Burke

[Acree_Mike]

[From Mike Acree (980420.1218)]

Bill Powers (980416.0332 MDT)--

Peter Burke has asked me to look at the paper with the following URL:

http://burkep.libarts.wsu.edu/Papers/Identity%20Levels%20and%20Agency.pd
f

It is a study of the program and principle levels in 30 young mothers.

It shows how the interview technique can be used

with profit in studying higher-level organizations. I think it's a

ground-breaking paper.

It was nice to see some PCT concepts being applied in this way, though
I'm not sure how else the study qualifies as ground-breaking. Burke's
methodology is still group-oriented, and, as he states, there was a very
high degree of overlap between the level at which mothers were operating
and their social class. It would be interesting to get an idea how the
few lower-class mothers, as he calls them, transcended their presumed
program-style upbringing. Or were these mothers' financial
circumstances a temporary aberration in their family histories? (That
points to the hazard of indexing class by income.)

Thirty years ago Basil Bernstein (to whom Burke refers) characterized
social-class differences in language in term of elaborated vs.
restricted code. His student Joan Tough found those differences very
striking already in children 3 to 7 years old. When asked to describe a
scene, socioeconomically disadvantaged chidren proceeded, like Gregory,
by paratactic enumeration of concretes: "There's a boy and a girl and
there's a bus, a red one, and some traffic lights." Their advantaged
counterparts not only used more abstractions but also projected more
into the past or future, and imputed a central meaning: "I think
there's going to be an accident because this boy is just going to run
across the road when the bus is coming." It is easy to suppose that
restricted code constrains one more to the program level in thinking.

Burke capitalizes implicitly (I am tempted to say "unwittingly") on the
close connections between language, thought, and action in his reliance
on interviews as his data source. I think of interviews as appropriate
when the object of study is what people will _say_ about child rearing
(or whatever), especially to a psychologist they may be eager to
impress. But Burke is saved here by the fact that people are as limited
in their imagination as they are in practice. Investigators, like
Frances Schachter, who have observed lower-class mothers at home with
their children found that their "educational" activities consisted of
endless drill on numbers, letters, and colors. More interestingly,
Hilde Schlesinger has noted that mothers who would normally function at
the principle level (not her description) often revert to program-level
functioning with disabled (especially deaf) children, where their sense
of control is diminished. A very sweet, very Christian middle-class
mother once explained proudly to me how she taught her deaf toddler to
stay out of the street: she walked her daughter along the curb and hit
her every time she stepped off into the street.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me about Burke's paper is that the
concept of discipline itself seems (pace Ed Ford) more of a program-
than a principle-level concept (and education has largely become that).
At least, if discipline were to be interpreted at the principle level,
it would be a huge loss to the s-m community.

Mike

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin (980421.0053 EDT)]

Mike Acree (980420.1218)--

Nice summary. Thanks.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me about Burke's paper is that the
concept of discipline itself seems (pace Ed Ford) more of a program-
than a principle-level concept (and education has largely become that).

Discipline in the sense of "teaching consequences" is clearly program-level
if-then stuff. With self discipline you get into principles.

It may be that if-then consequential rules are a scaffolding for developing
principles. The story is that the ten commandments were intended to be
descriptive. "When thou shalt have grown up, this is how thou'lt be: Thou
shalt not steal...." But it was nevertheless expected that for many people
they would have to be presented as prescriptive if-then rules backed by the
image of a vengeful deity until they grew up some. In the conservative
view, principles and "character" are always imposed from without upon
unruly human nature. In the liberal view, they grow from within the person
as innate capacities. FWIW.

At least, if discipline were to be interpreted at the principle level,
it would be a huge loss to the s-m community.

Right. Kipling and Orwell worried about "blubbing" at a caning vs. _The
Education of Little Tree_.

  Bruce Nevin

(620 days to fix Y2K bugs.)

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (980421.0911 MDT)]

Mike Acree (980420.1218) --

It was nice to see some PCT concepts being applied in this way, though
I'm not sure how else the study qualifies as ground-breaking.

I don't demand perfection. What was ground-breaking about this study was
that it actually gathered experimental evidence and developed a means of
assessing two higher levels of control processes. Most others just talk
about the higher levels; these researchers put their ideas at risk by
experimentally testing them. Sure, it could be done better. But the only
way to earn the right to say that is to DO it better.

Best,

Bill P.

[Acree_Mike]

[From Mike Acree (980421.1540 PDT)]

Bruce Nevin (980421.0053 EDT)--

Nice summary. Thanks.

And thank _you_ for a most interesting reply. I might say here that I
have regularly appreciated your posts, even if I've had little of
substance to contribute in response; but this one is a virtuoso display
of economy, with the number of interesting observations packed into a
few lines.

It may be that if-then consequential rules are a scaffolding for

developing

principles.

It may well be; as Jean Gebser puts it, a given level can be transcended
once it can be concretized. But the trap for us, of course, is assuming
that each new level or structure is our ultimate habitation rather than
the scaffold. Education at each level (I'm thinking especially of
science) seems to consist largely of unlearning all the simplifications
we were taught at earlier levels. Impatient souls wonder from time to
time whether all the construction-deconstruction is really necessary,
but I suppose at least some of it is.

The story is that the ten commandments were intended to be
descriptive. "When thou shalt have grown up, this is how thou'lt be:

Thou

shalt not steal...." But it was nevertheless expected that for many

people

they would have to be presented as prescriptive if-then rules backed

by the

image of a vengeful deity until they grew up some.

I love that story more than I believe it. Whose is it?

In the conservative
view, principles and "character" are always imposed from without upon
unruly human nature. In the liberal view, they grow from within the

person

as innate capacities.

I'm afraid I love that story more than I believe it, too. I see that
distinction between liberals and conservatives in terms of their
child-rearing philosophies (presumably part of the reason why I usually
_like_ liberals better), but I _wish_ it distinguished them also in
terms of their political philosophies. It is "unruly human nature"
which liberals very much fear in wanting to use the police power of the
state to impose compulsory education "from without," or to constrain and
control capitalistic acts between consenting adults. The difference
between liberals and conservatives seems to me, not a matter of rule-
and punishment-based discipline vs. principles like love and respect,
but simply a matter of whether that discipline is imposed in relation to
ignorance and greed or sex and drugs. Like the mothers of disabled
children, we reach for the whip to control those "others"--the poor,
business people, libertines, addicts--whom we can't count on to conform
to our values. George Lakoff has drawn the parallel explicitly between
child-rearing and politics, but, remarkably, remains trapped by his own
disciplinary- vs. nurturant-parent model of the state: unlike our
friend Bill P., he never considers the possibility of a model where the
citizens are not children.

Mike

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin (980421.0053 EDT)]

Mike Acree (980421.1540 PDT)--

The story is that the ten commandments were intended to be
descriptive.

[...]

I love that story more than I believe it. Whose is it?

Some rabbinical wise guys back there someplace. I forget.

The liberal/conservative take came from a book called _Maps of the Mind_ (I
think), brief synopses of many and various theories or philosophies as to
what the mind is about. This particular one, entitled "Left, right,
center," concerned research into ideology by someone one of whose names was
Sylvan (I think). I haven't located my copy of the book since our move last
year; it may be in a box in the attic.

There are both liberal and conservative impulses (surprise!) in the
politics of public education, and indeed in individuals who profess
themselves to be one or the other. Sylvan Whoeverhewas was talking about
ideologies which (as I perceive them) are rooted respectively in fear and
trust. We each know both places. To exemplify the liberal in education,
look at Dewey; for the conservative, perhaps the traditional methods of the
Jesuits ("give me a child before the age of twelve, and ...").

It is "unruly human nature"
which liberals very much fear in wanting to use the police power of the
state to impose compulsory education "from without,"

The fear of unruly human nature is a conservative impulse in these people
identified here (perhaps self-identified) as liberals. But there are other
issues involved in the "police state" aspects of public education.

Around 1900, 2% of high-school age population was in school, the rest were
in the work force on farms and in factories. Because those who remained
were highly motivated, being trained to move into the managerial elite
exemplified by their parents, primitive pedagogical methods sufficed:
insert funnel, pour in information, induce regurgitation, repeat. Around
1912, the figure rose somewhat to about 10%, perhaps 18% in 1920. With the
Depression, the percentage of high-school age kids still in school zoomed
above 50% for the first time, and truancy laws were passed and enforced
much more widely than before. This was because there was no place for them
in the work force, adults did not want their competition, and parents
needed them off their hands while they scrambled to meet economic needs.
While still trying to serve the 2% or 10% elite (the managerial class was
expanding), schools also had to become mass detention institutions to keep
unwilling and uninterested kids off the streets, an extension of the prison
system if you will. Old pedagogical methods no longer worked, even for the
elite, motivated students. In the next decade or two, school attendance
rose to 96%, the baby boom made stretch marks that are still with us, the
tasks of teachers became hopelessly conflicted, and the public schools have
never quite resolved the tangle.

Note that a child who is not born to the managerial elite could be
"motivated", could desire and work for academic success, only with deep
conflict. You are not accepted by those to whom it comes naturally because
clearly you are not one of them; and your efforts are seen by your
working-class peers as a rejection of them. "Whaddaya think y'r better than
us?" One way of dealing with the conflict is to cultivate the persona of a
nonconformist loner. Another is to try and fail, finding acceptance by
fulfilling the expectations of all concerned. The conflicts experienced by
a working-class kid are even more acute for racial minorities. In all of
this, suppression of "unruly human nature" takes on class and racial
overtones, or perhaps those are the fundamentals and not overtones at all.

I may not be saying it well, but I know what I'm talking about here.

  Bruce

[Acree_Mike]

[From Mike Acree (980422.1053 PDT)]

Bruce Nevin (980421.2218 EDT)--

I may not be saying it well, but I know what I'm talking about here.

From what I can tell, you know what you are talking about and are saying

it well. No argument from me on any of it. I especially appreciate
your point about adults forcing children into prison-schools in the
Depression because they didn't want the competition in the workplace.

The liberal/conservative take came from a book called _Maps of the

Mind_. . . .

I don't know that one, but it was also the subject of Thomas Sowell's _A
Conflict of Visions_--he spoke of the constrained and unconstrained
visions--as well as of Lakoff's _Moral Politics_.

There are both liberal and conservative impulses (surprise!) in the
politics of public education, and indeed in individuals who profess
themselves to be one or the other. . . . We each know both places.

Yes, very much my point, though I hadn't heard anyone else acknowledge
that.

I was especially interested in your remarks about the conflicts of
people from working-class backgrounds in academentia, having recently
become sensitized to them by a fellow escapee, Lin Farley, author of
_Sexual Shakedown_. It now seems to me that I've acquired a feel for
that; it's difficult to put into words, beyond some quality of
iconoclasm or irreverence; but I often have a sense of whether a fellow
academic is from a working-class background. Even authors I haven't
met, though it's presumptuous to take any of this too seriously. But,
without knowing anything about the authors personally, I'm sure Jared
Diamond, author of _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, is not from a working-class
background, whereas I wouldn't be surprised if Terence Kealey, author of
_The Economic Laws of Scientific Research_, were. (Maybe not the best
examples--I was trying to think of two comparably radical books.) I
realize you were talking about conflicts in the environment-of-origin,
but bicultural individuals tend not to feel quite at home anywhere.

In all of
this, suppression of "unruly human nature" takes on class and racial
overtones, or perhaps those are the fundamentals and not overtones at

all.

Yes, it has seemed so to me. In a remote example (which I mention
because you might well know), I have wondered whether 17th-century
efforts toward standardization of grammar and orthography (e.g., by the
French Academy) were motivated in part by the desire to mark
social-class differences.

Mike

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (980422.1312 MDT)]

Mike Acree (980421.1540 PDT)--

...as Jean Gebser puts it, a given level can be transcended
once it can be concretized. But the trap for us, of course, is assuming
that each new level or structure is our ultimate habitation rather than
the scaffold. Education at each level (I'm thinking especially of
science) seems to consist largely of unlearning all the simplifications
we were taught at earlier levels. Impatient souls wonder from time to
time whether all the construction-deconstruction is really necessary,
but I suppose at least some of it is.

If you're going to learn about relationships, they have to be relationship
between SOMETHINGS. So you have to learn about the somethings first, don't
you? For this reason I disagree with Dag's statement that we should learn
principles before programs. If principle perceptions are functions of many
program perceptions, it seems to me that you must already have program
perceptions before you can develop any principle perceptions.

Best,

Bill P.

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin (980422.1755 EDT)]

Bill Powers (980422.1312 MDT)--

If you're going to learn about relationships, they have to be relationship
between SOMETHINGS. So you have to learn about the somethings first, don't
you? For this reason I disagree with Dag's statement that we should learn
principles before programs. If principle perceptions are functions of many
program perceptions, it seems to me that you must already have program
perceptions before you can develop any principle perceptions.

Learners and teachers often use analogy. The program perceptions that the
students have might not be the program perceptions for the science being
taught, but they might be for some other domain to which analogies could be
drawn. It would be necessary to have program perceptions, but the specific
program perceptions (and lower) for the science could be in process of
being learned while the principle perceptions are being learned, in a kind
of bootstrap process.

  Bruce Nevin

[Oded_Maler6]

[From Oded Maler (980423)]

(Mike Acree (980422.1053 PDT))

Yes, it has seemed so to me. In a remote example (which I mention
because you might well know), I have wondered whether 17th-century
efforts toward standardization of grammar and orthography (e.g., by the
French Academy) were motivated in part by the desire to mark
social-class differences.

Je ne sais pas, but as one of the victims, I think this is a kind of
gate-keeping mechanisms mentioned earlier.

--Oded

[R_Marken]

[From Rick Marken (980424.1220)]

I have finally taken the time to read Peter Burke's paper at:

burkep.libarts.wsu.edu/PapersIdentity%20Levels%20and%20Agency.pdf

and, at the risk of revealing even futher the level to which I
am Bill Powers' sycophant, I must admit that I, too, found it
ground breaking. Burke's research is an excellent first step at
trying to find out, via observation (interviews) what kinds of
program and principle perceptions parents control then they parent.
Burke's conclusions are based on the results obtained from
_individuals_, not from a group.

Very good work, Peter. I hope you can make it to the Vancouver
CSG meeting because I would love to discuss this project with
you in detail.

No wonder you rarely post to CSGNet. You are actually out there
observing behavior and testing PCT. Bravo!

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken

[David2]

I have read the article and found it interesting, worthwhile and
possibly clinically useful. I wonder if Stephen Burke has read Dick
Robertson's self-image paper?

If we take a parent who functions typically at the program level, and do
the MOL exercise with him/her in nonparent related areas, can we help
the person go up a level and perhaps, change the way parenting is
approached?

If there are tapes or transcripts of an interview, I would love to
listen to one, along with the analysis of transcript. Any chance?

The relationships between typical level of functioning and other
variables (for example, social class) is of less interest to the PCT
approach and more consistent with conventional approaches.

Very nice work!

Richard Marken wrote:

···

From: David Goldstein
Subject: Re:Burke
Date: 4/24/98

[From Rick Marken (980424.1220)]

I have finally taken the time to read Peter Burke's paper at:

burkep.libarts.wsu.edu/PapersIdentity%20Levels%20and%20Agency.pdf

and, at the risk of revealing even futher the level to which I
am Bill Powers' sycophant, I must admit that I, too, found it
ground breaking. Burke's research is an excellent first step at
trying to find out, via observation (interviews) what kinds of
program and principle perceptions parents control then they parent.
Burke's conclusions are based on the results obtained from
_individuals_, not from a group.

Very good work, Peter. I hope you can make it to the Vancouver
CSG meeting because I would love to discuss this project with
you in detail.

No wonder you rarely post to CSGNet. You are actually out there
observing behavior and testing PCT. Bravo!

Best

Rick
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken