Making Meaning and Using Natural Resources: Education and Sustainability

A natural resource is not given, but depends on human knowledge for its exploitation. Thus a 'unit of resource' is, to a significant degree, a 'unit of meaning', and education is potentially important not only for the use of resources but also for their creation. The paper draws on poststructuralism to confirm the intuition that it would be misleading to conceive of 'units' of meaning. However, it is commonly acceptable to conceive of 'units' of resource, as in much discussion around sustainability; but, if the latter concept is suspect, then so is the former. The error seems to arise from the assumption of identifiable points in space-time, already problematised by quantum mechanics and poststructuralism. Conceiving of 'now' as a moving in and with time, rather than as a point in time, human survival is construed as an ongoing process of meaning-making constrained though not determined by the carrying capacity of the planet. The Second Nature conception of John McDowell is critiqued with respect to this.     

Information audit: whose line is it anyway?

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High Stakes Testing and the Structure of the Mind: A Reply to Randall Curren

'High stakes testing' is to be understood as testing with serious consequences for students, their teachers and their educational institutions. It plays a central role in holding teachers and educational institutions to account. In a recent article Randall Curren seeks to refute a number of philosophical arguments developed in my The Limits of Educational Assessment against the legitimacy of high stakes testing. In this reply I contend that some of the arguments he identifies are not mine, and that others survive his critique.     

Images of Native Americans

This article summarizes a background study conducted for museum staff planning the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Through interviews we identified attitudes of Smithsonian visitors toward Native Americans. Three results stand out: First, although most visitors have had some minimal contact with contemporary Native Americans, imagery of the past dominated their responses. This past is characterized as a period in which Native Americans had freedom of movement, had control over their destiny, and lived in harmony with nature. This peaceful existence was destroyed with the arrival of the Europeans. Second, current Indian life is seen as grim, except in those cases where Native Americans have fully assimilated into urban environments. Implicit is an assumption that traditional life and values can only be maintained on reservations. At the same time, reservations are associated with poverty, alcoholism, unemployment, and poor health care. Third, visitors would like the new museum to emphasize aspects of Native life and culture that are unique or different from their own. Overall, visitors have only a cursory familiarity with Native philosophy, history, or current conditions. Very few express strongly held beliefs or positions about Native Americans.