Dear Catarina, et al

I might have thought that my comment about the feminization of universities
was so commonly understood that it didn’t really require any explanations.

Equally, I might have thought that the recent flurry around the
infantilization of universities was so loud that everybody knew about it
already.

That is, I see nothing contentious about either of my complaints and I
certainly see nothing offensive or remotely sexist.

How are infantilization and feminisation connected? Directly. If you pursue
a feminization program, to its logical conclusion, you will disclose
infantilization.

Let us follow the path and see where we get.

The first useful article I found in a Google search for “the feminization
of universities” was:

Du Nann Winter, Deborah (1991) The Feminization of Academia (
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=podimproveacad
)

Interesting to me, this article was published almost at the start of my
full-time academic career, 30 years ago. After nearly 30 years, the
project, in my academic world, has achieved its desired outcomes.

It is a well written well constructed, well argued account of what is
required for universities to be feminized. That is, the author presumed
this purpose is worthy and they presumed the outcomes will be beneficial to
all concerned. I recommend the article.

Du Nann Winter first establishes the terms that I presumed would be well
known.

“In a recent issue of To Improve the Academy, van der Bogert, Brinlco,
Atkins, and Arnold (1990) call for an approach to faculty development that
integrates both feminine and masculine modes. They suggest that the
traditional academic climate has been masculine in its hierarchical
organization and its emphases on a) individual competition and
accomplishment, b) research over teaching, c) sacrifice of personal to
professional lives, and d) the development of expertise, specialization,
and efficiency. Citing key literature on gender differences in thinking and
personality (Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger,
& Tamie, 1986), they describe the feminine style as cooperative rather than
competitive; connected rather than autonomous; nurturing; interdependent;
and as using networks rather than vertical organization to communicate,
make decisions, and evaluate.”

What is the problem here? Surely an integration of masculine and feminine
modes would be to the benefit of all? Is that a feminist presumption? Du
Nann Winter is happy to describe the project as a feminist project – it
could also be described in a neutral way except it wouldn’t work as a
neutral project. Why? Because these concepts sit on a symbolic diagram that
presumes they are opposite rather than apposite. The project presumes the
superiority of its concepts. Vertical management, for example, does not
complement networks, it tolerates such collectives at best. This issue is
taken up by Du Nann Winter, later in the article. That is, the existing
system will resist these changes to preserve its existing status. She
writes:

“In fact, I would argue that faculty development practices at most
institutions have been marginalized in the same way and for the same
reasons that women are often marginalized in male-dominated institutions.
Both run counter to the prevailing dominant norms of autonomy, expertise,
and independence. Women and faculty development both threaten the existing
patriarchal order, and in so doing, are often subtly and not so subtly
patronized and diminished.”

If the suggest integration of masculine and feminine modes were to work,
how might these changes work?

“Suggesting ways of more explicitly integrating the feminine modes within
the masculine institution, van der Bogert et al. conclude by calling for
programs which more formally address feminist values of connection,
community, and relationship. When these characteristics are combined with a
masculine emphasis on skills and logic, they are termed "transformational"
techniques. In listing the various types of transformational activities,
the authors show a clear focus on cooperative modes of working, including
"collaborative learning, teaching, and research; providing support groups;
empowering subordinates and sharing decisions; encouraging faculty
interdependence in the department/college/institution" (pp. 94-95).”

So, the masculine values of an emphasis on “skills and logic” will be
subsumed into such things as "collaborative learning, teaching, and
research; providing support groups; empowering subordinates and sharing
decisions”. It wouldn’t seem to matter whether anyone in the support group
ever came to learn. What is more important is that they joined the
community, abided by the collective agreement and felt empowered.

So far we haven’t burst the sexist elephant balloon. I am more than happy
with Du Nann Winter’s account of the non-sexist nature of what we are
talking about when we talk about masculine and feminine
modes/styles/characteristics.

“Because distinguishing between masculine and feminine styles sometimes
leads to confusion, a few prefatory remarks about these dimensions may help
clarify their use in this article. Both masculine and feminine styles refer
to general characteristics of groups of women and men, rather than to
dichotomous characteristics which separate men from women. Clearly, many
women value expertise and competition, and many men value cooperation and
sharing. Furthermore, there are many women who also value competition over
cooperation, just as there are many men who also value sharing over
expertise. But, in general, more women are focused on creating connection
and involvement while avoiding isolation; and more men are focused on
achieving status and accomplishment while avoiding dependence (Tannen,
1990).”

If anyone wants to argue about this generalization from Tannen,  I’m not
interested. That is, my identity is not dependent on group feelings about
arguments. In Greek terms, I’m an idiot. In Nigel’s terms, I’m
idiosyncratic. My status is always at risk. I don’t mutually share, I don’t
look for consensus and I am more than happy to be the only one having
coffee at McDonald’s while the caring group is at Starbucks. I am never
“assimilated”, especially by a “central committee”. If someone is in
immediate danger I might offer generic help, otherwise I respond according
to the nature of the engagement. I resist the loss of my “ostensible
autonomy and independence” and I would never put someone else in that
position – here begins the infantilization (see below).

“. . . those of us who have participated in The Professional and
Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) will recognize
the emphasis on horizontal rather than vertical organization, illustrated
when new members are quickly assimilated, and when the central committee is
run with a consensus model. Even the very concept of ‘help’ is a feminine
value, because asking for and receiving it threatens the ostensible
autonomy and independence of the receiver. Research suggests that females
are more likely to give and request help than males (Tannen, 1990).
Effective help on professional and teaching practices requires caring,
support, and mutual sharing.”

I can not share with anyone, my understandings unless they, of their own
apprehension, can come to understand of themselves. I do not TEACH. What I
can do is withhold my understandings from the world, from fear that I will
be outcast by those who, care and share and support, if I resist all their
caring and sharing and support. Which gets us to the problem announced by
Nigel, about us all being novices. Du Nann Winter writes:

“Whereas traditional masculine models of teaching have posed the professor
as the expert who delivers the facts to the uninformed student, active
learning suggests a different definition of both knowledge and student.
Much more in line with the feminist view of knowledge as a shared
intellectual event, the social construction of knowledge allows the student
to share a more equal role with the facilitator, rather than the expert. In
newer teaching models, student and professor work together addressing
complex problems. Team teaching and team learning are emphasized. The
typical classroom changes from the expert pontificating to the naive, to
small work groups addressing a problem, with the professor roaming from
group to group to act as consultant. Such practices are much more congruent
with feminist modes of intellectual practice.”

The disgruntled undergraduate may well feel that a lecturer is
“pontificating” and sure, we could all find examples of such behavior. If
lecturers are merely delivering facts then they are not lecturing, they are
teaching. The argument, as stated, only works if we align ourselves with
failed learning situations. That is, we failed to learn rather than the
lecturer failed to teach us. The world is super saturated with knowledge.
Much of our brain, all the time, is caught up in inhibiting insights
available to us in the world. Ancient Greeks and many before them, made the
observation that a person walking south on a boat that is travelling north
is moving relative to both the boat and the world at large. It’s fun to
notice this knowledge. The parallel observation, made by Einstein about
time and a person on a train, has always been equally as obvious to
everybody who ever saw a train go by a clock. Why did we all not see this?
What has inhibited our knowledge of the world? Certainly not masculine
modes of learning.

Another example would be Wittgenstein. Apparently, he rambled like a loony
in “lectures”. Did he stop any student from understanding his ramblings?
Equally, did Socrates stop any young man in Athens from understanding? He
went from group to group annoying them with his logical and rhetorical
expertise.

I will end this account of feminization of universities with a brief look
at the presumed need for what Nigel called collective viewpoints to
overcome fragmentation and idiosyncrasy. Du Nann Winter announces the
dangers of a perceived lack of coherence in teaching programs. This is an
issue faced by many design degrees. How to ensure a well-rounded education
while transmitting all the core knowledge expected of a professional
degree. Her answer is a seemingly attractive one, based on feminine modes
of understanding learning. Specialisation and isolation of expertise are
seen as masculine things while collaboration and interdisciplinary
approaches are deemed as feminine.

“The increasing emphasis on connections and meaning across the curriculum
will demand new roles for the professoriate. Recent attacks on the
undergraduate curriculum (Boyer & Levine 1981; AAC Report 1985; AAC Task
Group, 1988) have converged on the fragmentation characterizing the
undergraduate curriculum. Requirements based much more on political
considerations than sound intellectual merit have delivered an incoherent
smorgasbord of specialized courses as an excuse for undergraduate liberal
education. Attempts to build a more coherent and defensible baccalaureate
experience will encourage faculty to engage in much more team teaching,
interdisciplinary curriculum design, and integrative course experiences.
These features will again require faculty to step out of their narrow bands
of specialization and work together collaboratively, learning from each
other and mutually considering problems of complex nature. As a recent
participant in a collaboratively taught interdisciplinary general studies
course, I can attest to the potent form of faculty development that it
delivers: learning new skills in intellectual and pedagogical realms is a
continuous and intense experience when one works as a team with other
colleagues in different disciplines.”

Watching the team work becomes the sport rather than coming to terms with a
body of knowledge. Fragmentation is “solved” at the horizontal level in a
denial of the intrinsic virtues of the various specializations that have
been collapsed into the collective agreement. This is not how the Bauhaus
worked. You had to come to terms with Kandinsky and his ability to paint
nothing.

Which gets us back to my opening point in my original email about Nigel’s
undergraduate complaint that he objected so much to the masculine process
of being evaluated, based on no teaching, that he effectively spent 50
years determining what might best be taught to design students about
designing. Problem solved.

How then do we arrive at infantilization through this process of finding
discrete knowledge that is teachable and that can be delivered in a
collective mode of help etc.? Let’s take up fragmentation seriously. The
apprehension of a world as a whole is a cognitive achievement. Those of us
who have experienced radical fragmentation of self and the world have a
sense of the tenuous nature of this wholeness. We look out and we see,
mostly, a world, most of the time.

We are not sure that babies apprehend the world the ways that we agree,
mostly, that we all (except for mad folks) see the world. Nigel’s urgent
project, as I see it, has been to determine coherence and pattern and
insight into the world through a presumption that design is a discipline
(has an observable coherence), that design is a way of seeing (finds
distinctive patterns), and, design has research tools/methods that allows
design to map uncharted territory (brings intuition to bare on problems).
That is, design is able to sustain a public educational and societal world
in the face of threatening individual fragmentation.

And, if we do not hold to a collective agreement about this design world
then we will be like babies, each of us stumbling around with a fragment of
the knowledge of DESIGN. If we agree to care for our design world, we
might, at best become novices. Why must we be novices? Because if we become
masters then the world that we see, as masters, is not directly open to
teaching, though, on my account, it IS open to learning. We would be
idiots, at best.

Caring, as described in the Du Nann Winter article is premised on the view
that babies are taught, through care, to construct a world of care. That
is. Babies duplicate the world given to them through care, community,
cooperation etc. This idea might seem to have historical merit given that
almost all babies have been inducted into the world in a feminized mode.

But babies are not, in fact, taught. Babies learn. To treat babies as in
need of teaching is to infantalize babies. If we look at the world “infant”
we discover its Latin origins. Infant means, in Latin, without speech. Yes,
we provide babies with lots of examples of language, as speech (or sign
which can be a full-on language).  Nobody knows how they take that up and
disclose language, to themselves. For example, there is no adequate account
of how babies discern the units of sound that constitute words, phrases,
sentences etc. (There is a vast and increasing amount of data about this
but no comprehension.) Just as babies learn, of themselves in the world,
about gravity, so they learn, of themselves in the world, about language.
Indeed, the gap between babbling and speech proper is so profound that we
go from imitation of sounds to generation of novel instances of language in
an instant.

One can suggest that just as a child acquires generative language, so they
acquire generative design. Generative language means the capacity to
generative an infinite number of novel instances of language spontaneously.
Being able to spontaneously generate an infinite number of problem
solutions might sound extravagant until we remember, as we pointed out
before, that one of the biggest jobs the brain does is to inhibit itself.
We would all be mad if we were not continuously doing this inhibiting. Like
a person on funny drugs, we might stare at a light bulb until we die.

To finish, I would argue that when we avoid the perplexity of not knowing
and replace this affect with subservience to caring teaching, we make of
ourselves the infants of parents who seek to serve our best interest. No
more anxiety for Keith. The literature on the codling of the American mind
is all over the Internet so I really don’t care enough to help anybody with
this issue. I have nothing novel to say about the literature. The world
does not conspire to keep us ignorant. People conspire, in their pretend
care, to keep us in agreement with their need to care. Get up, walk.

Oh, my careless heart.


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