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Drawing from at least 3 of the readings from the course (which I will include in the attachment). write a 1,000-1,250 max word self reflexive, critical essay that examines how you previous educational experience have influenced your perceptions, actions, and roles in the world. You should consider not only formal educational experiences, but also family expectations; uncomfortable or exhilarating encounters with new people or cultures; and salient aspects of their social position and identity. In other words, this essay should serve as an opportunity for you to reflect on how your educational background has shaped your positionality. In writing this essay, you should seek to achieve a balance between autobiographical storytelling and self-reflexive analysis, with the help of different theories from the readings.

Below in the attachment will be the full prompt and the 3 articles that you need to INCLUDE and relate to when writing this paper.

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Educational Philosophy and Theory ISSN: 0013-1857 (Print) 1469-5812 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rept20 Peers on Socrates and Plato Jim Mackenzie To cite this article: Jim Mackenzie (2014) Peers on Socrates and Plato, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46:7, 764-777, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2013.794690 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2013.794690 Published online: 20 Aug 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 245 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rept20 Download by: [San Jose State University Library] Date: 23 August 2017, At: 17:53 Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2014 Vol. 46, No. 7, 764–777, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2013.794690 Peers on Socrates and Plato JIM MACKENZIE Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney Abstract There is more to be said about two of the topics Chris Peers addresses in his article Freud, Plato and Irigaray: A morpho-logic of teaching and learning (2012, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44, 760–774), namely the Socratic method of teaching and Plato’s stance with regard to women and feminism. My purpose in this article is to continue Peers’s discussion of these two topics. Keywords: feminism, Plato, Socrates, Socratic method In his 2012 paper, Chris Peers considers a link between a conception of learning drawn from Freud and some of his commentators, and a conception of teaching drawn from Plato’s Theaetetus. Freud’s psychoanalysis relied on startlingly few clinical cases, and his reports of these have been combed through many times both by supportive and by critical commentators.1 Peers concludes by asking whether ‘the fact that teaching is traceable to the masculine imaginary constitute [sic] a factor in the instability, the patent unreliability of the teaching machine?’ (p. 770). This conclusion echoes that of another paper by Peers, also interrogative, ‘Have we overlooked other modes of communication simply by privileging language and speech?’ (2008, p. 250).2 There is more to be said about two of the topics Peers addresses, about Socrates’ teaching (both as described in Plato’s Theaetetus and elsewhere), and about Plato’s stance with regard to women and feminism. My purpose in this article is to continue the discussion of what Peers has said on these two topics. Socrates’ Teaching There is a picture of teaching which many people regard as natural and obvious——so much so that they never question it, or perhaps even realise that they hold it. The picture is this: the teacher has some knowledge, the learner does not, and teaching is the process whereby the teacher puts the knowledge, or a copy of the knowledge, into Ó 2013 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Peers on Socrates and Plato 765 the mind of the learner.3 Peers invokes this picture when he speaks of ‘a prevailing didactic style’ in which ‘a certain authority is both presumed and concealed in assuming the role of speaker’ (p. 761), and of ‘the authority to speak’ as ‘fundamental to the praxis of pedagogy’ (p. 760). He says that ‘The shape and form of teaching refers [sic; shape and form?] to the dominant forms by which social and political authority were (and continue to be) demonstrated, i.e. speech and language. But it [sic; the dominant forms?] also implies the hierarchy bound up in the authority to speak: didacticism makes sense as an assumption of authority’ (p. 768), ‘an educational ontology that pretends to a direct, causal relation between instruction and knowledge’ (p. 770). He describes the role of language in education and in other aspects of life thus: ‘In this way pedagogy (and all other modes of public, didactic authority) have traditionally employed a sense of language as a universal code or structure to render themselves transcendent of the body, gender-neutral, as well as sexually innocuous.’ (p. 770).4 Further, ‘The idealization of teaching bears the pretence of saying: “I am identical with myself” so that regardless of who says “I,” You are the pupil, the listener, who is submitted to my authority, my speech.’ (p. 770). Peers ascribes didactic teaching to Plato and to Socrates: ‘…the means by which this image of Socrates-as-teacher has emerged historically is through an assimilation of “teaching” with Socrates-as-didact’ (p. 766); ‘as didact he [Socrates] enables Plato to describe an ideal scenario in which questions usually get responses that provide the subject with an opportunity to speak at some length in explaining a position’ (p. 767). For his ascription, Peers cites only a single work by Plato, the translation of the Theaetetus in Cornford’s Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (1935).5 This is a very narrow textual base, and when dealing with Plato’s views on knowledge and its objects a rather unfortunate one. Cornford was avowedly defending the thesis that in the Theaetetus Plato still held the Theory of Forms as it is given in the Meno and the Republic.6 This thesis has fewer adherents today than it had three quarters of a century ago. It is hard to understand why Peers has limited himself like this when it is now so easy to consult different editions and translations.7 ‘Socratic teaching’ is commonly taken to mean a kind of teaching which does not accord with the picture of didactic teaching, which does not proceed by telling or instruction from a position of authority.8 As Aristotle said, ‘…Socrates used to ask questions and not to answer them; for he used to confess that he did not know,’ Soph.El. 34 (183b7). The Socratic teacher questions the learner from a position of real or pretended ignorance. Socrates repeatedly disclaimed having any knowledge to transmit to anybody. Indeed, he does so several times in the very dialogue Peers has chosen to discuss (Theaet. 150c–d, 157c, 161b, 189e; cf. Meno 80c–d). His method of teaching was quite different from the didactic approach.9 Socrates tells us, in Plato’s account of the speech he made at his trial, that his friend Chaerophon had asked the Delphic Oracle whether anybody was wiser than Socrates, and had been told ‘No’.10 Socrates explains that he came to understand that the god had meant that whereas other people had false and confused beliefs which they thought were knowledge, he at least knew how little he knew, and in that sense was wiser than they were (Apol. 20e–21c). His way of investigating whether other people did know as much as they claimed, what became known as the ‘Socratic Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 766 Jim Mackenzie method’, was to ask them short questions requiring short, often Yes/No, answers.11 His questions were deployed to force answerers into inconsistency (elenchus), thus exposing their ignorance, numbing them as an electric fish does (Meno 80a, 84b); for a fuller description, see Boghossian (2012). Plato represents Socrates asking questions in this way, rather than speaking didactically from a position of authority, in his elenctic dialogues, specifically the Alcibiades I, Charmides, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Meno, and Protagoras, and also in Book One of the Republic. The other author who knew Socrates and whose dialogues featuring him survive, Xenophon, also shows Socrates asking questions rather than telling or instructing. In his case the questions are almost always merely rhetorical, Socrates putting his (in reality, usually Xenophon’s) positive views in interrogative form. The questions are not co-ordinated with each other, what is asked does not depend on the previous answer, and they never result in the checkmate of an inconsistency. Perhaps Xenophon knew that Socrates’ teaching somehow involved asking questions, but hadn’t grasped how Socratic elenchus works (cf. Ryle, 1966, p. 122). Peers, however, does not treat Socrates as one who asks questions and traps the answerer in an inconsistency, but as one who has positive doctrines to impart and who instructs the hearer. Admittedly there are passages in the one dialogue Peers relies on, the Theaetetus, as in the Republic after Book One, in which Socrates does behave in this, for him unusual, way. In the Theaetetus Plato is reconsidering issues he had addressed in the Meno, and it is useful to compare the two. In both dialogues, Socrates asks for a definition and is given a list of examples instead. In both the model for knowledge is mathematics, and specifically the incommensurable (Waterfield, 1987, p. 139). In both, Socrates’ reputation for perplexing people is mentioned (Meno 80a, Theaetetus 149a). In both there are allusions to Socrates’ forthcoming trial (Meno 94e–5a, 99e; Theaet. 210d). And in both Plato offers analogies to explain Socrates’ unobvious, non-didactic method of teaching.12 Both analogies emphasise that, in contrast to didactic teaching, the teacher does not need to know beforehand what the student will come to learn as a result of the interaction. This is a kind of pedagogic praxis to which, pace Peers (p. 760), ‘the authority to speak’ is not ‘fundamental’. In the Meno, what Socrates does is compared to reminding someone of something forgotten, and in the Theaetetus, he compares himself to a midwife helping the learner to bring forth an idea.13 In the Meno, 82b–6a, Socrates takes a Slave Boy who clearly has no knowledge of geometry (in that he twice gives the wrong answer to the question of a theorem), and by questioning the Boy and drawing simple diagrams under his instruction, leads him to the theorem. Socrates claims that he has only questioned the Boy to find out his opinions, not told him anything (Meno 84d), and that if the Boy knows the theorem at the end he must have known it all along, even though when first questioned he appeared not to (85b, c).14 The Slave Boy episode is unusual in that Socrates’ questioning results in a positive thesis; significantly the thesis is a geometrical theorem.15 Peers says that ‘… the characteristics of such dialogue as it was practiced in Greek antiquity remain effective, to some extent’ (p. 768). They do indeed. The technique Socrates used with the Slave Boy in the Meno still works with modern university students, even though one Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Peers on Socrates and Plato 767 might have hoped that by completing secondary school they would have had more mathematical understanding than an untaught child in ancient Greece.16 Plato’s analogy for this process in the Meno is recollection, just as in ordinary life we jog each other’s memories about such things as where someone left the keys by asking questions in an orderly way. This is a familiar example of how someone who does not know a solution can help guide another person to it. Socrates tells us his method consists, not of telling the learner something (since Socrates disclaimed authority), but of asking questions ‘in the right order’ (Meno, 82e).17 There is, however, a crucial difference between the recollecting by the key-loser and what Meno’s Slave Boy does. In recollection, the answer was once known and then forgotten. But as Meno testifies (85e), the Boy has never in his life known the theorem or studied geometry. What Socrates’ method results in is like recollection, not an example of it. Even so, Socrates mischievously pretends to believe that the Boy must have known the theorem before he was born (81b–d, 85c, and 86a–b; and see Leibniz, 1765, p. 77; Ebert, 1973), and even suggests that all learning is really recollection (81d, cf. Phaedo, 72e–77a).18 In an earlier paper Peers (2008, p. 246) docilely endorsed Dover’s image (1978, p. 202) of education as transference symbolised by phallic penetration. Yet soon after (p. 249) he quoted Colleran (1950, pp. 122–123) as saying that Socrates maintained that truth ‘resides internally within the mind’, which implies that nobody teaches or transfers it to another, and that Socrates draws that truth out of the other person, ‘delivers’ it. Plato’s use of sexual imagery as a metaphor for the relation between teachers and students (e.g. the beginnings of Laches and Charmides) is hardly unexplored (Vlastos, 1969). The didactic model of teaching does indeed lend itself to a sexual analogy: the teacher penetrates the mind of the learner, and implants knowledge there. Nevertheless, this particular metaphor is not apposite here: penetration is not at all what Socrates does to the Slave Boy’s mind with the theorem. He encourages the Boy to attempt answers, and to discover what is wrong with his attempts, until the Boy comes up with an answer, the theorem, which withstands further challenge. If this is analogous to any sexual activity, it is to a kind very different from what is suggested by Peers’s frequent references to the anatomical differences between the sexes.19 In the Theaetetus, what Socrates does is compared to the role of a midwife in childbirth (148e–151d). Though Peers says, ‘Socrates’ patients are male, not female: the exclusion is a way of ensuring that the junction between didact and respondent is secure’ (p. 768), Plato is comparing real midwifery, in which the patient is a woman and the outcome is a baby, with a kind of teaching in which the patient need not be female, and the outcome is an idea. The point about midwives in Greece being past childbearing is not (as Peers seems to think, p. 766) that Socrates is an old man, but that he does not himself give birth to ideas. And Socrates unlike a midwife not only helps the new idea (baby) into the world, but tests it to see if it is rather a false phantom.20 Most new ideas, it seems, are false phantoms and destined for destruction in an elenchus. The two analogies are somewhat different from each other. The analogy with recollection implies that all of us have the answers within us——the technique should work with anybody, even a Slave Boy——and also that the answers are right.21 The analogy 768 Jim Mackenzie with midwifery implies that the technique works only on those who are ‘pregnant’ with an idea, and also that the idea may be ‘still-born’, or incorrect (Waterfield, 1987, p. 141). Plato’s explanation in the Theaetetus of what Socrates does is a development from his account of it in the Meno, but in neither case is it didactic. Plato and Women Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Peers says, The community in which both Socrates and Plato lived was composed of men; the kind of pleasure imagined by Socrates in relation to the dialogue is based upon a concept of the Good that was carefully and systematically confined: it could and can (still) only be maintained with respect to masculinity by giving the feminine a hierarchically subordinate status, in which women become objects of exchange among men (Irigaray, 1985b, pp. 170– 197). So Plato and Socrates would never include women in the ideal dialogue because, as the ideal form of social exchange the dialogue is a denial of a prior moment of sexual or familial exchange, in which economic roles have already been assigned. (p. 768, emphasis in original)22 This ignores Plato’s manifest lack of interest in women as ‘objects of exchange among men’ in a market-like arrangement. He was hostile to private property of any kind (Resp. iii 416d; iv 421d–3a) and advocated rather the nationalisation of the means of reproduction (Resp. v 457d–461e.23 Irigaray is implying that neither Plato nor Socrates ever included women in serious dialogue of the kind in which teaching and learning occurs.24 We need to consider the evidence for this in the case of each of them. They were Athenians, and women were more secluded in Athens than in other Greek cities (particularly Sparta), and in Greece generally more than in other Mediterranean civilisations of the time.25 We read little of other Greek thinkers engaging in educational exchanges with women. Therefore even slight evidence of such exchanges by Socrates or by Plato would be significant. Socrates did not run a school. Indeed, he is reported by Plato in several places as having been contemptuous of those who took money for teaching: All of us have the picture of Socrates, followed by his troop of upper-class young men, strolling round the bankers’ tables and the market place of Athens. Every now and then he waylays some citizen, a politician, maybe, or an orator or a rhapsode, and subjects him for an hour or two to ordeal by the Socratic Method. (Ryle, 1966, p. 175) Ryle then argues that this picture is fanciful, and that nothing like it could have happened in the reality of the market place. ‘Such interviews did not occur. They are Plato’s invention.’ (p. 178). In whatever venues Socrates engaged in conversations, it is probable that in most cases everybody present was male, simply because that was the way Athenian life was conducted. Whether or not he could have debated in the market place with men, he could not have done so with women. And women, or at least respectable women, did not attend dinner parties in ancient Greece. There Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Peers on Socrates and Plato 769 were massive social barriers against Socrates ever taking women seriously in discussion. Nevertheless, we have several indications that he did precisely that. In Plato’s Symposium (210a–212b), Socrates calls the priestess Diotima of Mantinea his teacher. In the Phaedrus (235c), he praises the writings of Sappho. In the Menexenus (235e, 236b) he describes Aspasia the companion of Pericles as a teacher of rhetoric and a composer of speeches. (For whether and how this may be ironic, see Trivigno, 2009.) Xenophon presents Socrates citing Aspasia as condemning lying by matchmakers (Mem. 2, 6. 36), and as an authority on household management (Oec. 3. 14). Though we know little for sure about the historical Socrates, both our immediate sources report him acknowledging women as authorities. What evidence we have tells against the view that he required ‘sexual sameness’ as a condition for the teacher–pupil relationship. Plato himself did run a school, the Academy. Diogenes Laertius lists some of his students including two women, Lastheneia, who like Diotima came from Mantinea, and the cross-dressing Axiothea of Phlius,26 and later notes that both continued their studies under Plato’s successor Speusippus (Vitae, 3. 46 and 4. 2). There are thus several references to Socrates and to Plato conversing seriously with women and to learning resulting from these exchanges. Neither Socrates nor Plato was quite so opposed to ‘includ[ing] women in the ideal dialogue’ as Peers affirms.27 In his Oeconomicus, Xenophon describes a conversation between Socrates and Critoboulos, whom we know from Plato (Euthyd. 306d) as the elder son of Crito, the prosperous farmer who appears in Plato’s Euthydemus, Crito, and Phaedo. Plato tells us that Crito regarded arranging for the education of one’s sons as a more important contribution to their welfare than choosing a wife to be their mother or providing financial security for them, and that he hoped that his own sons would learn philosophy (Euthyd. 306d, e). By introducing Crito’s son Xenophon is playfully indicating that he is replying to some of what Plato had shown Socrates and Crito saying about the education of the young (Stevens, 1994, p. 216). In Xenophon’s dialogue, Socrates identifies wealth with usefulness rather than possessions, and ascribes success in running a household to moderation and hard work. When Critoboulos presses him for more detail Socrates disclaims any such knowledge and instead reports what he says are the views of Ischomachus, who had emphasised the importance of educating one’s wife about household responsibilities. From Socrates’ report, Ischomachus plainly took the wife to be docile and not very bright, and completely ignored any role for a husband in a marriage except as providing wise and kindly supervision. Again Xenophon’s choice of this character is significant. There had been a major scandal after Ischomachus died because his widow Chrysilla, who had moved in with her daughter and son-in-law Callias, promptly became pregnant to the son-in-law, leading to her daughter’s attempting suicide (Andocides, 1896, pp. 80–82). So when Xenophon has Ischomachus promising his wife that she will retain her status into old age (Oec. 7. 20), the reader is intended to remember that she will indeed still retain sufficient attractiveness to rival her daughter.28 When we turn to his blueprint for an ideal society, we find that Plato argued that there would be complete gender equality among the ruling class. Women could be guardians (Resp. v 451e, 454e, 456b).29 The family would be abolished, and children Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 770 Jim Mackenzie cared for by servants employed by the state (Resp. v 460c). All potential guardians, girls and boys alike, would receive precisely the same education (Resp. v 451e–2a, 466c–d, vii 540c, Laws vi 781a–d, vii 804e–6c, 813b, e, 814c, viii 829b, 833c, 854a). This may be less appealing than it at first sounds: the classroom activities would consist largely of mathematics (Resp. vii 525b–531c, 536d, Laws v 747b),30 and outside there would be vigorous physical education, including fighting with swords and footraces in armour over distances up to 20 km (Laws viii 833b–e). Dorothea Wender described what she saw as the basic problem of Plato’s feminism thus: ‘Plato both despised women as a class, and advocated more liberation and privilege for them than any man in history had ever done, so far as we know’ (1973, p. 82). Her resolution was to attribute Plato’s feminism to his misogyny, that is, his dislike of women, and to what she calls his paedophilia, his sexual preference for young men aged around 18 to 20.31 Heterosexual men and men who like women and enjoy their company are by these very facts dependent on women. Xenophon, for example, clearly liked women and relied on them. Consequently he could not envisage women taking a greater part in political affairs. Who would look after him and bring him his slippers and the Greek equivalent of cocoa in the evening? But Plato disliked women. (Wender provides an extensive collection of misogynistic remarks from Plato’s dialogues.) He never married. He was wealthy (Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 3. 3 and 3. 9), and attended by servants. (Several are mentioned in his will, Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 3. 42). If he wanted somebody to cuddle at night, it would be a young chap with a cute smile he had met at wrestling training. Women played no part in his life. If they wanted to go and discuss politics or run the government, he would not be inconvenienced in the slightest. Wender concludes: ‘He [Plato] did not like us or admire us. But he felt it would be just and expedient to give us a chance. Xenophon liked us, and felt that it was important to keep us just the way he liked us. It is a difficult choice for many women. It is hard to give up being liked’ (1973, p. 90). Even if teaching has the ‘instability, the patent unreliability’ Peers finds in it, I suspect ‘the fact that teaching is traceable to the masculine imaginary’ (p. 770) is not a factor.32 Notes 1. The assumption that the psychological processes affecting early childhood development everywhere resemble those found in upper middle class families in Vienna in the late nineteenth century now appears narrowly Eurocentric (and see Bloch & Sperber, 2002). 2. Peers says ‘Although symbols and images can each be codified, the fixing of meaning is easier when graphic symbols accompany stipulated phonetic sequences’ (2012, n. 5, p. 771). Picture-dictionaries for educational purposes go back to the enormously successful Orbis pictus of Comenius (1658), and nowadays they can provide not only graphic symbols but sounds and even video clips. Still, their efficacy for ‘the fixing of meaning’ should not be overestimated. Should the entry for ‘dog’ portray a kelpie or a poodle? What picture should accompany the phonetic sequence ‘prime number?’ See further Leibniz’s insistence against Locke on the difference between a sense-derived image and a cognitive idea, using the examples of ‘chiliagon’ and ‘eternity’ (1765, pp. 261–263), and Wittgenstein’s warnings abut the limitations of ostensive definitions (1953, i, xx 27–38, pp. 13e–19e). Peers on Socrates and Plato 771 3. Even towards the end of his life Foucault took for granted that education was the transmission of knowledge from a teacher who had it to a learner who did not, in other words the didactic picture: I don’t see where evil is in the practice of someone who, in a given game of truth, knowing more than another, tells him what he must do, teaches him, transmits knowledge to him, communicates skills to him. (Foucault, 1988, p. 18) Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 4. 5. 6. 7. Freire had mocked the didactic picture as the ‘banking’ concept of education (1972, p. 58); Marx too had mocked it in the third of his Theses on Feuerbach (1888, x 3, p. 283). Some events which were certainly ‘modes of public, didactic authority’ and which employed language nevertheless did not render themselves ‘transcendent of the body.’ The Nuremburg rallies of the 1930s, for example, were ostentatiously bodily displays. He refers to passages by Plato only by the pagination of the Cornford translation. When dealing with works which exist in many editions and translations, it is usual and courteous to assist the reader by referring to the text in a way which is independent of the particular edition one is using: hence we identify passages from the Bible by the book, chapter, and verse, and passages from Shakespeare by the play, act, scene, and line. For Plato, the norm is to use the Stephanus number, indicated as a matter of course in modern editions and translations including Cornford’s. Cornford (1935, p. 2). Others have argued that Plato was more open to change. Indeed, Ryle held that Plato’s ‘captivation by the Theory of Forms was of relatively short duration, lasting, perhaps for about the half-dozen years from say, 370 to 364’ (1966, p. 102). See further Waterfield (1987, pp. 241–246) and Chappell (2011, x 3). For the Theaetetus in particular, there is also Chappell (2005), patterned on Cornford’s model of translation with running commentary, but responding to an additional seventy years of scholarship. In an earlier paper, Peers (2008, p. 240) cited Stephen Mitchell’s translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh (2004). This is more readable than some of the stuffier versions produced by scholars of the field (e.g. George, 1999), but as Mitchell did not read the languages of the original and used other translations into modern languages as his sources, his version may be suspected of being less reliable. Peers says flatly, ‘The king [Gilgamesh] cannot share his passion, anxiety, fear and hope with a woman’ (2008, p. 241). In George’s version, we read that when Gilgamesh reaches Shiduri’s tavern by the sea-shore at the edge of the world, he tells her of the death of his beloved friend Enkidu, and of his fear that he too will die in words which share his passion, anxiety, fear and hope with her (X. 69–71, p. 78). Unfortunately restricted permission prevents the reproduction of these three lines from George’s translation from being published in a form which would enable reproduction consonant with English copyright law in the various forms in which Educational Philosophy and Theory is published. 8. In some law schools, the name ‘Socratic method’ is given to a kind of ritualised bullying in which the professor humiliates one student after another by asking questions until an inadequacy is revealed in the student’s preparation of the assigned reading (though contrast Reich, 2003, and Boghossian, 2012). This situation is very different from that of those with whom the historical and the Platonic Socrates conversed. They were not dependent on him for marks or grades, and (except in such cases as Tim. 17b, 26a–d) had been under no expectation to prepare for the encounter. I shall henceforth ignore this meaning of the phrase. 9. Bettany Hughes begins the introduction to her The Hemlock Cup with the words: ‘When Socrates comes into focus, in Greece in the fifth century bc, he is no didact’ (2011, p. xix). 10. Socrates takes care to emphasise Chaerephon’s record supporting the anti-oligarchic side in Athenian politics (Apol. 21a; Popper, 1966, ch. 10 x v, text to n. 49, pp. 193–194, and 772 11. Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Jim Mackenzie n. 56 (5) e6 to ch. 10, p. 310; and Hughes, 2011, esp. pp. 196ff. and 329ff.; though contrast Waterfield 2009, especially pp. 180–181). Peers strangely ignores the political dimensions of Socrates’ situation. In his ‘customary style’ (Apol. 27b); in the elenctic dialogues most answers and most questions are brief. Both Protagoras (Prot. 329b) and Gorgias (Gorg. 449c) promise to answer Socrates concisely. This makes Peers’s remark quoted above, that Socrates’ ‘questions usually get responses that provide the subject with an opportunity to speak at some length in explaining a position’, difficult to understand. Elsewhere Plato offers yet more images for Socrates’ method. In the Phaedrus 276e–7a, he compares teaching by the use of dialectic to planting a seed in the soul of the learner. In the Republic iv 435a, he likens producing knowledge by comparing two things to producing a spark by rubbing sticks together. In the Apology 30e, he compares the effect of Socrates’ questions to that of a gadfly stinging a horse into wakefulness. Peers says, ‘…this sense of in-between-ness is the basis on which the midwife becomes relevant, as a metaphor for something standing in between an original source, i.e. man, and something that is empty and false unless it is appropriately endowed, i.e. woman’ (p. 767). The one who stands in between the man and the woman is not the midwife, but the chaperon. The midwife’s job comes later. The way Socrates frames his questions may give the Boy hints as to what answers he expects, but if the questions are asked more neutrally, or even as if the opposite answers were expected, the procedure still works, as anybody can demonstrate with a naı̈ve subject. Further, though we do not know how the theorem was first proved, it is not clear that any process essentially different from the conversation between Socrates and the Boy could have been successful. If the theorem was first proved in a Meno-like conversation, whoever was playing the role of Socrates could not have hinted which answers would lead to the theorem because ex hyp. nobody yet knew what the theorem was. Therefore how the questions are loaded in Plato’s presentation is not sufficient to explain Socrates’ demonstration. Friends of Hirst’s Forms of Knowledge would not be surprised that the knowledge demonstrable in this way is mathematical (Hirst, 1965; Mackenzie, 1998). Peers suggests in his n. 15, p. 772, that in Greece master-pupil relations ‘were typically framed by sexual favours’. As Marrou says, ‘for the Greeks it [pederasty] was the normal mode, the standard type of all education’, though he qualifies this by explaining that ‘the school itself existed merely to give technical instruction, not education’ (1948, p. 31) and admits that ‘…the peoples of Greece did not all react to pederasty in the same way’ (p. 27). Education in modern universities is not typically ‘framed by sexual favours’, though such things have occurred. Jane Gallop declared that ‘graduate students are my sexual preference’ (1997, p. 86), and of her own experience as a student she writes: ‘I learned and excelled; I desired and I fucked my teachers. And they taught and challenged me, criticized and praised me; they let me see them as men and never stopped taking me seriously as a student. I felt that in their eyes I was both a desirable woman and a serious scholar’ (1997, p. 42). The ancients were quite familiar with how ordered questioning promotes recollection (our earliest source, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, says that it is drawing on Greek predecessors, 3. 23, 38). Cicero’s example of recollection through ordering (De Oratore, 2. 86, 352–3) became the basis of what was called artificial memory through places and images (artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus) (Yates, 1966, pp. 1–2). Klein (1965) describes the recollection theory as a myth (p. 95), and concludes his meticulous investigation by asking, ‘Are we not led to the conclusion: we have to withhold our assent to the thesis that learning is recollecting?’ (p. 168). As Peers says, ‘Phallomorphism is characterized by ubiquity’ (2012, p. 765). It is indeed, at least in his own work; for example his notes 8, 10, and 12 (pp. 771–772), and the first paragraph of the conclusion to his (2008), p. 250. Though it seems Freud did not say so himself, the law of identity sometimes applies even to a cigar (pace Hiller, 1922) Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 Peers on Socrates and Plato 773 20. The exposure of infants deemed unacceptable was a custom in classical Greece, but unacceptability was determined by the father (or in Sparta, by the elders) rather than by the midwife (Patterson, 1985, p. 108). In practice, midwives’ involvement in the birth process and their greater familiarity with new-born infants doubtless enabled them to influence the outcome either way (pp. 114, 116). Plato endorsed infanticide (Resp. v 460c). 21. Peers says that ‘“Truth” is meant to imply “belief” and “certainty” as investments that yield pleasure…’ (p. 761). But on conventional accounts of truth, something may be true without being believed. Cassandra’s prophecies may serve as examples. 22. ‘Irigaray, 1985b, pp. 170-197’ is Irigaray, 1978, a discussion of the first chapter of Marx’s Capital. It says nothing about Plato’s concept of the Good. 23. He also proposed that those who distinguished themselves in war should have unfettered sexual access to whomever they wished, and that it should be illegal for anyone to refuse them (Resp. v 460b, 468c). Popper is rightly horrified by this suggestion (1966, ch. 8 x vi, p. 150, text to n. 42). 24. In an earlier paper, Peers said: The entire paradigm of teacher and pupil, oscillating through an endless dialectic of teaching and learning that is, by now, and in a global sense, seemingly beyond dispute, emerged through this specific ritual in which men came to love each other through their common values, which found their expression in physical and sexual desires that were bound up with sexual sameness. (2008, p. 244) Teaching and learning had been essential parts of human life for many thousands of years before the classical period in Greece and its specific rituals. Further, it is generally the case that how a social practice ‘emerged,’ whether by this we mean its actual beginning or merely the earliest examples we happen to be familiar with, may differ from its subsequent manifestations. The first permanent European settlements in Australia were British penal colonies. The organisation that runs the Wimbledon tennis championships began as a club to promote the playing of croquet (Tingay, 1974, p. 24). Our word school is derived from the Greek rvokg, ‘leisure.’ It is especially important to avoid taking something’s origin as a measure of its validity if one wishes, as Peers does (2012, p. 760), to appeal to the work of Heidegger (Farias, 1989; Rockmore, 1992). Although Socrates says that in every task the beginning is the most important part (Resp. ii 377a–b), there is no general reason to privilege any moment in a thing’s history, let alone the first. 25. A relevant comparison in this respect is Etruria: There is no doubt that in Etruria (as, later, in Rome) woman’s place in society was remarkably high, and certainly quite different from that of the Greek woman. The fact that women took part with men in banquets, far from being a sign of dissolution——as maliciously stated by many Greek writers, astonished and scandalized at a custom quite foreign to the Greeks of classical times——is a mark of social equality: yet another link between the civilization of ancient Etruria and the customs of the modern western world. (Pallottino, 1978, p. 137) See further Bonfante Warren (1973) and Ginge (1996). 26. According to Mary Renault (1966), the actor Niko (Nikeratos) shared adventures with Axiothea in Syracuse while they were trying to help Plato. The appeal of Plato’s philosophy to women lasted several centuries. Diogenes Laertius addressed his Lives of Eminent Philosophers to an enthusiastic female Platonist (3. 47, cf. 10. 29), and the mathematician Hypatia was a follower of Plato (Dzielska, 1995). 27. It has been suggested that women may have contributed even more substantially to intellectual life among the ancient Greeks, for example by Butler (1897), a conjecture dramatised by Graves (1955); see Ebbott (2005). 774 Jim Mackenzie Downloaded by [San Jose State University Library] at 17:53 23 August 2017 28. Foucault (1990) discussed this passage, but completely missed Xenophon’s point. He took the pontifications about the role of a wife attributed to Ischomachus quite literally (see especially pp. 161–162), treating them as reflecting the opinions of Xenophon himself and even those of ancient Greeks generally. 29. Plato’s arguments for this (Resp. v 451d–7b) reveal that his feminism was what was in the 1970s called ‘anti-essentialist’, unlike Irigaray’s: But the truth of the truth [sic] about female sexuality is restated even more rigorously when psychoanalysis takes discourse itself as the object of its investigations. Here, anatomy is no longer available to serve, to however limited an extent, as proof-alibi for the real difference between the sexes. The sexes are now defined only as they are determined in and through language. Whose laws, it must not be forgotten, have been prescribed by male subjects for centuries…[Women’s] exclusion is internal to an order from which nothing escapes: the order of (man’s) discourse. To the objection that this discourse is perhaps not all there is, the response will be that it is women who are ‘not-all.’ (Irigaray, 1975, pp. 87–88, emphasis in original) A generation before she wrote this, Alan Turing (1950) had proposed what became known as the Turing Test for whether machines can think, in which the machine must pretend to be a person in a teleprinter (i.e. text only) interrogation. Turing explained that he developed this idea from the Imitation Game, a teleprinter interrogation of someone’s gender. The game would not have been worth playing unless much language spoken by women was so far from being ‘prescribed by male subjects’ that many men had difficulty in simulating it (and similarly for women with men’s language). Jane Austen famously tried to avoid representing direct conversations in men-only contexts, though in fact she did so twice, both times between a father and son, in Mansfield Park (1814), II. ii and III. iv, as Mullan (2012, pp. 185–186) reminds us. Since Irigaray wrote, students of sociolinguistics have investigated the genderedness of language extensively (Lakoff, 1975; Spender, 1980; Coates, 1986; Tannen, 1990; Mulac, Studley, & Blau, 1990; Thomson & Murachver, 2001; Ebbott, 2005; Cameron, 2007), and the centuries-old secret Chinese women’s script, Nu Shu, has been revealed to the world (Zhou, 2004; See, 2005). Irigaray’s notion that discourse is of its nature masculine is more difficult to defend than it was 30-odd years ago. 30. Plato recommended such studies as geometry and astronomy (Resp. vii 524e–531c), though Irigaray would perhaps prefer fluid mechanics as less overtly masculine (1974, p. 109). One looks forward to a derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion from Newton’s Second Law in the question-and-answer style Socrates used with Meno’s Slave Boy. 31. Diogenes Laertius (Vitae 3. 31) and Athenaeus (Deipnos. 13.56 589 = 1854. vol. 3, p. 940) ascribe to Plato a love affair with the courtesan Archeanessa, but the poem about her they attribute to him is elsewhere more plausibly attributed rather to Asclepiades of Samos (Sens, 2011, p. xcix; Clack, 1999, p. 69). Anyway, having written a poem to somebody is not conclusive evidence of a love affair. Vlastos, denying that Plato was bisexual, says: “In every passage I can recall which depicts or alludes to the power of sexual desire the context is homosexual.” (1969, n. 74, p. 25). 32. Work for the whole article was hindered by the inadequate funding of Australian academic libraries. References Andocides. (1896). 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Equity & Excellence in Education ISSN: 1066-5684 (Print) 1547-3457 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ueee20 Autoethnography, a Chicana's Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to do Critical Race Theory Minerva S. Chávez To cite this article: Minerva S. Chávez (2012) Autoethnography, a Chicana's Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to do Critical Race Theory, Equity & Excellence in Education, 45:2, 334-348, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.669196 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2012.669196 Published online: 04 May 2012. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1076 Citing articles: 8 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ueee20 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 45(2), 334–348, 2012 C University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education Copyright  ISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 online DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.669196 Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to do Critical Race Theory Minerva S. Chávez California State University, Fullerton This article investigates the role of autoethnographic research as the methodological tool of choice for a Chicana who positions herself along the liminal perspective. I posit that testimonios, autobiographical educational experiences, must be used as valid ethnographic research to contribute to existing knowledge around issues of educational equity. Producing autoethnographic research acknowledges and validates my Chicana presence as well as draws attention to my marginal position inside dominant structures of education. Autoethnography and critical race theory are the manners in which I think about the world and the ways I have chosen to engage in educational research. My work is derived from personal experience in Los Angeles urban schools and later in elite institutions of higher education. These distinct locations present a unique opportunity to problematize the internalized forms of class and racial structures that permeate educational institutions. Grounded in my own educational biography, testimonios frame my research perspective to interrogate the role that educational institutions play in the creation of particular ideologies in working-class students of color. The most profound and liberating politics come from the interrogation of our own social locations, a narrative that works outward from our specific corporealities. “For silence to transform into speech, sounds and words, it must first traverse through our female bodies,” writes Gloria Anzaldúa (1990, p. xxii). It is, in my opinion, the contemplation of the body that is essential in the development and evaluation of an epistemology of Chicana thought and culture. (Cruz, 2001, p. 658) I am an anomaly in higher education: a working-class, Chicana, first-generation college student with a Ph.D. This unique situation leaves me to wonder, as an assistant professor, how does an anomaly conduct educational research? Since the beginning of my higher education studies, and in particular, graduate school, I have found that when I write, I am unable and unwilling to create the traditional “academic distance” between the papers I produce and the voices of my educational experiences. The identification of “distance” here is meant to convey the deeply theoretical and intensely abstract papers that are characteristically valued in higher education for their objectivity and their distance from educational practices. From this perspective, distance also encompasses the prized invisibility of the researcher. Admittedly, the production of what are traditionally deemed objective measures Address correspondence to Minerva S. Chávez, California State University, Fullerton, College of Education, Secondary Education, College Park CP-600, Fullerton, CA 92831. E-mail: mchavez@fullerton.edu AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 335 of investigation is undeniably valuable within specific educational goals and contexts. However, the actions and behaviors of our everyday lives—the instances that serve to inform theory—are set aside as researchers prioritize measures to maintain objectivity. What is needed is a break from this restrictive pattern too often found in academic texts and discourses. It is important to emphasize that to disrupt forms of knowledge that render the author’s identity inconsequential, I deliberately chose to situate myself at the margins of this academic sphere. Here, in the margins, is a space where my stories, intertwined with the experiences of my community(ies), are read alongside academic settings and serious texts. Producing autoethnographic research acknowledges and validates my Chicana presence as well as draws attention to my marginal position inside dominant structures of education. These spaces, the margins, can also be contextualized as the liminal position. I do not stand alone in this consciousness-raising space. Women of color often reside in this location to fully develop research that centers the connections between “experience and consciousness” (Collins, 2002, p. 158) so that we may affirm our existence and “provide a truth far greater than any telling of a tale frozen to the facts” (Moraga, 2011, p. 4). Anzaldúa (1987) refers to this space as the “Borderland” or the ability to “inhabit multiple selves without feeling incoherence” (Hurtado, 1989, p. 414). While I cannot be as confident that there are no “incoherent” feelings in this space, I am convinced that at a minimum, feeling fine with these forms of multiplicity makes for an open mind about the possibilities for change. In addition, the justification to theorize narratives serves to further emphasize the complex relationships between the personal and the political as they pertain to the formation of student ideologies in the construction of their individual beliefs and actions toward education. Further pushing the concept of positionality, Rendón (2009) reflects on this space as a setting primed for “unlocking the polarities” (p. 68) that facilitates the process of disrupting “old belief systems” (p. 68), thus helping to contribute to the production of more inclusive and progressive shifts in ideologies concerning educational equity. Ideology has been a curious concept to me even before I knew the existence of the word. As I traveled the educational pipeline, my educational stories have unavoidably been impacted by the hegemony of dominant educational practices. My stories are thus an attempt to recreate the instances where I collide with hegemonic ideological constructs. As an autoethnographer, my role serves to unpack the repercussions on my educational identity all along the pipeline. Exploring the development of particular identities may help inform research in understating how Latinas/os and other marginalized students of color experience educational institutions in order to acquire more specific knowledge of their academic successes and failures. I elaborate on this point later in the article. LA CHICANA: THE FOCUS ON ONE WOMAN’S STORY I was born and raised in a Spanish-speaking, working-class city called South Gate, located just ten miles from downtown Los Angeles in California. The city derives its name rather practically; South Gate is positioned as the south “entrance” to downtown LA. It is cradled between the cities of Compton and Downey, both within walking distance from our home, but worlds apart. Growing up, Compton as well as the neighboring city of Lynwood, was a city demographically composed primarily of African Americans, although today, large influxes of Mexican and Central American immigrants live in both these cities (Camarillo, 2005). Compton, which had a notorious reputation at the height of the Crips and Bloods turf wars, contained a large number of housing projects 336 CHÁVEZ lodging the poorest of them all (Flores, 1997). Conversely, Downey, in our minds, was filled with large, beautiful homes owned by middle-class, white families. The buzz between the students around the time we reached high school was their spirited aspirations of moving to the next city over: “When I grow up, I’m going to live in Downey!” We did not claim other nearby cities, like Bell, Cudahy, and Huntington Park, as our future home since they were demographically similar to South Gate. Moreover, given that most of us were not exposed to real opulence and privilege, Downey, in our eyes, was the “city of gold.” Sadly, no one ever made us question the racial or class implications explicit in these statements. My parents are Mexican immigrants who speak little English and have a basic general education. As a child, I attended elementary, middle, and high school in the city of South Gate, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. By the time I reached third grade in the early 1980s, the neighborhood schools’ ethnic demographic became increasingly Latino (Zonta & Ong, 2003); at the same time, the majority of these schools became declared Title 11 schools (Stein, 2004; Timar, 1994). Unfortunately, these shifting demographics and the high increase in poverty created an educational atmosphere where college was rarely discussed or even encouraged for the majority of the student body. So while my parents continuously stressed the importance of going to college, significant formal educational resources were unavailable; and when they were, they were inadequate. This situation is not unique to the schools I attended nor is it news that schools remain in very similar conditions today; other researchers have come to similar conclusions in their investigations inside overcrowded under-resourced schools where students of color are the majority (Kozol, 2005; Oakes, 2002; Oakes, Mendoza, & Silver, 2004). As a consequence, I entered college underprepared yet ripe for critical comparisons on the subject of educational disparities. I formally learned about the process of writing as an undergraduate student in a small, elite, private, liberal arts college located in Western Massachusetts that was incredibly patient with me. I spent endless hours sitting alongside my writing instructor during those college years, meticulously going over my drafts with Professor Levinson2 as he pointed out everything from basic grammar errors to opportunities for deeper analysis. Four years of intense writing instruction and mentoring, however, can only begin to make a small dent after all those years of being under-schooled. As a result, writing is not a pleasant task for me. I struggle greatly with it while I kick, scream, and procrastinate. Writing, in my opinion, feels more like an unruly younger sibling than best friend you love to hang with. Despite this serious writing setback, I still claim to have gained a steady intellectual development. Possibly because of it, I have been reflective of my schooling experiences in critical ways and even more so when I became immersed in the economically and culturally privileged educational settings of higher education. I relate to my own sense of awakening with the words of a working-class man Freire (2003) encountered in a discussion group: Perhaps I am the only one here of working-class origin. I can’t say that I’ve understood everything you’ve said just now, but I can say one thing—when I began this course I was naı̈ve, and when I found out how naı̈ve I was, I started to get critical. (p. 35) In my case, the distinctions that brought on my comparative critiques were evident on many levels. Witness the use of the word “distinctions.” With this word, I imply the deep-rooted recognition that I traveled to and from an array of radically different educational settings. These distinct locations, coupled with extensive theoretical development in graduate school, offer me a unique opportunity to understand the internalized forms of class and racial structures that permeate AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 337 educational institutions (Apple, 2003), for they are grounded in my own educational biography. Against this backdrop, an important aspect that emerges is the implication of educational institutions to “proudly affect consciousness, identity, cultural cleavage, and social antagonism” (p. 5). Producing autoethnographic texts thus contributes to those cultural struggles taking place in education. These texts serve as a tool of “subaltern resistance” (Gonzalez et al., 2003, p. 234) to “challenge the very legitimacy of political and cultural dominance” (Apple, 2003, p. 5). Detailing my uncommon educational trajectory and drawing on it as a way to frame my research, takes advantage of this unique position to interrogate the role that educational institutions play in the creation of particular ideologies in working-class students of color. In order to facilitate the process of unlocking dualities (Rendón, 2009), I heed the call to describe the “specificities of situations” (Apple, 2003, p. 5) in education that have not been previously identified. This includes holding educational institutions “up to rigorous questioning” (Gandin & Apple, 2003, p. 193) by those who benefit least from the ways these institutions now function. A Kinder Story: Fall 1978 It was the big day. Mom dressed me in bell-bottom dark green jeans with a polyester screen tee, the one with the yellow cap sleeves. It was an itchy choice for a dry Southern California summer, but it was my favorite tee, and I wanted to wear it for the grand event. I had practiced counting to 100 all month and was eager to reap the rewards: a striking certificate with my name beautifully handwritten across the center acknowledging my impressive accomplishment along with a giant lollipop the size of my head. Mom and I found Ms. Stevens, my kindergarten teacher, scrambling about corralling her students, asking them to form “nice and neat straight lines, one for the boys, one for the girls.” Mom prodded me toward the girl line, outside the classroom doors as she did every morning after having dropped off my sister in first grade on the other side of the school playground. Mom made her way back out the school gates and waited while she chatted with the other mothers who watched their kids until each teacher filed their students into the classrooms, shutting the door tightly behind them. When the kinder playground cleared, mothers and babysitters disbursed too, taking the local gossip with them. “Minerva!” Ms. Stevens exclaimed as I passed her on my way into the classroom, “Are you ready to count to 100 today?” I smiled up at her and nodded. She lowered herself to my level and smiled at me so broadly that I watched her eyes disappear amidst the wrinkles hugging her round face. “We’ll see, little girl,” she said. “We’ll see. It’s such a hard task! Heavens!! And you only speak a little English.” She patted my back and said, “But you can do it! You can do it!” I know I could do it, I said to myself. I counted to 100 even before I started kindergarten. I counted while I sang along with The Count on Sesame Street on PBS everyday. I also recited my numbers beside my sister, Carla, last year when she practiced for her kindergarten class. I watched as Carla returned triumphantly with her certificate and giant red lollipop in hand for having accomplished such a grandiose feat for such a small kindergartener. Now it was my turn, and I could hardly wait to count for my own class. It was so exciting. After Ms. Stevens took attendance, she collected our lunch tickets and read us a short story. When she finally exclaimed, “It’s time, kindergarteners!” I felt like I would burst from the excitement. 338 CHÁVEZ Such anticipation was equally shared among the students in my class. We all squealed in delight, and a flurry of movement ensued among us. Ms. Steven made us sit in rows so that we were better able to see the student reciting the numbers. The counting had begun when she called us up in alphabetical order. Most students did not have any problems counting, but when the Latina/o students stepped up to face the class, Ms. Stevens stopped them repeatedly. “No, Maria. It’s not tu, it’s pronounced twoooooo, whooo, whooo.” She corrected Maria, stretching out the vowel of that poor three letter word before exaggerating the “w” sound at the end. I watched her mouth do strange things just to say two. “Again,” she requested. “Let’s hear that oooo, oooooo and whooo whooo at the end.” And so there was Maria, flustered but determined, singled out by Ms. Stevens for her improper English pronunciation. It was even more painful to watch when Jose’s turn came up. Every number was corrected so much that Ms. Stevens lost her patience and exclaimed, shaking her pointer finger at him, “Jooossaayyy, it looks like YOU didn’t practice your counting.” Jose turned tomato red. “You’ll need to practice harder at home. Why don’t we try again next week?” But it really was not a question. It was more of a declaration and an easy way to move things right along. I witnessed several English-only speaking students take their place toward the front of the classroom, reciting their numbers flawlessly and I noticed how Ms. Stevens did not interrupt them even once. Then it was my turn. I walked up to the front, faced the class and in a nervous move instantly began tugging at the flaps of my cargo jean pockets. “1, 2, 3, . . . ” I began, delivering my numbers as if they were second nature, thinking about the next one to come, when an odd feeling overcame me. I quickly managed to count all the way to 49 and stopped dead in my tracks. A few seconds went by, and I shut my eyes tight trying hard to find my lost voice. Where did it go? But I knew where it went. I simply could not retrieve it from where it was. “Ah haaa . . . ” Ms. Stevens prompted me to go on, “Forty-nine . . . ” I stared at her with all my insides screaming, “Fifty!!! I know it’s 50!” Say it, I encouraged myself. Just say it. But it was too late. I heard my inside voice pronounce 50 and knew Ms. Stevens would not approve of its sound. I had heard my inside voice say “feet-tee” and recognized that it was wrong. Say 50, I encouraged myself. Fifty. But no amount of self-prompting worked. Why could I not simply skip it and say the rest of the numbers? I can do it, I know I can, but my inside voice insisted on Feet-tee. “Minerva?” Ms. Steven asked gently. “Did you practice ALL your numbers at home?” I lowered my head and shook it. “You can sit down,” Ms. Steven whispered. “Stanley, you’re next, and don’t you disappoint me.” I returned to my place on the colorful carpet surrounded by students who proudly displayed their certificates and giant lollipops on their laps. THE PERSONAL ROLE OF METHODOLOGY From the onset, I acknowledge that my educational research does not ignore the premise that we are all in a relationship with existing social, political, and economic conditions that are structured hierarchically to one another. An important reason to do autoethnographic research is to help AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 339 uncover relations of domination in the “ordinary” fabric of educational contexts. One way to do this is by problematizing how we live our daily lives, for it is in the social, political, and cultural practices that our perceptions of the “common sense” are formed that, in turn, affect how we live our lives (Apple, 1995). Underlying my discussion on autoethnography as a research methodology for the marginalized is the principle that hegemonic forms of ideology are not to be taken lightly and, therefore, must be highlighted as I consider how aspects of my own student identity were formed in relation to particular ideological constructs, such as the use of language in the Kinder Story above. Macedo, Dendrinos, and Gounari (2003) remind us that “simple communication implies linguistic interactions between humans in given historical, social, and cultural contexts” (p. 25). Furthermore, the idea of using autoethnographic research in the Kinder Story calls attention to how dominant forms of assimilationist ideology function within educational institutions in shaping students’ behaviors in schools. In my case, I felt silenced brought about by my feelings of shame in language use by a well-meaning teacher who engaged in practices of linguistic discrimination. To be a “nice” teacher, Nieto (2010) claims, is not enough. A quote from Apple (1995) summarizes the implications of ideology in our lives: [I]deologies [are] filled with contradictions. They are not coherent sets of beliefs. It is probably wrong to think of them as only beliefs at all. They are instead sets of lived meanings, practices, and social relations that are often internally inconsistent. They have elements within themselves that see through to the heart of the unequal benefits of a society and at one and the same time tend to reproduce the ideological relations and meanings that maintain the hegemony of dominant classes (Richard, 1979). Because of this, ideologies are contested; they are continually struggled over. Since ideologies have both “good and bad sense” within them, people need not be won over to one side or the other, if you will. Particular institutions become the sites where this struggle takes place and where these dominant ideologies are produced. The school is crucial as one of these sites. (p. 14) As a Chicana researcher, I use educational narratives in order to focus on the concept of ideology and to draw attention to how ideology plays out in more nuanced ways. To be sure, the theoretical concept of ideology is heavily abstract and complicated. For this reason, I unravel ideological underpinnings by underscoring their appearance in the various educational settings where I have traversed, or rather, transgressed, by behaving properly—that is, according to white norms and privileges. But I do not fool myself in thinking that my proper behavior in elite institutions, and not-so-elite institutions, such as urban schools, has been without conflict. My very presence, the presence of the brown, female body and the lived experiences contained within, after all, is a reminder of class and racial inequities. Speaking about the role of people of color in institutions of higher education, Córdova (1998) observes: Our presence, as working-class people of color (especially women of color), in an institution which values itself on its elitist criteria for admission, forces the debates and challenges previously sacred canons of objective truth. Our presence, therefore, and the issues we raise, threaten the class legitimation function of the University. It is probably for this reason that our presence here is so complex—and so important (p. 18). Ultimately, I am influenced by the work of Córdova and others (Carter, 2005; Delgado Bernal, 2006) to think about important relationships in schools and the ways that ideologies are formed as they directly relate to issues of power. Current forms of academic and personal relations between the adults in urban schools and the students who attend them are created under dehumanizing conditions that limit the capacity for students and their teachers to build relationships based on 340 CHÁVEZ conscientização (Freire, 2003)—the ability to connect the social, political, racial, and economic contradictions that frame our contexts in ways that require us to mobilize against those existing conditions that serve to oppress and dehumanize us. Without conscientização, the situation turns troubling as the effects of these conditions limit students’ abilities to be academically successful. An Exclusionary Tale, Fall 1986 Dr. Sanders was our middle school principal, known for his loud, belly-shaking jolly laughs. They were the kind of laughs that reminded us of Santa. He resembled the mythic man, too: large, round, and white. The principal’s charm made all the students feel as if Dr. Sanders was their best friend, and so he was treated like a Hollywood celebrity around campus, especially during lunchtime. The principal would wrap his enormous arms around us, enveloping all the middle-schoolers into a colossal side bear hug. It was quite possible that he could fit as many as 30 giggling students within his reach. He would ask us how we were and often inquired about our parents or older siblings, “How’s your mother?” or “How’s your brother doing in high school? What is he now, a sophomore?” A boisterous laugh and the usual warning followed every sentence, “I’m going to call them to make sure!” Dr. Sanders delighted me until I learned about whom I truly was in the eyes of the school principal; I was in eighth grade, attending to my duties as an office aide, my favorite period of the day. I was stuffing teacher’s mailboxes with weekly school newsletters, hot off the copy machine in the main office one early afternoon when I overheard a conversation. “Dr. Sanders?” Ms. Whiteford, the friendly main office secretary stopped the principal on his way in from roaming the campus after the last lunch period. “Yes, gorgeous?” he replied heading toward her desk, picking up all the red jellybeans from her overflowing candy platter and popping them into his mouth several at a time. “Well. I’m a bit worried,” she began. “We haven’t received any of the math textbooks, and it’s already three months into the new school year.” “That’s it?” he commented, surprised. Selecting the orange jellybeans this time, Dr. Sanders looked at her. “Well, um, yes,” she continued. “The teachers are complaining, saying that the students have nothing to do.” “No rush,” he said. “These kids are gonna be factory workers anyway.” He broke out in laughter and the rest of the staff laughed along with him as if it were the funniest joke he’d ever cracked. The staff didn’t seem fazed by his revelation. In those days, unlike today, the middle school office staff was made up of older, white ladies who aligned themselves with the principal’s interests or, rather, forgot that they themselves were working-class folk, too. Dr. Sanders went back to his office, sat in his beautiful, high-back, leather chair and continued with his day; business as usual for everyone at South Gate Middle School. Meanwhile, I continued stuffing teachers’ mailboxes with the weekly newsletter banner across the top announcing, “South Gate Middle School is a great place to be, nice place to learn!” A CHICANA’S RESEARCH TOOL OF CHOICE: AUTOETHNOGRAPHY Stories are the ways humans make sense of their worlds. Stories are essential to human understanding and are not unique to autoethnography. Stories are the focus of Homeric literature, oral AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 341 traditions, narrative analysis, and fairy tales. Given their importance, I argue that stories should both be a subject and a method of social science research (Ellis, 2004, p. 32). There are good reasons to use autoethnography. In calling my research autoethnographic, I mean to accentuate how this method uses one’s own experience in a culture to look at our culture and ourselves. In doing so, I emphasize the direct ties between individual lives and larger notions of social formations and historical processes (Chávez, 2010). Additionally, autoethnography can be defined as the union of “autobiography, story of one’s own life, with ethnography, the study of a particular social group” (Reed-Danahay, 1997, p. 6). Ellis (2004) explains autoethnography in this way: Autoethnography refers to writing about the personal and its relationships to culture. It is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness. Back and forth autoethnographers gaze: First they look through an ethnographic wide angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations. As they zoom backward and forward, inward and outward, distinctions between the personal and the cultural become blurred, sometimes beyond distinct recognition. (p. 38) Although social scientists now use the term autoethnography to refer to studies that include the researcher and his or her experiences in the field, as well as to express in a narrative form how people “do” culture, I use the term autoethnography as it was originally conceived, that is, “cultural-level studies by anthropologists of their ‘own people,’ in which the researcher is a full insider by virtue of being ‘native,’ acquiring an intimate familiarity with the group, or achieving full membership in the group being studied” (Ellis, 2004, p. 38). To elaborate, instead of the traditional ethnographic study of immersing oneself in “the field” of another culture, autoethnography allows me to center my own educational experiences. My elite graduate school experience at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, uncovered the insight that it was popular for privileged, well-educated Whites to conduct research in urban schools for a period of time in order to gain an understanding of the failures of urban schooling. But as an educational researcher and a product of urban schooling, am I now supposed to ignore these experiences? That is unlikely; I consider it an advantage that I now have the tools to use these experiences to produce new knowledge from an organic position. Delgado Bernal (2006) speaks of this Chicana epistemology as research that is generated from “collective experience and community memory” (p. 114). In order to ensure the integrity of these experiences and memories, autoethnographic work enables me to extract my K-12 years of “research” at the same time that critical race theory (CRT) then becomes the theoretical validation that demands that I speak up. There are compelling reasons to do this kind of research; I am optimistic about the effects of two particularly stimulating elements in autoethnography. Foremost, it is the unconcealed and unapologetic use of emotion utilized by the researcher in the writing style that contains the possibility to position readers in an unconventional spot: squarely alongside the “despised other” (Apple, 2006b, p. 683): the Chicana protagonist. This positionality creates an opportunity for dissonance or what Rendón (2009) describes as a “dialectical space where new understanding might emerge through the integration of polarities” (p. 68). Thus, autoethnography becomes an effective method to engage academic readers by pulling them away from interpreting this research as simply a distant “unit of analysis” text. If done well, autoethnography has the potential to create conditions of emotional jarring. Moreover, autoethnography has the possibility to create 342 CHÁVEZ relationships that can be based on more basic human feelings to create authentic and meaningful connections (Rendón, 2009). In a similar fashion, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) describe stories by people of color as a way to “catalyze the necessary cognitive conflict to jar dysconscious racism” (p. 58). In such situations, I contend that these jolts have the potential to contribute to engendering closer relationships with the “marginalized other” through storytelling. Coles (1989) observed: [S]tories are renderings of life; they can not only keep us company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or give us the courage to stay a given course. They can offer us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisers—offer us other eyes through which we might see, other ears with which we might make surroundings. (p. 159–160) I consider how this initial sense of connection, empathy, or differing perspective may begin to uproot those firmly planted in detrimental common sense ways of understanding difference. The notion of being uprooted, the sense of being lifted up and off the hegemonic center, must be channeled by bringing these new relationships into the margins so to de-center dominance in order to produce more equitable educational spaces. I call attention to the use of autoethnography. This methodology has been practiced since the early 1970s (Anderson, 2006), yet it is still at the margins of mainstream forms of research methodologies (Jewett, 2008). Autoethnography confronts and defies traditional investigative methods. In addition, autoethnography challenges the role of objectivity in research since it underscores the positionality of the researcher in this investigation. I am exceedingly comfortable in this methodological zone; hence, autoethnography and the use of CRT are an attempt to reclaim representational space. I do this to have an unconventional voice, with an unconventional story, and still be included in the academy. CRITICAL RACE THEORY: WEAVING STORIES WITH THEORY Given the above discussion, I tenaciously use my autobiographical experiences as valid ethnographic research to contribute to existing educational knowledge around issues of educational equity. I wish to build on critical race theorists, like Delgado (2009), Montoya (2002), and Solórzano and Yosso (2002, 2009), who make claims to the liberatory and empowering effects of this epistemology. These theorists rationalize the margins as a place for counter-storytelling, and they justify the role of critical race theory as a framework that: (a) foregrounds race and racism in all aspects of the research process . . . [I]t also challenges the separate discourses on race, gender, and class by showing how these three elements intersect to affect the experiences of people of color; (b) challenges the traditional research paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the experiences of students of color; (c) offers a liberatory or transformative solution to racial, gender, and class subordination; and (d) focuses on the racialized, gendered, and classed experiences of students of color. . . . [I]t views these experiences as sources of strength and (e) uses the interdisciplinary knowledge base of ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, humanities, and the law to better understand the experiences of students of color. (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 24) AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 343 The use of critical race theory is easy to understand. The level of experience that is required to do critical race theory for me has been ripe from the beginning. Solórzano and Yosso (2002) explain critical race theory in education to be “a set of basic insights, perspectives, methods, and pedagogy that seek to identify, analyze, and transform those structural and cultural aspects that maintain subordinate and dominant racial positions in and out of the classroom” (p. 25). Additionally, they developed five elements that highlight the framework. First, they include “the intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subordination” (p. 25). This aspect of critical race theory acknowledges that racism does not stand alone, that racism is a facet of other forms of subordination that include, for instance, gender, class, language, and sexuality. These features of intercentricity call attention to race and racism in relationship to other forms of oppression. The second advantage to using this theoretical framework includes “the challenge to dominant ideology” (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000, p. 63). This aspect of CRT questions the pervasive American narratives of equal educational opportunity by challenging claims of neutrality at the same time that it exposes the liberal discourse of colorblindness as a tool to reframe and protect white privilege (Leonardo, 2004) and the historical and contemporary forms of whiteness as a property (Harris, 1993). The third element explains “the commitment to social justice” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26). Solórzano and Yosso are clear to acknowledge the contradictory forms that exist in educational settings, voicing their understanding of the ways in which schools function both as oppressive institutions and institutions where forms of resistance against hegemonic practices are to be found and cultivated. Therefore, the call for social justice by critical race theorists requires the eradication of “racism, sexism, and poverty and the empowering of subordinated minority groups” (p. 26). The fourth component calls for “the centrality of experiential knowledge” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26). Critical race theorists call for the recognition of diverse forms of knowledge, created by people of color, as a challenge to hegemonic forms of understanding the experience of the “despised others” (Apple, 2006b, p. 683). In particular, the methods by which people of color are choosing to describe their knowledge include forms of “storytelling, family histories, biographies, scenarios, parables, cuentos, testimonios, chronicles, and narratives” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26). Critical race theorists call for the validation of these ways of understanding the world as a form of resilience and resistance by people of color and express the need to include and legitimize these diverse texts when considering alternative forms of understanding our existing social (dis)order. Finally, the fifth element argues for a “transdisciplinary perspective” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 26) Critical race theorists recognize the importance of generating new knowledge from the diversity of academic disciplines, in a sense, mirroring our intersecting social realities. Of most prominence in CRT are the fields of “ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, law, and other fields to guide research that better understands the effects of racism, sexism, and classism on people of color” (p. 27). The Perfect Marriage: CRT and Autoethnography At the center of this discussion is my perspective that has been marginalized. I use critical race theory because I have no choice; it is what I know and how I come to know. It is the heart 344 CHÁVEZ of my epistemological frame. By grounding my work within CRT, I intentionally underscore the interrelated roles of schools as apparatuses assisting in the process of capital accumulation, legitimation, and production—thus calling attention to the impact on the ideological roles that educational institutions play in the sorting practices that influence the formation of particular identities (Apple, 2006a). By weaving theory and narrative together, my testimonios aim to problematize the ways in which diverse educational institutions have influenced my ideological perspective regarding race, class, and culture. Both stories included in this piece are offered as illustrations of the impact of ideology that help emphasize particular forms of identity development as a student of color in urban schools. Without the use of testimonios, without the power of the first person account and the role of bearing witness to educational injustice, my ability to challenge dominant perceptions around language and class would be limited. Accordingly, the use of the Kinder Story sets the tone for my trajectory in education: a story that encompasses my position from the margins. In retrospect, speaking with an accent in kindergarten and being judged against fluent English speakers brought about my own silencing, as was the case at various other moments in my education. Developing resiliency sometimes means that it was simply wise to stay silent. Elenes (2000) argues for the need to voice such testimonios as a way to “situate knowledge” (p. 115) uniquely gained from the perspective of the oppressed. Indeed, these testimonios reveal the contradictions inherent in my developing identity as a student, for they serve to identify the moments when I consciously succumbed to ideological dominance and those when I rebelled against it, such as was the result of the Exclusionary Tale. Solórzano and Delgado Bernal (2001) describe this rebellion as a characteristic of “transformational resistance” that occurs when oppressive situations create an “I’ll prove others wrong” (p. 319) attitude in the Chicana student. I recall the principal incident and his comment most vividly when I needed to push myself through difficult and challenging experiences in education. In essence, testimonios trace the path that reveals a “map of consciousness” (Elenes, 2000, p. 115) as I developed ways to proactively navigate dominant ideological settings in schools. My testimonios, generated from oppressive situations, cement my desire for social justice and fuel the need to improve schooling conditions for those students of color who follow. Marrying CRT with autoethnography constructs the testimonios of the anomaly in unique ways. Together, they represent new alternatives in thinking about the voices that have been excluded in the academy. I draw on storytelling in order to provide a more critical understanding, in particular, of the urban school experience and its consequences on the shaping of student identities as a result of the inferior schooling conditions that are typically found in such schools (Fernandez, 2002). Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) argue for “voice” in the form of storytelling as an integral component of critical race theory. As they contend, voice is: [A] first step on the road to justice [that] provides a way to communicate the experiences and realities of the oppressed. Thus, without authentic voices of people of color (as teachers, parents, administrators, students, and community members) it is doubtful that we can say or know anything useful about education in their communities. (p. 58) Indeed, without this voice, educational institutions would be limited in their perspective in constructing more equitable schooling conditions for all students. How I chose to think and write about the function of storytelling in my new role as an educational researcher is worth noting. To be sure, this theoretical lens and autoethnography represent the political forms of my AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING 345 development; more significantly, however, they are inextricably intertwined with my personal development. Critical race theory already spoke to these forms of intimate connections (Delgado, 2009). Critical race theory and autoethnography are the manners in which I think about the world and the ways I have chosen to describe my experiences. AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LIMITATIONS It is important to consider the limitations of autoethnographic writing as a research tool. First, from an educational researcher standpoint, this form of writing will routinely suffer for its difficulty to claim generalizability from a single autoethnographic account. However, centralizing the voices and stories of subjugated scholars of color facilitates understanding how “sociotemporal notions of oppression and the normalization of racial inequality in public schools and society” (Duncan, 2005, p. 2) function to produce particular student identities. Hence, recognizing racial and class inequality in American schools cannot fully be examined without capturing the narratives of those who lived through these experiences. Second, given that the researcher and the participant are the same individual, many scholars will be “teetering on edge,” so to speak, by this epistemological framework. Some have claimed that autoethnographic writing must be balanced delicately so as not to tread on the side of essentialism (Buzard, 2003). However, the obligation to make scholarly contributions to the development of our own critical consciousness is imperative. Rendón (2009) furthers this positionality by claiming that the “work of transformation is not only about changing what is ‘out there’; it is about transforming what is ‘in here,’ our own internal views and assumptions” (p. 48). Understandably, the limitations imposed by the construction of self-knowledge are challenged by our humanness as we “interview ourselves” to discover that we must rely on our fragmented sense of memory or our limited capacity to understand and reflect upon our own experiences. I want to make clear that in the act of retelling, we are simultaneously reinterpreting the events we choose to depict regarding our lived experiences. Thus, while stories are many times fragmented bits and pieces of our own collective memory, these instances serve to deepen our understanding of the ways in which social relations are embedded within existing hegemonic structures—in this case, educational institutions. CONCLUSION “Autobiographical stories really make theory and history come alive, don’t they?” (Ellis, 2004, p. 23) The stories I research are my own—the stories of my understandings and perceptions regarding my schooling experience, the data that make up my educational experiences as a workingclass Chicana who traveled through the (treacherous) educational system, relatively unscathed. I emphasize relatively—the seemingly successful educational ways, according to mainstream notions of understanding educational success; that is, success measured by a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree from a college or university (Huber, Huidor, Malagon, Sanchez, & Solórzano, 2006). This is an important form of analysis in the face of reigning positivistic methodologies. At the same time, autoethnography combined with critical race theory serve to highlight the much larger critique of the effects of schooling on poor and working-class students of color. It 346 CHÁVEZ is a deliberate attempt on my part for the personal and cultural to become indistinguishable as I demonstrate that trying to separate the two creates subtractive schooling conditions (Valenzuela, 1999). If schools are serious about successfully educating Latina/o students and other students of color, the autoethnographic texts from a Latina who “made it” could uncover factors that led to such “success” across the educational pipeline. I wish to include my narratives as opportunities to assist in “unlock[ing] polarities” (Rendón, 2009, p. 68) experienced in education. In a more fitting sense, Rendón contends that “unlocking the polarities requires surrendering old belief systems and working with our growth edges as we begin to uncover larger truths that join two realms of reality” (p. 68) to produce new forms of knowledge and understandings of our practice and our role within these educational spaces. Expanding on Rendón’s notion of unlocking polarities to dislodge outdated forms of thinking about what constitutes truth, narratives in the academy further the scholarly contribution of a more complicated analysis of social inequality in schools. Toward this end, stories capture the nuanced forms of how oppression and inequality function in educational settings told from the perspective of those who experienced such microagressions, the subtle form of racism (Sue, Lin, Tortino, Capodilupo, & Rivera, 2009). As a result, I bear witness to the experiences of those schooled in urban educational institutions. I find myself armed with educational theory, writing stories that push me to be inwardly reflective as I consider ways to transform educational institutions into more socially just places that recognize the diversity of all our students. Inward reflectivity, therefore, is certainly a good place to start if our sustained goals are to change these highly politicized and unequal structures within the field of education. NOTES 1. Title I was enacted in 1965 with the passage of t...
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