives as fellow members. There is a basic right to employment,
with state enterprises providing jobs for those unable to find positions in
collectives.

This condition is to initiate a reduction in economic coercion as an essential move towards an increase in economic and individual freedom.

There is, of course, a possible problem of increased inefficiency, but Smith addresses this issue in further democratic socialist measures.

Socialism, Part Two: What It May Look Like

The following is a continuation of an earlier post (Socialism, Part One: What It May Look Like) about the nature of socialism–which is a solution to problems that capitalism, characterized by the domination of a class of employers, cannot solve. Socialism is not something that emerges from a utopian view independently of the nature of capitalism but requires a critical approach to capitalism.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on the democratic nature of the workplace, which is subject to control not only by the workers at the particular workplace electing managers but also by certain community organizations that represent specific community interests. From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), page 303:

(ii) Managers of worker collectives are democratically accountable to those
over whom they exercise authority, either through direct elections or through
appointment by a workers’ council that is itself directly elected. These
enterprises are required to have representatives from a range of social
movements (environmental groups, consumer groups, feminist groups, and
so on) on their boards of directors, accountable to those movements.

What do you think of such proposals? How do they relate to democracy? To the lack of democracy in your life? Do you think that such proposals are worth fighting for?

Socialism, Part Three: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

The following is a continuation of an earlier post (Socialism, Part Two: What It May Look Like) about the nature of socialism–which is a solution to problems that capitalism, characterized by the domination of a class of employers, cannot solve. Socialism is not something that emerges from a utopian view independently of the nature of capitalism but requires a critical approach to capitalism.

In the following, Michael Perelman contrasts what many people experience in their lives: their own contrast between an activity which they enjoy doing and their experience working for an employer, which they often enough find to be draining.

From Michael Perelman, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011),

Just What Is Work?

To understand the potential for transforming the economy, consider a simple example that does not require much of a stretch of the imagination. Just think of the enormous contrast between farm work for wages and gardening as a hobby. Farm work is considered to be so abhorrent in the United States that we regularly hear that only foreign-born workers are willing to perform it. Supposedly, upstanding citizens of the United States would never subject themselves to the life of a farm worker for poverty wages.

While farm labor may be among the hardest, most dangerous work in our society, many people regard gardening as a pleasant diversion. While the United Farm Workers Union represents mostly downtrodden workers, a good number of wealthy people are proud affiliates of their blue-blood garden clubs. Over and above the time they spend in their gardens, many gardeners enthusiastically devote considerable leisure time to conversing or reading in order to become better gardeners. In addition, many gardeners also willingly spend substantial sums for equipment and supplies to use in their gardens.

What, then, is the underlying difference between farm work and gardening? Farm work typically entails hard physical labor, but many gardeners also exert themselves in their gardens. The difference lies in the context of gardening. Gardeners, unlike farm workers, freely choose to be gardeners. During the time they work in their gardens, they want to be gardening. Nobody tells them what to do. Gardeners are producing for themselves rather than for someone else who will benefit from their work.

As the psychologist John Neulinger says: “Everyone knows the difference between doing something because one has to and doing something because one wants to.”43 We should also keep in mind that society respects gardeners. Our newspapers regularly print features of interest to gardeners. Some even have special sections to appeal to their affluent gardening readers. All the while, the lives of farm workers pass virtually unnoticed. In our society, farm work is never “respectable” work; well-to-do families would not approve of their children becoming farm workers.

Of course, gardeners are not entirely free to follow their whims. The rhythms of the seasons and the sudden shifts in the weather dictate some of what the gardeners do, but gardeners generally accept these demands beforehand. …

As suggested earlier, the key to the Procrustean trap is not the threat of physical force but rather the inability to imagine anything outside of the constrained present circumstances. The willingness to take seriously Margaret Thatcher’s preposterous claim—“There is no alternative”—perfectly sums up this state of mind.

A writer for Bloomberg.com reminisced about Thatcher’s Procrustean destructive success:

Of course, it’s possible to change a society and to drag it into the global economic monoculture. Mrs. Thatcher showed how: Break up collectives and make people feel a little bit more alone in the world. Cut a few holes in the social safety net. Raise the status of money-making, and lower the status of every other activity. Stop giving knighthoods to artists and start giving them to department-store moguls. Stop listening to intellectuals and start listening to entrepreneurs and financiers.
Stick to the plan long enough and the people who are good at making money acquire huge sums and, along with them, power. In time, they become the culture’s dominant voice. And they love you for it.46

Thatcher’s scheme actually worked. Her acolytes were so convinced that the mere utterance of Thatcher’s acronym TINA seemed sufficient to cut off any debate with skeptics.

The social-democratic or social-reformist left in Toronto certainly has reinforced the TINA principle. The so-called radical left, by keeping silent out of fear of becoming isolated, themselves becomes part of the social-democratic left. They, like the social-reformist left, provide no real alternative vision to the oppressive and exploitative nature of work characteristic of the power of employers as a class.

In fact, through their silence and their lack of criticism, they contribute to the perpetuation of class rule. They are, practically, social reformists who will never go beyond the existing class system despite their rhetoric of class struggle and struggle from below.

Socialism, Part Four: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

The following is a continuation of previous posts on the possible nature of socialism that excludes the power of employers as a class.

(iii) Worker collectives produce public goods, inputs into the production process, or final consumption goods. Funds for the first are directly allocated to collectives by the relevant planning agencies (see below). The latter two categories of products are offered for sale in producer and consumer markets. In Schweickart’s view, attempts to centrally plan all inputs and outputs in a top-down fashion are simply not feasible, at least not in a complex and dynamic economy. But it does not follow that capitalist market societies are the only acceptable forms of economic organisation. It is possible to imagine a feasible and normatively attractive society combining markets with the socialisation of the means of production, that is, a society making use of producer and consumer markets after abolishing both capital markets and
labour markets.

In addition to the elimination of a market for workers and management of work enterprises being accountable to work councils and community councils, capital markets in the sense of an investment process owned by a minority would no longer exist. There would, nonetheless, be markets that produced means of production and markets that produced consumption goods. For example, at the brewery where I worked, the workers who produced the soaker or the filler that the brewery workers used would be subject to competition from other workers who produce soakers or fillers. Workers in the brewery would be subject to competition from workers in other breweries.

Unfortunately, Smith does not elaborate much on what he means by the abolition of capital markets. His reference to David Schweickart’s work Against Capitalism, however, gives a clue to what he means. Schweikart has the following to say (page 172):

First, we issue a decree abolishing all enterprise obligations to pay interest or stock dividends to private individuals or private institutions.

This decree will need no enforcement, since enterprises are not going to insist on paying what they are no longer legally obligated to pay.

But Schweickart sees a flaw in the abolition of all capital markets, at least immediately (page 173):

6.3.2 Once More, This Time with Feeling (for the Stockholders)

Too Simple? Of course. The above is not meant to be a realistic scenario. Above all, it fails to take into account the fact that millions of ordinary citizens (not only capitalists) have resources tied up in the financial markets. People with savings accounts or holdings in stocks and bonds have been counting on their dividend and interest checks. (Nearly half of all American households have direct or indirect holdings in the stock market, mostly in pension plans.) Eliminating all dividend and interest income-which is what Radical Quick does-will not strike these fellow citizens as a welcome reform. Let us run through our story again, this time complicating it to take into account their legitimate concerns.

Schweickart, realistically, recognizes that workers have investments in capital markets and hence are in some ways tied to such markets. His solution is to imagine a situation where at least the key corporations, due to the circumstances of a crisis, would be subject to elimination from capital markets (pages 173-174):

Let me first set the stage a little more fully than I did with Radical Quick. Let us suppose that a genuine counterproject to capitalism has developed, and that, gradually gaining in strength, it has been able to elect a leftist government that has put most of the reforms outlined earlier in this chapter on the table and has secured the passage of some of them. Suppose investors decide they’ve had enough and begin cashing in their stock holdings. A stock-market crash ensues. In reaction, the citizenry decide that they too have had enough-and give their leftist government an even stronger mandate to take full responsibility for an economy now tumbling into crisis.

Our new government declares a bank holiday, pending reorganization (as Roosevelt did following his election in 1932). All publicly traded corporations are declared to be worker-controlled. Note: This control extends only to corporations, not to small businesses or even to privately held capitalist firms. It is decided that it will be sufficient to redefine property rights only in those firms for which ownership has already been largely separated from management. (With the “commanding heights” of the economy now democratized, most other firms can be expected to come under increased pressure from their own workers, over time, to follow suit.)

The exact way in which capital markets would be reduced and eventually abolished would vary across time and place, depending on circumstances.

As I have emphasized throughout this blog, though, it is much less likely that workers will be receptive to a call for the elimination of capital markets and markets for workers unless they find the situation to be unfair. The ideology of the social-reformist left consistently makes reference to fairness within the limits of the employer-employee relation. We need to break with such ideology if we are to initiate such a process without having to respond erratically when a crisis hits.

Or are there alternatives? What do you think?

Socialism, Part Five: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

The following is a continuation of previous posts on the possible nature of socialism that excludes the power of employers as a class.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on the right of use by workers of the places, machinery and so forth where they work, but with the local community being the owner of local resources (and regional and national communities being the owners of regional and national enterprises of regional or national scope). From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), page 304:

(iv) Workers in enterprises are granted use rights to facilities and other
means of production. But ultimate ownership rights remain with the local
community. Workers cannot use their enterprise as a cash cow and then walk
away; they have a legal duty to maintain the value of the community’s
investments. If sufficient depreciation funds cannot be appropriated from
revenues to maintain the value of these investments, it is the responsibility
of community banks to shut down an enterprise. Once depreciated funds
have been deducted, the remainder of the revenues from public allocations
or sales in consumer/producer markets (apart from the taxes to be considered
below) are then distributed among the members of the collective according
to formulae set by the democratically accountable management

Since the workers are the trustees of the workplaces and not their owners, each year, the workers in the sector that produces either consumer goods for the market or the raw material, machines and so forth required to produce both themselves and consumer goods, have to set aside a certain amount of the proceeds from sales to purchase worn out means of production. The workers must also include in that depreciation fund a fund for repairs.

Workers have a responsibility to the present community and to future communities to maintain the general conditions for the continued livelihood of the community. This means that any cooperative that fails to maintain the value of the means of production must be closed down, and workers in such cooperatives must find work in another, more viable cooperative.

The sales revenue will be distributed generally into three parts: (1) the depreciation fund, (2) a tax on capital assets (which will be explained in another post), and a residual of what is called profits, to be distributed to the members of the cooperative as their personal income according to distribution rules created by themselves. (There also may be income tax and consumption tax, but I will not address that).

Socialism, Part Six: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

The following is a continuation of previous posts on the possible nature of socialism that excludes the power of employers as a class.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on the capital-assets tax, which is the basis for the generation of new investment and the supply of public goods. From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), pages 304-305:

(v) The origin of funds for new investment and public goods is a flat tax
on the non-labour assets of all enterprises.16 In Schweickart’s proposal, the
rate of this tax is initially set by a democratically elected legislature, operating
on the national level. This legislature also decides on the appropriate division
of revenues between funding for national public goods and funds that are
allocated to democratically elected regional and local legislative bodies. Each
of these assemblies, in turn, must also decide upon the level of funding for
public goods to be supplied in the relevant geographical area vis-à-vis the
level of funds set aside for distribution to the level below it. These legislative
bodies can also set aside a percentage of funds for investment in areas of
pressing social needs.

(vi) After all decisions have been made regarding the general level of new
investment and the order of social priorities, and after funds required for
public goods on the national, regional, and local levels have been allocated, the remaining revenues are distributed to local communities on a per capita
basis (at least this should be the presumption in the absence of compelling
reasons to do otherwise, such as the need to temporarily favour historically
disadvantaged regions). Community banks would then undertake the actual
allocation of new investment funds to worker collectives. The boards of
directors of these banks would include representatives of a broad range of
social groups affected by the banks’ decisions. New enterprises would be
formed, and existing ones expanded, through allocations by community banks
rather than private capital markets.

The capital-assets tax assumes that the workers have right of use of most of the means of production of our lives (there may be some room for independent businesses, but they do not form the bulk of economic activity). If they do, then instead of new investment being derived from the private decisions of boards of directors of corporations, it is derived from a democratically-elected national legislature which sets the rate of the capital-assets tax.

There are two general aspects to the tax (like any tax): the flow from a source to the government and the flow of the tax to institutions. The source is the capital assets used by democratic worker cooperatives. It is a flat-rate tax based on the value of the means of production that is applied to capital assets used by workers.

The flow of the revenue generated by the tax to people only arises after deductions from revenue required for investment in projects at the national level. Once this has been deducted, then the revenue is distributed to the regional communities on a perc capita (per person) basis; the regional democratic bodies which in turn allocate investment funds for investment in projects at the regional level. The remainder is then allocated to the local community via public banks, likewise on a per capita (per person) basis.

This principle of distribution of the revenue generated from the capital-assets tax on a per capita basis means that, in areas where there is a concentration of means of production relative to the number of people who live in the area, the outflow of taxes paid will be relatively greater than the inflow of revenue from taxes when compared to areas where the concentration of means of production is relatively smaller.

The capital-assets tax is to replace interest and dividend payments. As noted in the previous post on this topic, since many workers in the more industrialized capitalist countries have at least some investments in the stock market or hold bonds, GICs, and so forth and, furthermore, pension funds are generally linked to investment, a policy that at one sweep sought to abolish interest and dividend payments may well be opposed by the working class, initially. Consequently, some form of transitional program may be necessary, one where interest and dividend payments are gradually phased out, or one where compensation for nationalization occurs. In any case, the ultimate goal is to abolish interest and dividend payments and replace them with a flat capital-assets tax.

Socialism, Part Seven: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

The following is a continuation of previous posts on the possible nature of socialism that excludes the power of employers as a class.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on the criteria to be used in the distribution of the flat-rate capital-assets tax, which is the basis for the generation of new investment (and which was outlined in the last post on this topic). From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), page 305:

(vii) When allocating investment funds for new worker collectives and the
expansion of existing ones, community banks must take three main questions
into account. Is there likely to be sufficient demand for the output of the given
enterprise for it to maintain the value of the community’s investment and
provide adequate income for its members? Will the investment provide stable
employment? And is the investment consistent with the set of social priorities
democratically affirmed on the national, regional and local levels? Extensive
external financial and social audits can be regularly imposed on all enterprises
and community banks to assess their performances in terms of these criteria.
These independent social audits are a crucial component of the socialist version
of the principle of transparency, institutionalising a level of accountability
and transparency far beyond the limited neoliberal version of the principle.17
Community banks can then be ranked on the basis of the results of these
audits. The level of income of the staff of a particular bank, and the amount
of funds allocated to this bank for distribution in the future, are determined
by the bank’s place in this ranking.

The distribution of investment funds to existing and new worker collectives through community banks would be controlled by taking into account:

Whether the level of demand would likely be sufficient to not only maintain the value of the means of production (machinery, buildings and so forth) but to ensure a reasonable income for the working members of the cooperative.
Whether the investment would result in unemployment of the members, or would there be sufficient work for all members (without jeopardizing efficiency, presumably).
Whether the investment would result in effects that contribute to the realization of plans democratically decided on at the local, regional and national levels.

To ensure that these criteria for lending to worker cooperatives via public banks were satisfied, social audits could be carried out systematically and transparently. Since the revenue of workers in public banks would be a function of their success in extending loans based on the three criteria (and subject to social audits), workers in public banks would be motivated to more likely extend loans to worker cooperatives that were most likely to meet these three criteria.

Socialism, Part Eight: What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers

This is a continuation of earlier posts on the subject of the nature of socialism–a society that aims at the abolition of the power of employers as a class and the initial appropriation of the necessary requirements for us to control our lives as a collectivity and as individuals.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on some kinds of relations that may emerge between a nation that is socialist and other nations (whether socialist or not). From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), pages 305-306:

(viii) In Schweickart’s model, there are no markets for capital assets, and
so there will be no capital flight in the form of cross-border investments in
capital assets. There will also be little foreign direct investment, since worker
collectives are unlikely to outsource their own jobs, and community banks
are assessed according to the extent they create employment in their own
communities. But there will still be trade across borders. For a period of time,
this may include trade with regions that have not institutionalised a version of economic democracy. In such circumstances, regions committed to socialist
globalisation should follow the principle of fair trade rather than ‘free’ trade.
To ensure that this occurs, Schweickart calls for a ‘social tariff’.18 If oppressive
labour practices hold down wage levels in a given region, the prices of imports
from that region will be raised to what they would have been had worker
income been comparable to the level prevailing in the importing country. A
social tariff will also be imposed to compensate for a lack of adequate spending
on the environment, worker health and safety, or social welfare in the exporting
nation. The revenues collected by this tariff will then be distributed to the
groups in the exporting country with the best record of effectively implementing
anti-poverty programmes, whether or not they are agencies of the government

There will little if any flow of capital investment beyond the borders of the socialist nation (hence little or no capital flight); workers are unlikely to invest abroad rather than locally since this would result in loss of employment. Furthermore, community banks would prevent such investment through its enforcement of the criteria of employment creation (see previous post).

It is possible that trade between socialist and non-socialist nations would still occur. In trade between a socialist nation and a capitalist nation, the socialist nation would create a social tariff, imposing it to prevent unfair competition on the basis of capitalist ways of producing wealth (such as reduced wages or lack of health and safety measures).

This social tariff, rather than being used for the benefit of the socialist workers and community members, would flow back to workers in the non-socialist world as an expression of solidarity with them via agencies or organizations of the exporting non-capitalist country that have proven to be effective enforcers of anti-poverty measures in the non-capitalist country.

Smith adds three other measures that have an international focus: (1) the creation of international monetary clearing units, which would serve as world money that would function, among other things, to ensure that excessive trade imbalances would not arise, especially for the more vulnerable parts of the world economy; (2) a global representative assembly that would legislate and oversee issues between nations in a much more democratic manner than the current United Nations model; and, finally, (3) a democratically accountable international planning agency that would ensure equitable investment funding for the provision of international public goods, distributed according to the number of people (per capita), with provisions for exceptions on the basis of past historical biases of economic development.

All these measures refer to what has come to be known as “market socialism.” Such a system, if democratically organized, would likely not only be more efficient than a capitalist economy but definitely superior in terms of ethics. However, before addressing that issue in further posts, I will, in a future post, consider whether the idea of market socialism is an adequate model for a future society without capitalism, or whether it leaves out of consideration some essential aspects that need to be considered if we are to resolve our social problems on this planet.

Socialism, Part Nine: An Inadequate Conception of the Nature of Freedom and Necessity, or Free Time and Necessary Time, Part One

The class formal principle of employers–that workers receive from society what they contribute (contradicted at a practical level through systematic exploitation of workers necessarily in a capitalist context–that is why it is a formal principle that contradicts reality–see for example The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part One) would be realized in a socialist society on average since exploitation of one class by another would be eliminated. However, the principle of relating individual life to labour is still a bourgeois or capitalist principle that needs to targeted because it still reduces human beings to merely one criterion–labour. From Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, pages 86-87 of Marx-Engels Collected Works, volume 24):

Hence, equal right here is still in principle bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange only exists on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly encumbered by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour. But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal abour. It recognises no class distinctions, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises the unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the workers as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right by its nature can exist only as the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable by an equal standard only insofar as they are made subject to an equal criterion, are taken from a certain side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Besides, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, etc., etc. Thus, given an equal amount of work done, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, etc. To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birthpangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development which this determines.

Neither Tony Smith nor Schweickart, both advocates of market socialism, refer to this. For Schweickart at least, any elimination of the market economy will lead to various negative effects, such as authoritarian conditions. Sam Gindin, similarly, does not take into consideration the inadequacy of markets as an expression of human freedom.

This model so far is a market-socialist model. Rather than conceiving it as a definitive model of how future society will work, however, we should consider it as a transition society that may last for longer than Marx thought but, nonetheless, is itself inadequate.

This inadequacy can be seen in the omission by Smith and Schweickart of any consideration of the need to transform the division of labour. In Schweickart’s book, for example, there is no discussion at all of the division of labour. If we are to live in a full life, though, we need to reduce or eliminate the gap between labour that is predominantly physical and labour that is predominantly intellectual.

Another aspect over which both Smith and Schweickart are silent is the implication for human beings if prices are to continue to exist. Schweickart does not directly address the question, but his assumption that prices will always exist fails to address the problem of the continued valuation of objects ultimately in terms of labour. Marx’s theory of exploitation is not just a critique of exploitation but a critique of the form of exploitation–through the mediation of relations between objects instead of a conscious connection with other human beings. Human beings, via ultimately money, are related to each other via objectified labour measured externally as money.

Market socialism may well be needed for some time, but it is inadequate as a form of society for human beings. At first, it is necessary to create a society where the reality of labour time being the measure of human wealth corresponds to the principle of determination by labour time: what workers contribute to society and what they receive from it do not differ quantitatively (workers are not exploited).

However, the principle of the life process is still based on one principle–labour and its measure, time. The human life process, however, is much more than this process, and the need for human beings will be to surpass this principle and to break the link between contribution and the flow of goods and services based on that contribution.

Now, let us listen to a person who claims to aim at realistic socialism–Sam Gindin, head of the Toronto Labour Committee (and former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (now Unifor). Mr. Gindin implies that, due to what he calls scarcity, we will always need a market form of socialism:

Scarcity — the need to make choices between alternative uses of labor time and resources — is unlikely to end outside of utopian fantasies because popular demands, even when transformed into collective/socialist demands, are remarkably elastic: they can continue to grow. Think especially of better health care, more and richer education, greater care for the aged, the expansion of art and of cultural spaces — all of which require labor time and generally also complementary material goods. That is, they demand choices.

Furthermore, the calculation of scarcity can in particular not ignore leisure, with leisure representing the “realm of freedom.” Even if we produced enough of what we wanted, as long as some of that labor isn’t completely voluntary but instrumental, then effective scarcity of either labor time or the good/service remains. Workers may even like their jobs and see them as a source of creative expression and satisfaction, but as long as they’d periodically prefer to not show up or leave early, some further inducement is needed to offset the sacrifice of providing those labor hours. That inducement is a measure of the persistence of effective scarcity. And once scarcity is acknowledged as an inherent and essentially permanent frame in the restructuring of society, the question of structured incentives becomes paramount. This is not just a matter of motivating adequate hours of work, but of affecting its intensity and quality, and influencing where that work is best applied (i.e., determining society’s overall division of labor).

Mr. Gindin, it is clear, identifies the need to make choices of “labour time and resources” with scarcity. There is an identity between the need to make choices in the realm of labour and the continued existence of scarcity.

The counterpart of this is the implicit denial of the need to make choices in “leisure,” which is identified with the “realm of freedom.” Mr. Gindin, of course, fails to justify this identity and fails as well to explore the nature of “leisure.”

Mr. Gindin follows neoclassical economics (which justifies capitalism in various ways) by arguing that “scarcity” in the abstract (eternally or forever, without qualification) characterizes human life. Consider the following quotation from a typical textbook on neoclassical (or capitalist) economics (Steven A. Greenlaw, Timothy Taylor, Principles of Microeconomics, page 8:

Economics is the study of how humans make decisions in the face of scarcity. These can be individual decisions, family decisions, business decisions or societal decisions. If you look around carefully, you will see that scarcity is a fact of life. Scarcity means that human wants for goods, services and resources exceed what is available. Resources, such as labor, tools, land, and raw materials are necessary to produce the goods and services we want but they exist in limited supply. Of course, the ultimate scarce resource is time- everyone, rich or poor, has just 24 hours in the day to try to acquire the goods they want. At any point in time, there is only a finite amount of resources available.

People live in a world of scarcity: that is, they can’t have all the time, money, possessions, and experiences they wish.

Mr. Gindin argues, then, that scarcity arises objectively when there are alternative possibilities that exist for the use of resources and labour time. Choices must be made, and the choices necessarily involve the realization of some projects and the exclusion of others. We can never have our cake and eat it simultaneously.

This idea seems valid, and yet it is really superficial. Mr. Gindin practically wants to ridicule those who believe that work can be itself a realm of freedom–despite the need to make choices and despite the need to engage in the production of food, shelter, clothing, health care, education and so forth. To be realistic for Mr. Gindin is to believe in the necessity of drudgery throughout human history. What else does he mean when he writes “And once scarcity is acknowledged as an inherent and essentially permanent frame in the restructuring of society, the question of incentives becomes paramount.”

Mr. Gindin’s implicit assumption is that all incentives are external or instrumental in nature. There is, for this social democrat, no such thing as an intrinsic incentive (or motivation). Such an assumption needs to be questioned.

Rather than addressing the issue of scarcity (pure necessity for Mr. Gindin) directly, let us look at the so-called opposite realm of leisure (pure freedom for Mr. Gindin).

He claims that leisure is somehow the “realm of freedom.” What leisure is that? Leisure is a concept that is purely non-instrumental, it would seem, for Mr. Gindin. All leisure.

As an aside: Mr. Gindin borrows his concepts from current experiences and then generalizes them throughout history. Thus, leisure in the current context of work life characterized by the power of employers using people as things for their own ends is often a compensation for the drudgery of such daily life. Such an uncritical use of the concept of leisure will be addressed in another post.

Thus, Mr. Gindin separates completely labour and leisure. Leisure is purely non-instrumental, and labour can be to a certain extent enjoyable but, ultimately, is tainted with instrumentality by its very nature. Since leisure is identified with the “realm of freedom” and non-instrumentality, and labour is tainted with instrumentality by its very nature, scarcity must arise by necessity since workers by their very nature would prefer leisure (freedom) over work (necessity and instrumentality). To engage in work, workers must be externally motivated to do so (since their default mode is to prefer leisure (pure freedom) over work (pure necessity).

Mr. Gindin’s assumption concerning the so-called identity of leisure with the realm of freedom and a lack of instrumentality is questionable. Many so-called leisure activities have an instrumental aspect to them. For example, I “leisurely” drove my daughter, Francesca, to the Royal Tyrrell Museum summer camp in Alberta some time ago, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (about a distance of 1,300 kilometers). It took a “leisurely” time of around 18 hours (stopping along the way for lunch and supper). For me, the activity was stressful though enjoyable (when compared to working for an employer) since Francesca was with me. The leisure activity of driving, though, was instrumental since it was a means to the end of developing my daughter’s capacities–that was the real end.

I had a choice to make in whether I was going to ask Francesca whether she wanted to go to the camp at all and, given that choice, what means I would use to achieve that goal.

It cannot be said that the act of driving the car was secondary to the end of developing her capacities in a certain direction since she could not do so without attending the camp. The act of driving the car, though instrumental, was an essential condition for achieving that end (of course, it was not the only means by which to achieve that end–taking a plane, bus or train were possible alternatives). Furthermore, the end of developing Francesca’s capacities motivated me to drive for long periods of time in the first place, so the end itself formed an instrumental aspect of my activity of driving the car–it formed an ideal or motivating aspect of the physical aspect of driving the car.

My drive to Drumheller was thus instrumental for Francesca, my daughter, despite being a leisure activity. I had to make choices, of course. I could have taken a bus with her. We could have flown. The goal of the trip, for me, though constrained by certain means, was non-instrumental as an ultimately intrinsic end and yet was instrumental, ideally, in guiding my own activity in the present (driving the car towards Drumheller, Alberta, where the Royal Tyrrell Museum is located). I had an internal incentive or intrinsic incentive.

Of course, human life is finite, but who would deny that? However, Mr. Gindin draws false conclusions from that fact not only in relation to leisure but also to “education” and “art.” These issues will be dealt with in another post or posts.

Mr. Gindin’s assumption, then, that leisure is the pure realm of freedom is simple nonsense. Mr. Gindin’s hidden assumption of the mutual exclusion of instrumentality and intrinsic ends–that they are separate–remains an unproven assumption.

But some may say that this is an example from the realm of leisure (which does not exclude the realm of necessity despite Mr. Gindin’s implicit assertion to the contrary). What of the realm of work? Does it need external incentives because alternatives arise and choices must be made?

In a follow-up post, I will shift to Mr. Gindin’s opposite view concerning work. Since leisure is supposedly the pure realm of freedom that lacks instrumentality, work, according to Mr. Gindin, if in any way instrumental (which it must be for Mr. Gindin), involves a lack of freedom, which is expressed in the concept of scarcity and thus requires external or extrinsic motivation. Just as leisure is supposed to be the pure realm of freedom, so too the realm of work is supposed to be always tainted by the realm of necessity.

This issue has to do with the two main divisions of labour: academic or intellectual and practical (or manual or physical). I referred briefly to such a division when I provided a critique of such a division in schools and the school curriculum (see Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Three).

(As an aside: Mr. Gindin probably follows his colleague, Leo Panitch (they wrote a book together), in rejecting (without understanding) Marx’s so-called labour theory of value (really a theory of commodities and capital). (I attended Mr. Panitch’s class on globalization in the winter of 2014. Mr. Panitch explicitly stated that he considered Marx to have taken a wrong turn in Capital, especially Marx’s use of some of the dialectic of the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel, who, among other things, argued for the need to reconcile opposite relations, such as freedom and necessity)

Socialism, Part Nine: Inadequate Conception of the Nature of Freedom and Necessity, or Free Time and Necessary Time, Part Two

This is a continuation of a previous post.

In a previous post, I criticized Mr. Gindin’s view that leisure is the pure realm of freedom. (Sam Gindin is (or was) head of the Toronto Labour Committee and former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (now Unifor)). In this post, I will criticize his view that work, being a world of necessity, requires external incentives.

Let us look at part of a previous quote from Mr. Gindin’s writing on socialism:

Furthermore, the calculation of scarcity can in particular not ignore leisure, with leisure representing the “realm of freedom.” Even if we produced enough of what we wanted, as long as some of that labor isn’t completely voluntary but instrumental, then effective scarcity of either labor time or the good/service remains. Workers may even like their jobs and see them as a source of creative expression and satisfaction, but as long as they’d periodically prefer to not show up or leave early, some further inducement is needed to offset the sacrifice of providing those labor hours. That inducement is a measure of the persistence of effective scarcity. And once scarcity is acknowledged as an inherent and essentially permanent frame in the restructuring of society, the question of structured incentives becomes paramount. This is not just a matter of motivating adequate hours of work, but of affecting its intensity and quality, and influencing where that work is best applied (i.e., determining society’s overall division of labor).

Mr. Gindin’s superficial imagination leads him to apply the current poverty of work relations, implicitly, as the standard for determining the so-called “realm of necessity.” Like leisure, which is supposed to be the pure realm of freedom, he separates freedom and necessity at work.

Consider my work at the brewery in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. When I worked at the brewery, we were obliged to work to produce not only beer, but beer for the market, and not only for the market but for the ultimate goal of more profit. We were things to be used by the employer (see https://theabolitionary.ca/the-money-circuit-of-capital/).

The riveting of material production to the goal of profit as the ultimate goal prevents workers who produce beer from reorganizing their lives both inside and outside the brewery in such a way that they can integrate their working lives with other aspects of the process of producing beer. For example, at the brewery in Calgary, there was a chemist who probably, among other things, tested the quality and properties of the beer being produced (being “only a bottling worker,” I really did not understand what the chemist did when I worked at the brewery).

Mr. Gindin tips his hand by referring to “scarcity” as somehow requiring incentives. He fails to explore what is meant by “incentives,” but implicitly assumes that all incentives are external and cannot be internal to the process which produces beer–a mechanical materialist point of view.

Under a socialist way of life, initially, workers would produce beer for others via the market. Even at this stage, here is no reason why workers could not begin to integrate a study of chemistry with the production of beer. The same could be said of the mechanics, physics and mathematics of beer production. For example, the filler–a machine for the filling of beer bottles rotated in a circular motion, with spouts attached to the machine. The velocity of rotation, the speed of the incoming bottles and so forth could be calculated and adjusted to attain certain specific rates of output and qualities of beer production (rather than being externally specified by managers as the representatives of employers).

John Dewey, an American philosopher of education, pointed out somewhere that there is no such thing as a purely biological human experience, a purely mathematical human experience, a purely physical human experience and so forth. Human experience is all those aspects and more. The apparently most mundane human act or experience contains a rich variety of potentially worthwhile pursuits that can be analyzed and pursued in ever greater depth and breadth. The production of beer can be integrated into the study of chemistry, physics, mechanics, biology, mathematics, history, geography and other sciences. Despite beer production being instrumental for the production of beer as a consumer good, it could be the point of departure for the infinite expansion of the capacities of workers who produce beer–with the only limit being their own capacities for the pursuit of such sciences and the finite period of time in which they live on this planet before dying. Workers could thus freely expand their intellectual and physical horizons even when they produce beer.

Mr. Gindin’s superficial separation of freedom and necessity at work, like his superficial separation of freedom and necessity during leisure hours (as pointed out in the previous post), leads him to false conclusions concerning the nature of work in a socialist society. This should not surprise anyone.

Mr. Gindin’s false conclusions concerning the nature of the relationship of freedom and necessity under socialism go beyond the issue of leisure and work. He claims the following in relation to education and art, among other areas of human life:

Scarcity — the need to make choices between alternative uses of labor time and resources — is unlikely to end outside of utopian fantasies because popular demands, even when transformed into collective/socialist demands, are remarkably elastic: they can continue to grow. Think especially of better health care, more and richer education, greater care for the aged, the expansion of art and of cultural spaces — all of which require labor time and generally also complementary material goods. That is, they demand choices.

In another post, I will show that Mr. Gindin’s reference to “more and richer education” can integrate–contrary to Mr. Gindin’s mechancial separation of the two–both elements of necessity and freedom. I may also address in a future post his claim that the demand for the expansion of art somehow involves the separation of necessity and freedom.

Socialism, Part Nine: Inadequate Conception of the Nature of Freedom and Necessity, or Free Time and Necessary Time, Part Three: Education

This is a continuation of a previous post.

In a previous post, I pointed out that Mr. Gindin claimed that the expansion of educational services would involve scarcity and therefore would require external or extrinsic motivation of some sort. (Mr,. Gindin is head of the Toronto Labour Committee and former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (now Unifor) union.

Let us look at part of a previous quote from Mr. Gindin’s writing on socialism:

Furthermore, the calculation of scarcity can in particular not ignore leisure, with leisure representing the “realm of freedom.” Even if we produced enough of what we wanted, as long as some of that labor isn’t completely voluntary but instrumental, then effective scarcity of either labor time or the good/service remains. Workers may even like their jobs and see them as a source of creative expression and satisfaction, but as long as they’d periodically prefer to not show up or leave early, some further inducement is needed to offset the sacrifice of providing those labor hours. That inducement is a measure of the persistence of effective scarcity. And once scarcity is acknowledged as an inherent and essentially permanent frame in the restructuring of society, the question of structured incentives becomes paramount. This is not just a matter of motivating adequate hours of work, but of affecting its intensity and quality, and influencing where that work is best applied (i.e., determining society’s overall division of labor).

Mr. Gindin’s use of “scarcity” is meant to show that he is being realistic. He claims the following:

Scarcity — the need to make choices between alternative uses of labor time and resources — is unlikely to end outside of utopian fantasies because popular demands, even when transformed into collective/socialist demands, are remarkably elastic: they can continue to grow. Think especially of better health care, more and richer education,

Mr. Gindin prides himself on being realistic (his reference to “utopian fantasies” is meant to show this). In reality, he is a most conservative “socialist” (really a social democrat) who operates in terms of the capitalist economy and its social institutions.

He converts the relation between necessity and freedom in a socialist society into a false relation of mutual exclusivity. Thus, for him in the educational sphere an expansion of educational services necessarily leads to a diminution of resources in other areas. If, however, freedom and necessity are united and reinforce each other in the educational sphere and in other spheres (an internal relation of freedom to necessity), there need not arise such a diminution since human activity in other areas will, in turn, be enriched.

Mr. Gindin does not explore how educational institutions may change under a socialist system and how this might effect the relationship between necessity and freedom both in work and outside work.

John Dewey, an American philosopher of education, certainly did not believe that education excluded either necessity or freedom. Operating between 1896 and 1904 in Chicago, the University Laboratory School (commonly known as the Dewey School) used the common needs or common necessities of most of humanity for food, clothing and shelter as the point of development for children’s physical, intellectual, emotional, ethical and aesthetic development. By having children try to produce food, clothing and shelter in various historical epochs through the occupations associated with these needs, Dewey hoped to bridge the gap between intellectual and physical life that deeply divided American capitalist society.

Children started with purposes that they understood (the need or necessity for food, clothing and shelter) and were to come to understand the natural and social roots of varying the means for satisfying such common needs or common necessities.

Of course, the need for food and shelter (and, in most environments, the need for clothing), are given by the natural conditions of humans as living beings. They did not choose these conditions. However, through varying the means used by diverse historical societies, children can gradually come to learn about the potentialities of the natural world in diverse geographical areas and the diverse means by which human beings have come to produce their own lives. They learn increasingly how to control their own basic lives by experiencing diverse environments and diverse means by which to address problems associated with the satisfaction of the basic needs or necessities.

What of the learning of science? Does learning how to produce our basic necessities exclude the learning of science? Is there some sort of opposition between learning how to produce such basic necessities and the need to make choices about the learning of science? Does learning how to produce basic necessities in various environments involve a waste of time since the time could be spent learning about science? Mr. Gindin, with his false dichotomy of identifying the need to make choices with scarcity, would probably consider it necessary to choose between the learning how to produce the basic necessities and learning science.

Dewey, however, did not believe that learning how to produce the basic necessities and learning science were mutually exclusive. Human beings naturally focus on ends since they are living beings; means are secondary to the ends of life. Dewey repeats in a number of works his contention that human beings naturally are more concerned with ends than with means: “For men are customarily more concerned with the consequences, the “ends” or fruits of activity, than with the operations by means of which they are instituted” (Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 1938/1986, page 253). However, consideration of means is just as essential to the life process.

If intelligent action (which is what education needs to develop) involves the coordination and means and ends, then education needs to have children learn to shift from their concern or interest or natural proclivity towards ends to a concern with the conditions for the creation of those ends and the coordination of the two.

Through engagement with the occupations linked to basic needs or necessities, the child gradually becomes conscious of the steps required a as well as the material means necessary for the basic ends to be achieved. A shift in attitude gradually emerges, as means and their perfection become more important—but always-in relation to the end to be achieved.

The shifts from ends to means and their eventual coordinate relation can lead to the habit of ensuring that the ends desired are placed in the broader context of the means required to achieve them, and the choice of means to achieve ends be placed in the wider context of the total process of their impact on oneself and others.

A shift from concern from ends to means as a temporary end in itself can thus form the basis for the development of science.

Analytic categories characteristic of the diverse sciences are to emerge gradually. For
instance, the study of chemistry emerged from the process of cooking as well as from the metallurgical processes associated with the basic occupations. Similarly, physics emerged from the processes of production and use of tools.

The basic occupations provide a bridge between common-sense inquiry and scientific inquiry. Without such a bridge, science would remain vague and would likely be resisted. Moreover, hose who do tend towards an interest in scientific work as such would likely become remote from the concerns of the common person, and would fail to understand how science is, ultimately, instrumental to-the human life process.

On the other hand-, the common, person could fail to appreciate how science can enrich her life and how it does affect her life in the modern epoch. For instance, Dewey mentions how metallurgical operations performed by human beings to transform metals into something useful resulted in the identification of about half a dozen metals (Logic: The Theory of Inquiry). By abstracting from the immediate relation between human beings and substances of the Earth, science has enabled human beings to identify over 60 metals. Through scientific inquiry, differentiation of metals and their diverse uses have expanded substantially in a relatively short period of time. The common person needs to understand the, need, (or scientific inquiry in relation to the limitations of common-sense inquiry as the scientist needs to understand that scientific inquiry may be an end for her but instrumental for many people.

The point of this is to show that the allocation of resources to the expansion of educational services need not entail some sort of “scarcity” merely because the allocation of resources to schools entails the non-allocation of resources in other areas. The allocation of resources in one area can result in the transformation of individuals into individuals with expanded horizons. The expansion of horizon can, in turn, lead to enhancement of experiences in other areas in a qualitative feedback loop that enhances the totality of live experiences.

As long as the resources allocated to schools involve the enrichment of both the living and social nature of human beings in a coherent fashion (taking into account both their nature as living beings and as social beings), the allocation of resources need not involve some sort of limit to other social activities; the necessity of producing food, clothing and shelter can lead to an expanded horizon and thereby to enhanced freedom.

Schools, if they contribute to the growth of children, would form one of many institutions that would contribute to the qualitative enhancement of our lives as individuals and as social individuals in a unique way.

An analogy may help. Look at your own body. You need your own kidneys in order to clean your blood of impurities and excrete them in the form of urine. The energy allocated to this function limits the energy that can be allocated to your other organs. However, your other organs should not have all your energy allocated to them; there must be a balance between the allocation of your total energy to the diverse organs and their functions, with some organs requiring more energy, others less, depending on a number of circumstances (level of current activity, age, gender and so forth). Merely because each organ has a limited amount of energy and resources allocated to it does not mean that there is some sort of “scarcity” of energy and resources. Your freedom to move about in an effective–and graceful–manner depends on the varying allocation of resources and energy to diverse parts of the body.

If schools develop individuals who can appreciate the continuity (and difference) between their common-sense experiences and scientific experience, the resources allocated to it will feed back into other institutions in a coherent fashion.

Furthermore, individual children will gradually discover what unique contributions they can make to others, and they will come to appreciate the unique contributions of others to their lives.

This process of receiving something unique from others and contributing something unique to others defines the nature of true individuality. True individuality means the impossibility of substitution of function. Individuality is not only unique existentially—all existences are unique–but also functionally; structure and function meld into each other. Means and ends become one unique event that persists as unique in its actualization.

Modern human relations need to “capture” individual variations since modern human nature can advance only through such variations. These variations are unique. From John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916/2004, page 96):

… he [Plato) had no perception of’ the uniqueness of individuals. … There being no recognition that each individual constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of tendencies of which an individual is capable.

Plato also did not recognize that stability or harmony could arise through unique changes. From Democracy and Education, page 97:

But it is true that lacking the perception of the uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others, and consequently not recognizing that a society might change and yet be stable, his [Plato’s] doctrine of limited powers and classes came in net effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality.

The emergence of distinct .or unique individuals arises from the process of acting
within a social environment; individuality is an achievement and not a presupposition. From John Dewey (1922), Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, page 84:

This fact is accentuated and made fundamental by the fact of infancy— the fact
that each human being begins life completely dependent upon others. The net outcome accordingly is that what can be called distinctively individual in behavior
and mind is not, contrary to traditional theory, an original datum.

The development of a unique function and the reception of unique functions from others constitutes an essential element of freedom, and the development of such unique functions can only arise in conjunction with the realm of necessity and not apart from it. From Jan Kandiyali (2017), pages 833-839, “Marx on the Compatibility of Freedom and Necessity: A Reply to David James,” European Journal of Philosophy, volume 25, page 837:

The key point is that Marx is describing a communist society as one in which individuals achieve self‐realization through labour—by helping others to satisfy their needs. Thus, … Marx claims that in non‐alienated production, I would enjoy an individual expression of life during production and in knowing my personality to be manifest in the product I create. However, … Marx emphasizes how my production satisfies another’s need, and how that production for another contributes to my own, as well as the other’s, self‐realization. Thus, when you consume my product, I experience the enjoyment of knowing that my activity has satisfied your need. Because I have satisfied your need, you recognize me as the ‘completion’ of your essential nature. And finally, because I recognize that you appreciate my production for you, my cognizance of your appreciation completes my self‐realization.

What I want to emphasize is that this account of self‐realization through labour that meets the needs of others, labour that characterizes production in a communist society, involves a distinctive conception of the relationship between freedom and necessity. According to this conception, freedom is not merely compatible with necessity. Rather, the necessity of labour is part of the explanation for why labour is a free and self‐realizing activity. For it is only in labour that ‘I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need’, and it is only when I have satisfied another’s need that I can be recognized as completing another’s ‘essential nature’.

Mr. Gindin, with his talk of scarcity, has a mechanical conception of human nature and of human relations. It is a conception which splits human beings into beings of necessity (beings of nature) and beings of freedom (social beings).

This mechanical conception if human nature and human relations is shared by his colleague, Herman Rosenfeld (see Reform Versus Abolition of the Police, Part Five: More Philosophical Considerations). There seems to be a pattern emerging here: social democrats or social reformers view other people and human relations as external to each other–like ping pong balls rather than living and breathing beings with the capacity to engage in conscious and organized self-change.

Mr. Gindin also has a mechanical view of the relation of art in a socialist society since it, too, is restricted by “scarcity.” A critical analysis of such a view will be posted in the future.

Socialism, Part Nine: Inadequate Conception of the Nature of Freedom and Necessity, or Free Time and Necessary Time, Part Four: Art

This is the conclusion of a series of previous posts on the subject.

In a previous post, I criticized Mr. Gindin’s claim that the expansion of educational services would involve scarcity and therefore would require external or extrinsic motivation of some sort. (Mr,. Gindin is (or was) head of the Toronto Labour Committee and former research director for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (now Unifor) union. See Socialism, Part Ten: Inadequate Conception of the Nature of Freedom and Necessity, or Free Time and Necessary Time, Part Three: Education.

Let us look at part of a previous quote from Mr. Gindin’s writing on socialism:

Furthermore, the calculation of scarcity can in particular not ignore leisure, with leisure representing the “realm of freedom.” Even if we produced enough of what we wanted, as long as some of that labor isn’t completely voluntary but instrumental, then effective scarcity of either labor time or the good/service remains. Workers may even like their jobs and see them as a source of creative expression and satisfaction, but as long as they’d periodically prefer to not show up or leave early, some further inducement is needed to offset the sacrifice of providing those labor hours. That inducement is a measure of the persistence of effective scarcity. And once scarcity is acknowledged as an inherent and essentially permanent frame in the restructuring of society, the question of structured incentives becomes paramount. This is not just a matter of motivating adequate hours of work, but of affecting its intensity and quality, and influencing where that work is best applied (i.e., determining society’s overall division of labor).

Mr. Gindin’s use of “scarcity” is meant to show that he is being realistic. However, just as Mr. Gindin does not criticize the particular form of education in modern society, he does not consider the limitations of the particular form of art in modern society. He writes the following:

Scarcity — the need to make choices between alternative uses of labor time and resources — is unlikely to end outside of utopian fantasies because popular demands, even when transformed into collective/socialist demands, are remarkably elastic: they can continue to grow. Think especially of … the expansion of art and of cultural spaces — all of which require labor time and generally also complementary material goods. That is, they demand choices.

Mr. Gindin seems to consider the “expansion of art and cultural spaces” in purely quantitative terms. The existing “art and cultural spaces” are supposed to be “expanded” rather than qualitatively transformed. Given the specific class nature of modern society dominated by a class of employers and the general class nature of human history after the agricultural revolution, the view that art and culture needs mere expansion rather than qualitative transformation reflects an impoverished view of the nature of socialist society. If socialist society is characterized by the abolition of classes, and classes involve exploitation and oppression, then the nature and development of art and culture should accordingly change qualitatively.

The issue can be approached from different angles. One issue is the question of the form of art (something which Mr. Gindin does not even adddress). John Dewey’s philosophy of art can aid us in understanding the limitations of Mr. Gindin’s characterization of “scarcity” and art in a socialist society.
Dewey points out that the form of modern art is isolated from common human experience. It is this isolated form itself that prevents a proper understanding of the nature of art as a refined development of common-sense human experience. From John Dewey (1934), Art as Experience , pages 3-4:

BY ONE of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of the works of art upon which formation of an esthetic theory depends has become an obstruction to theory about them. For one reason, these works are products that exist externally and physically. In common conception, the work of art is often identified with the building, book, painting, or statue in its existence apart from human experience. Since the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience, the result is not favorable to understanding. In addition, the very perfection of some of these products, the prestige they possess because of a long history of unquestioned admiration, creates conventions that get in the way of fresh insight. When an art product once attains classic status, it somehow becomes isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life experience.

When artistic objects are separated from both conditions of origin and operation in experience, a wall is built around them that renders almost opaque their general significance, with which esthetic theory deals. Art is remitted to a separate realm, where it is cut off from that association with the materials and aims of every other form of human effort, undergoing, and achievement. A primary task is thus imposed upon one who undertakes to write upon the philosophy of the fine arts. This task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience. Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations. It is the business of those who are concerned with the theory of the earth, geographers and geologists, to make this fact evident in its various implications., The theorist who would deal philosophically with fine art has a like task to accomplish.

If one is willing to grant this position, even if only by way of temporary experiment, he will see that there follows a conclusion at first sight surprising. In order to understand the meaning of artistic products, we have to forget them for a time, to turn aside from them and have recourse to the ordinary forces and conditions of experience that we do not usually regard as esthetic. We must arrive at the theory of art by means of a detour. For theory is concerned with understanding, insight, not without exclamations of admiration, and stimulation of that emotional out burst often called appreciation. It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing any thing about plants theoretically. But if one sets out to understand the flowering of plants, he is committed to finding out something about the interactions of soil, air, water and sunlight that condition the growth of plants.

The isolation of art from ordinary human experience distorts an understanding of the nature of art. Such a distortion is like a mirror, in which we only see the reflection offered to us and not the background material (and social) conditions for the mirror to function as a mirror. From Thomas Nail (2020), Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxism, page 149-150:

A mirror is something that reflects almost all the light that it receives within a certain limited frame. A mirror, however, also actively changes the light it receives and limits the range of light returned based on the limits of its frame. The danger of the mirror, as the myth of Narcissus reminds us, is mistaking the mirror for nothing other than the image it reflects. The mirror is thus a tricky kind of object because it so easily conceals its own quality, use- value, or sensuous materiality: the frame, the tain (silver backing), as well as the agency of light itself. Narcissus dies because he mistakes the sensuous agency of nature (water, light, air) as nothing other than himself.

The isolation of art in a socialist society from the rest of human experience would proceed to break down as the power of the class of employers was superseded and as the objectified power of workers is abolished and the human life process comes under the workers’ and the diverse communities’ control.

Mr. Gindin simply ignores any qualitative transformation of art and culture and refers to the (quantitative) expansion of arts and culture–as if the integration of the domain of art with other domains of life would not in itself involve “an expansion of art and culture.” Mr. Gindin fails to see that the modern art form itself expresses oppressive conditions, where art is relegated to an isolated activity by a relative minority. He succumbs to the ideology of the mirror, seeing only the reflected form of the alienated art form as a permanent form that merely requires–“mechanical” elements rather than organic elements that grow from the common source of human daily life experience.

Art in modern capitalist society would undergo a qualitative change–it would be freed of the exploitative and oppressive conditions that give rise to it as something separate and divorced from everyday living and working. From Piotr Hoffmann (1982), The Anatomy of Idealism: Passivity and Activity in Kant, Hegel and Marx, page 98:

In effect, since human labor is guided by conception and imagination, the Marxian “architect” from Capital is always capable of embodying in the material an original vision of things; he can tear the veil of banality and commonplace which stifles the potential of our sensibility. Needless to say, according to Marx this aesthetic potential of human senses must be stifled and repressed under the prevailing conditions of commodity production and of alienation of labor in general. 54 But it is the same conditions – the increasing sophistication of the labor-process – which both create the new potential of human senses and needs and repress its emerging claims and requirements. Indeed the whole process of labor, such as we know it in its past and present form, has that double, paradoxical function: at the same time that it creates those new and higher qualities of human life it also represses them by creating a mode of human intercourse which prevents their realization. “Certainly, labor obtains its measure from outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But [ …] this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity [ …] the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits – hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labor. ” It is in Grundrisse, not in Paris Manuscripts, that Marx writes these words. His intention couldn’t be clearer: labor is not only a response to need and dependency upon external objects, but a truly creative and (as Marx put it) “liberating” process through which man gives a higher form to his life-activity, a form where his senses, needs and tastes become refined and stripped of their crude utilitarian functions.

In societies before the emergence of capitalism, art was not as divorced from daily life as it is now. Art forms were closely related to utility and daily living, with art expressing more, initially, an assumed magical function related to survival than some sort of separate form expressing emotion and aesthetic refinement. From Arnold Hauser (1951), The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, page 3:

When the Palaeolithic artist painted an animal on the rock, he produced a real animal. For him the world of fiction and pictures, the sphere of art and mere imitation, was not yet a special province of its own, different and separate from empirical reality; he did not as yet confront the two different spheres, but saw in one the direct, undifferentiated continuation of the other. He will have had the same attitude to art as Lévy- Bruhl’s Sioux Red Indian, who said of a research worker whom he saw preparing sketches: ‘I know that this man has put many of our bisons into his book. I was there when he did it, and since then we have had no bisons.’ The conception of this sphere of art as a direct continuation of ordinary reality never disappears completely despite the later predominance of a conception of art as something opposed to reality.

Later on, emotional expression and aesthetic concerns emerged with the development of agriculture. Here art and aesthetics (the appreciation of art from the side of consumption) now became somewhat divorced from daily life–with the emergence of class society. Religious rite took the place of magic. However, even then the degree of separation of art from daily life characteristic of modern capitalist society, with art appearing to be a separate realm from the realm of human life and its self-reproduction, was much less. In feudal society, for example, production and consumption were not as separated since they were still closely linked to daily life and utility. Page 93:

‘Urban economy’ in the sense of Buecher’s theory of economic stages signifies, in contrast to the earlier production for own use, a production for the customer, that is, of goods that are not consumed in, the economic unit in which they are produced. It is distinguished from the following stage of ‘national economy’ in that exchange of goods still takes the ‘direct’ form—i.e. the goods go direct from the producing to the consuming unit, production as a rule not being for stock or the free market, but to the direct order of definite customers personally acquainted with the producer. We are thus at the first stage of the separation of production from consumption, but still far removed from the completely abstract method of modern production by which goods have to pass through a whole series of hands before they reach the consumer. This difference of principle between the medieval ‘town economy’ and the modern ‘national economy’ still remains, even when we pass from Buecher’s ‘ideal type’ of town economy to the actual historical facts; for although pure production to order never existed by itself, the relationship between the tradesman and consumer in the Middle Ages was far closer than nowadays; the producer was not yet faced with a completely unknown and indefinite market as he was later. These characteristics of the ‘urban’ way of production showed themselves in medieval art in a greater independence of the artist, on the one hand, as compared with the artist of Romanesque times, but, on the other hand, in a complete absence of that modern phenomenon, the unappreciated artist working in a total vacuum of estrangement from the public and remoteness from actuality.

The abolition of classes in a socialist society, undoubtedly, would revolutionize the relation between art and daily life–just as the agricultural revolution and the emergence of class societies also revolutionized the relation between art and daily life. The abolition of classes would mean that even in work relations there would be the possibility of expressing ourselves without exploitation and oppression preventing us from doing so. The relation between freedom and necessity would change accordingly. There would be a qualitative change in the nature of art as it became integrated into the daily lives of individuals–but this time on a higher, more refined plane than earlier.

Mr. Gindin, though, just sees “an expansion of art”–undoubtedly in purely quantitative terms. He has an impoverished view of the nature of a socialist society and the relation between freedom and necessity in a socialist society.

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Four

The following is the fourth of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French.

Four further posts follow that include performance evaluation criteria in Domain I (Professional Responsibilities), Domain II (Educational Environments), Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships). It also includes my “Teacher’s response.”

This post deals with the performance evaluation criteria of Domain I (Professional Responsibilities).

When I refer to “see above” in some of the posts, it refers to previous posts in this series, such as A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part One.

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Re: “Domain 1: Professional Responsibilities

1a Demonstrating knowledge of curriculum content and pedagogy

1b. Demonstrating knowledge of students

1c. Selecting appropriate instructional goals

1d. Demonstrating knowledge of resources

1e. Effective Instructional Design

1f. Assessment of Student Learning

1g. Maintaining accurate records

Administrator’s Comments

Fred has a strong command of the French language, in both written and verbal communication. This series of observations did not indicate his level of knowledge of the curricula set out by Manitoba Education. The instructional goals identified during the observations did correlate with goals set out in these curricula, however.

The pedagogy to which Fred ascribes (at least as according to our conversations) presupposes a level of motivation to learn and pursue a second language which he identifies as being lacking in most of his students. This has repeatedly been identified by Fred as an issue – that his students do not value the learning of French, and that it is therefore almost futile to be attempting to force them to learn the language. I have not identified any means by which Fred has successfully fostered an appropriate level of motivation in spite of the factors he’s identified as limiting this motivation. So, we are left with a situation where he believes that the students do not (for the most part) want to learn French, where he’s been unsuccessful in changing that situation, and where he therefore believes that their learning is necessarily restricted.

Earlier this year, it was made clear to Fred that a key element that appeared to be lacking was the formation of effective, empathetic relationships with the students in his classes. He has attempted to rectify this by engaging in question and answer sessions with them at the beginning of the class, wherein students ask him a question, he translates the question into French, and then responds in both French and English. It is not evident that this has led to a more effective relationship between Fred and his students. It is also not evident that this simple “exposure” to spoken French is leading to any learning of the language, as the dialogue from the students’ perspective is entirely in English – the spoken French, by Fred, seems to be ignored. To the extent that Fred has demonstrated a knowledge of his students, as persons and as learners, it would seem that the view is largely negative. For example, when we held our postconference after the 3^rd observation (grade 8 French), and I asked Fred about the 5 girls who comprised this class, he described to me in turn why each of them was not an effective learner in his class. When I went further by asking how this situation had come about, he went back to the experience of earlier years, where he identified two other students (since discontinued in French) who had “poisoned” the other students’ attitudes toward French and toward himself.

At the beginning of this process, individual lessons were based upon the completion of identified tasks. Fred has resisted the notion that specific learning goals for students should be clarified and shared with students, but has begun to take some steps in this direction. As stated earlier, there is no evidence (and none identified by Fred during our postconferences) that the questioning back and forth between Fred and the students at the beginning of classes has led to any learning by the students. Although learning goals have begun to be identified, it has not been observed that any significant movement toward attaining these goals has been made during observed classes. For example, the second observation (grade 7) was meant to increase student competence in using possessive adjectives. As an observer, it was not clear that students understood this to be the lesson’s focus, nor did they demonstrate any increased competence or confidence in the use of the adjectives or any other aspect of using the French language.

Fred has not indicated any significant understanding of either the importance of formative assessment during a class, nor of how to effectively carry out the process. When I’ve questioned how Fred would know whether students are progressing effectively in their use of French, Fred has repeatedly referred to the subsequent use of summative assessments (at some future date) as indicating this progress. No means of encouraging or facilitating student self or peer assessment is present either. A significant emphasis within the MY French curricula is to facilitate an appreciation of French culture and language in students’ affective domain. When this has been raised, Fred has appealed (as previously noted) to the obstacles in the way of increasing this appreciation of French, and has not been able to supply any means by which this is being increased. Indeed, there appears to be a significant decline in students’ attitudes toward their French lessons from the grade 6 to the grade 8 levels in Fred’s classes. In the grade 6 class, some students are smiling, spontaneous and enthusiastic. This declines in the grade 7 class, and in grade 8 there were no smiles, and what seemed to be a complete lack of spontaneity and enthusiasm.

Teacher’s Reflections

Re: “The pedagogy to which Fred ascribes (at least as according to our conversations) presupposes a level of motivation to learn and pursue a second language which he identifies as being lacking in most of his students.”

I believe that I have already addressed this issue.

Re: “This has repeatedly been identified by Fred as an issue – that his students do not value the learning of French, and that it is therefore almost futile to be attempting to force them to learn the language.”

I certainly view the forcing of learning French language to children many of whose lives at home are probably characterized by poverty to be oppressive and relatively meaningless for many of them—as I experienced when I was growing up.

Re: “I have not identified any means by which Fred has successfully fostered an appropriate level of motivation in spite of the factors he’s identified as limiting this motivation. So, we are left with a situation where he believes that the students do not (for the most part) want to learn French, where he’s been unsuccessful in changing that situation, and where he therefore believes that their learning is necessarily restricted.”

I have addressed this issue above.

Re: “Earlier this year, it was made clear to Fred that a key element that appeared to be lacking was the formation of effective, empathetic relationships with the students in his classes.”

I have displayed considerable empathy in trying to see the behaviour in the context of many students’ lives; I certainly do not consider throwing an airplane to be outrageous behaviour. To claim that I lacked empathy with students is an unfortunate misreading of situations.

Re: “He has attempted to rectify this by engaging in question and answer sessions with them at the beginning of the class, wherein students ask him a question, he translates the question into French, and then responds in both French and English. It is not evident that this has led to a more effective relationship between Fred and his students. It is also not evident that this simple “exposure” to spoken French is leading to any learning of the language, as the dialogue from the students’ perspective is entirely in English – the spoken French, by Fred, seems to be ignored. To the extent that Fred has demonstrated a knowledge of his students, as persons and as learners, it would seem that the view is largely negative. For example, when we held our postconference after the 3^rd observation (grade 8 French), and I asked Fred about the 5 girls who comprised this class, he described to me in turn why each of them was not an effective learner in his class. When I went further by asking how this situation had come about, he went back to the experience of earlier years, where he identified two other students (since discontinued in French) who had “poisoned” the other students’ attitudes toward French and toward himself.”

Note the exclusive reliance on the relation to the grade 8 class as an example. An example implies something typical, and the situation with the grade 8 class is atypical.

I had tried, with the grade 8 class, the method of asking and answering questions, but they did not respond well.

Re: “At the beginning of this process, individual lessons were based upon the completion of identified tasks. Fred has resisted the notion that specific learning goals for students should be clarified and shared with students, but has begun to take some steps in this direction.”

I have already addressed above the issue of tasks (from a Deweyan perspective, concrete goals for students) and learning goals (from a Deweyan perspective, the means towards concrete goals).

“As stated earlier, there is no evidence (and none identified by Fred during our postconferences) that the questioning back and forth between Fred and the students at the beginning of classes has led to any learning by the students.”

See above.

“Although learning goals have begun to be identified, it has not been observed that any significant movement toward attaining these goals has been made during observed classes. For example, the second observation (grade 7) was meant to increase student competence in using possessive adjectives. As an observer, it was not clear that students understood this to be the lesson’s focus, nor did they demonstrate any increased competence or confidence in the use of the adjectives or any other aspect of using the French language.”

See above.

Re: “Fred has not indicated any significant understanding of either the importance of formative assessment during a class, nor of how to effectively carry out the process. When I’ve questioned how Fred would know whether students are progressing effectively in their use of French, Fred has repeatedly referred to the subsequent use of summative assessments (at some future date) as indicating this progress.”

I certainly agree that my formative assessment skills can be honed—like any other skill. To claim, however, that I fail to understand the importance of formative assessment a complete lack of understanding of my position and provides further evidence of the preformed conclusions of the administrator about my beliefs. In the University Laboratory School (also known as the Dewey School), as far as I have been able to determine, there was nothing but formative assessment. This feature of the school caused some difficulties when the students were to prepare for college entrance, but provision was made for addressing the issue:

“The oldest members of this united group (who normally would have been classified as Group XII) were given special tutoring and review courses in preparation for their college board examinations, which were complicating the program. Had the group consisted solely of those who had followed the consecutively developing program of the school, and had it not been hampered by the demands of college entrance examinations, the various courses for the oldest children doubtless would have followed a far different and more logical plan, hints of which appear in the records” (Camp & Edwards, 1936/1966, p. 237).

Since the Dewey School was designed to be an experimental school, where hypotheses were formulated about the best conditions for learning, tested and modified, depending on the circumstances. Since no summative assessment was performed until the later years, and only then for the purpose of preparing the students for entry into college, it can be inferred that formative assessment was an ideal ground for learning.

On the other hand, the principal simply did not bother to delve deeper into my beliefs. His evident disdain for my beliefs and his evident drawing of conclusions without any process of objective inquiry prevented him from understanding what we share in common.

Furthermore, the implied claim that I do not understand the importance of the present moment rather than the future misses entirely my position.

From my dissertation:

“Dewey, by contrast, considers that the prehistoric pattern of mind still functions, though in modified form, in present conditions and that it has some positive attributes. One of the major positive attributes for Dewey is the capacity to focus on the present situation. For Dewey, the present is where the life process centers, and the past and future are relative to the living present. The past divorced from the present is dead, and the future divorced from the present is fantasy.¹

Dewey gives the example of hunting in prehistoric times (1902/1976e). He outlines what differentiates it from other modes of living or acting. It is much less concerned with the mediation process or the objective side of the relationship between human beings and their environment. Its focus has more to do with the subjective side of the life process, and the subjective side, or the animate term of the life process, is always a living present. The concerns of prehistoric peoples are largely related to the personal side and not to the impersonal side of the life process. The rhythm of life is characterized by a tension that is personally felt; the stages of the life process focus on the personal at the expense of the objective. This mode of the life process is characterized by the drama, where superficiality in the treatment of phenomena is compensated by the degree of intensity of the emotions and the sharpness of attention in the use of the senses for the purpose of enhancing the personal side, such as increased acquisition and display of skills.

This personal aspect of the life process is preserved in the modern life process in the form of the “pursuit of truth, plot interest, business adventure and speculation, to all intense and active forms of amusement, to gambling and the `sporting life’” (1902/1976e, 45). Educationally, Dewey uses the hunting occupation as a model by which to criticize various theories and practices that purport to be educational but which violate the principle of the life process centering on the present and its potentialities and possibilities. In chapter five of Democracy and education (1916/1980a), for example, Dewey refers to education as preparation. This way of defining education is still prevalent in modern schools—preparation for obtaining a job, for further studies and so forth. The activity engaged in by the child is supposed to be useful in the future rather than functional now. Since the use of a structure is an integral part in the formation of the structure—function mediates structure—then the separation of the formation of the structure from its use in the vague future leads to ineffective and distorted structures that do not effectively contribute to the living present, either now or in the future.

Education needs to be preparation for confrontation of the present situation, which includes the past as relevant to the identification of the nature of the present problematic situation and to the future as the hypothesized solution to the present situation. The present, however, is still the focus since it is only the tension within the present life process that converts the past into something relevant or meaningful to the present, and the future potentialities of present conditions are likewise only meaningful in relation to the present life process:

Men are engaged neither in mechanical transposition of the conditions they have inherited, nor yet in simply preparing for something to come after. They have their own problems to solve; their own adaptations to make. They face the future, but for the sake of the present, not the future. In using what has come to them as an inheritance from the past they are compelled to modify it to meet their own needs, and this process creates a new present in which the process continues. (1938/1986, 238)

When the potentialities of the present situation are divorced from the formation of structures, then something external to the present must be attached to present behaviour—rewards and punishment. There is little wonder that Skinner’s concept of reinforcement, which focuses on the provision of an external reward having little to do with the activity, forms an essential component of the school system—the latter operates on an impoverished notion of education as preparation.

For Dewey, then, prehistoric life has something to teach us—the importance of the present as the locus for the relevance of the past and the future. Education is not preparation for some possible experience in the vague future. Freire’s philosophy, it is true, escapes some of the problems associated with defining education as preparation by incorporating some of the present problems of the peasants into the curriculum, but Freire’s abstraction from the life process a such prevents him from appreciating the positive aspect of prehistoric life and from incorporating those positive aspects into his educational philosophy and practice.

The Deweyan educational model incorporates the appreciation for the present living process whereas the Freirean model, though not excluding it, does not integrate it in the form of an appreciation of prehistoric life. Freire’s model, despite the emphasis on subjectivity, ironically, veers more towards the objective moment by treating prehistoric life as a stage to be overcome rather than a stage that is one-sided and that hence requires to be balanced by a more stable process of control of the objective conditions for human experience.”

On the other hand, I do recognize that there is often a conflict between formative and summative assessment. Summative assessment is important at the public level, for other institutions, for example, as well as for scholarships (in Deweyan terms, it is education for preparation—which Dewey adamantly criticized). There is a conflict between the importance of formative assessment, which is designed for improving learning, and summative assessment, which is designed for other purposes. The different purposes easily come into conflict.

I am in total agreement with the principal concerning the importance of formative assessment in the process of learning.

Re: “No means of encouraging or facilitating student self or peer assessment is present either.”

Agreed. It is something that I should incorporate into the process.

Re: “A significant emphasis within the MY French curricula is to facilitate an appreciation of French culture and language in students’ affective domain. When this has been raised, Fred has appealed (as previously noted) to the obstacles in the way of increasing this appreciation of French, and has not been able to supply any means by which this is being increased.”

I have addressed the issue of culture above and an appreciation of French in relation to the students’ own language.

Re: “Indeed, there appears to be a significant decline in students’ attitudes toward their French lessons from the grade 6 to the grade 8 levels in Fred’s classes. In the grade 6 class, some students are smiling, spontaneous and enthusiastic. This declines in the grade 7 class, and in grade 8 there were no smiles, and what seemed to be a complete lack of spontaneity and enthusiasm.”

The administrator’s characterization of the level of motivation as progressively lacking as grades increase is not my reading of the situation. I would say that the grade 6s are more motivated to learn than the grade 8s, with the grade 7s more motivated than the grade 6s or grade 8s.

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Three

The following is the third of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French. This post deals with the performance evaluation of grade 8 French. It also includes my “Teacher’s response” to that evaluation.

For the context of the “clinical evaluation,” see the post A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Eight.

As a teacher, I was earning around $85,000 a year at the time. Undoubtedly, according to the social-democratic or social-reformist left, it was a “good job,” “decent work,” and other such clichés. Being under clinical evaluation or supervision, however, was in effect legal torture–and I could not grieve the continued harassment by the principal since it was within management’s rights to “evaluate” a teacher’s performance.

Mr. Stankevicius remarked that the evaluation reflected negatively–on Mr. MacNeil:

You have provided a very scholarly response but it needs to be shortened. I hope you agree with my suggestions. …

You have made your points here. NM [Neil MacNeil] does not look good in a lot of how he states his observations (in my opinion).

I provide Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts (and post by followed by my reflections (response) that I provided. In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades is distributed over three posts. In the case of Grade 6, I also included the first area of evaluation (Domain I, Professional Responsibilities), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response). Four further posts follow that include Domain I (Professional Responsibilities), Domain II (Educational Environments), Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships).

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Date and Focus of Teacher/Administrator Pre-Conferences and Post Conferences

3. Grade 8 French 2011 12 05 2:50 – 3:30 p.m.

“Pre-conference: Reviewing a quiz on passe compose. Fred will clarify expectations for a sports bulletin around research, then go up to the library for this research.

To note:

– nothing noted.

Post-conference: Fred was asked for his assessment of how this class went. He spoke to the need to review the passe compose again with the class, and to clarify again the intent of the assignment that the class was given for their sports bulletin.

I stated that, in my view, this was not the primary issue in the class. I pointed out that this was a class of 5 girls, with one new student who started this class today, and another boy whose attendance was “hit and miss” in Fred’s words. In my observation, all of the girls were unengaged and disinterested throughout the class. (Fred had occasion to remonstrate with each of the girls during this 35 minute class, and with some as many as a dozen times.)

I asked Fred for his assessment about how the situation had come to this pass, where I heard three of the girls state “I hate French” during the class. He responded by speaking to each of the girls in turn, describing what he believed to be their fault(s) in this matter. He pointed out that at least two of the girls were being forced to be there against their will, and I replied that, if we were to remove the students who did not want to be there, there might be no students left. After further prompting from me, about how this should not be the case for this class, he went back to previous years, where he spoke to the role of two boys, who have since dropped French, in having destroyed the atmosphere of the class.

I pointed out to Fred that, in all of this, he had not acknowledged his own role for the state of affairs in the class. He acknowledged that he did have some responsibility, for not having been sufficiently disciplinary with these students, but that he was working on this. He pointed out the detentions list he now has on his whiteboard. I asked how he intended to repair the relationships with these students, which he acknowledged to be damaged, and he said that he would talk with them.

Finally, Fred inquired about the next steps in this process. I clarified for him that the notes from the first two observations that I had given him were not part of my report. I told him that I would complete my report (using this template), give it to him for his comments, and that it would then be forwarded to the superintendent.”

Teacher’s Reflections

Grade 8

Re: “Post-conference: Fred was asked for his assessment of how this class went. He spoke to the need to review the passe compose again with the class, and to clarify again the intent of the assignment that the class was given for their sports bulletin.

I stated that, in my view, this was not the primary issue in the class. I pointed out that this was a class of 5 girls, with one new student who started this class today, and another boy whose attendance was “hit and miss” in Fred’s words. In my observation, all of the girls were unengaged and disinterested throughout the class. (Fred had occasion to remonstrate with each of the girls during this 35 minute class, and with some as many as a dozen times.)”

This is true. With one girl in particular, who has persistently been oppositional or defiant. I have since changed my tactics. If she does not do her work in French class, she then makes up for it during recess.

Re: “I asked Fred for his assessment about how the situation had come to this pass, where I heard three of the girls state “I hate French” during the class. He responded by speaking to each of the girls in turn, describing what he believed to be their fault(s) in this matter.”

The first thing that I said was that my formative assessment of their skills had been inaccurate—that I had overestimated their skill set. It was indeed an issue that came out when I had a discussion with the students subsequent to the observation and post-conference. One student said that I expected too much of them; I have taken that criticism into consideration and have tried to proceed more slowly and have made changes to the material as a support for their learning.

With respect to the issue of discipline, I would say that I made a serious mistake in trying to reason with certain students in past years who are no longer in French. My general approach has been to be empathetic to students (despite the contrary proposition by the administrator); I was too tolerant. I failed to identify real disrespect from mere shenanigans, and as a consequence I allowed the two students the year before too much leeway.

I have continued with the detention if the students talk while I am teaching.

As for referring to each student in turn, I indicated what they were doing that interfered with my direct instruction (such as persistent talking while I was trying to teach).

One circumstance that I did not mention was the obligation to teach in the home economics room. At the beginning of the year, I did not even know where I was going to teach. I was then assigned to the home economics room—a room ill-suited for teaching in general (apart from home economics) let alone French in particular. The room was several times used for meetings (in the evening and the day). I did not even have chalk at first and had to ask other teachers for some chalk. Then I was shifted to a different classroom. My sense was that such references to the unsuitability of environmental conditions and changes in environmental conditions would be interpreted by the administrator as “excuses.”

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Two

The following is the second of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French. This post deals with the performance evaluation of grade 7 French. It also includes my “Teacher’s response” to that evaluation.

For the context of the “clinical evaluation,” see the post A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Eight.

As a teacher, I was earning around $85,000 a year at the time. Undoubtedly, according to the social-democratic or social-reformist left, it was a “good job,” “decent work,” and other such clichés. Being under clinical evaluation or supervision, however, was in effect legal torture–and I could not grieve the continued harassment by the principal since it was within management’s rights to “evaluate” a teacher’s performance.

I provide Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts (with each post followed by my reflections (response) that I provided. In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades is distributed over three posts. Four further posts will follow that include Domain I (Professional Responsibilities), Domain II (Educational Environments), Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships).

Mr. Stankevicius remarked that the evaluation reflected negatively–on Mr. MacNeil:

You have provided a very scholarly response but it needs to be shortened. I hope you agree with my suggestions. …

You have made your points here. NM [Neil MacNeil] does not look good in a lot of how he states his observations (in my opinion).

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clin

ical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Date and Focus of Teacher/Administrator Pre-Conferences and Post Conference

2. Grade 7 French 2011 11 29 2:15 – 2:50 p.m.

“Pre-conference: Students will ask personal questions of Fred. Then, students will take notes about gender of nouns, to give students a reference. Then, a lesson about possessive adjectives. When I asked what this lesson would look like, Fred responded “would you like a copy of the handout?”.

To note:

– in response, Fred says there is nothing to highlight, except that the class will be late due to coming in from recess.

Post-conference: I shared with Fred that it was not evident to me that there was any significant understanding of the possessive adjectives that students were being asked to learn/review, except on the part of one student. It was only this student who seemed to be particularly engaged during the lesson on the possessive adjectives. The only French written or spoken by the students throughout the lesson was when they recited “mes parents” twice after Fred.

We discussed two students in particular who seemed to be completely unengaged throughout the period. I shared that it appeared to me that Fred was “fighting” (for lack of a better word) with these students to pay attention, but to little or no effect. I asked whether Fred had considered other means of engaging these students, such as providing opportunity to learn in other ways for the student whom Fred identified as liking to draw. He said that he would consider this.

I asked Fred how he would know whether students had a command of the possessive adjectives which were the subject of this lesson. Fred replied that this would become evident as they worked on their family tree assignment. I asked how he might have a sense of this in the realm of formative assessment, and he said that he was led to believe they had a fundamental competence based on their responses in class. I pointed out that there were, effectively, no spontaneous responses in class aside from those of the one student who appeared interested and engaged.”

Teacher’s Reflections

Grade 7

Re:” Pre-conference: Students will ask personal questions of Fred.” I also asked questions of students.

Re: “Then, students will take notes about gender of nouns, to give students a reference. Then, a lesson about possessive adjectives. When I asked what this lesson would look like, Fred responded “would you like a copy of the handout?”.

There seems to be some confusion here. The administrator was supposed to observe a lesson on the possessive adjectives the previous week, which included taking notes on the possessive adjective. However, the same day was career fair for high-school students, and many classrooms were being used for that purpose—including my own. Ironically, it was the RCMP presentation which was located in the classroom where I taught. The presentation went to 2:30, but the observation was supposed to start at 2:15. Consequently, the observation took place the following week.

I had had the students already take notes on the possessive adjective another day. I wanted to give them a sense of the form of the possessive adjectives (certainly not “master” it in such a short period of time). I had also another day indicated that the possessive adjectives are difficult since their form is determined by the thing possessed. It can become confusing since the thing possessed may be plural while the person possessing the thing may be singular or plural. For example, mon, ma, mes: singular in the sense of the possessor, but mes is the plural form of the thing possessed even when one person is possessing the thing (ma soeur: singular thing possessed: mes soeurs: my sisters). It is true that I wrote on the objectives that the students would learn the possessive adjectives; I should have qualified that (mon, ma, mes); I made a mistake.

Re: “Post-conference: I shared with Fred that it was not evident to me that there was any significant understanding of the possessive adjectives that students were being asked to learn/review, except on the part of one student. It was only this student who seemed to be particularly engaged during the lesson on the possessive adjectives. The only French written or spoken by the students throughout the lesson was when they recited “mes parents” twice after Fred.”

I have partially responded to this above [in a previous post]. There are further issues. I was under the mistaken impression that I had to elaborate on learning goals before moving onto a specific task (see attachment). The claim that there was little evidence that the students had learned the possessive adjectives is inaccurate. A few did use it correctly; one student, for example, who is hardly a stellar French student, stated “mon oncle.” A few others also indicated the correct form. However, once it was clear that some indeed did not remember, I reviewed the possessive adjectives on the board in combination with the vocabulary for family members. I did not expect them to understand the possessive adjective immediately.

However, on further reflection, what I should then have done was to verify that more students grasped the concept of the possessive adjective. To that extent, the administrator’s assessment is accurate. I could have improved on my formative assessment. My formative assessment skills can always be improved.

A large part of the class was dedicated to an explanation of the learning goals and the task. I reviewed the possessive adjectives.

Re: “We discussed two students in particular who seemed to be completely unengaged throughout the period. I shared that it appeared to me that Fred was “fighting” (for lack of a better word) with these students to pay attention, but to little or no effect. I asked whether Fred had considered other means of engaging these students, such as providing opportunity to learn in other ways for the student whom Fred identified as liking to draw. He said that he would consider this.”

I am not certain about to which two students the principal is referring. We discussed one student’s lack of engagement. There was definitely one student who was tuned out and who did not pay attention. The principal has a valid point here. The principal suggested, besides the specific point of possibly attempting to incorporate the student’s drawing in order to engage the student that I differentiate instruction for the student. I have done that (see attachment), and the student has now drawn a family tree and written most of the required elements.

There was another student who interrupted me on occasion and who wanted to argue. I began to document her defiant behaviour. I called her parents, and we had a meeting. They were going to have her withdraw from French. They did not. I have attempted to walk a fine line in relation to this student.. Her defiant behaviour will probably continue, and I will address it when necessary, but to address it each time would disrupt the class. I have to use my judgement. When she is openly defiant, I will and have done something. For example, during a class subsequent to the observation, she wanted to get some white paper from the library for her family tree project. I let her, but she insisted on taking her binder. I saw no need for her to take her binder and told her to leave it. She made a point of taking it anyway; she had detention as a consequence.

Re: “I asked Fred how he would know whether students had a command of the possessive adjectives which were the subject of this lesson. Fred replied that this would become evident as they worked on their family tree assignment. I asked how he might have a sense of this in the realm of formative assessment, and he said that he was led to believe they had a fundamental competence based on their responses in class.”

This is a misreading of what I said. Given my philosophy of education, I would not expect that the students would have “increased their competence in the use of the adjectives or any other aspect of using the French language” during a few classes of French. I had reviewed possessive adjectives in French in general in previous lessons to provide a general but vague background. Concretization would arise through the process of creating a family tree within the limited context of using “mon, ma, mes” (delimitation of the set of possessive adjectives to a subset of them). To expect grade 7 students to be fluent in the use of even the possessive adjectives mon, ma and mes after a few lessons is unrealistic. Furthermore, since the use of these possessive adjectives constitutes a means to the end of creating a family tree (a solution to the problem of creating a family tree in French), they would be more efficiently learned—in context.

Re: “ I pointed out that there were, effectively, no spontaneous responses in class aside from those of the one student who appeared interested and engaged.”

I have already addressed this issue in part. Furthermore, spontaneous oral response is harder than the written form (since spontaneous response is usually delimited by a shorter period of time) In addition, as indicated above, there were a few more students who did respond orally—not just one.

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part One

The following is the first of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French. It also includes my “Teacher’s response” to that evaluation.

For the context of the “clinical evaluation,” see the post A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Eight.

As a teacher, I was earning around $85,000 a year at the time. Undoubtedly, according to the social-democratic or social-reformist left, it was a “good job,” “decent work,” and other such clichés. Being under clinical evaluation or supervision, however, was in effect legal torture–and I could not grieve the continued harassment by the principal since it was within management’s rights to “evaluate” a teacher’s performance.

I provide Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts (followed by my reflections (response) that I provided. In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades is distributed over three posts. Four further posts will follow that include Domain I (Professional Responsibilities), Domain II (Educational Environments), Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships).

Mr. Stankevicius remarked that the evaluation reflected negatively–on Mr. MacNeil:

You have provided a very scholarly response but it needs to be shortened. I hope you agree with my suggestions. …

You have made your points here. NM [Neil MacNeil] does not look good in a lot of how he states his observations (in my opinion).

I provide Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts (followed by my reflections (response) that I provided). In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades is distributed over three posts. Four further posts will follow that include Domain I, Professional Responsibilities), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response), Domains II (Educational Environments), Domain III (Teaching and Learning) and Domain IV (Professional Relationships).

Lakeshore School Division

Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report

Teacher: Fred Harris

School: Ashern Central School

Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support

The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)

Date and Focus of Teacher/Administrator Pre-Conferences and Post Conferences

1. Grade 6 French 2011 11 10 12:45 – 1:25

Pre-conference: “Fred will be asking the class questions; Au Camp de Vacances. Class is working toward eventually creating a vacation camp brochure. Class will work on pages having to do with this topic.

To highlight: Nothing identified. Matthew M. is an issue re: his focus/obsession with certain topics. Fred pointed out the poverty of some of the students, and that this manifests in their behaviours.

Post-conference: Fred was asked about the learning goals of this class, which had not been identified spontaneously in the pre-conference, and were not identified during the class. In conversation with me, it was pointed out that there were several:

– lessening the antagonism students feel toward French as a second language;

– having students learn more about Fred through the questioning of Fred by students about himself during the first 15 minutes of the class;

– encouraging students to hypothesize about the meaning of words and phrases, rather than just “telling” them;

– having students learn that they can take meaning from the images on pp. 4-5 of the “Au Camp de Vacances” handout they have, which is written in French at a level which the students presumably are unable to understand on their own.

We discussed whether students should have learning goals identified for them. I pointed out the research backing doing so; Fred characterized this as unnecessary and counterproductive to the “inductive” methods he is utilizing with them. I also encouraged Fred to at least ensure that the learning goals were clarified in future preconference meetings.

We discussed student engagement and classroom management. I pointed out that a large segment of the class seemed unengaged for much of the class – speaking inappropriately, getting up and moving about the class, braiding hair, etc. Fred characterized this as being due to their being “forced” to learn a second language, something that he believes is inappropriate, and to their own personal struggles in school, at home, etc. Some of the behaviours which concerned me as being very inappropriate – e.g. throwing a paper airplane, getting up and walking around others’ desks for no reason, using a pencil sharpener (which was very noisy, so that hearing the lesson was not possible) when no writing was taking place – Fred in turn did not believe were serious.

I asked how Fred would know what students learned in this class. Fred responded that this would be evident in their quiz marks, or in other ways (unspecified). It was not clear to me what “French” would have been learned in this class, or how one would know whether any learning had taken place.”

Teacher’s Reflections

Grade 6

Re: “Fred was asked about the learning goals of this class, which had not been identified spontaneously in the pre-conference, and were not identified during the class. “

What the administrator calls learning goals was unclear to me at first. It eventually became clearer that he meant the means by which students realize a goal, that is to say, that my understanding of means to a goal or end is what the administrator calls learning goals.

Re: “Post-conference: Fred was asked about the learning goals of this class, which had not been identified spontaneously in the pre-conference, and was not identified during the class. In conversation with me, it was pointed out that there were several: … – having students learn more about Fred through the questioning of Fred by students about himself during the first 15 minutes of the class;”

This statement is a one-sided view. In fact, I asked them if they had any questions about me, and then I would ask them questions about themselves. I took notes (based on a suggestion from a facilitator at a French workshop). I have incorporated such notes in a game, Bataille, that we play (see attachment).

Re: “I pointed out the research backing doing so;”

If there is indeed research, I am certainly willing to read up on the issue. In fact, I indicated during one of the conferences that I would appreciate references so that I could read such research (especially articles since I do not have the time to read many books these days). He claimed that the specification of learning goals was the single most important variable in determining learning. As a philosopher of education, I am skeptical of such wide-sweeping assertions. My understanding of the learning process is that it is much more complicated than that. However, I am certainly open to such a claim and would enjoy reading up on the matter. I wanted to know more.

I did search for an hour at the resources on learning goals that the administrator provided me the day before I received the clinical evaluation report. I found no specific research that justifies the assertion that the specification of learning goals is the most important determinant of learning. Attached is a copy of evidence that I did go on the sites referenced by the administrator. I received the sites for resources only the evening before I received the clinical evaluation, and in effect only read them a little while before receiving the clinical evaluation.

Re: “Fred characterized this as unnecessary and counterproductive to the “inductive” methods he is utilizing with them.”

The use of “ ” marks in this observation may be a sign of a lack of respect for my ideas. The administrator has shown little empathy for my ideas.

See below about reading strategies, the inquiry process and the image or goal.

Re: “I also encouraged Fred to at least ensure that the learning goals were clarified in future preconference meetings.”

I will continue to comply with that request in further lessons.

Re: “The pedagogy to which Fred ascribes (at least as according to our conversations) presupposes a level of motivation to learn and pursue a second language which he identifies as being lacking in most of his students.” This has repeatedly been identified by Fred as an issue – that his students do not value the learning of French, and that it is therefore almost futile to be attempting to force them to learn the language.”

The workshops that I have attended have emphasized a pedagogy of asking and answering questions, among other things. I have tried to incorporate that into the process. I will gradually stop translating, when appropriate. For example, when asking certain questions to the students (such as Quel est ton film préféré?=What is your favourite movie?), I do not translate anymore.

There are several goals of having them ask me questions and my asking them questions. Firstly, it is to establish a personal relation between them and myself. The principal, when he informed me that I would no longer be teaching senior-high French, contended that I may lack a personal approach to teaching. I tried to address this contention through this method. When talking with special education teachers and educational assistants time and again the issue of establishing a working relationship with such students was emphasized. I am by nature a rather private person (I did, after all, obtain a doctorate because I like to do independent study), but I have decided to open up more in order to achieve that goal. Secondly, it is a way of learning about their interests, and for their learning about my interests. It is also to learn about them and how I may be able to incorporate such information into my teaching. For example, from the questions that the students have asked me, I can infer that they do not see me as having a history; there have been only two questions about my childhood, one having to do with where I was born and the other having to do with my favourite video games when I was a child. I may have the students personalize a conversation and then have them imagine themselves as adults and how the conversation might change as a result. Thirdly, I am concerned with the attitude of the students towards the French language; I want to avoid their developing a negative attitude. Attitude is important in learning any subject. Fourthly, I have also gained an insight into the daily interests of some of the grade 6 students. For example, both Joseph and Draizen play PS-3 at home. Matthew Riley likes to play tag and help his foster father; he also likes to watch television, in particular CSI: New York. Emily likes to go horseback riding and play with her dogs and cats. As I indicated above, I have incorporated some of this knowledge into the game Bataille.

At a more philosophical level, the purpose of my asking questions is to link the everyday experiences (common-sense experience—something which Dewey emphasizes) of the students to the French language. That they are not learning “French” per se is not the point. The point is that they are learning that French, like English, is a way of communicating our experiences and lives in this world—a way of sharing our experiences—something which only human beings can do; human beings are social beings (one of the most constant experiences that people have in their lives is—other human beings). It is also to demystify the French (or, for that matter, any other language). The fact that all the students in the classroom already are capable of conversing in a language, and that fact is something which they share with all other human beings on this planet, needs to be recognized. It is a cultural issue. Being able to speak French is something similar to what they are already capable of doing—speaking a language. On the other hand, the fact that their experiences (and mine) can be expressed in another language is designed to decrease the distance between their lives and the French language, even if in terms of an attitude.

In addition to the use of questions, I have used other strategies to teach “reading across the curriculum.” There are certain techniques or strategies that are useful regardless of the language or subject. I have taken two full courses in reading strategies, one at the postbaccalaureate level and the other at the graduate level (one specifically for reading clinicians—which I thought of becoming at one point).

Pre-reading is a recognized strategy for the reading process. Looking at titles and pictures is a recognized pre-reading strategy.

Some students did use their inference skills to arrive at an understanding of the title. They also learned or practiced that the use of pictures can lead to a preliminary understanding about what the text is about. Perhaps the process could have been shortened somewhat, but learning a strategy requires time. Furthermore, it is appropriate to use part of the title, “L’arrivée,” to have them try to use their knowledge of the English language to come to a conclusion about the meaning of the “L’arrivée.” Another learning strategy for French is to use our own English background to learn more French. The English language does contain many French words.

I asked them how they knew (a bit of metacognitive recognition), and some indicated that they saw the pictures and guessed what it would be about.

In the second place, in addition to attempting to incorporate a declared goal of the Division of incorporating reading strategies into the lesson, I attempted to incorporate another strategy that is applicable across the curriculum: the method of inquiry.

From my dissertation:

“Dewey defines inquiry thus: “Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole” (Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, p. 108). An indeterminate situation arises objectively when the relation between people and their environment is undergoing change that disturbs the relation in some way. Dewey’s definition of inquiry implies that a problematic situation contains two essential elements that inquiry must address: an indeterminate situation and a disconnected situation. The situation requires both clarification and unification. It is this process of clarification and unification that constitutes the learning or educational process in general.”

The inquiry process was the process of inferring from the word “arrivée” what it might mean. The meaning had to make sense in the context of “L’arrivée au Camp Boisvert” and not just by itself. When one student said “arrived,” the context indicated that it did not make sense: “The arrived at Camp Boisvert.” So I pursued the issue until someone inferred that arrival made sense—meaning is, after all, what comprehension involves. Making sense (comprehension) is essential when learning a language (as it is when learning to read—that is why analysis of reading errors in such works as Jerry Johns’ Reading Inventory differentiates substitution errors, in part, as meaningful (they are substitutions which make sense in the context and indicate reading for meaning) from substitutions that do not make sense. Substitution errors that make sense are not counted as errors for the purpose of remediation since the reader is reading for meaning.

In addition to the idea of incorporating reading strategies and inquiry into the process of learning French, I have tried, undoubtedly in an experimental form, to incorporate the notion of “psychologizing the subject matter.” (See attachment). The students know how to speak English and use it evidently on a daily basis—and they also, implicitly, know many French words even though they do not explicitly realize it. I was trying to have them learn, implicitly, what they might already know, even if in a vague way (a technique used since Socrates and exemplified in Plato’s dialogues). This does not mean that they do actually use French words; however, they do use many words which are similar if not identical in spelling in both languages. Since the English equivalent is part of their everyday (psychological) experience, the focus on such words may lead them into a realization that they already know many French words.

Telling students that they know many similar words in French does not, in my experience, have much effect in actually having the students use such knowledge to develop their vocabulary; only those inclined to the use of deduction favour this method (that is how I expanded my French and Spanish vocabulary). When, however, they discover for themselves that such words are similar, the point may well be driven home more effectively.

Once we finished going over pages 4 and 5, we went over explicitly the words that are similar in English and French. They came up with about 30 words.

We may also have a competition between two or three teams to see who can come up with the maximum number of words similar in English and French.

Re: “Fred has resisted the notion that specific learning goals for students should be clarified and shared with students, but has begun to take some steps in this direction.”

I have no problem with the idea of specifying the learning goals—now that I understand that they often are a listing of what the students are expected to learn (in my terms, the means to an end). For most people, as I argue in my dissertation, it is the ends that are considered to be more important than the means by which those ends are realized. People need to learn to focus more on the means, not by focusing on them at the beginning, but indirectly, by coming to realize that the goal without the means is nothing but a chimera—a vague image or goal.

John Lennon, in his song, Beautiful Boy, sang something analogously: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” The idea is linked to the concept of the situated curriculum (see attached). Learning often occurs when you are busy doing other things. By creating a family tree, the students are learning to use the possessive adjectives (mon, ma and, in some cases, mes). They are not consciously doing that, but as they attempt to realize the vague goal (and it is vague because of a different environment—French—although it is not vague in relation to their native English language).

Re: “Fred has not indicated any significant understanding of either the importance of formative assessment [feedback by the teacher of a student’s learning, whether the feedback is verbal or written] during a class, nor of how to effectively carry out the process. When I’ve questioned how Fred would know whether students are progressing effectively in their use of French, Fred has repeatedly referred to the subsequent use of summative assessments (at some future date) as indicating this progress.” [Summative assessments are marks or grades.]

I certainly agree that my formative assessment skills can be honed—like any other skill. To claim, however, that I fail to understand the importance of formative assessment a complete lack of understanding of my position.

In the University Laboratory School (also known as the Dewey School), as far as I have been able to determine, there was nothing but formative assessment. This feature of the school caused some difficulties when the students were to prepare for college entrance, but provision was made for addressing the issue. Since the Dewey School was designed to be an experimental school, where hypotheses were formulated about the best conditions for learning, tested and modified, depending on the circumstances. Since no summative assessment was performed until the later years, and only then for the purpose of preparing the students for entry into college, it can be inferred that formative assessment was an ideal ground for learning.

Furthermore, the implied claim that I do not understand the importance of the present moment rather than the future misses entirely my position.

From my dissertation:

“Dewey, by contrast, considers that the prehistoric pattern of mind still functions, though in modified form, in present conditions and that it has some positive attributes. One of the major positive attributes for Dewey is the capacity to focus on the present situation. For Dewey, the present is where the life process centers, and the past and future are relative to the living present. The past divorced from the present is dead, and the future divorced from the present is fantasy.¹

Dewey gives the example of hunting in prehistoric times (1902/1976e). He outlines what differentiates it from other modes of living or acting. It is much less concerned with the mediation process or the objective side of the relationship between human beings and their environment. Its focus has more to do with the subjective side of the life process, and the subjective side, or the animate term of the life process, is always a living present. The concerns of prehistoric peoples are largely related to the personal side and not to the impersonal side of the life process. The rhythm of life is characterized by a tension that is personally felt; the stages of the life process focus on the personal at the expense of the objective. This mode of the life process is characterized by the drama, where superficiality in the treatment of phenomena is compensated by the degree of intensity of the emotions and the sharpness of attention in the use of the senses for the purpose of enhancing the personal side, such as increased acquisition and display of skills.

This personal aspect of the life process is preserved in the modern life process in the form of the “pursuit of truth, plot interest, business adventure and speculation, to all intense and active forms of amusement, to gambling and the `sporting life’” (1902/1976e, 45). Educationally, Dewey uses the hunting occupation as a model by which to criticize various theories and practices that purport to be educational but which violate the principle of the life process centering on the present and its potentialities and possibilities. In chapter five of Democracy and education (1916/1980a), for example, Dewey refers to education as preparation. This way of defining education is still prevalent in modern schools—preparation for obtaining a job, for further studies and so forth. The activity engaged in by the child is supposed to be useful in the future rather than functional now. Since the use of a structure is an integral part in the formation of the structure—function mediates structure—then the separation of the formation of the structure from its use in the vague future leads to ineffective and distorted structures that do not effectively contribute to the living present, either now or in the future.

Education needs to be preparation for confrontation of the present situation, which includes the past as relevant to the identification of the nature of the present problematic situation and to the future as the hypothesized solution to the present situation. The present, however, is still the focus since it is only the tension within the present life process that converts the past into something relevant or meaningful to the present, and the future potentialities of present conditions are likewise only meaningful in relation to the present life process:

Men are engaged neither in mechanical transposition of the conditions they have inherited, nor yet in simply preparing for something to come after. They have their own problems to solve; their own adaptations to make. They face the future, but for the sake of the present, not the future. In using what has come to them as an inheritance from the past they are compelled to modify it to meet their own needs, and this process creates a new present in which the process continues. (1938/1986, 238)

When the potentialities of the present situation are divorced from the formation of structures, then something external to the present must be attached to present behaviour—rewards and punishment. There is little wonder that Skinner’s concept of reinforcement, which focuses on the provision of an external reward having little to do with the activity, forms an essential component of the school system—the latter operates on an impoverished notion of education as preparation.

For Dewey, then, prehistoric life has something to teach us—the importance of the present as the locus for the relevance of the past and the future. Education is not preparation for some possible experience in the vague future. Freire’s philosophy, it is true, escapes some of the problems associated with defining education as preparation by incorporating some of the present problems of the peasants into the curriculum, but Freire’s abstraction from the life process a such prevents him from appreciating the positive aspect of prehistoric life and from incorporating those positive aspects into his educational philosophy and practice.

The Deweyan educational model incorporates the appreciation for the present living process whereas the Freirean model, though not excluding it, does not integrate it in the form of an appreciation of prehistoric life. Freire’s model, despite the emphasis on subjectivity, ironically, veers more towards the objective moment by treating prehistoric life as a stage to be overcome rather than a stage that is one-sided and that hence requires to be balanced by a more stable process of control of the objective conditions for human experience.”

On the other hand, I do recognize that there is often a sharp conflict between formative and summative assessment. Summative assessment is important at the public level, for other institutions, for example, as well as for scholarships; it is much more future oriented and divorced from present conditions. There is a conflict between the importance of formative assessment, which is designed for improving learning, and summative assessment, which is designed for other purposes. The different purposes easily come into conflict.

I am in total agreement with the administrator concerning the importance of formative assessment in the process of learning. Ideally, there should be nothing but formative assessment. [For a critique of grades, see the post The Expansion of Public Services Versus a Basic Income, Part Two: How the Social-democratic Left Ignore the Oppressive Nature of Public Services: Part One: Oppressive Educational Services. That post also contains a short description of a meeting between the principal, the superintendent Janet Martell, and Mr. Stankeviciuse concerning the issue of formative versus summative assessment.]

Re: “We discussed student engagement and classroom management. I pointed out that a large segment of the class seemed unengaged for much of the class – speaking inappropriately, getting up and moving about the class, braiding hair, etc. Fred characterized this as being due to their being “forced” to learn a second language, something that he believes is inappropriate, and to their own personal struggles in school, at home, etc. Some of the behaviours which concerned me as being very inappropriate – e.g. throwing a paper airplane, getting up and walking around others’ desks for no reason, using a pencil sharpener (which was very noisy, so that hearing the lesson was not possible) when no writing was taking place – Fred in turn did not believe were serious.”

The administrator, during our first postconference, claimed that the throwing of an airplane by one of the students constituted outrageous behaviour (that is the adjective that he used). I indicated during the discussion that we undoubtedly had different definitions of what outrageous means. I saw what the student did, and addressed the issue by minimizing disruption of the class.

To use the adjective “outrageous” for the act of throwing an airplane in class certainly put me on the defensive. I was wondering why the administrator would use such an adjective for this situation.

I would reserve the adjective “outrageous” to the probable living conditions of several students in that class. Although I have never been inside one of the houses of my students, I did drive one student (not mine), during one cold winter night in the winter of 2008-2009 to his house in the countryside (he knocked on the door and wanted to warm up a bit). Although the exterior of a house need not characterize the interior, if the former did indeed characterize the latter, then the living conditions of that student probably approached what I had experienced as a child.

Ashern Central School probably has a level of poverty comparable to schools in the inner city of Winnipeg ]Manitoa, Canada]. I also have experience with those schools in two ways. I substitute taught for a number of years in inner-city schools (I had been taking special education courses since 2001); Finally, when I was teaching two grade ten geography classes in French immersion at Oak Park High School in Charleswood (Winnipeg), one of my students set off a stink bomb in the class. The vice principal, who was responsible for discipline issues, warned the student and threatened that if he did anything else silly, he would oblige him to transfer to the class with fewer students, but his friends were in the class with more students.) A stink bomb is certainly more serious than throwing a paper airplane (it disrupted several classes since students could not study there for awhile.)

I did not find the throwing of a paper airplane to be outrageous behaviour; it was inappropriate, but it was hardly outrageous. I addressed the issue quietly and without disturbing the rest of the class.

I disagree with the administrator’s use of the phrase “large segment” (I would use “some”), some of the administrator’s observations concerning classroom management are valid and useful. When I study, I have the fan on—it helps me concentrate. I was not even aware of the sharpening of the pencil. I need to be more “with it,” to use an expression during my bachelor of education days. In fact, I used such an observation in my grade 7 French class recently to call into question the act of a student who got up and started to sharpen his pencil while I was giving instructions. There was no need to sharpen a pencil when he did so. I also need to be more consistent in my application of rules. I also did not notice that one of the students had not opened the booklet. I have tried to rectify the situation by being more “with it.”

I asked the teacher of this class last year about this class, and the teacher indicated that it was a very challenging class.

In addition, there was another teacher present while I was teaching this class. I have talked to this teacher at other times, and she has indicated that many students did listen much more to the classroom teacher than they did to her. This does not mean that they should not have listened to her; however, it is necessary to contextualize the behaviour of this class and realize that behavioural issues in this class have a past that extends beyond my French class both temporally and spatially.

Re: “I asked how Fred would know what students learned in this class. Fred responded that this would be evident in their quiz marks, or in other ways (unspecified). It was not clear to me what “French” would have been learned in this class, or how one would know whether any learning had taken place.”

I have answered this issue in relation to the reading strategy and the inquiry process. In terms of the reading strategy, I thought that the use of the inquiry process was appropriate. There is more to learn than just the subject matter.

1 Calore (1989) claims that Dewey’s theory, unlike those of Bergson, Mead and Whitehead, involves “ontological parity” between the past, present and future; unlike those philosophers, here is no ontological privileging of the present. Such an interpretation runs counter to the tenor of Dewey’s philosophy, where the past and the future are always functions of present living conditions.

Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Eleven: The Limitations of a Reformist Feminist Critique of Gender Relations

This is a continuation of earlier posts.

As I pointed out in a previous post, it is necessary for the radical left to use every opportunity to question the legitimacy of existing institutions.

The author (Shannon Sullivan) of the article, “Reconfiguring Gender with John Dewey: Habit, Bodies, and Cultural Change,” argues that Dewey’s concept of habits as a set of created structures of the body at the individual level that constitute the self is useful for characterizing the gendered body and its transformation over time. At the social level, habits become customs. Both habits and customs can be transformed through friction between contradictory or opposing habits or customs.

It is the task of education to ensure that children and adolescents develop flexible, not rigid habits characteristic of many adults.

Even adults can develop flexible habits as their habits come into conflict with each other; at the level of society, customs can be transformed through the clash of customs. Individual habits that lead to the need for the connecting with other like-minded individuals can lead to the transformation at the cultural level. Feminist movements can and have transformed habits and customs.

The author gives the example of how the defining of gender according to the rigid binaries of male and female gave way to a greater acceptance of the provision of health care and other benefits to same-sex partners of employees by employers.

However, the example by the author itself furnishes food for thought. Employers have been obliged to accept same-sex relations. Such relations may question gender customs, but they do not question the premises for the existence of businesses in the first place. What happens if equity and social justice requires the questioning of such premises? For example, are not employees human beings who, practically and legally, are treated as things to be used by other people rather than people (human agents).

Few feminists and few teachers and indeed few of those who fight for equity and social justice question the premises for the existence of employers. If habits and customs related to the existence of employers are going to change, however, it is necessary to adopt and develop theories that enable people to question such premises.

The author lacks a critical awareness of her own feminist limitations. By providing an example of how employers incorporate gender flexibility into their practices, she does not question how employers control the body of employees as employees; to be an employee is to be a body that is controlled by others (employers or their representatives—such as principals in the case of school divisions).

Equity and social justice is much more demanding than many believe. To fight for equity and social justice often involves persecution by those in power of those who fight for equity and social justice. If those who are concerned with equity and social justice are not persecuted, in all likelihood they are not really fighting for equity and social justice. To fight for equity and social justice requires opposing those who control other human beings in various forms. To fight for equity and social justice, it is necessary to question the premises of social structures—and those who believe in them and defend them. To question such premises will likely result in persecution by those in power in one form or another.