A Justice Site
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When We Start to Gather Stories
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FACULTY ASSISTANCE: Letters of Recommendation - Susan - jeanne
UWP Criminal Justice Dept. - CSUDH Dept. of Sociology
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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: January 1, 2007
Latest Update: January 6, 2007
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
January 1, 2007.
Folks, I created this new format for messages to our learning community. I'll reserve the myworld(s for Susan or j for jeanne)latest.htm for the current notes on what we're reading. myworld(s or j).htm is the index, from which you can link to any letter you need. I'll list the summaries and concepts discussed in the letter on the index. I'm hoping to use this format to avoid the rigamarole of backing up every article I read. I know the links won't be there when later students come along, but if I identify the sources, you should be ok. I don't have enough time to backup everything. Anyhow, I'll try this. The links, right under the Dear Habermas icon, go to the current letter of "Jeanne's World and Welcome to It."
The week leading up to this New Year's Day has been hectic. I've spent the last two days at my keyboard all day trying to make up for the loss of a week when my computer crashed. I'll try to catch up on all the reading for you.
January 3, 2007:
Finally, I find a moment to add a little.
James Thurber's image for "My World and Welcome to It" on Wikipedia
Thurber seems to have related his world to his home. How did my image of Susan's and my world differ? Consider that I took a much wider view of our world, coloring hers in blues for a softer, kinder edge, and mine in red, like my red dress, for the Red Queen's fast-paced, hectic world. Yes, that's the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland.
James Thurber is entering his home with a portfolio under his arm, suggesting that he is an artist. I didn't picture Susan and myself as teachers in a classroom. Instead I saw a wonderfully pleasant vacation scene, with a cool, comfortable or hot Sanata Ana ocean breeze wafting in with all the stories our Dear Habermas (DH) community has to tell. I wonder if that could indicate a love of teaching. I hope so.
- Now I would like to share with you a wonderful film for which I saw a clip on television this week, Normal People Scare Me:
- Artists for Autism describes the film and the short documentary that I saw. The film does a wonderful job of helping us see and begin to understand what autism is like. That's important because as we are better able to describe what is happening, we have a much better chance of including autistic children and adults in our community in ways that are effective for us and for them. This site is linked for the Normal People Scare Me site.
- Talking About Disability: A Guide to Using Appropriate Language A guide to terms that won't hurt peoples' feelings. Often we are tongue-tied, not wanting to offend, but not quite knowing what to say. I was grateful to find this guide. Read it over whenever you know you're going to have occasion to use such language. This site is linked for the Normal People Scare Me site.
- Normal People Scare Me Website that sells the film for $29.95 or the short documentary I saw for $19.95.
- La Mayor Comunidad en Idioma Castellano Sobre el Síndrome de Asperger Yahoo Group in Spanish on Asperger's Syndrome. I haven't had time to check it out yet. Evaluate it. jeanne
Autistic Syndrome Disorder, and Asperger's Syndrome Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and ADHD are increasingly diagnosed for both children and adults. I found the following book, available at Amazon's, but also available free in pdf format on the Web, a useful guide to understanding these disorders.
January 5-6, 2007:
Take a look at the history of what we're trying to do on About Us. I am always surprised at how on track we have managed to stay. Especially having had to use traditional budgeting systems, most of which constrain you to preconceived notions of what you should be doing. For me, that suggests the iron cage of bureaucracy forcing all of us into the same mold, suppressing independent development and creativity to make it easier to "manage" us. (Weber, "the iron cage of bureaucracy")
Pat and I talked about this over the weekend, noting how easy it is to fall into to the trap of adversarialism. (Fellman, Rambo and the Dalai Lama) We learn, invent, create within a social context. That social context pushes, interacts with our individual decisions and goals, shaping as much as we do the results. Some of the independence and refusal to bow to the demands of the Other in his context makes Rambo's heroism and courage dangerous. It IS dangerous. Sometimes Rambo wins in the interest of justice; but sometimes he kills others in the process of winning. Fellman begs us to consider mutuality, the sensitive listening to and negotiation with the Others in our context, putting aside the need to "win."
Some of the kindest and most loving people I have known still feel the need to compete with others for the best grades, the best salary, the best advancement. Hierarchy. None of us escapes the effect of hierarchical powers on our own thinking. Sometimes, when my work is criticized in ways that don't make sense to me, I feel that I have failed in this hierarchical context. I'm not "as good" as someone else. I forget that winning, being the "best" matters far less than what I leave to this world, especially if I mean that legacy to be greater social justice, greater awareness of the "other," greater respect for each to do what he/she does best. What do I do that is so criticized? I don't ask those I teach to compete with one another. Instead, I work as hard as I can to discover where their strengths lie and to help them use what we are learning most effectively. There can be no competition in that. Only a wonderfully mutual climate of learning.
But it takes time to build a mutual climate of learning, especially in the competitive climate our schools have promoted for so long. That competitive climate strongly affects my perception of self, so that I wonder sometimes when I'm different if I'm really "less good" than the "other." Of course I do. That's when a "good dog" helps bring me back to my senses, and remind me that I can't escape that competitive climate anymore than the child who fails and is branded with an F. Our free will, to the extent it is interdependent with the context in which we exist, is but one of the factors that determines who we are, how we see ourselves, how others see us. To suppose that we are above the pull of the context is a misinformed arrogance.
The task of reminding me that I'm not above feeling and reacting to the context in which I live usually falls to Pat. 'll let her tell you how she recently discovered that the context of competitiveness affects her, too.
love and peace, jeanne
References:
- Thurber, My World and Welcome to It
on Wikipedia.
