Dear Erin,
Ronald did such a great job summarizing the essential Foucault!
I teach community college. This means I teach survey courses, and can't
assign anything advanced, nor do I feel right requiring more than one
textbook, since my students are working poor people and are really feeling
the strain.
So, Foucault never comes up.
But I always find an opportunity to say to them, "I am a tool!"
And I see the understanding in their eyes.
Along with a little bit of disagreement. After all, I just stood up there
and told them that.
I don't think students necessarily need to be taught the basic observations
about power and the institutional construction of the subject. They are
themselves intense sites of struggle, and they know it. So these basic
realities are already known to them. All you have to do is teach them
Foucault's particular take on it, and help them sort out the specific
details of the struggles being waged over how their Selves should be
constituted. Boys and girls, men and women, will have different and
overlapping experiences.
So you might assign them a critique of you, your teaching style, the
arguments and claims you encode, and their encounter with it, and the
institution at large. I mean, if it were me and I could do more than what I
do, I would tell my students, "I am a tool!" And then I would tell them to
defend and deny in 1000 words. That would cover the "what Foucault is
saying" part of your question. I don't know what literature you are
reading, so I don't know how to help with the second part.
How about that?
Yours,
Beth Davies in Denver, CO
bdavies@xxxxxxxxxxx
Great word games!
http://www.stofkagames.com/
Ronald did such a great job summarizing the essential Foucault!
I teach community college. This means I teach survey courses, and can't
assign anything advanced, nor do I feel right requiring more than one
textbook, since my students are working poor people and are really feeling
the strain.
So, Foucault never comes up.
But I always find an opportunity to say to them, "I am a tool!"
And I see the understanding in their eyes.
Along with a little bit of disagreement. After all, I just stood up there
and told them that.
I don't think students necessarily need to be taught the basic observations
about power and the institutional construction of the subject. They are
themselves intense sites of struggle, and they know it. So these basic
realities are already known to them. All you have to do is teach them
Foucault's particular take on it, and help them sort out the specific
details of the struggles being waged over how their Selves should be
constituted. Boys and girls, men and women, will have different and
overlapping experiences.
So you might assign them a critique of you, your teaching style, the
arguments and claims you encode, and their encounter with it, and the
institution at large. I mean, if it were me and I could do more than what I
do, I would tell my students, "I am a tool!" And then I would tell them to
defend and deny in 1000 words. That would cover the "what Foucault is
saying" part of your question. I don't know what literature you are
reading, so I don't know how to help with the second part.
How about that?
Yours,
Beth Davies in Denver, CO
bdavies@xxxxxxxxxxx
Great word games!
http://www.stofkagames.com/