Kyle > Recent Status Updates

Summing up the long and sometimes torturous journey into a New Literacy, and describing this process as "clearing away some of 'dead wood'" (p. 226) couldn't be more of an apt description. Many many pages, remnants of such dead wood, are used to describe what people want or expect from reading and writing skills that numerous institutions in the States and Britian claim will help build the economy, really cashing in.

The mountain, it seems, has come to Mohammad in this chapter which explains why an anthropologist in North East Iran had so much to write about literacy: the Unesco Persepolis Symposium in 1975. Street was no doubt there to report on his observed village, as was Viscus on literacy in rural Tanzania. Clearly eye-opening experiences for both, learning the "backwards" people in the sticks did have the right end of them.

Continuing to show signs of lightening up, Street now considers the farming community where he lived and note the new "commercial" literacy that borrows from the old school-style of literacy indigenous to the mountainous countryside. It actually looks quite simple, using school books as ledgers but as this case study reveals, there is a lot more going on, especially with the urban students who cannot read the system.

A vast improvement over the theory section of this book, what Street finds out through his decade in the northeast of Iran the actual people who use literacy in various ways closely related to the 'idealogical' method he laboriously defined in the last chapter (seems like a lifetime ago). The freedom to interpret and choose between texts, even have some fun with literacy as Mullah Nasr-ed-Din, is a welcome discovery.

Luke gets all Henry V-ish in delivering rousing speeches to his band of rebel brothers, and it actually increases tension in the final battle to hear about the loss of friends and allies. Hard to picture how exactly the spectacle would be staged, but those are the magical theatrics for a director's creative team to decide, and for the audiences to wonder at. Most likely teachers will soon put on such a play.

More sympathy for the stormtroopers manning the Death Star is on display in act four than seen in the laser battles from the original movie, and the image of Luke Skywalker soliloquizing with a trooper's helmet gives this Hamlet in Space more gravitas than most sci fi classics (that don't already have Shakespearean actors in the cast). Luke, Han and Leia start their quarrelsome friendship while fleeing Tarkin's grip.

At the midpoint of the play enters the highly sought-after Han Solo, reminding me of a younger self and how many times my friends and I did vie for this role. Now with this text any child who can handle blank verse can play this part, leaving the question of who plays Luke open (and like Han shooting first, unanswered). Leia sings a dirge at her planet's destruction, and it is the first of few poetic shifts.

Slowly starting to hit the big Shakespearean themes of fate, honour and responsibility, but the plot still runs a bit too linear - all this time with Owen and Beru when it is Obi-Wan's guilt-tinged conscious that moves the story along. Governor Tarkin emerges in this act as a duke of dark powers, similar to some of the best stage villains whose words were put to page, Darth Vader still remains like a stock character.

For a young person's first introduction to Shakespeare, it is amusing to see many of the lines that will be repeated in something like the original context. As a first encounter with Star Wars, on the other hand, mayhaps it will be the cause of consternation to try figuring out what is going on with the typical minimum of stage directions or explanation: how does one explain an iambic droid to the uninitiated reader?

Back to the beginning with Gyanumaya climbing the side of a Chetri's house, that gets re-examined from a culturalist and constructivist points of view, revealing something missing on both parts. Identity and agency rely on a combined sense of improvisation that subverts social and political oppression. The point is brought home by recalling particular moments from preceding chapters, many of which I wrote about here!

There is a certain sense of closure with the authors' return to Nepal, and their investigation of the Tij festival that presents an alternate world, through dukha (family struggles) and rajniti (political) songs. It is no surprise that women in the 1990's would be brandishing sticks, smashing alcohol bottles and chasing loutish husbands out of the gambling dens. Like research-based theatre, art has the power to move!

Finally, the book has turned into my kind of research: taking examples from literature, in this case medieval courtly love and 20th century nationalistic newspapers, and examining the connections to human activity. Not that I don't value case studies that interview human subject; it is just I would rather prefer to understand the figured worlds that a society produces, not the people who make up this or that society.

Are there really such brutish men in Naudada, reminiscent of the figured world I first encountered of Nepal: Marion's tavern in Raiders of the Lost Ark? It should be no surprise, then, that alcohol, gambling and spousal abuse takes place in this anonymous village, and Skinner examines the women who adapt and resist this man's world where the imposed identity of a "good woman" keeps women in this scary place.

The amount of effort that Lachicotte's subject Roger puts into authoring himself in a borderline discourse makes it hard to imagine him doing anything else but looking for mental health problems. Yet it could be a more honest and authentic search for self than most of us, claiming to be psychologically fit, are willing to put ourselves through. Like the reverse of hypochondria, we only go so far creating an identity.

Identity-making in the sense of authoring oneself is the idea discussed in the groundbreaking psychological studies of Vygotsky that get mashed up with the discourse analysis of Bakhtin. As with most revolutionary Russian thinkers, there is more than just the one name attached to the theory, and I enjoyed to read about respective collaborators Luria and Voloshinov in the dialogue on how we author our cultural worlds.

Forget all the "eye of the beholder" bollocks, the research team lead by Holland discover some gendering issues in positions of privilege and power. They work out a way of dealing with the ad-hoc rules of attraction with favoured popular people that didn't involve grade three-level name-calling. This study also includes a critical look at David Mamet's play Oleanna as proof that institutional change happens.

As the authors shift focus to power and privilege, it is good in a disheartening way to reflect upon how I did not have to experience life as a lower-caste girl in Nepal, an African-American high schooler in Washington DC or an outspoken wife in Nicaragua (who reportedly was raped by a "reluctant" gang of men for breaking one of their rules), but still very impressed with the positions both subjects and authors take.

All well, for some, in this ending. Events happen a little out of place but used to sympathetic effect, especially the brief mention of chapter one's thistle. Not sure what is next for Butler, but it is pretty much a familiar story as what was lately seen, on screen, in The Hurt Locker, where the soldier gets taken out of danger, but danger never leaves the war-torn minds. Poor Marya, how does her story end?

A good indication of how people playing the figured worlds game adapt the rules as they play. The world investigated here is romance at two southeastern colleges, and parts of it are as mysterious as the fictional Emily Dickinson College in the 1978 movie Animal House, fortunately from a researcher's theoretical frame rather than naughty frat boys' point of view. Wonder where these interviewed women are now?

There are people who believe that alcoholism only affects people in North America, and that Europeans seem to be immune to the adversities of the bottle. Of course this is a myth, with plenty of examples in literature from the old world as proof of Europeans just as powerless against drinking. Still there is something about the disease of alcoholism, investigated by Cain, that could only be the result of prohibition.

Glad to have picked up this book again as I start writing my final papers, especially as both of them look at virtual reality, a big topic back in the late 1990's that has been put on the backburner over the past two decades. Very impressed with the constant reconnecting to Vygotskian self-authoring based on sociohistorical figured worlds. Even the alcoholism in next chapter may relate to Internet addiction in Japan.

Peril at Shamil's palace for the Murat family cranks upon the narrative tension, and the pleasant conversations with Marya and Butler are simply holding back Hadji's impatience with the double-dealing Russians. Even Butler gets dealt a nasty hand, similar to many dissolute heroes populating Russian literature. Seems like a happy reunion for Hadji's family just wasn't in the cards, and he is getting ready to cash out.

The Russians on the march features a hero from another time, Butler, who seems just happy to be anywhere where the fighting happens. Not sure what role he has to play. People who are not happy are the family who helped Hadji Murat in the first place, their village destroyed by the Russians Murat unleashed. Lastly, the man who is hardest to figure out, Murat himself, appears to be making the moves on Marya Dmitrievna.

Interesting how Murat's biography, faithfully recorded by Loris-Melikov, makes its way up the channels of rank and executive power: from generals to courtiers to the emperor himself. Each stage reveals a how mindlessly cruel those above are towards the men (and horses) beneath them. Good thing the Romanov line was nearing the end of its lascivious run by the time Tolstoy wrote this parody of Nicholas' absolute power.

Like the end of a Chekhov play, the book is tinged with sadness as the characters make their exits. Jo-ann finishes off her storywork framework with a few points about copyright, digital possibilities and how non-Natives should approach Indigenous storytelling. Not everything the story tells has to be theme-based, especially themes that can be put on a test, but the listener mindfully takes away what the story gives.

It all comes down to the teachers who decide to bring Indigenous stories into their classroom, and the importance of making them work (meaning the teacher works to understand its meaning before teaching them). Poor Molly Bishop who thought a bunch of photocopied Slug Woman stories were enough to engage her class. Try as best as I can to avoid making this connection, but many teachers do same with Shakespeare's plays.

The province's Law Court Education Society has all the impersonal trappings of a colonizing organization, yet is given respect for helping to get the pedagogical ball rolling. Jo-ann narrates her involvement with them, something that happened around the same time as I finished my journey in the K-12 school system. I am not 100% sure, but part of my college may have been with Ellen White, both of us in a film program.

More of a biography of Jo-ann's experiences working with educators and storytellers, she hints at the power of story in the first half of this chapter, but it is not until the second half, specifically when Coyote re-enters her discussion that the transformative power is present. It becomes clear that the silence-being-inside-a-story moment described in "the bird in the tree" translates beyond many language barriers.

Switching things up, Jo-ann describes the research sessions at the Coqualeetza Complex and the practices established by the Elders who met there. One fascinating aspect of this process is the use of humour, a rare commodity in educational research. Whether it is genial teasing or bringing a story to life, humour is often a good indicator of comfortable communication. Think how much is left out of a joke put on paper!

Jo-ann begins her journey into storywork research by cautiously stepping away from the comfortable campfire and searching for the right kind of questions to ask her Elders. The first two principles come to her assistance as she learns respect and finds that inner-trust, also known as responsibility. One important lesson in learning from Elders' story is what can be printed in public records and what must remain oral.