Nobody seems to ask the question what words actually are and exactly their relationship to the human nervous system.

--William Burroughs

Schooling and the State

Ever since I starting studying schooling during my master's degree, I was struck by how current and essential the problematics being analyzed in this discipline were to any understanding of inequalities and dominations that are present in many societies around the world today. Yet, when reading educational research, I was almost always left wanting more, as if much of the research didn't have the theoretical rigor that I was seeking. What was missing from this research? An example of this desire for more coming from work that was just on the verge of being brilliant is the writings of Zeus Leonardo. His use of Critical Race Theory to discuss the sociological realities of racialized or White Supremacist education was certainly on point in terms of the framing and the theme he was discussing. But, his final analysis did not leave me satisfied that his approach would be all that successful at exposing the inner workings of race in education. Why?

Perhaps, one reason for this emerged yesterday in a conversation with Professor Robotham at CUNY Graduate Center. He noted that educational research has often approached these sorts of themes through the social justice and "rights" perspective. This approach is important in its own right, but it may be blind to the actual political purpose that schools play in modern societies. Without an understanding of the political motivation around public education to begin with, how can one understanding in any in-depth way the complex reasons why schooling looks the way that it does today? One framework that can remedy this may be looking at education and the State. What roles does the school play in the 21st century State, which more and more governs diverse groups of people in racial, cultural, linguistic and class terms. How does a State in the 21st century develop political stability in the context of State domination that is required of its institutional success? As we know, schooling was seen by the founders of modern day nation-states as the essential location to "make good citizens", which may be translated into loyal subjects. In national contexts with minorities in terms of class, gender and race, what purpose did education serve if these groups where often relegated into second class citizenship? Some scholars (perhaps like Mahmood Mamdani, who I need to read) have argued that for a multicultural State of be stable, it needs to recruit a certain number of elite natives onto its side. In this way, schooling is fundamental to the training of this native elite.

Could the same be said about 21st century schooling? The goal of my project is to examine the various ideological and pragmatic motivations behind schools as an institution of the State.

Thoughts of Quilmes

The picture that first greets you as you enter this blog comes from the Ruinas de Quilmes near Tucaman, Argentina. I visited this site in June 2014 during a month long trip to Argentina. The experience had a certainly spiritual tone that the visiting of any location of long lost civilizations normally is. The Quilmes lived in Inca-inspired city on the base of a mountain, with a view at all angles of other mountains and long, wide valley. This area, now full of towering cactus, was home for many hundred of years of a unique people, with intricate cultures, ideas and lives, who held out the Spanish for 150 years until they were finally conquered and forces into their own Trail of Tears toward Buenos Aires. To stand in a place where thousand of children were born and learn to make sense of the world made me wonder how much one's environment shapes the mysteries and questions one has about the world. This place, so immensely beautiful, would have inspired a native inhabitant to indescribable awe. Like the Grand Canyon, I ask, what vision of the world does one have who is born here and lives most of his/her life in that one spot? How is that different from Michigan, or Italy or Algeria? A young man when we arrived gave us a brief introduction to the history of Quilmes. He said that the inhabitants spoke a language related to Incan, now long long lost. What knowledge did this language hold? What poetry did it have that could explain, expand, and lay out the beauty and terror of the world?

This week in quotes (Sunday August 24th)

"The impulse to create begins--often terribly and fearfully--in a tunnel of silence."

--Adrienne Rich, Arts of the Possible, p. 150

"For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt--of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 a.m., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning death--while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths."

--Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury

"Understanding, as distinguished from having correct information and scientific knowledge, is a complicated process which never produces unequivocal results. It is an unending activity by which, in constant change and variation, we come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality, that is, try to be at home in the world."

--Hannah Arendt, "Understanding and Politics" in Essays in Understanding

"In making poetry, or an kind of art, we're translating into a medium--in this case language--the contents of our consciousness, wherever they may come from, let alone the huge underground beneath consciousness."

--Adrienne Rich, "Some questions from the profession" in Arts of the Possible

"What remains? The language remains..."

The title of this blog comes from the evocative title of an interview published in Hannah Arendt's Essays in Understanding 1930-1954. In an interview, Günter Gaus ask Arendt if she had returned to Germany after her fleeing to the US in the late 1930s and if so, what remains of the pre-war Germany that she once knew so well. Here is an excerpt.

Gaus: When you come to Europe, what, in your impression, remains and what is irretrievably lost?

Arendt: The Europe of the pre-Hitler period? I do not long for that. I can tell you. What remains? The language remains....the German language is the essential thing that has remained and that I have always consciously preserved.

Gaus: Even in the most bitter time?

Arendt: Always. I thought to myself, What is one to do? It wasn't the German language that went crazy. And, second, there is no substitution of the mother tongue. People can forget their mother tongue. That's true--I have seen it. There are people who speak the new language better that I do. I still speak with a very heavy accent, and I often speak unidiomatically. They can all do these things correctly. But they do them in a language in which one cliche chases another because the productivity that one has in one's own language is cut off when one forgets that language. (pp. 12-13)

This dialogue is interesting and telling for many reasons. The permanence of the mother tongue for Arendt demonstrates that language lives somewhere deep inside all of us, even when it can be connected with profound trauma. Arendt appears to have made an active choice to not equate the German language with the atrocities that occurred in Germany in the Second World War. Therefore, she has remained in contact with the language that she thinks and writes in everyday. Second, she recognizes that access to her mother tongue is essential to be able to be creative in any language and avoid, as she says, chasing one cliche to another.

What happens when the language does not remain? When language is lost, suppress or dumbed down?  How many people have no access to their mother tongues because of monolingual schooling and/or linguistic nationalism that "act like heavy tanks advancing out from a more or less distant centre which claims uniqueness for itself, flattening any cultural and linguistic diversity they find in their path” (De Mauro in Italian Cultural Studies, 1996, p. 95).

What is lost when languages die, are forgotten, or are hidden far from "view"?

Anthropology and colonialism

While I am reading some of the foundational text of anthropology, I can now see how central the institutions and ideologies behind colonialism are to the history of anthropology. In texts by Malinowski, Bateson, Mead and Evans-Pritchard, for example, the authors hardly mention the colonial structures by name or presence, let alone critically discuss their impact in candid ways. Yet, occasionally the authors mention how one of the practices that they are studying, especially those they consider to be most exotic and perhaps horrifying, are now outlawed by the British Government. "The Government" is seen as worst neutral and as best as a type of civilizing force that rationally outlaws "barbaric or primitive" practices. The impact on culture of these colonial powers never or hardly analyzed. In this sense, colonialism is rendered almost invisible, especially in terms of what this means for an cultural interpretation of a white anthropologist. For a new anthropologist like myself, one must never lose site of the origins of the field deeply embedded in the history of colonialism and empire.

I wonder, who were the first anthropologist to see through the use of this field for colonial control? In what ways is anthropology used today for control of groups of people or even for neo-colonial projects?

Applying for a PhD in linguistic anthropology

One of the purposes of this blog is to document--from start to finish--the processes involved in becoming a linguistic anthropologist. These processes include my intellectual questions and challenges, adventures in graduate study from admissions to dissertation writing, and other reflections on language, identity and anthropology. One of the motivations behind this type of forum is to dialogue about graduate programs in anthropology based on my own experience with it. When I was applying for my PhD program, I had so many questions about the process and it felt that there were few places on the internet where genuine discussion was taking place. It appeared that confusion and anxiousness was the status-quo for applicants and candid discussion about the application process was hard to find. Of course everyone (including myself) has the (perhaps) childish desire to find a "how to get into grad school" website that outlines "must-dos" to get into your program of choice. For example, everyone wants to know what the minimum or desirable GRE score is and what to say on your personal statement. Yet, perhaps these aspects are mere distractions from the real important questions at hand. Applying for graduate school is difficult and emotionally draining. But, if you know that before you begin, at least you will not be surprised by it. I certainly was not accepted to all the schools I applied for. But, I did, in the end, get into the school that was probably best for me. I think now that because I had many years outside of university, I was able to understand that something as important as PhD study takes time. I prepared myself for over a year for the application. I don't think that this should be something entered in haste.

Here are a few consideration that I would like to share about the steps I took that were very helpful and other aspects of the application process that I didn't learn until after I had already applied for my degree. As my graduate work proceeds, I will amend these according to the things that I learn.

Things that I believe helped me get into graduate school:
1. I studied really hard for the GRE. I don't consider myself naturally very skilled at standardized testing. In fact, as an activist and researcher in the field of education, I am very much against standardized testing both in terms of its practical effectiveness to demonstrate skills and the intrinsic values and motivations behind its implementation at all levels of education. Additionally, I had already taken the GRE once when I applied for my master's program, and I didn't do very well. I realized that if I wanted to have a strong, well-rounded application, I had to get at least a decent score on the test. In order to do this, I required a significant change of attitude. I tried to think positively about the test as a game for my intellect. Then, I study for at least two months. I took many practice tests (all of which are free online). I didn't take a paid course, but focused on self-study. In the end, my scores were dramatically improved. Take the GRE seriously, and you will not regret it. I know that I didn't get into graduate school because of my GRE scores. But at least when I was applying, I didn't have to fear that my GRE scores were the excluding factor for which I was rejected.
2. I emailed as many professors as I could before you apply and tried to meet with them. Many of the professors I emailed didn't respond to me. But, some did. I made a trip to visit these schools before the decisions were made. I think this gave my application some help at least in one case. I wish that I had emailed these professors earlier, but I didn't have my project ready ahead of time in order to email them about it. I should have worked on creating my project earlier in order to be able to contact the professors earlier.
3. I showed my project to several people--friends, former professors and relatives in order to get advice. I wrote many many drafts of my project. It took me months of research and writing to come up with the final draft. This process helped prepare me for beginning graduate school and it made my project more professional than it otherwise would be.
4. My many years outside of undergraduate work helped me to establish a specific project based on my real life interests. I know that other students develop a project during their undergraduate study. In any case, I believe that a specific project was important to my application.

Things I only learned after I applied:
1. In order to be accepted into most programs, your project needs to mirror not the former work of the professor with whom you would like to work, but his/her current research. While I was applying, I saw many professors at all the schools I was applying to whose past work was of great interest to me. Yet, professors want students who can teach them something of interest to them. This means your work should be very closely tied to the current interests of certain professors at the school. This will be one of the most important indicators of successful admission, I believe. This fact was emphasized to me by a professor at Columbia, whose work I greatly admire. She was very kind in telling me the truth: that acceptance into graduate school requires students to go where ever the professor who is doing similar research works. While I was very focuses on a few certain universities, I overlooked other schools that probably would have been a great fit on academic terms.
2.  At coffee with a PhD from the university at which I will be attending, my friend told me that it is essential to have a clear idea about what you want to do after your PhD before you start your program. Do you want to teach? Do you want to do research? Do you want to work in the private sector? Although it is difficult to know how you may change throughout your PhD program, it is important to make decisions early on to set yourself up for a successful post-graduate career. I hope that I can follow this advice.