It’s an understatement to state that the opening chapters of Freire’s Pedagogy of the oppressed resonated with me on multiple intersecting levels; a reflection of my own philosophical underpinnings and life experience growing up in a working poor family in Newark, NJ, as a long-time organizer of low-wage workers and presently as a non-traditional doctoral student with aspirations to engage in critical “big-picture” labor and working class education – like many others with ambitions to foster  “critical reflection” as the basis for praxis, “reflection and action upon the world in order to change it.” (51)  It is difficult to hone in on just a few points about a treatise as essential as Freire’s but here are some observations from my standpoint both as a long-term organizer and experience and aspirations as an educator within labor and social movements and in the academy.

Freire delineates the painstaking process through which the oppressed may overcome norms and structures of dehumanization and attain genuine agency; for the oppressed to be able to “wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform” (49) Making  this consciousness-raising (conscientizacao) possible requires overcoming internal and external obstacles faced by the oppressed.  Internal obstacles include their own self-depreciation, humility and fatalism, the tendency to assume the interests of their oppressors as their own and to compete with rather than join together with others of the oppressed in the effort to elevate their own status.  At the same time as the oppressed may fatalistically accept and blame themselves for their own lot, for the oppressors, “having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own “effort,” with their “courage to take risks.” (59)  And as Freire observes even those of the “oppressor” class that seek to stand on the side of justice often adopt an approach more of charity than solidarity – believing themselves better situated to assume leadership rather than trusting the ability of oppressed peoples to possess knowledge, engage in critical reflection and take ownership over their own movements.

Anybody that has spent any time organizing understands these barriers as well as the capacity of people to transcend them.  Freire draws out these processes and the necessity of employing a humanizing pedagogy constructed upon critical reflection, experiential knowledge, and the engaged action of the oppressed as the only means of undoing systems of oppression and making humanization possible.  “It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves. This discovery cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis. Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation.” (65)

I see both Brier and Waltzer’s respective articles responding, in part, to the larger question: Can DH help transform the university or will the university transform DH? One way both Brier and Waltzer insist on the DH to University trajectory is through highlighting the importance of teaching and learning practices and bringing to the fore DH projects that model particular kinds of collaborative ones.

Whereas we’ve learned from our previous readings on the history of the American University system, how it has become increasingly designed and driven from an administrative/management perspective, a focus on the importance of teaching and learning has the potential to shift the frame towards more “liberatory” and student-centered pedagogical practices (Freire, Shaughnessy and Elbow).

Many of the DH projects that both Brier and Waltzer highlight in their respective articles, from Matthew Gold’s “Looking for Whitman” to NYC College of Technology’s “A Living Laboratory” present new models of collaboration between faculty and students. DH projects like these seem to flourish when the larger institution has already embraced aspects of radical pedagogy as both a philosophy and practice.

Jill Lapore is a history professor at Harvard University and probably that is why she places “Disruption Theory” in a historical and contemporary context.This article “The Disruption Machine. What the gospel of innovation gets wrong” was and still is quite controversial because “Disruption Theory” is very popular and widely adopted theory as a business model.”Disruption Theory” is based on the idea of disruptive innovation which is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leading firms, products and alliances. (definition form wikipedia).

1. The Term “disruption innovation” is frequently overused. And I guess her message is that we need to stop for a moment and think the way we are using these words. Can this term be applied to basically everything?
2. The idea of connecting “disruption innovation” with fear. ” The upstarts who work at startups, . . are told that they should be reckless and ruthless. Their investors . . . tell them that the world is a terrifying place, moving at a devastating pace. . . . Disrupt or be disrupted.”  Are the disruptive innovators moved really out of fear?
3. It seems Jill Lepore does not like “upstarts who work at startups”. Lepore is quite harsh on Josh Linker, venture capitalist. She thinks that disruptive innovators are dangerous and needs to be stopped. But isn’t that true that the creators of Google are disruptive innovators?
4. New means “Innovation” and not “progress” anymore. Innovation before had a pejorative meaning. Cannot “Innovation” and “Progress” be mutually interchangeable ?
5. “Disruptive Innovation” is based on not reliable evidence because it was based on the study of the disk-drive industry and the steel-industry. “In the longer term, victory in the disk-drive industry appears to have gone to the manufacturers that were good at incremental improvements, whether or not they were the first to market the disruptive new format. Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out.”
6. There is a very good point about the past. We have the urge to look for innovative solutions. We are in a constant search and maybe we are leaving behind insights and lessons fro the past. Things that are really relevant. Even if we need to find new, innovative ways to teach we also need to keep with traditional forms of education. The same applies for journalist or health care. Do we really need to keep the traditional approaches? Can technology substitute the traditional approaches?

As someone relatively new to the American education system, I am always disconcerted about the corporative treatment of higher education institutions in this country and how politically motivated they are (including public and privates universities).

While this article has been very descriptive as well as critical about the current situation we are facing, I am missing (and I am not sure if it is because the unfamiliarity with the entire background) what type of collaborative action / unionization processes can solve these problems. I feel like there is a need for a more detailed description of the activist movement that Bousquet is looking for when he states “your problem is my problem”: How can student unions get organizational assistance / support to be successful if it does not come from the tenure faculty? What are the alternatives? How it can really work?

I am aware that being at CUNY has given me a specific point of view (and a very narrow perspective) of how the university works in the States. However, just imagining a “renovated future” (even if it an almost impossible future to believe) where only 25% of university staff is non-tenure track faculty (instead of the current 75%), does this future include a coming back to a system where only middle and upper classes had access to the University? What about institutions, i.e. Community Colleges, that serve low-income students? (Being Bousquet a “product” from the CUNY system – City College).

Fabricant’s and Brier’s Chapters Two and Three from Austerity Blues accomplish two remarkable goals. First, they succinctly describe and contextualize the development of the public university system during the latter half of the 20^th century. Second, and more importantly, they analyze how post-war economic and political challenges shaped the development of public universities, particularly CUNY (and UCAL). The reading ends with the observation that public universities after the tumultuous 1960s and 70s would come under attack from austerity and neoliberal policies.  These two chapters tackle wide-ranging issues but three stood out the most to me. (The questions for the provocation are within the following three sections; I apologize if there is any confusion.)

First, the post-war fears of veteran unemployment and subsequent unrest and interest in molding citizens, employees, and scientists of the future drove the state and federal governments to heavily invest in higher education. It was a matter of furthering American excellence at home and dominance abroad. In light of this goal, what type of education would be privileged/sought after by the state? If the purpose was to grant educational opportunity to veterans, then how did public educational institutions respond to the influx of students who were different than the target population? What happens if these students are not interested in the aforementioned goals and values of public education? Did aiming to solve the particular challenges presented by nearly 8 million veterans/new college students limit how public universities approached latter challenges?

Second, the comparison between the creation and growth of the UCAL and SUNY/CUNY, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s demonstrates how institutions react to internal and external pressures. There are two developments I thought were crucial to each system. One was the development of the UCAL “multiversity” system and the other the CUNY BHE’s master plan. Can the multiversity program be considered a bridge to the later neoliberal/austerity policies? How does the multiversity impact how and what education receives money and attention? For CUNY, the emphasis on maintaining tuition-free education seemed to have backfired as the university attempted to grow. Now we have an emphasis from politicians and activists on affordable education (and from some quarters, tuition-free higher education). What does the development of the public university system in New York tell us about where funds should derive? Should the state bear all or most of the burden or should students share some if it for the good of all?

Would anyone be interested in meeting sometime before/after class for a general discussion about the work we’ve covered so far, ideas for the upcoming assignments, pretty much anything else?

I often find informal meetings like this help with the class and in networking. If you’re interested, post here!

It seems like much of Christensen’s approach conforms to the category of what is called (specifically in business, tech, and Silicon Valley) ‘design thinking’. Bearing similarities with pedagogy as a practice that seeks to differentiate information from knowledge (including [assignment] scaffolding and outcome assessment), design thinking “is a formal method for practical, creative resolution of problems and creation of solutions, with the intent of an improved future result” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking).

I learned a great deal from Christensen’s piece. The text does important work not only on the level of exegesis and prescription, I would also say it has a certain performative pedagogical function. As a graduate student myself, the text works as a kind of ‘unveiling’ of structural forces that—as CUNY students—we are uniquely subjected to. Part of any field of practice is not only competence in discipline-specific knowledge, but also familiarization with the political economic (and discursive-metapragmatic) constraints within which that work is being done. While I’ve often heard appeals from faculty and fellow graduate students about the structural forces Christensen discusses, I benefited a great deal from his historical contextualization and ‘disruptive-innovative’ (not to say cyborgian) solutions. I say ‘performative’, then, because I at once recognized his call and was also emotionally and ethically engaged in the solutions he proposed, as well as the ethical model of the University he is advocating.

Any institution recognizes its goals, its challenges, and its possibilities for desirable transformation in terms of broader social notions of value that change along with social paradigms (in our time, primarily technologically-driven). While Christensen’s advice is quintessentially practical, I therefore wonder about the risks to the kinds of qualitative, unquantifiable ‘values’ that Christensen names as one of the University’s niche strengths. While Christensen paints with a broad brush, there is still a certain myopia here.

Just to clarify what’s stated in the syllabus, please read the following from Austerity Blues for Thurs, Oct 6. A full-text PDF of the book is available on the group site.

• Chapter 2, “The State Expansion of Public Higher Education”
• Chapter 3, “Students and Faculty Take Command”

I have posted as a new pull-down menu at the top of this screen, the first paper assignment, which is due November 7th. We can discuss this in class next week if folks have any questions.