I gave a presentation for the 2ND ANNUAL UNIVERSITY LEARNING AND TEACHING SHOWCASE at MSU.
It was part of a presentation called " Engaging Students in Online and Hybrid Courses: Ideas, Examples & Tips", along with Susan Hussein
If you go to http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/Homepage/jeanTrueBain.mp4. The file is pretty big -- 181 MEG.
you can find the video for the presentation. My entire presentation was a video. I then answered questions.
If you go to http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/Homepage/Handout_bain.docx
you can download the handout.
My idea is that individuals can post questions and comments on this blog, and, when enough have been posted, I will produce a 'extended director's cut' of my presentation. Please, if you can, let me know what you think of notion of the value of hybrid courses.
Thanks.
-- Jean
Friday, May 6, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
A Fantasy in Zombie Time
In this season where states are reviving doctrines of nullification, legislators have gone AWOL to avoid legislating, Republicans and Democrats to differing degrees are doubling down on dead ends and the style of American politics seems to be moving from the paranoid to the psychopathic (I pass over the roilings across the Muslim world) one can hope for teachable moments.
Or maybe a collective nervous collapse. Amid our mix of self-blinding popularism and an oligarchical capitalism hidden in a technological and cultural matrix whose obscurity challenges our critical resources, people swing between apathetic catatonia or acting out the repressed secret --– that, worse than zombie banks, we face a plague of zombie governments, undead institutions lurching around, guided by their instinct for survival, hungry consumers of human lives.
These institutions are dead because they long since lost the potential for meeting the dreams and demands placed upon them, the circumstances and technologies of their imperfect formation long withered to near unmeaning. They are kept animate by the constant, droning incantation of our collective fable of democracy and freedom and prosperity and individualism, and by our inability to visualize real alternatives and to think beyond the perceived failures of past alternatives.
But I do not yet despair. My fever dream is that some solid son or daughter of the soil or city would break the animating spell by asking some magic questions. I imagine this patriot standing up at a town hall meeting where, before the witnessing cameras, candidates are holding forth, and asking, “Sir (or Madame), you know how we Americans idolize democracy, and, judging by your words, you do too. Yet our democracy is in trouble. Before we act, first we need to know what we are talking about, what ideal we are aiming at. How not? So, you who hold democracy so dear, tell me, tell us, what you think democracy is, exactly? And what does democracy produce which makes it desirable? Surely you must know. And then tell us, tell me, with honest words, how you see democracy in our land producing this good, especially under your leadership? How can your version of democracy create the society we once aspired to? Have you anything solid to say? Or should we seek elsewhere?
I also dream that we figure out how to ask these questions with the nuance, honesty and patience needed so all our citizens will hear them. Elite-speak is not enough. For tele-ranters like Glen Beck, however disturbing, feed upon our widespread and fearful knowledge of an impaired democracy and a dysfunctional politic. And while their plans for revolution make strong souls shudder, we still need to be as willing to think critically about democracy as we are to assert our patriotism or to forge nightmares so to create blamable villains.
And as we acknowledge the structural and practical shortcomings of our democracy, we should remember the original and profound radicalism of the American experiment, and be prepared to think boldly again. Indeed, the Tea-partiers’ constitutionalist fantasies evidence the need to forget the Constitution and our recent political traditions, if only for a season, and to ask, “If we had to start over, are these the arrangements we would devise? Have all the vast changes in worldviews, in culture, in demographics, in economics, in technology over past two centuries not created contexts which demand a different political and social logic than we employ now?” By answering “Yes” we can begin a serious conversation about crafting those arrangements which can reanimate our dreams through dissolving those inequalities of rights, opportunity and justice which make hollow our claims of democracy, ‘democracy’ defined as a condition wherein the people know they have real and effective power, individually and collectively, at their disposal. We are far from that happy state, and we know it.
This situation should be intolerable, but it does not mean we need another French Revolution and lobbyists carted off in tumbrels. Gradualism can be good. But we must start demanding cogent answers from our leaders, media personalities and from ourselves. We need a living, and not just lively, discussion of democracy and society to break the unspeakable spell. Remember, it’s the zombies or us.
Or maybe a collective nervous collapse. Amid our mix of self-blinding popularism and an oligarchical capitalism hidden in a technological and cultural matrix whose obscurity challenges our critical resources, people swing between apathetic catatonia or acting out the repressed secret --– that, worse than zombie banks, we face a plague of zombie governments, undead institutions lurching around, guided by their instinct for survival, hungry consumers of human lives.
These institutions are dead because they long since lost the potential for meeting the dreams and demands placed upon them, the circumstances and technologies of their imperfect formation long withered to near unmeaning. They are kept animate by the constant, droning incantation of our collective fable of democracy and freedom and prosperity and individualism, and by our inability to visualize real alternatives and to think beyond the perceived failures of past alternatives.
But I do not yet despair. My fever dream is that some solid son or daughter of the soil or city would break the animating spell by asking some magic questions. I imagine this patriot standing up at a town hall meeting where, before the witnessing cameras, candidates are holding forth, and asking, “Sir (or Madame), you know how we Americans idolize democracy, and, judging by your words, you do too. Yet our democracy is in trouble. Before we act, first we need to know what we are talking about, what ideal we are aiming at. How not? So, you who hold democracy so dear, tell me, tell us, what you think democracy is, exactly? And what does democracy produce which makes it desirable? Surely you must know. And then tell us, tell me, with honest words, how you see democracy in our land producing this good, especially under your leadership? How can your version of democracy create the society we once aspired to? Have you anything solid to say? Or should we seek elsewhere?
I also dream that we figure out how to ask these questions with the nuance, honesty and patience needed so all our citizens will hear them. Elite-speak is not enough. For tele-ranters like Glen Beck, however disturbing, feed upon our widespread and fearful knowledge of an impaired democracy and a dysfunctional politic. And while their plans for revolution make strong souls shudder, we still need to be as willing to think critically about democracy as we are to assert our patriotism or to forge nightmares so to create blamable villains.
And as we acknowledge the structural and practical shortcomings of our democracy, we should remember the original and profound radicalism of the American experiment, and be prepared to think boldly again. Indeed, the Tea-partiers’ constitutionalist fantasies evidence the need to forget the Constitution and our recent political traditions, if only for a season, and to ask, “If we had to start over, are these the arrangements we would devise? Have all the vast changes in worldviews, in culture, in demographics, in economics, in technology over past two centuries not created contexts which demand a different political and social logic than we employ now?” By answering “Yes” we can begin a serious conversation about crafting those arrangements which can reanimate our dreams through dissolving those inequalities of rights, opportunity and justice which make hollow our claims of democracy, ‘democracy’ defined as a condition wherein the people know they have real and effective power, individually and collectively, at their disposal. We are far from that happy state, and we know it.
This situation should be intolerable, but it does not mean we need another French Revolution and lobbyists carted off in tumbrels. Gradualism can be good. But we must start demanding cogent answers from our leaders, media personalities and from ourselves. We need a living, and not just lively, discussion of democracy and society to break the unspeakable spell. Remember, it’s the zombies or us.
I wonder if this will work...
I have been a long time away from this site. I wonder if it shall work.
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