Reproduzo aqui um texto curto (5 páginas) da minha amiga Liv Mjelde.
Sciences from Below.
Challenges in the social division of working and knowing
Liv Mjelde
The Senior Centre, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Abstract
My research field has been vocational/ technical education, including the chasm between vocational and academic approaches to learning, as well as women’s spheres, and men’s spheres in vocational/technical education. Epistemologically, I draw on Thomas Kuhn’s and Edgar Morin’s call for changes of paradigms in both natural and social sciences. New voices from women scientists that call for “sciences from below” – an inductive approach to scientific enquiry in education which will give voice to vocational students. The sociologist Dorothy Smith’s “standpoint of knowing” is central to my understanding, that is, situating the researcher concretely in relation to the field of research. Another of departure is comparative historical sociology. One studies the past to know the future. In this light I discuss the works of Maria Montessori, a pioneer in both medicine and education. She put her scientific experiences into praxis long before the women’s movement of the 1970ies challenged the hegemonic order in the sciences.
Keywords: vocational/academic education, feminist standpoint of knowing; paradigms of complexity.
Introduction
I am honored to be asked to share some thoughts with you at the opening of the Second Congress of EAPE in this historic city of Naples. I have had the pleasure of being part of the organization since its foundation in Athens in 2016 and have been a member of the board for 5 ½ years – a time that has enriched my life as a human being and as a sociologist. One of my research interests is the social division of knowledge which has developed during industrial capitalism, penetrating our lives in both work and family life with a specific division of masculine spheres and feminine spheres. This division manifests and replicates itself in schools and universities and is under constant challenge. Today we are all engaged in globalization and gender issues, two unavoidable subjects integral to facing complexities in educating future generations.[i] I have been inspired by Professor Natale De Santo’s interest in and knowledge of Edgar Morin, a fellow sociologist whose later work in complexity theory has been recognized as an important tool to the sciences.[ii]
Edgar Morin has just now, in his 100th year, received the Nobel Laureate “Albert Camus Mediterranean Price”, for his contribution to the world of science and to ways of posing new questions. Albert Camus, Edgar Morin and Natale de Santo have all given me inspiration.[iii]
Women’s relatively recent entrance into the world of science has given me nourishment for my reflections: from the marine biologist Rachel Carson with her combination of “scientific knowledge and poetic writing”, to women scientists of the 1970s who posed questions on the “situated gaze” in the sciences have all been important to how I pose questions. Sandra Harding[iv] devoted many years of work to standpoint theory: that will say, the origins of recent feminist epistemology. She shows how standpoint theory originated while trying to explain two phenomena. First, asking how the kind of research recognized as “good science” or “good social science” could produce such sexist and androcentric results as that which feminist social scientists and biologists started to document in the 1970s. The other was how to explain the successes of feminist work which violated the norms of good research, such as subjective engagement in research guided by feminist politics. Dorothy Smith’s standpoint of knowing, that is, situating the researcher materially in the realm of the research instead of seeking a vantage point from the outside the frame of study, is central in my understanding of the social relations of working and knowing. Her works, The Everyday World as Problematic and Doing Sociology for People show ways to do what Harding calls “Sciences from Below.”[v] Academia is still very suspicious of “subjectivity”, which essentially amounts to including the everyday experience and subjectivities of everyone’s life and particularly of the subjectivity of the academic. Edgar Morin[vi] points out that it is acceptable to engage in phenomenological research of someone else’s lived experience, but it is largely only feminist scholars who have stressed the importance of the presence of the knower in all her vulnerabilities. Morin insists on reminding us that life is not confined to one or two disciplines, but life involves one’s “whole everyday life struggles”. This is central to his scientific thinking. A philosophy of life cannot exclude these moments from its purview. Natale De Santo also stresses the separation in disciplines: “Although ‘disciplines’ are indispensable in our professional lives to solve general and fundamental problems, we have to unify knowledge which is now dispersed in many disciplines. It is necessary to develop a more complex method of thinking and a more complex paradigm of knowing.”[vii]
On this occasion I want to honor an Italian pioneer who overcame enormous obstascles in the world of science in the late 1800s. I speak of the Italian physician and educator, Maria Montessori.[viii] She is best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy:. I share her grounded belief in human beings’ ability to learn from birth to grave.
She was one of the first women to be allowed into the study of medicine in Italy in 1896. She became world famous as a practitioner and philosopher in educational science. One of Maria Montessori’s pathbreaking discoveries was that children with development disabilities had presuppositions if they met engaging and problem-solving activities. As newly educated, she became a supervision doctor in psychiatric hospitals. Through this work she discovered the appalling conditions endured by children considered to be fools and idiots. They were hidden away in institutions and given no learning or development possibilities. She took practical initiatives to give them possibilities both for playing and learning. She discovered within these children hidden potentials and with time they learned reading, writing and arithmetic. The results were impressive and were called “Montessori’s first miracle”.
She opened her first school in Rome 1907. It was a school combined with a day-center directed towards working class kids. In Casa de Bambini learning was intended to take place through the child’s creative potentials and natural learning desire. This way of thinking about learning stood in sharp contrast to the classical cathedral views of learning of the times where children were supposed to absorb knowledge through blackboard education and memorizing. She built on her experiences which had shown that children had huge potential for self-discipline and self-learning. The results in the Casa de Bambini were so impressive that it was called “Montessori’s second miracle”.
Her devotion to research and practice has spread far beyond Italy. There are Montessori-inspired kindergartens and schools in many parts of the world, in Scandinavia, as well as in Latin America and Africa. She had a strong belief in everybody’s ability to learn and was deeply concerned about the teacher’s ability to adjust and redeem the inherent abilities in all human beings. A teacher, she argued, should be a guide and a mentor. This thinking is at the centre of our discussions on learning and teaching in EAPE.
ConclusionI have been deeply inspired by the transdisciplinary and complex thinking that penetrates EAPE. We come from different professions, but what we have in common is our praxis as teachers/mentors and researchers in search for new complex knowledge and development in our scientific fields as well as in the art of teaching and contributing to the furthering of knowledge. To recite our colleague professor Dennis Cokkinos: “A teacher holds the philosopher’s stone which can convert the novice to the gold of knowledge.” The program of the second congress in Naples Congress was rich and varied. I am sure it will be an inspiration for us all as we continue to contribute to building a brighter future fro humanity.
[i] Morin,E. 1999. Seven complex lessons in education for the future. Paris. Unesco 1999
[ii] De Santo, ND. Teaching Complexity. The Case of medicine. In Cokkinos, D, Agnantis, N. Gardigas, K., Soldatos, C: The Capital of Knowledge. Proceedings of the First International Congress. Athens: Society for the propagation of useful books. 2020. 127-142
[iii] https://www.eldiario.es/cultura/filosofo-edgar-morin-reencuentra-camus-companero-resistencia_1_8054431.html
[iv] Harding, S. Sciences from below. Feminisms, Postcolonialities and Modernities. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008
[v] Mjelde, L Canada’s highest award, the Order of Canada to Professor Emerita Dorothy E. Smith. In The Bulletin.EAPE Athens 2020. 25-26
[vi] Montouri, A. Foreword. Edgar Morin’s Path of Complexity. In Morin, E. On Complexity. New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc 2008
[vii] De Santo, ND. Teaching Complexity. The Case of medicine. In Cokkinos, D, Agnantis, N. Gardigas, K., Soldatos, C: The Capital of Knowledge. Proceedings of the First International Congress. Athens: Society for the propagation of useful books. 2020. 127-142
[viii] Befring, E. De pedagogiske kvalitetene: løfterike muligheter for barn og unge. Oslo Universitetsforlaget. 2018
Boteco Escola 