Subject: Re: Authority and Authorship
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Wed 26 Jan 2000 - 07:45:10 MET
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 16:45:10 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Authority and Authorship
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On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Cathy Burke wrote:
> I have noticed a related point which has been put by
> several students in different ways. This is to do with a notion of
> 'authority' and how we become familiar with it in an educational
> context.
I have thought about it and my conclusions are that a need for authority
comes from insecurity. Insecurity, in turn, comes from the lack of
security. No this is not to sound banal but to explicate all ends. So
maybe before we conclude that our students need this or that (i.e.
teachers, books, nmore grammar as in my field) I think it may be useful to
raise teh perspective a bit and to just put it plain: they may just need
security. This, in my view, is something different than to say that they
need a teacher, a book, of more grammar drills. I know many people
at universities today, supposingly brought up in the culture of a book and
the authority of the teacher. Are they all now very much secure? On one
trip to the US, in one of more "prestigous places", I saw all the young
staff tremble because to be tenured they had to write 6 articles and a
book! How bad can it get?
To them it was a huge task, mostly because they feel so little in a
library which is so big! (and they can be big in the US:-))
My answer is: they felt a burden because they do not know the field of
their profession from the perspective of experts but just from the
perspective of learners. Maybe here is something to worry about? I would
claim that 20 years later the same people will not know more, but rather
less. But they will be secure and appear smart because they will find out
that the library books were written by humans too. They will develop (and
not build upon!) economy principles for organising and dealing with
things. They will have a command over very little but will execute it
superbly in a large variety of contexts. At present, these people have a
command over a lot, but ain't got a clue what they know. So, my thoughts
as usual tend to go back to teachers (and most importantly to universities
that I believe do not help) and our teaching.
I therefore would ask, do learners need the teacher to pat them and tell
them that they do well, or do they need to find a source of security
within themselves. Teacher, then, books computers arguments on-line,
conferences, karate-movies, the task of bringing up a dog, a child, seeing
your in-laws grow slowely old, all would function as parts of the contexts
within which learnes would elaborate on the meaning of things. The meaning
must be theirs, otherwise, they will always need an authority figure,
until, one day, they will appear on the top of the ladder and there will
be no one to look up to. They will have to pretend that they are it: the
leader and teh authority. But inside they will know well that they are
not. So what would this make out of us and out of the system that
suppports a need for authority rather than a need to argue and tell others
how things are? The trick is of course we all have to do the telling
smart, otherwise no one will listen.
Now I am not saying that they should learn off-line or on-line. I do not
know what these things mean. What I am saying is that we need to give
what, to quote Calhoun and David Wiles (from an old post),
survives statistical and critical examination of the principles on which
we form our beliefs as to the appropriacy of the teaching/learning
conditions.
> they have difficulty in questioning authority and this is reflected in
> their own writing which is often deferential.
we do agree here. We just have to think out more how to overcome it
and I would not suggest that satisfying the craving for an authority
figgure is to give in to the illusion and the system of repression; and
automatically it also means failure on our part.
> What excites me about introducing on-line learning within traditionally
> taught courses is that authorship can be reflected upon and that the
> authority figure can be shifted from centre stage.
We need no computers for it. No doubt that computers can do what other
media can't. The trick is to find out what is it and so what?
:-) with best wishes,
Ania Lian
ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2
please, keep checking my IFETS-site:
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