Perhaps a more apt dichotomy to consider is whether learning flourishes
under competitive or cooperative conditions.
“Caring” is not synonymous with femininity nor incongruous with
masculinity, and caretaking is not equivalent to infantilization.
However, I will admit you appear to be an expert on inhibition, or lack
thereof.
c

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 8:57 PM Keith Russell <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> 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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