Re: [Foucault-L] How do we use Foucault texts in teaching?

Dear Linda, Michael, and Marc,
I thank you so much for responding to the question I posed. The list serves
so many purposes! I am trying to quote only parts of your posts as per
suggestions about responding to the list; I apologize for the decontextualized nature
of the quoting. Your comments and thoughts below have helped me to draw in
my "open-ended" question somewhat and make it more manageable. There must be
vast bureaucratic and cultural differences between the systems in Australia to
the U.S., and moreover, my little school is understandably caught in a
consumer and market race for enrollments. Since I "coordinate" a teachert ed
program, I believe I am caught up in curricular and state certification issues.
Foucault is indeed regarded as "legitimate" in a philosophy or history course but
it is a hard sell to the state education auditors.

As I rethink the subject line, I am reminded of Foucault's comments regarding
the more peripheral workers who wished to help prisoners, and Foucault's
response was that perhaps there was nothing they could do, and the impulse for
social workers, for instance, to do something, might be part of the problem.
When I think of my students (future teachers)--who definitely appear to be
deer "caught in the headlights" (I love that image, Linda) of their cumbersome
certification programs--they are as reluctant to read, say, John Dewey or Jean
Piaget, as they are to read anybody who does not speak directly to their
particular experiences.

I also am reminded that I have wanted to treat future teachers with the same
regard as I would the "prisoners"--all of us are caught, to some extent, in
the carceral of schooling. With your help, I have been reminded that I am a
specific intellectual in the sense that I "use" Foucault's texts in my scholarly
duties, but I am not sure I should "use" his texts in my undergraduate
certification classes. For instance, there might be no direct and pedagogical
purpose of "using" Foucault in these classes; that would mean I have succumbed to a
role of "transmitting" knowledge. I can still intervene in notions that they
bring to education, or I can strive to create situations in which their
"learning" is not prescripted.

This all brings me to a second question. I keep forgetting and then
remembering and then remembering that I forgot, and forgetting that I remembered the
distinction Foucault once made in his different uses of thinkers. I remember
that he juxtaposed how he "thinks about" Kantian philosophy, for instance, to
how he "thinks with" Heidegger, and consequently he doesn't write about those
with whom he was still actively "thinking with". I got in trouble with my
sloppy remembrance before; if you can help me recall the interview, I would be
grateful. Thanks ever so much, again. Lisa

> The other thing I've seen work is
>> secondary citations - the work of philosophers of
>> education (i.e. Michael Peters and the like).
>>
>> The same applies to teacher ed in a way. Although I
>> guess this is "un-truth telling". I was teaching in
>> a core unit last year which is pretty much based on
>> Foucauldian principals but the thing is that only a
>> bare minimum of students would go away and read
>> three chapters of D&P, or some of Rose's Governing
>> the Soul - about half didn't even read the unit text
>> (which I found an entertaining read!). Those that
>> did read some Foucault were like deer in headlights
>> - it was very hard for them to relate what they were
>> reading to anything else in their teacher ed course
>> (or life for that matter) because everything they'd
>> been learning was decontextualised and discretely
>> packaged in line with the requirements set out by
>> regulatory bodies - the standards of any teacher
>> education program as you describe.
> Cheers,
> Linda


> Foucault once said that he would quote Marx without
> citing him, disguise Marx's concepts in forms that are
> prima facie unreconizably Marxist.
michael bibby <shmickeyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


>"The mere fact that people rarely see Foucault >as something that could be
considered >'legitimate' "
> -Marc J. Beerline
Folow-ups
  • [Foucault-L] Foucault's 'What is Enlightenment?' essay
    • From: Nick Butler
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