do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Saturday 3 April 2010

i am deeply sorry for all my previous impressions. i feel so lucky to have a few good teachers, and love the confidence it gives me to be challenged intellectually.
i am sorry i ask so much.
i have made an effort to get my head out of the muck.  for instance, i think duffy in the law department is such a valuable resource. his mind is razor sharp and his lecture fast.  i thanked him for his effort, with hint of other dissatisfactions.  he said, "oh, we're just old fashioned" and then i thought of sister mary david and her old fashioned grammar class.  low fi classrooms with a strict approach.  but duffy makes such clever jokes you rarely laugh out loud.  all the brain is occupied decoding them.  there is no time to laugh, he goes so fast, but gee he's funny.
i told him we need to digitize his lecture, just like they are doing at every major school, at london school of economics, or new york law.
i love c is for culture.
http://nyls.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=4f3acab65b424c17b0eeb26ec8be6bc2

and then my anthropology teacher ties the loose knots of what was the frayed odds and ends of philosophy i pretended to care for as a child.  and i am almost sure he is the best teacher ever, but maybe that is because i agree with him on so many things.  important things regarding racism and the environment.  so while my tuition is free, my rent is not, and i am here collecting debt and art, and reading this
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/usctheses-m220.html
if brian bartelt sticks around LACC you should really take his class.  no matter what your major or interest, we are all humans.  it is quite stunning.  and the field so profound.
while some professors could dull something to the excitement level of a dripping faucet, some have a gift for enthusiasm.
so i don't really despise LACC at all.
i just am trying to avoid bad energy, even including classroom bad energy.
the miracles of abstract thought and language are themselves magnificent.  but that is no excuse for sloppiness, sexism, and racism. especially tax-funded.
but i  think it is important to note that we are going to these old systems for old information, given in old formats.
so when they hand you a floppy disk, just say thank you and throw it over your shoulder into the infinities of ewaste.
when and if i leave, i will bask in the joys of tuitioned classes, or new loans, inconceivable loans.  i pray, i hope edu can go on for ever.  but i will have itunes U and books, and text to speech, and the wisdom of anyone, anywhere.
and that proff so and so brings a sexist tone etc, is just another drop in the bucket of the sorrows of american misogyny.
i am so sorry to exist, and i do not prefer to be around hater-people.  i think its lousy they can get paid to spread their hate ideologies.  my internet lectures at good schools, are completely compelling and academic. professional.

but the human experience, and the joy of speaking in class, questioning, and the joy of anticipation for class, that is really priceless.
as though there were nothing more we wanted than to be respected in our minds, to be treated as intellects, separate from the wageslave atmosphere of so many dead-end jobs.
LACC stop protecting abuse, stop paying settlements for incompetent admin, recognize the humanity of us . . . and stop protecting abuse.
hope its a great spring break everybody

Friday 2 April 2010


pam cash! i think you are always right!  i think i am going to move to oregon to participate in this phenomenon.  take some enviro policy and try to get into enviro law if i can figure out how to finance it.  if you have a scholarship foundation anytime soon, please help! so if i can't live my facetious edu dreams, then i will become one of those eco-hippie types, full time.  but what is messed up about LA most of all is the air.  i can feel it destroying my body, the lack of oxygen and rain.  the smog takes 20 points off my IQ which fortunately i can spare, but really sometimes i want them back.
i think my smog adaptiveness fails me because i grew up around oxygen.  my smog gills are just weak.  they didn't learn how to convert thick carbon monoxide and airborne particulate into powerful ideas like, pop culture.  i am stuck.  my brain is hungry.  i have to go.
even if oregon is a bunch of arm-chair activists and overeducated broke hippies, i really can't sacrifice my health much longer for life in this creepy town full of backward city planning, anti-recycling ethos, foul water, foul air, and narcissistic luddites.  if you have any ideas feel free to write me.  my anthro teacher set us up for this fun 8 week series at LACC sustainability with giovanna imbesi.  of course she has copyright password protected her little workbook, because you dont want too many people to catch on, you know, it is important to keep it secret and elite and ego-based!!! but overall it is a rad class and i can't wait to present.  and of course you know, LACC is not neo-richhippy melananin deficient trustafarian,  by any means.  we are talking a rad earth week, community garden etc.
of course admin is oblivious about discrimination and earth-hating policies.
they are so one-foot-in-the-grave boomer apathetic about everything, except their stupid paychecks.

i think you are profound.  what i want to know is that if that organic food is soaked in acid rain & airborne carcinogens, and irrigated with petrochemical, pharmaceutical laced water . . . how organic is it?
and hey greenwash is what they call this magic wand eco-narcissism that is self-deceptive.
or in law there is a whole new wave of litigation contra the grand greenwash deception, which uses green brand identity to trick well meaning consumers.
fiji and windex are among the sued . . . that's kind of cool isn't it . . .


in response to amazing
pam cash's

http://pamcash.livejournal.com/909968.html:

"I got an email from a place called Common Circle Education in Berkeley, Ca about a class they devised called Urban Permaculture Design.

This excited me greatly. It'd been what I'd been clamboring for in my head. I envisioned Downtown having gorgeous rooftop gardens, solar panels, local economies that could increase the standard of living for a lot of my neighbors and peers. Local production, local commerce, all within our deliciously dense jungle. 
 What I found on the site looked extremely disappointing.  Not only did it look like the word "Urban" was only thrown in the title to make it sound cool (I didn't see one photo of an even slightly urban situation!), but it went on to talk about green building, etc...

now, I'm no architect, nor am I a surveyor, nor am I an environmental analyst, but I'm pretty sure that tearing down the old buildings here and building a nice new Woodsy lookin' palace for rich white people would use MORE RESOURCES than occupying an old one and restoring it and maybe even convert it to using nice Sun-energy.

They talk about how exciting it will be to learn about using cool natural irrigation systems. I know I'm excited to gather and harvest the one week of rain we get here in SoCal. Conveniently, the classes are in NorCal or Oregan where nobody has to worry about such bothersome dryness. Maybe they would tell us all to move out to their suburban havens, which surely wouldn't be havens anymore once they became dense and other non-agricultural economies moved in.

The thing is I WANT to do this permaculture stuff, I want to live sustainably and I want to create awesome communities. But can the solution be that you're either A) an agrarian, or B) a magically rich person in some undisclosed location who buys the stuff but doesn't really factor into the big picture? My guess is that they have their heads so far up their idealistic asses that they have disdain for any city dweller, especially us vile and perverted Angelinos. I watched their little video.  "People live in cities... they're out of touch with nature." The same could be said with them and the reality of what is actually happening in the world and the type of change we really need.

So I wrote a  letter. I copied it to paste here but then uncopied it to copy the link so now it's gone. It was through their site, not my gmail, so I can't go back and get it. Lost. But it basically talks about that, and about how people who are privileged enough to afford their class have a responsibility (in my opinion) to make it useful to people in lower socio-economic classes. For example, if I learn how to be an organic farmer and run away to live on a little commune, I help the world by making them food, but I run away from the huge problem of all the homeless people in LA, and all the other myriad problems here. We need solutions for our communities, not solutions that involve running off to a modern hut in Hawaii. I don't want to save the world by living in a fringe dream where I can ignore the huge problems that matter to all kinds of people, not just neo hippy people.

So they haven't written back, but I've received an automated response encouraging me to be their facebook friend.

I'm not just trying to pick on them. I want them to offer a class that can be useful to me, not a judgemental bullshit class about yoga in a forest. I want to be a part of the solution. Maybe a big part! But I also want to listen to metal shows on the weekends, wear fancy clothes and have martinis, go to perverted clubs and dance to really loud music, and make out with strangers. Unless you, the reader, are my parents, in which case I'd like to stay home and read books during my free time.

I'd encourage the HUGE readership of my blog to t
 ake a look at the site and tell me your opinion. 
You can also check out the 
youtube video that infuriated me. 
Conclusion: I want to help the world too. I just want to do it in a city. Because I think rural living is crap, and wastes 
a lotmore energy than it thinks it wastes. I don't want to have my own organic farm! But I love organic farmers. Thank you for making my food.<3"