[Lonergan_l] hodic and terrifying: happy 2010
Jaray...@aol.com
Most groups and organizations usually do a year's review, wish the best
for the coming year and seek to plan for the new year and beyond. So while
wishing you all a happy 2010, I thought it might help move us along if we
noted that Phil, a legend within GEM studies, joined our site in 2009 and
that he hosted the 2009 Halifax Conf. and now invites us to the 2010
Vancourver Conf.
Before getting to the meat of this little email, I would like to quote
two footnotes from one of Phil's ever challenging writings, the first on his
use of "hodic" and the second on what he refers to as "terrfiying" pages
in the BL corpus:
1) I have been using the word “hodic”, meaning functional specialist, for
some time now,
with its reference to the linguistic root of “method” and to the
hod-carrier Tim Finnegan of the
song: “to rise in the world he carried a hod”.
2 The primary reference here is to the page is to p.464[489] of Insight.
Were I to
summarize Lonergan’s methodological challenge I would do so in terms of
two terrifying pages:
this page of Insight and p.250 of Method in Theology. There is of course
the terrifying paragraph
of the middle of p. 278 of Method in Theology, with its “one can go on”
that recalls the terrifying
page of Insight...See also Phil's website: _www.philipmcshane.ca_
(http://www.philipmcshane.ca/)
So to the "meat". Nothing ever gets done without organizations or
leaders. This site gave birth to the Society for the Study of Insight (SSI--under
the leadership of Catherine King) and its attempt to put a suitable site
stressing GEM's pedagogical aspect and its relevance to secular as well as
to religious studies. Lowell Cochrane devoted much time to help set up the
site. Thanks Lowell. In the meantime, the SSI leadership decided that there
were now enough GEM sites and that we should try to channel SSI activities
in other ways cooperating eg with the SGEME born at Halifax 2009.
Robert Hennam is the official planning director for SGEME (w. 87
members). Bob and Phil now invite SGEME members to eg do some basic studies on a
one or more GEM themes (possibly but not necessarily related to
participating at Vancouver 2010). Some such challenges might be that brought up by Phi
above as to "hodic" and its "terrifying" implications.
Since the membership(s) of the Skippersite, SSI and SGEME overlap to
some extent, I throw it up for grabs that those interested try to conduct
some initial interchanges here on the Skippersite that could lead to more
"hodic" work on FS 1-8, on the texts listed in 2) above or on some other topics
participants might be interested in--eg as in planning for Vancouver 2010
or on some other GEM topic. Lest such discussions be just vague or
"chaotic" (ie leading to no helpful conclusions), a person might take the lead in
coordinating and facilitating a particular discussion. But perhaps Phil
and/or Bob might first let us know whether ongoing discussion have been
occuring on the SGEME side,
John
_______________________________________________
You are subscribed to the Lonergan_l mailing list
Loner...@skipperweb.org
Archives on skipperweb:
http://skipperweb.org/mailman/listinfo/lonergan_l_skipperweb.org
List Moderators: John Raymaker and Adrial Fitzgerald
List Owner: Robert Boyd Skipper
St. Mary's University
San Antonio, Texas
For conversations or topics not directly related to Lonergan or to
the GEM (Generalized Empirical Method) please use the sister list, Eureka:
http://skipperweb.org/mailman/listinfo/eureka_skipperweb.org
Lonergan_L archives (from June 5, 2007):
http://groups.google.com/group/lonergan_l
Phil McShane
a right-on message from John, ambiguously welcome!
The 'ambiguously' brings in the question of honesty, especially when an
organization or institution is not doing well.
We just dont like the pause of a review that would reveal flaws.
So, I review SGEME and find that we need focus, and we must find a 2010
focus. And the same may well be said of the various other groups interested
in Lonergan's pointers [a distraction here ... the "one can go on" reference
is to page 287 not 278, and our issue is "going on effectively" in a manner
which is to make metaphysics efficient and thus one and beautiful: see
Topics in Education 160, line 16]. A metaphor might help here: we have a
city to take or take down - let's call it Gomorrah - in the tomorrow of
2010 [or, in my more realistic view, we should push forward so that there is
a group, or sub-group, with 20/20 vision in 2020].
The "one can go on" reference is central here, and I would tie it in
helpfully [I hope!] with the question of bearing fruit raised on MIT 355,
the first page of the MIT chapter on Communications. To take the city of
Gomorrah we need something like the phalanx [the military structure, but it
is also related to a well-boned hand], whereas much of Lonerganesque talk is
like soldiers round campfires outside the city, at best lamenting the
strength of the city's walls, at worst gossiping about unrelated topics and
possibilities. "Without the last, the first seven are in vain, for they fail
to mature" (MIT 355). We dont have the phalanx, or the outstretched hand;
nor do we have the first seven: interest in Lonergan's pointings, then, is
massively immature.
Let me go back to my original work of forty years ago, 1969, on the
immaturity of musicology. (The Shaping of the Foundations, chapter 2). What
this "going back" - instead of the "going on" of "one can go on" - what this
going back helps us to glimpse is that we are just not glimpsing at all.
Musicology is a respectable scholarly business that is largely ineffective
... the music industry runs the show, even though, yes, there is Bono doing
his bono show, and Placido Domingo can conduct a higher level thing in
recent Vienna outdoors .... but were their audiences effete?
The Meaning Industry? It is run by contemporary conventions of
ignorance, decay, malice: the most manifest of 2009 being the bailout in
USA. Was, for instance, the gathering on economics in Seton Hall a
significant "Lonergan response"?: there was no hint there of a phalanx, nor
was that absence noted in any serious way.
A first move then - it seems to me - is to acknowledge a clear failure -
or is it an obscure dishonest dodging? - of the function that is
Communication or Implementation. Might this, indeed, be a January
Reflection, BUT personal: What is the street-implementational effect of my
thinking, my work, our work, our web-conversing? So, for instance there
is/was the recent discussion of "the given": are there aspects of that
discussion that touch the walls of Gomorrah, the halls of learning of
tomorrow, the follies of the obvious "given" of meaningless commercial
success and failure?
The issue facing SGEME is, at present, the concrete promotion of
sensitivity, among Lonergan students, to the inattention - including our
own - to "IMPLEMENTATION" as being of the essence of Lonergan's view of
metaphysics. That is our 2010 focus. If the group can do that in 2010 it
would be a decent minimal effect. But, of course, we can hope for more.
Still, the "making it a topic" (MIT, 253) could seed more, could be an
effective voiced wake-up call to our various Lonergan gatherings. Like
musicology, Lonerganism can move on as a business, even as a comforting
groupiness, but it would be good at least to reveal that, to "reveal the
selves" (MIT, 253) that do the writing, the talking, the website
contributing that we are not going on globally, WE ARE NOT GOING ON
GLOBALLY.
Phil
Catherine B. King
FYI: Below is a clip from a relevant (I suggest) article posted on the
Teachers College Record website: www.tcrecord.org. (It's free.) The
article speaks (1) directly to the required slowness of real change at the
institutional level (writ-large) and (2) indirectly to the slowness of the
process of having and integrating insights on the personal level
(writ-small) of human history. (On the site, the article has a nice
reference page.)
Happy New Year to all,
Catherine
QUOTING:
"Across professions, continuing education of professionals is an essential
process, especially where change in and support of practice are concerned.
It is in professional development (whether it be professional preparation or
ongoing professional education) that research and practice are meant to come
together. Researchers in medicine (Haines & Donald, 2002), education (Ball &
Cohen, 1999; Guskey, 1986; Hiebert et al., 2002), and social work (Rapoport,
1985) find simply handing out information to be generally ineffective with
regard to changing or updating practice. So too are periodic workshops and
lectures that are not connected to practice nor aimed at a systematic
refining of practice (Lampert & Ball, 1999; Lieberman & Miller, 1991, 2001).
The failure of most professional development activities relates in part to a
failure to appreciate the change process; in part to a failure to grasp the
developmental trajectory of professionals; and in part to a lack of
understanding of the ways in which adults learn.
THE PROCESS OF CHANGE
"The Rand Study of Education Innovation (Berman & McLaughlin, 1978), a
comprehensive review of 25 years of dissemination efforts, laid out four
stages of change: (1) mobilization, (2) implementation, (3) adoption, and
(4) institutionalization. In each stage, teachers play a critical role. What
the Rand study's authors found was that innovations were rarely adopted in
whole. Rather, the ways in which innovations were introduced, monitored for
use, and supported determined whether the innovations were ultimately
adopted in the form intended. And even when adopted, it was the rare
innovation that actually became part of the fabric of the institution as its
way of addressing a particular aspect of the educational enterprise.
Barriers to institutionalization had to do with changes in personnel, lack
of resources, and, most important, lack of ongoing support for teachers to
use the innovation faithfully.
What has become increasingly clear to researchers of educational reform is
that serious deep-rooted change takes time (Fullan, 1993; Sarason, 1982) and
that teachers must be an integral part of the change process (Ball & Cohen,
1999; Hiebert et al., 2002; Lieberman & Miller, 1991, 2001). END QUOTE