Power, Knowledge, and Education

by Michael Goeller, Fall 2000

Assignment #1: What's the purpose of knowledge?

The title of the question says it all, really: "What is the purpose of knowledge?" A simple question to ask, but a tough one to answer, at least if you're sitting at a desk with no one around. But hey, there are lots of people around to help you get started! You have Richard Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. And you have Peter Drucker. And you have your classmates. And you have lots of other voices around you, really -- including your parents, people on TV, and your roommates. Let's try to keep those last voices out of our conversation, at least for now (hint: turn off the TV! oh, and tell your roommates to keep it down -- say, "hey, could you be quiet already, I'm trying to make some knowledge here!"), and let's try to engage closely with the voices at hand: Miller & Spellmeyer, Drucker, your classmates, and you.

What I'd like you to do as you begin writing your draft for this paper (or as you begin your pre-writing, where you are thinking on paper in preparation for drafting) is to imagine you are in our classroom with Drucker, Miller, and Spellmeyer. Your classmates are around for moral support and they say things occasionally (sometimes they even say things worth quoting). The four of you are here, talking about knowledge. This is a serious conversation for them, so you're trying to be serious too, even if that's not your usual style.

Of course, this "conversation" has to take place on paper (or in electronic form), in essay form. But you have a lot of information to help you make it happen. You have what they have written, after all. You should use direct quotes, point to implications of their arguments, and talk about their examples. And you should try to figure out, based on your reading of them, just how they would answer that question: "what's the purpose of knowledge?"

As the conversation gets started, you might end up taking something of a back-seat to these guys, paying attention to what they've said. Would they be in complete agreement on everything? Where do you find controversy between them? Let's make this conversation interesting. Don't settle for simple answers. Try to draw out from their essays what they are really saying about the purpose of knowledge. I know they don't say it all directly. You have to pay close attention. What do they imply? What do they say (and be sure to quote them on it) that could be taken as an answer to the question? Explain how that answers the question. And explain how it relates to things that the other guy(s) has said. Really mix it up with them.

Now that you have things going (you're in charge here, after all), I want to hear your voice too. Join this conversation. How do you see things? Start to define your perspective in dialogue with these writers.

As you start to refine that conversation, you should revise your initial draft of the paper so that it reflect more of your point of view. The paper should start to have an argument (your argument), as you start to have a sense of your project in the paper. Do you agree with these writers? How so? What have they left out? Or where do you think they seem to be misguided? What is the purpose of knowledge anyway? How does your view connect with those of Drucker and Miller & Spellmeyer?

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Assignment #2

Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer discuss the relationship between Peter Drucker's and Benjamin Barber's essays at some length in their introduction to our book. They note that there are certainly differences between the two essays, but a more useful response than identifying differences is to "think connectively" by searching for "common ground" in their ideas.

Drawing on a synthesis of Drucker's and Barber's visions of society, try to address the following questions in a coherent and original essay: Why is community so important? Who (or what) needs to take the most responsibility in the new society for promoting community? And what can they do to create community in an age of increasing mobility and alienation?

Before focusing on the one most responsible, in your view, for establishing community, you may first want to set forth your synthesis of Drucker's and Barber's views of the various powers in society that have to power to promote or undermine it. I'd especially like you to think about the idea of "responsibility," since it is a recurrent theme for both writers. Drucker asks: "And what responsibility does knowledge have? What are the responsibilities of the knowledge worker, and especially of a person with highly specialized knowledge?" then "But there is also society's need for organizations to take social responsibility ­ to work on the problems and challenges of the community." And Barber writes: "Responsibility has become the leading principle of the new minimal-government politics-- a politics that asks high-school community-service volunteers, welfare mothers, and disemployed workers to shoulder the burdens of the economy and the community, and to stop expecting government to remedy every social ill. It is time to make the same demand of corporations and businesses. Responsibility and power go hand in hand: nothing has greater power today than a multinational corporation; no group has been left with less responsibility." Clearly, the issue of responsibility is important for them. Notice, though, that while both Drucker and Barber raise the issue of responsibility in their essays, neither has completely answered the question posed above in bold.

It is up to you to do the work of "connective learning" which, according to Miller and Spellmeyer, "moves from an awareness of the stakes to an informed and original position."

Assignment Goals:

To work on developing an argument that also creates a conversation among the voices of the various authors under consideration to work with quotations from both authors, discussing all quotes to develop your own argument in your essay -- an argument that doesn't merely recapitulate the views of one of these writers but constructs a useful synthesis of their ideas.

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Assignment #3

The situations discussed by James Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance involve highly asymmetrical power relations where, he claims, issues of power are "ubiquitous" and that "[n]o real social site can be thought of as a realm of entirely true and free discourse." Yet in the contemporary western societies discussed by Benjamin Barber and Peter Drucker, there is an assumption that people can communicate openly and that a balance of power will mitigate social inequality.

How do we keep our society from becoming like those that Scott describes? What are the most important threats to equality, according to these writers ­ and how can they be resisted? What are the "arts of resistance" by which our society can maintain a balance of power?

This is an especially hard question because it is really asking you to come up with an original theory about power in society based on a reading of three essays that do not directly discuss this topic. You

must argue that there are important social institutions or ways of approaching threats to equality that can help us avoid the drastic asymmetries described in Scott's essay. Important: Try to use Scott's views of power to frame a discussion of at least two examples of threats to equality and ways of resisting it from Drucker and / or Barber. And be sure to use all three readings in the course of your essay.

Assignment Goals:

To develop an original argument (or theory) that can help explain and connect three seemingly unrelated essays around a central insight into the issue of power.

To discuss quotations from two or more authors together within paragraphs, developing connections and explaining quotations and connections carefully.

To present a coherent essay that sets forth a clear argument in an early paragraph, forecasting the main issues that the paper will then explore and develop.

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Assignment #4

In this assignment, I want you to use James Scott's terms and ideas to help us better understand the workings of power in the Bedouin society described in Lila Abu-Lughod's "Honor and Shame." And I want you to consider how ideas we have encountered in other readings could help to improve the lives of subordinate groups in that society.

Question:

What do the hidden transcripts and public transcripts reveal about the arts of resistance practiced in Bedouin society? What ideas, institutions or social practices discussed by either Benjamin Barber or Peter Drucker could improve the lives of subordinate groups in Bedouin society if they were introduced there?

Discussion:

This assignment's greatest challenge is that it asks you to apply Scott's ideas to passages from Abu-Lughod's essay, and to use Scott's terms to explain the sometimes hidden or even confusing elements in these passages. In order to do this well, you will have to practice the arts of close reading that Scott himself illustrates ­ quoting passages and discussing them very carefully to reveal details that might be easily overlooked. You need to show how quotations or incidents in Abu-Lughod's essay become clearer when framed with terms or ideas from Scott's essay. Try always to be aware of the complexity of the situations her essay describes, and remember that Scott tells us "Power relations are not, alas, so straightforward that we can call what is said in power-laden contexts false and what is said offstage true."

In applying the ideas of Barber or Drucker to Bedouin society, you may feel like you are judging a different culture on Western terms, and that may trouble you. You are welcome to examine the fairness of such cross-cultural criticism if you like and to find an different approach to the assignment if you think applying Western standards to Bedouin culture is not right. For example, you might instead consider whether the Bedouin society that Abu-Lughod describes will eventually develop the institutions and practices described by Barber or Drucker as it becomes more Westernized ­ or, alternately, whether the people in that society might become even more set in their ways in Jihad-like reaction to these Western ideas.

Assignment Goals:

To use ideas from one text to frame examples in another text. To practice the skill of close-reading, discussing passages with great care and attention to detail. To develop a well unified paper that uses three authors in its argument.

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