Maybe I have drank the kool-aid, but I can't stop thinking about Baudrillard. Denis, I have to say that initially I had some strong thoughts on why you would have selected Baudrillard as a potential philosopher to connect with questions around curriculum. The only reason I chose Baudrillard was because of the date for the presentation listed in the syllabus and no other. At first glance, the reading selection seemed ridiculous and non-sensical. I believed I would have nothing intelligent to say about Baudrillard because I could not understand a damn thing he said.
So how did I go from a place of being in an intellectual Baudrillard barren wasteland, to, in this my final blog... Baudrillard rocked my world and I don't care who knows it.
Well, is it not a trip to really have your paradigm stretched, shifted and toyed with?
As a person who has been in school now for the past four years (Masters backing on the Post Bac), at times I feel "all learned out". In reading another scholar, another stance, a different way of looking at an idea, another pedagogy, there is often familiarity there. A sense of "I heard this in some way, shape or form before".
But Baudrillard...ah Baudrillard.
Things are not as they appear and I am so glad Morphius, I mean Denis, has laid Baudrillard and other thinkers like McLuhan down in front of us to trip us up a bit.
Without realizing it, bigger picture, out of the education realm thinkers, can help us make sense of the world we are so entrenched in. We are more systematized and caught up in the world of schooling than we know. Outsiders to education helps us to understand that it is not just in education where "ways of knowing and being" exist. Baudrillard, McLuhan and even my old pal Maxine challenge us to be in a state of "wide-awakeness" and be aware of what is potentially at play and at stake.
Ideas like simulacra may seem abstract and "way out there", but the relevance to the work we are doing with children and the curricular choices we make are rooted in the here and now.
Case in point. In reading report cards this past weekend, I was thinking about Baudrillard. What does it mean when we report to parents on what is important in our classrooms? Based on teacher comments, is the "curriculum" really about completing assignments, handing in homework, making corrections, being quiet in class, separate subjects, neatness and organization, understanding concepts and skills etc. ? Are we assessing kids on how well they "do school"? If this is what we value, is any of this "work" real? Is this the true curriculum of school if this is what we report on? Is the reality that we have created of what is "real school" is based on a non reality?
The point is that my thinking has been expanded. I could not have seen curriculum or education in those term before. I like that. I am grateful for that.
As I have said before, it is a priviledge to have the luxury of thinking, reading, blogging, and discussing along side of all of you, with the help of our new friend Denis. Thank-you for the provocation and "the trip"; to think deeply about what is so integrally important to all of us, the education of our children.
lb
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Chaotic Thoughts on Baudrillard- Vegas and Processed Cheese
As I am preparing for our group presentation, I have been making notes in a random and "happenstance" kind of way. I thought these inner rambling might help in thinking about what you are reading for our presentation on Wednesday.
To understand a bit of this article you have to come at it from the belief that if you open yourself to the chaos, you can find some order and make sense of some things.
The copier and the copied are take fake so much that all “truth is lost”
There is no reality anymore-replacement of symbols, images, signs- take on a life of their own. What is real anymore?
Hollywood imitates life? Life imitates Hollywood? The medium is in the message, the message is in the medium.
To simulate: Replicate, reproduce, copy, imitate, suggest, create, conjure up, fake
Modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with signs and symbols and the human experience is a simulation of reality rather than reality itself? Eg-Facebook and friendship
Where do we have simulations in curriculum where the real is not real?
Example: Instead of exploring with a real microscope and real slide samples, the teacher has the student read a textbook explanation of how to use a microscope and examine slides. To examine the parts of the microscope, the teacher gives a worksheet with a picture of the microscope labeled for the students to complete while the real microscopes sit unused on the counter at the back of the room. What is real about this experience? Have the students lost a sense of what is real about microscopes in this simulation? Do the medium change? “We have to do the “boring” stuff first before we can get to the fun stuff.”
Simulacra- signs of culture and media that create the perceived reality. –blog reference to sex and pornography and the Paris Hilton phenomenon
Simulacrum- is that which never hides the truth- it is the truth that conceals that there is none(truth). The simulacrum is true. In other words- What is truth? There is no truth.
Precession of simulacra- the way simulacra have come to precede the real.
Three types of simulacra:
1st order- image is a clear placemarker for the real item
2nd order-mass produced copies-“water down” the original- associated with industrial revolution –e.g. photocopying images from the original.
3rd order- Simulacrum (signs of culture and media that created perceived reality) come before the “original” and reality breaks down. There is only simulacrum.
E.g. – The only experience a child has with art is through reproductions in a book, on a computer, or poster reproductions, but has never been to a gallery to look at real paintings or created real paintings. The student has never listened to a real person play a real piano and has only listened to recordings.
A student has only played hockey on the computer, and never put on skates and stepped out on the ice.
The student learns about Africa through films, tv commercials, books, and has never met someone from Africa and will never visit the continent and countries within.
The fire drill and “Code Yellow” drills.
The student has only read about microscopes but never held one in their hands and played around with one.
Where does this blurred view of reality come from?- Television, film, print, internet
Goods that are needed vs. goods for which a need is created by commercial images
Exchange value- money rather than usefulness
Multicapiticalism-???
Urbanization-seperation of humans from the natural world.
Language and ideology-to obscure reality rather than reveal it
The analogy of the map- map as representation. The map being made before the real geographic territory
Hyperreality- present age- real objects have been taken over from the signs of their existence.
Ideas from Sandoz:
A work of art as a reflection of something “fundamentally” real.
Simulation becomes confused with the source.
The image of the simulation has been extended theoretically.
This sense of loss of what the previous meaning held.
Difference between simulation and simulacrum:
Simulation- to mimic, intent to deceive, imitate behaviour-process
Simulacra-a form or appearance of a thing, a mere image, almost hollow or phony, on the surface level- the condition produced
Sandoz talks about Plato and I thought about Vegas and the images, status, buldings created to be representations of the real. If a tourist goes to “Venice” in Vegas first and the European Venice second, in their construct, which is the real Venice?
In simulacra- not only are we deceived, but our original sense of real is altered- What tastes like cheese? Kraft dinner powder- or a block of “real” cheese. A child growing up on KD, Kraft slices and Cheeze Whiz-tastes a block of French aged cheddar and says-This doesn’t even taste like cheese! The simulacra proceeds and the original reality is altered and replaced.
What if God could be simulated? What do we worship, consider our higher power, are slaves to, would do anything for? Money, power, greed...
This idea Sandoz talks about with regards to Baudrillard ideas about work- work for its own sake, being of little real use, work is used to conceal that work-real or production-real has disappeared. Take a farmer- is their work real- planting, growing, harvesting food- to sell- to feed- we need food don’t we? –What does this mean for the work of schools- what is real useful work for children- Are they working at tasks for the sake of working- to hide the fact that the usefulness has gone out of school? What does this mean for curriculum? What is real work-productive work? What is original work?
The idea of hierarchy being broken down in simulacra coming from Dekeuze. The original being precieved as “best” and the process of recreating, reimaging, appropriating being seen as natural and helpful and new. It is a evolutional sense of reality. Not seen as negative, like, oh damn, we can never get back that orginal state of … but that the simulacra is natural and can be seen in positive terms. Sandoz talks about this idea of a privileged point of view that sits along side the idea of who’s original reality gets the favorable nod.
To understand a bit of this article you have to come at it from the belief that if you open yourself to the chaos, you can find some order and make sense of some things.
The copier and the copied are take fake so much that all “truth is lost”
There is no reality anymore-replacement of symbols, images, signs- take on a life of their own. What is real anymore?
Hollywood imitates life? Life imitates Hollywood? The medium is in the message, the message is in the medium.
To simulate: Replicate, reproduce, copy, imitate, suggest, create, conjure up, fake
Modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with signs and symbols and the human experience is a simulation of reality rather than reality itself? Eg-Facebook and friendship
Where do we have simulations in curriculum where the real is not real?
Example: Instead of exploring with a real microscope and real slide samples, the teacher has the student read a textbook explanation of how to use a microscope and examine slides. To examine the parts of the microscope, the teacher gives a worksheet with a picture of the microscope labeled for the students to complete while the real microscopes sit unused on the counter at the back of the room. What is real about this experience? Have the students lost a sense of what is real about microscopes in this simulation? Do the medium change? “We have to do the “boring” stuff first before we can get to the fun stuff.”
Simulacra- signs of culture and media that create the perceived reality. –blog reference to sex and pornography and the Paris Hilton phenomenon
Simulacrum- is that which never hides the truth- it is the truth that conceals that there is none(truth). The simulacrum is true. In other words- What is truth? There is no truth.
Precession of simulacra- the way simulacra have come to precede the real.
Three types of simulacra:
1st order- image is a clear placemarker for the real item
2nd order-mass produced copies-“water down” the original- associated with industrial revolution –e.g. photocopying images from the original.
3rd order- Simulacrum (signs of culture and media that created perceived reality) come before the “original” and reality breaks down. There is only simulacrum.
E.g. – The only experience a child has with art is through reproductions in a book, on a computer, or poster reproductions, but has never been to a gallery to look at real paintings or created real paintings. The student has never listened to a real person play a real piano and has only listened to recordings.
A student has only played hockey on the computer, and never put on skates and stepped out on the ice.
The student learns about Africa through films, tv commercials, books, and has never met someone from Africa and will never visit the continent and countries within.
The fire drill and “Code Yellow” drills.
The student has only read about microscopes but never held one in their hands and played around with one.
Where does this blurred view of reality come from?- Television, film, print, internet
Goods that are needed vs. goods for which a need is created by commercial images
Exchange value- money rather than usefulness
Multicapiticalism-???
Urbanization-seperation of humans from the natural world.
Language and ideology-to obscure reality rather than reveal it
The analogy of the map- map as representation. The map being made before the real geographic territory
Hyperreality- present age- real objects have been taken over from the signs of their existence.
Ideas from Sandoz:
A work of art as a reflection of something “fundamentally” real.
Simulation becomes confused with the source.
The image of the simulation has been extended theoretically.
This sense of loss of what the previous meaning held.
Difference between simulation and simulacrum:
Simulation- to mimic, intent to deceive, imitate behaviour-process
Simulacra-a form or appearance of a thing, a mere image, almost hollow or phony, on the surface level- the condition produced
Sandoz talks about Plato and I thought about Vegas and the images, status, buldings created to be representations of the real. If a tourist goes to “Venice” in Vegas first and the European Venice second, in their construct, which is the real Venice?
In simulacra- not only are we deceived, but our original sense of real is altered- What tastes like cheese? Kraft dinner powder- or a block of “real” cheese. A child growing up on KD, Kraft slices and Cheeze Whiz-tastes a block of French aged cheddar and says-This doesn’t even taste like cheese! The simulacra proceeds and the original reality is altered and replaced.
What if God could be simulated? What do we worship, consider our higher power, are slaves to, would do anything for? Money, power, greed...
This idea Sandoz talks about with regards to Baudrillard ideas about work- work for its own sake, being of little real use, work is used to conceal that work-real or production-real has disappeared. Take a farmer- is their work real- planting, growing, harvesting food- to sell- to feed- we need food don’t we? –What does this mean for the work of schools- what is real useful work for children- Are they working at tasks for the sake of working- to hide the fact that the usefulness has gone out of school? What does this mean for curriculum? What is real work-productive work? What is original work?
The idea of hierarchy being broken down in simulacra coming from Dekeuze. The original being precieved as “best” and the process of recreating, reimaging, appropriating being seen as natural and helpful and new. It is a evolutional sense of reality. Not seen as negative, like, oh damn, we can never get back that orginal state of … but that the simulacra is natural and can be seen in positive terms. Sandoz talks about this idea of a privileged point of view that sits along side the idea of who’s original reality gets the favorable nod.
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