Department of History & Philosophy, The University of West Indies at Cave Hill

This page contains all the abstracts accepted for the Symposium, and links to the full text when we have it. Please note that the texts are all in pdf format, for which you may need the Acrobat Reader, which can be acquired at Adobe.

Please note also that e-mail addresses have all been altered to include 'nospam' after the '@', so none of them will work as given.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Knowledge/Wisdom Distinction: Implications for Develoment Oriented Education
Lawrence O. Bamikole
bamikole2005@nospamyahoo.com

The motivation for this paper is drawn from the age long association of philosophy with wisdom, which is encapsulated in philosophy’s etymological meaning - philosophos, lover of wisdom. However, when philosophy took the form of an academic discipline, this association was jettisoned, especially by some philosophical movements within Western scholarship. In its place, philosophy was now associated with knowledge in the epistemic sense.

Be that as it may, the dualism between knowledge and wisdom continued to reverberate at the background even in the writings of those who had spearheaded the separation of philosophy from the love of wisdom. Thus, Descartes, Hume and Kant, who were regarded as revolutionaries in the history of Western philosophy did not leave common sense and practical wisdom behind in their theoretical philosophies. This suggests that the association between knowledge and wisdom cannot be wished away.

In a manner that is typical of the dominant pattern in Western philosophical thinking, the dualism between knowledge and wisdom has created a pedagogical dualism between formal and informal learning. The distinction between formal and informal learning is based on the belief that the school’s major aim is to train candidates intellectually and that the social and moral dimensions of the curriculum will tend to look after themselves and emerge as by-products of a properly conducted inquiry.

The position that will be argued for in this paper is that for a development oriented education where learners are expected to be liberated and socially responsible persons, there is the need to harmonize the concerns of education in the formal and informal sectors. Such harmonization, which takes the form of closing the gap between knowledge and wisdom, will enable learners to develop a sense for self-actualization and sense of service to the community, whether at the local, national or international level.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Coming of a Post Modern University at the UWI?
Edward Bermingham SJ
itsadjeddyb@nospamhotmail.com

Like many sixty year olds UWI has lived long enough to be able to claim that “the world that conceived me and into which I was born no longer exists”. Over that sixty year period life expectancy has increased such that “sixty” is no longer a marker towards the end of life – realistically it marks the two-thirds-point. However, in other parts of the world the age of sixty years is increasingly seen as a receding and unattainable goal. The differing “futures” as they are marked by life expectancy demonstrate the ambiguity of the last sixty years. As UWI looks towards its future there is a similar ambiguity surrounding its “life expectancy” – both in terms of its survival and what kind of survival (life) it can expect.

At the St Augustine 2007 graduation ceremonies the Vice-Chancellor ruminated on why Universities were one of three types of institution that had, in one form or another, graced the earth for over eight hundred years. He attributed their longevity to the contribution they had made to society and to their ability to adapt to changing times. He believed it was reasonable to expect the ongoing world presence of Universities and was keen to locate the UWI amongst this persevering throng. However, the survival of the University may at best be ambiguous, adaptation solely for survivals sake may not be advisable or desirable. Lyotard, for example, called for the closure of universities because their time had gone. That is, they were no longer able to generate knowledge that had emancipatory power because knowledge was so fragmentary and had become so instrumentalised and commodified that it no longer possessed any liberating force.

This paper will explore the ways in which recent developments seeking to widen participation at the UWI in part through the increasingly wide spread use of information technology – the so called democratisation or McDonaldisation of tertiary education – has created an environment where the UWI itself has become a “contested site” of knowledge. One in which the struggle between societal tendencies to commodify and instrumentalise tertiary education on the one hand, and on the other counter tendencies re-asserting the emancipatory force of knowledge as enshrined in the values of liberal education is being played out.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tertiary Education and the Place of Education in Society - Transcending Plantocracy, Coloniality and Neo-Coloniality
John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji
tundebewaji@nospamyahoo.com

Over the last many centuries since the advent of Western Education in Africana societies – continental and Diasporic – there has been very little benefited from tertiary education to lift these societies up from peonage, dependence, economic stagnation, cultural degeneration and messenger of the West mentality from those who have been produced by these tertiary institutions. While Western tertiary education in Western societies builds on its cultural foundation an infrastructure and superstructure that facilitates, undergirds and deepens socio-economic, technological, cultural and spiritual development of West along the lines of greedy and wanton domination of the world (some would argue, the probable self-implosion of the West), Western tertiary education in Africana societies has only (and rightly, because that is what is intended by the West for other societies) developed a coterie of artificial leadership and literate but uneducated masses of graduates from these institutions, who fail to understand themselves, their societies, their world and the universe properly.

In this essay, I examine the factors responsible for this situation, historically; beginning from the mistaken demarcation of formal from non-formal and informal education in Africana societies, to the point at which Africana communities thoughtlessly embraced the idea that all that it takes to be educated is the amassing of various diplomas and certificates, to the utter neglect of capacity for critical, moral and humane reflective capacity. I then argue that for education to meet its remit of helping Africana societies to transcend plantocracy, coloniality and post-coloniality, there is need for an overhaul of the fundamental assumptions behind education at the tertiary level in Africana societies. Such a task is a philosophical one, requiring thought on issues of individual, communal and social identities of persons and communities in Africana world.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On some Limitations of Institutional Rationality
Ed Brandon
edbrandon@nospamgmail.com

D.H. Lawrence warned us to trust the tale and not the teller. This paper looks at two examples where universities fail to live up to the principles they preach and offers some speculations on what the actual tale might mean.

It is tempting to think that universities should promote rational behaviour. They certainly claim to promote it and encourage people to spend money on their getting students to exercise responsible critical thinking.

One general issue concerns the failure to standardise scores on tests and examinations in arriving at final results. The educational measurement literature assures us that it makes very little sense to average raw scores on different tests, yet this is precisely how class of degree is calculated. It is instructive that school examining bodies generally do take note of the measurement literature.

A similar failure to take assessment seriously can be approached via the question of matriculation and open entry. A very common argument is that it is only possible to maintain academic standards by requiring incoming students to have already acquired certain qualifications. This is obviously fallacious: the way to maintain standards is to be rigorous in testing for them, it matters not what a person has already done. Reliance on matriculation requirements thus seems to be an admission that the university in fact does not rigorously examine its students.

The paper concludes with some sociological speculations about what these failures should tell us about the role of tertiary education.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In The Idea of the University Karl Jaspers argued that we must be prepared to accept, perhaps even to welcome, the fact that most students “will learn next to nothing” from a university education. Here Jaspers seems to give voice to the sort of exclusionary elitism that nowadays so horrifies political establishments and prompts periodic outbursts from its senior members in Sunday newspapers. Jaspers’ bracing defence of academic elitism stems from his conception of the university’s mission; in particular, from what he maintains are its exacting educational aims and the peculiar nature of the student/faculty relationship. Curiously, this rather shocking outcome emerges from an inclusive sounding philosophy. “University education,” he argues, “is a formative process aiming at a meaningful freedom,” and since, “learning and personal initiative go hand in hand, the university aims for the broadest possible development of independence and personal responsibility.” In line with this, a university education is the product of a discussion between participants with a “Socratic equality of status.” The stress is thus on a mutual respect for intellectual standards and the truth; not on hierarchy, nor authority, nor anything that smacks of schooling.

While liberating, the up-shot is that the student “is free to ‘go to the dogs’.” Students are thrown back on their own resources with minimal supervision of studies and nothing in the way of curricula and syllabi to strait-jacket and stifle the life of the mind. They are also free to determine the degree to which they participate in classes or depend on books alone and must be relied upon to find their own way through the inevitable difficulties, perplexities and mistakes encountered in learning, and so necessary for their intellectual growth. Nevertheless, Jaspers recognises that such freedom is fraught with danger for the student. “The grain of sand remains free and independent next to the cliff” he dryly observes.

This is not, it would seem, a vision of higher education compatible with the mechanisms and values of the modern university. Being free to go to the dogs does not sit easily with specified learning outcomes, attendance requirements, retention rates, or quality assurance and enhancement procedures. It is a vision that views with abhorrence any form of regulation and the policing of student or faculty. There is even a sharp tension with pedagogic aids such as reading lists, handouts, distributed lecture notes, or anything else that might be regarded as the apparatus of spoon-feeding. Indeed, it hardly seems to promote anything that could be regarded as teaching at all. And his claim that most students—“the mediocre majority”—learn next to nothing and that university teachers should welcome this fact appears at odds with fashionable notions such as relevance or employability.

It is true that there is no university that conforms to Jaspers’ model; but nor has there ever been. It is also true that, in particular, his understanding of the context and general character of the student/faculty relationship is hopelessly ideal and, in my view, pedagogically mistaken. Yet, while Jaspers’ model is unpersuasive as an ideal and inaccurate as a description, there is a truth lurking behind his forthright but gloomy conclusion: viz., that there is a real sense in which a university education is aimed at an elite. In terms of the political context universities now find themselves in, this is an uncomfortable and embarrassing truth for faculty to admit, for it appears to epitomise a self-regarding and inward looking academy. Yet, despite this, perhaps it is a truth that academics should be prepared to accept, even to welcome. The reason is that it underpins a form of relationship between the academy and all its students, including what Jaspers would call the ‘mediocre majority’ and not just the elite few. It is a form of relationship that most of us working in universities value. I shall argue that this seemingly elitist and exclusionary reality in fact positively shapes this relationship in a way that is beneficial and, perhaps counter-intuitively, inclusive. Thus, at least, in starting any serious discussion on the nature of a university education, it should be a truth we are prepared to admit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Severance between Education and Being in the Philosophy of Michel Henry
Mejame Ejede Charley
m.c.ejede@nospamadpost.com

We are accustomed to all the possible forms of criticisms, the scorn or derision of education, the mockery addressed to classical culture such as it is yet taught in this day and age in school, college and in university. In the midst of the praise of laziness, the apology for escape, the prevailing inertia, it is beyond the bounds of possibility for the student to find in himself/herself the passion to learn, the enthusiasm of intellectual discovery. Michel Henry traces the origin of the whole trouble in the mechanist scientific paradigm beginning from Galileo. This paper aims at exploring the crisis of the meaning between life and thinking in Michel Henry’s philosophy; Michel Henry’s interpretation of the phenomenon of education and his new paradigm, his new vision of reality.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mass participation in tertiary education can be seen as an inevitable consequence of the knowledge economy. It would be foolish, however, to ignore the powerful commercial interests also at play. In this paper, I present evidence of an agenda to commodify education so that it can sold for profit in a global mass market. The process of commodification has been referred to as the ‘industrialisation of education’.

I will then argue that developing nations stand to lose the most if commercial interests are given a free hand. Paradoxically, the movement towards mass participation in tertiary education also brings with it the threat of exclusion for those who cannot afford to pay. The inhuman inequalities of the US health system should be sufficiently eloquent.

The knowledge technologies that are being primed for the industrialisation of education also carry with them the danger of cultural imperialism. Frustrated in their attempts to build strong self-concepts, Africans and Afro-Caribbeans may well continue to service the West.

Nothing is written in stone, however, and events need not unfold according to the plans of those who see in education nothing more than the potential for profit. Driven by greed themselves, seekers of profit are oblivious to the power of altruism. The open source movement in software development has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that online communities of volunteers can produce superior knowledge products free of cost to the end user.

Thus the knowledge technologies that are instruments for the industrialisation of education have the potential to subvert this purpose. I conclude the paper by describing a community-driven software mechanism for free and universal education. The mechanism enables the creation of ‘universal books’ - free, electronic books that are authored by online communities of volunteers and that are comprehensible by all, regardless of level of knowledge, language background or disability. I will show that all the components of such a mechanism already exist and all that remains is to assemble it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Learning from Fiction and How Fiction Should Be Taught
W. Scott Clifton
sclifton@nospamu.washington.edu

It has recently been suggested by philosophers of fiction that readers can achieve moral learning from fiction. Generally speaking, the theories proposed fall into two types: informational and formational. Informational theories suggest that we learn some new information from our engagement with fiction and can apply the new information to real-world situations in an effort to determine which are the best decisions to take and actions to perform. Formational theories suggest that there are certain kinds of activities involved in reading fiction—e.g., identifying with characters, bracketing skepticism about the details of the fictional world, etc.—and these activities require the reader to acquire new faculties or improve already operant faculties. Some of these faculties can be utilized then in the real world, making the reader a better moral agent. An even stronger version of a formational theory would claim that these faculties can be formed or improved only within the activity of engaging with fiction, concluding that fiction is irreplaceable in this respect.

I adopt a formational theory, which states that reading certain types of fiction—so-called realistic fiction—requires us to be able to place ourselves into the individual perspectives of different characters, sometimes moving from perspective to perspective within one circumscribed scene. But as we do so, we often have to bracket our own beliefs and desires in order to make the scene coherent. The characters would likely not have the mental states they are supposed to have if they also possessed some mental states similar to the reader’s. Thus, the reader is compelled to empathize with the character—adopting the character’s mental states, history, etc. Enriching and complex fiction requires the reader to become adept at this process of empathizing. A reader that is unable to empathize in this way will simply not be able to experience the fiction. Therefore, the reader must “sink or swim” with regards to empathy and fiction.

The ability to empathize is very important in the social world—important to making right decisions and acting rightly with respect to others. I conclude that engagement with fiction makes of readers better moral agents by motivating readers to improve their ability to empathize. If I am right, then our method of educating students in college and high school literature classes misses a fundamental point. I take the canonical method of teaching literature in these contexts to be the instruction in literary criticism. How do we interpret what is going on in the text? How do we justify our own interpretations of the text? But this teaches that the act of reading fiction is valuable primarily in its giving us a way to deconstruct static texts, which has practically no implication for behaving in the real world. This tactic would be appropriate if fiction had nothing to offer in this line, but, as I show, fiction does have much to offer. Teaching literature as if it were an activity that has ramifications only within the classroom is a wrong-headed approach and should be seriously re-considered.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contextualizing Rationality: Mature student carers and higher education in England
Stella Gonzalez-Arnal and Majella M Kilkey
S.Gonzalez-Arnal@nospamhull.ac.uk and M.M.Kilkey@nospamhull.ac.uk

Read the complete paper in the journal Feminist Economics or request a copy from Stella

In recent years, successive governments in the UK have implemented policies designed to increase and widen participation in Higher Education to include previously under-represented groups (mature students, disable students, part-time students and those from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds). At the same time, in order to meet the costs of expansion, changes in the funding of Higher Education have been introduced, which shift the burden of paying for education from the government to students and their families. We argue that this new policy framework has failed to take account of the circumstances and needs of mature students, whose life choices are informed by their caring responsibilities.

In order to support our assessment of current policies we use data collected in two empirical studies (one qualitative and the other quantitative) undertaken in the University of Hull, and make reference to other major studies in the area. In this paper we develop a theoretical framework to explain how the new policies are gender biased. We argue that these policies presuppose a highly contentious conception of the human subject, which sits uneasily with the reality of mature student carers. In essence, we show how they rest on a ‘rational economic man’ model of human behaviour, a model in which people are constructed exclusively as highly individualised, instrumental and economic actors. Although these policies are detrimental to mature student carers of both genders, they are particularly inappropriate to facilitate the successful participation in Higher Education of female mature student carers. Informed by the critiques of this model to have emerged from feminist economics and philosophy, we demonstrate how this model is an inappropriate starting point when considering the future development of Higher Education policy, and conclude by highlighting the implications of this new framework for gender equality in Higher Education.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Ethics of Education: bell hooks’ Conception of Education as the Practice of Freedom
Clevis R. Headley
headley@nospamfau.edu

In this brief essay, I shall seek to expand on the idea of education as promoting democracy by focusing on bell hooks’ idea of education as the practice of freedom. I will make my case for hooks’ position by employing the following strategy: I will first present a brief review of Plato’s conception of education; I will then deploy Levinas to establish why the Platonic conception of philosophy is authoritarian in that it facilitates regimes of marginalization and exclusion. Here, the case will be made that Plato’s conception of education is also flawed to the extent that it is dependent upon his metaphysical and epistemological views. Lastly, I discuss bell hooks’ conception of education as the practice of freedom, in conjunction with Levinas’ conception of ethics, in order to counter hegemonic conceptions of education that support domination and oppression. This task is accomplished by linking ethics with freedom and then accessing the significance of this relation for education. My argument is not intended to downplay the importance of education in guaranteeing the material success of society. Rather, my argument is that the role of education for the purpose of material gains should not be promoted at the expense of suppressing its role in advancing the ethical and political condition of society.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Place of Indo-Caribbean Philosophy in the Caribbean Academy
Paget Henry
Paget_Henry@nospambrown.edu

The purpose of this paper is to focus our attention on an important void in the life of the Caribbean academy: the teaching and researching of Indo-Caribbean philosophy. This academy has recently moved fill another important void – the teaching and researching of Afro-Caribbean philosophy. But, to really provide its public with comprehensive offering in Caribbean philosophy, it must go beyond its offerings in Afro-Caribbean philosophy. To these must be added offerings in Indo-Caribbean philosophy, Chinese Caribbean philosophy, and in a decolonized Euro-Caribbean philosophy. The full stature of Caribbean philosophy will only emerge from constructive engagements and dialogues between these currently contending and mutually negating traditions of philosophical thought.

In this paper, I will attempt to shift this current and unsatisfactory situation by introducing an outline the major contours of Indo-Caribbean philosophy.

I will divide the history of this neglected field into four basic phases: the Indian heritage, the Indo-Christian phase, the historicist/poeticist phase, and the contemporary phase of Indo-Caribbean feminism. I will argue that these phases are comparable with the major phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophy. I will then identify the significant areas of genuine exchange and also those of blocked or refused exchange. I will suggest that the latter are much greater than the former, and that racist constructions of each other have been major factors in this dialogic impasse. I am assuming that beyond this impasse lies a discursive space of with great possibilities for creolization and deeper mutual understanding. Hence there is a great need, on this the 60th anniversary of the Caribbean academy for us to commit ourselves to the reversing of the above patterns dialogic exchange between these two major Caribbean traditions of thought and to embrace the creole possibilities that they continue to suppress.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Care and the Pedagogical Relationship: A Teleological Approach
Kelly Heuer
heuer@nospampost.harvard.edu

The tension between discipline and care, fairness and nurturance, is central to issues in pedagogical philosophy. This dichotomy is echoed in psychology by the justice/care distinction in moral thinking drawn by Gilligan (1982). Yet philosophical reactions to Gilligan’s work have varied dramatically. Even those who take seriously her claim that the so-called “care perspective” deserves attention in ethical theory often differ in their application of this idea, taking ‘caring’ as a principle of right action, as a virtue or character trait, or as constituting a new ethical theory entirely. This paper will expand upon the suggestion made by Little (1998) that the justice and care orientations represent different standpoints from which to do ethical theory rather than constituting ready-made theories themselves, arguing that a teleological understanding of the “normative essences” of certain relationships can incorporate some of Gilligan’s most crucial insights. The application of this idea to pedagogical ethics – one field in which the concept of ‘care’ has been taken quite seriously – will serve as a lens to focus attention on the benefits and potential flaws of such an approach.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Road to Success for All is Paved with Good Intentions: Student Welfare in the Midst of Mass Tertiary Education
Donna Maynard
dmaynard@nospamuwichill.edu.bb

This paper explores, from a counselling psychology perspective, the extent to which the student is taken into consideration in the shift of the university from an elite institution to one of mass tertiary education. Formerly the university student would have been admitted based on his/her scholarly achievements and aptitude for leadership. What basis is the "mass" student being admitted on? Their academic prowess? The need to meet the "one graduate in every household" goal? What kinds of issues and problems does the "mass" student matriculate with? How should the university address those issues? Will the values and ethics of the university have to change, or be changed by the "mass" student body"? This paper argues that as the university opens its doors to the mass it will need to provide more support services to assist students with transitioning into and navigating their university experience and emerging as a UWI graduate of calibre.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Critical Examination of Human values in Tertiary Education
Sandra McCalla
oneras1973@nospamyahoo.com

Tertiary Educational institutions are now faced with the challenges of training and retraining individuals to meet social and economic needs of societies. This education of the citizen is not only to survive in the work world but also to be able to participate in decision making that relate to the changing needs of these societies. It is with this in mind that this essay will seek to discuss the human values underwriting tertiary education in contemporary society, especially in the Caribbean.

In the first instance, I seek, in this essay, to understand the values which determine the various curricular choices that are made in society. Secondly, I seek to examine the social, cultural, political and developmental agendas that determine the values that inform tertiary education programmes. Finally, try to relate these to the stages of social, cultural and moral values which products of tertiary education are supposed to champion for society and the educated elite in society.

Given the current stage of development of Caribbean societies, in the face of the wave of economic and technological globalization that is sweeping the world, it is imperative to undertake a critical evaluation of the values that underwrite the main bedrock of leadership development in contemporary Caribbean society. This is predicated on the urgency of the question: How can tertiary education play a role in this development? This question will be explored with the view to facilitate a clear understanding of the nature, and importance of values in education and how these determine the quality of life in society at large and in the Caribbean in particular.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Movement and Stasis in the Neoliberal Re-Orientation of Schooling and the University
Cameron McCarthy
cmccart1@nospamuiuc.edu

Scholars writing on the topic of globalization cast globalization processes too often in terms of simplistic binary oppositions: “homogenization” versus, “heterogeneity,” “uniformity” versus “diversity,” “cosmopolitanism” versus “localism,” “centralization” versus “decentralization” and so forth. In the context of an application to schooling and the university, globalization is often seen as a set of processes happening “way out there” in the world, far from what educators, teachers and students do. Globalization is therefore depicted as embodying movement and dynamism. On the other hand, schooling, particularly in the urban setting of metropolitan countries and in the third world periphery, is often represented within the discourse of “stasis” and “tradition”. In this presentation, I confront this unreflexive dualism, showing how globalization articulated to neoliberal policies—associated, for example, with the United States Bush government’s “No Child Left Behind Act” of 2002--is effectively restructuring the organization of knowledge in educational institutions and undermining their vital function as institutions dedicated to the public good. I argue “movement” and “stasis” are therefore intimately related in the reorganization and restructuring of education and the larger processes of re-feudalization of the public sphere.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harris, Whitehead and Wynter: Forcing new imaginings through textual and ritual liminality in tertiary education
Deryck Murray
cadco@nospamsunbeach.net

The University of the West Indies, in celebrating 60 years of institutionalisation this year, will mark an anniversary that hails its maturity and the construction of traditions validated by its success. This cause for celebration, however, is also marked by a risk: long institutionalisation often leads to a dulling of the imagination, the ossification of ideas, and the emergence of institutional hegemonic forces that push towards homogeneity. In terms of tertiary education, the risk is the death of original thought. The challenge is therefore to heighten our sensitivity to this risk and cultivate an environment that balances these important states of stability and innovation. In this paper, the historical basis of tendencies to stability or change in the Caribbean is briefly examined using the tukontological model as outlined at CHiPS II, 2006. However, it is primarily concerned with proposing an antidote to the specific risk of stagnation at UWI.

The singularity of the writings of Wilson Harris, Alfred North Whitehead and Sylvia Wynter is their notorious resistance to any straightforward reading or rendering. They draw all comers into narratives of liminality where we experience the discomfort of cognitive incoherence which forces hesitation, a re-cognition of categories that we almost recognize, and in the end, the co-invention of new ways of relating to the world. This paper proposes that rather than view the difficulty of engaging these writers as an obstacle, encounters with them should be experienced as rituals that facilitate the possibility of new ideas that can sometimes be reified to create new worlds.

This is in fact an instance of empirical metaphysics where we explore unconventional ideas and sometimes translate and materialise them as new approaches to old problems. However, whereas Harris, Whitehead and Wynter made their ideas available to us in writing, anthropologists and researchers on African Sagacity are seeking to document the metaphysics of others. UWI should pay attention to this work since the true benefit of any new metaphysics is its power to temporarily put us in a state of liminality. It is this power that tertiary education must deploy. This paper is therefore proposing that the University consciously deploy the technologies of ritual to create physical (through architecture, design and art), textual and virtual sites of liminality in order to add friction to the normally smooth and easy categories and modes of thought in order to force new imaginings among staff, students, researchers and lecturers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Making The Dish Run Away With The Spoon: Using Education For The Transformation
of Post-Colonial Caribbean Society
Nigel Newton
corvaln@nospamhotmail.com

But can you expect teachers to revolutionize the social order for the good of the community? Indeed we must expect this very thing. The educational systems of a country is worthless unless it accomplishes this task.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the impact of the British educational system on the people of African descent in the English Speaking Caribbean. It will show how this education led to the development of a facile servant class, high levels of self-hate, self-contempt and the pervasive nihilism destroying Caribbean people of African Descent.

Caribbean education is anchored and established in the World-views, philosophies customs and practices of the dominant European Cultures. The European’s self concept and attitudes towards Non-Europeans are motivated by his/her binary ideological concepts. All the institutions of those cultures validated and defended the established order. Conversely, post-colonial Caribbean educational institutions have not challenged that order.

Despite the contribution of education to the economic advancement of African-Caribbean people, this paper proposes to show that all levels of education have failed to make a meaningful, culturally relevant contribution to the self-concept, dignity and world-view of the descendants of the former slaves.

To be truly relevant education must cater to the specific needs, self-concept and world-views of African-Caribbean peoples. Traditional African Philosophies, religions, social and political systems and methods of social and economic organization must be respected and methods of social and economic organization respected and allowed to boldly impact the “lived experiences” of the people.

Finally this paper argues that an effective, culturally relevant education must include the history, world-views, social systems, religious and philosophical concepts necessary for the authentic transformation of Caribbean society.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The similar is different: Exploring Critical Race Studies, Africana Studies and Education Policy connections/distinctions
Laurence Parker
parker3@nospamuiuc.edu

This paper will focus on exploring the Africana Studies tradition with critical race theory (CRT) as a critique of racism in the law and society current applications to the field of education. Critical race theory has its roots in previous discipline-based critiques related to the history, philosophy, politics and social construction and reality of race and discrimination. Given this foundation, CRT has evolved around a number of general themes:

The purpose of paper is to conduct a preliminary investigation on CRT and its utility and limitations with respect to educational coupled with an exploration as to how might Africana studies could be connected to CRT through education. This paper will attempt to situate CRT and Africana Studies together in so that the “Black” diaspora conversations can be encouraged in order to prevent the narrowing of the topics that are interconnected related to race and systematic racism. It is hoped that in thinking about both Africana Studies and critical race analysis in education, we can have a combined theoretical framework that challenges us to analyze racial, class, and gender privileges within both formal and informal structures and process of schooling. It is also hoped that this type of combined theoretical critique can assist us in fostering ways to engage in important race praxis and positive change regarding racial justice in the schools and higher education institutions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Assessment and Academic Freedom in Higher Education
Matthew F. Pierlott
mpierlott@nospamwcupa.edu

In the United States, politicians, accrediting agencies, and college administrators continue with increasing emphasis to encourage faculty to develop student learning and program assessment plans. But there is much debate about the agendas being served by assessment and its potential role in higher education. Thomas Angelo and K. Patricia Cross have found that there is a wide array of differing learning goals among faculty members, often differing from stated departmental and institutional student learning goals. Assessment can help make explicit our individual and communal missions, but it runs the risk impeding on academic freedom.

Larry G. Gerber has argued for the importance of a robust academic freedom irreducible to the general freedom of speech in order to protect the integrity of higher liberal arts education from administrative interests. Using a Foucaultian analysis, Leanne Broadhead and Sean Howard have argued that assessment plays a role in the restriction of academic freedom via a disciplining of the faculty. Dianne Gardener, on the other hand, argues that there is no fundamental conflict between assessment and academic freedom, while Bruce Berger notes how academic freedom may cover for irresponsible pedagogical techniques.

I argue that faculty ought to embrace self-directed assessment in order to prevent its becoming a tool of limiting academic freedom and to undermine the claims of academia’s critics. Assessment can be an extension of academic freedom, rather than a threat to it. I examine different notions of academic freedom and different notions of assessment in order to clarify why there might be more disagreement than is necessary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Needs Discourses, Teen Mothers, & Girls Educational Attainment
Wanda S. Pillow
pillow@nospamuiuc.edu

While completion of high school graduation rates and trends has been a topic of study in the US little attention has specifically been paid to how gender impacts high school graduation. This gap is strikingly apparent in a recent National Women's Law Center publication "When Girls Don't Graduate, We all Fail: A Call to Improve High School Graduation Rates for Girls." This report states that an increasing number of girls are not completing high
school and that rates of non-completion are dramatically increasing for African American, American Indian, Latina, and Pacific Islander female students.

Certainly, this issue is one that needs and deserves additional research and educational policy, however, I also suggest that in order for such research and educational policy to be effective, the discourses framing girls' education must be examined and rethought. Utilizing Nancy Fraser's model of the "needs based" discourse prevalent in social welfare, I ask what we think girls "need" in terms of an education and how racialization in the US impacts how these needs are determined and defined. I provide specific examples of the impact of differential needs based discourses on the provision of education to pregnant and mothering students and conclude by reframing a discursive model of education for girls that is based not only on the education that girls need, but the education that all girls deserve and have a right to.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The applicability of Paulo Freire’s method to tertiary education in the Caribbean
Elaine P. Rocha
rochaep@nospamyahoo.com

This paper proposes a discussion about the current authoritarian nature of teaching at the tertiary level, both in terms of the classroom environment and the didactic methods which are often employed in imparting knowledge. The geneological basis of the word university defines tertiary education as preparing students to understand the universe. With this in mind this paper suggests the use of Paulo Freire’s methodology in the university, as a means both to comprehend and combine the universal and the immediate, exercising democracy within the classroom by eliciting active participation of the student, thus contributing to the promotion of learning, more in tune with the realities of the twenty-first century.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth-century. Primarily an educator, Freire is also considered as a politician and philosopher, his influence on par with that of Piaget.

His legacy of commitment, love and hope to educators worldwide can be found in his critical pedagogy which infuses hundreds of "grass roots" organizations, college classrooms, and most recently school reform efforts in major urban areas. Author of 35 books and articles translated into different languages all around the world, Freire has influenced the educational systems as he proposed a methodology opposed to the traditional authoritarian approach between teacher and student, and notions of teaching and learning.

His thoughts are influenced by different thinkers from Karl Marx to Rousseau, and can be understood in parallel with Foucault’s analysis of power and freedom; one of the reasons why his Pedagogy of the Oppressed has been so extensively used as a tool against colonialism and imperialism in Latin America, Asia and African countries.

Freire is best known for his opposition to what he called the "banking" concept of education, in which the student is viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher in daily “deposits of knowledge”.

Keeping in mind that Freire’s method was originally developed for Adult literacy courses, during the 1950s and 60s, the paper aims to discuss the applicability of this method to university teaching, in the age of digitized information and globalization. Some of the important questions to be raised are:

Why was Freire’s philosophy so revolutionary to education, and why has it been so universally applied?
Can we apply Freire’s methodology without compromising the quality of education?
Is it possible to combine both the student’s experiences and the content of the syllabus?
Is the university ready to renounce its authoritarian model and why should it change?
What factors will contribute to teachers being more open to the Freirian approach, and what is the role of the university administration in the process?
Can a university student produce and at the same time acquire knowledge during the process of being educated?
How does Freire’s methodology change the evaluation system?
How can Freire’s notion of the ‘escola-cidadao’ contribute to the goals of the university in its formation of committed Caribbean citizens?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Know Thyself! The Imperative for Tertiary Education and Beyond
Martin Schade
mjs@nospamflowja.com

Read complete paper

Abstract

Understanding the Self is the imperative before, during and after one’s Tertiary education. Any psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology must begin with an anthropology, in which the starting point is the subject. The Self is the agent in the search; the Self is the active condition in which the world is known and in which one has a relationship with all of reality. What is this Self and the impact of Tertiary education in the discovery one’s Self?

This paper will examine how the role of a University is to have a student come to a greater awareness of one’s Self as an active agent in the world. The University has as its mission the commitment of educating its students in a manner in which he or she can grasp the fullness of one’s own being in the world, as a holistic, critical and free participant. The role of the University is bringing its students out of the cave of ignorance and into a more complete understanding of human nature and the world. A student must be challenged so as to question and critically reflect upon the validity of the traditional way of understanding the Self. The dualism of body and mind/soul, which has been historically antagonistic, can no longer be the paradigm in explaining human nature. This paper will help in bringing University students out of the cave of ignorance which is still supported by the Fundamentalism of much of the Caribbean and the teacher-centred education that continues to be the philosophy and method of Tertiary education in the region. In presenting a new understanding of the Self from a Dialectical Incarnational perspective it will be explained that the dichotomy of the human Self as separate entities is an illusion and must be diminished in the search for a more complete understanding. The Self is the necessary union of the originally dualistic mind/body problem and the centre of all relationships. As J.S. Mbiti states “I am because we are.” Dialectical Incarnation is a philosophy of the heart. Modern Physics and Quantum Mechanics understand that the oneness of all reality is a “Path of the Heart” (Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics). All of reality, even the sub-atomic world previously unknown, is in “relationships”. The Self is the centre of all of one’s relationships and all of reality.

The Self will be philosophically examined through Nicholas of Cusa, Baruch Spinoza and Martin Heidegger. The paper will continue to briefly explain how the Self is a Person, indicating the distinction between Individualism and Personalism.

In offering a new perspective of the Self as a critical thinker and as a free agent in the new age of technology, the University must assure its students that the unexamined life of the Self still remains something “not worth living.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liberal Education in a Shrinking World
Mark Setton
kimsetton@nospamyahoo.com

Read complete paper

Abstract

In this paper we argue how, in the era of the global village, the university, and particularly the liberal arts curriculum, can serve as a springboard for the cultivation of global civic consciousness. In an age when supranational organizations devoted to global security appear seriously handicapped, the cultivation of supranational civic consciousness is a serious priority.

As early as the nineteenth century, liberal education was introduced in an effort to make the curriculum “human, rather than technical or vocational, but moreover to tackle socially and politically controversial issues by systematic study.” This view itself is no longer controversial and for the past century a general consensus has prevailed that tertiary education exists to create better citizens as well as better trained workers.

The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) now provides the following definition of liberal education:

“A philosophy of education that empowers individuals, liberates the mind from ignorance, and cultivates social responsibility.”

The problem is that in a “plugged-in” world where individuals and NGOs have unprecedented power to disseminate ideas and catalyze change, our universities are still sadly unprepared to cultivate citizens who 1) feel a sense of social responsibility, and 2) can implement this sense of responsibility in a global context.

One reason for this failure can be ascribed to the pressure exerted on educational institutions by local and national governments intent on cultivating a citizenry that can fortify economic supremacy in the global marketplace. In the case of the United States this emphasis on international economic competitiveness, in contrast to more broadly based cooperation and related skills, is evidenced in the policies of the US Commission on Tertiary Education.

A second reason for the failure to foster a genuinely global education is the lingering Eurocentrism of many Western universities. To take only one example, statistics indicate that the ratio of faculty teaching European languages to faculty providing instruction in the languages of Asia and the Middle East is now clearly disproportionate to the relative influence of these regions in economic and political terms.

A third more subtle cause of failure is pedagogical. It is associated with the age-old tendency of Western educational establishments to give primacy to the cognitive aspects of civilization and neglect the affective dimension. It is this imbalance that provides the focus of this paper.

Simply “knowing” about world civilizations in an intellectual sense is not going to turn our youth into global citizens. We have to teach students how to shift their perspective and put themselves in the shoes of their global neighbors, and this requires a somewhat radical change of course in terms of curricular content as well as educational philosophy. In terms of content, comparative values and social psychology should play a much larger role in tertiary curricula, coupled with a core curriculum that not only deals with non Western civilization but offers a genuinely comparative perspective. With regards to philosophy, we suggest two concepts that could describe the desirable ethos. One is the Confucian concept of ren or humanity, which is often interpreted as the golden rule, but is more accurately translated as practical sympathy. The essential idea is that the ability to identify with the feelings and inclinations of our neighbors, and act upon the resulting insights, is a key to social harmony and world peace. A second related concept is Wang Yangming’s “unity of knowledge and action,” which emphasizes that genuine knowledge is only realized through action or experience, and that this practical knowledge necessarily has an affective component, and consequently a transformative power.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some Kind of Conception: Fostering “Objectivity” in Tertiary Education
Mark C R Smith
mcs1@nospamqueensu.ca

Perhaps one of the primary goals of tertiary education is to foster the tools of “objective thought” in our students. The ability to think “objectively” is, after all, the principal goal of philosophy itself: to think without presupposition, prejudice, culture, religion, value, or indeed anything else that might “colour” the mind.

I will argue that this standard notion of “objective thought” is quite fundamentally misguided, by means of some case-studies in the history and epistemology of science. They suggest that the notion of “objectivity” is not monolithic; that is, that it is never free of the “subjective detritus” of point-of-view, history, race, sexuality, and many other aspects of human life.

But while we try to foster in our students the aspiration to an objective stance, and bow to experiences that are not our own, we recognize (repeatedly, in our lectures!) that there is some kind of conception of objectivity which resists justified objections. What is that conception?

I will argue for this conclusion: the primary goal of tertiary education is not to foster an epistemological structure of objectivity, but to foster a standard of reasoning whose canons are non-dogmatic. The standard of non-dogmatism might, in the end, be the best we can hope for, and the most valuable cognitive attitude we can foster in our students.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tertiary Education’s Role Determining Dilemma

Dick Stoute
dstoute@nospamsunbeach.net

The university cannot determine its role without reference to the community it serves and the environment in which it operates, as it is both a cost and a resource to its community. It must continually review the needs of the community and seek to serve them as best it can, given its skills and resources. But its resources and skills are not fixed; these also vary as the community evolves. This relationship with the community must be symbiotic with the university contributing more than it receives, so that the community, while supporting the university is a net benefactor.

There can be no formula for allocating resources to the university. Instead the university must actively compete for resources by demonstrating its value to the community. This is one of the roles it must play, but it is not an independent role as its ability to market itself depends on the benefits it offers to the community. It has to add value to the community to be able to champion its own cause. It must therefore be aware of the benefits it provides and seek to optimise these. Its success is the community’s success.

Similarly the community cannot determine the level and nature of its support to the university without knowing what the university will be providing.

There is a dynamic circularity here that prevents either the community or the university from determining its role, or setting its goals independently. Is there a way around this?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Democracy, Leadership, and Higher Education

Eric Weber
etweber@nospamolemiss.edu

In this paper, I examine the virtues and troubles of leadership confronting two universities, the University of the West Indies and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I show that despite great distances dividing over a dozen countries, the UWI has managed to serve as a beacon of international cooperation and advancement for people historically oppressed and desirous of the fruits of education. In the case of SIUC, we see a university plagued by conflict of leadership in the most basic vision of the mission of the university. The case of SIUC’s leadership conflicts help us to see some of the important virtues of elements of leadership plans, yet important components and troubles are also an important part of what can be learned through a study of the university and its recent history. In the end, the UWI serves as a stronger example of the overcoming of fragmentation amongst the newly associated countries of the University of the West Indies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------