Review: Knowledge in the Blood by Jonathan D. Jansen
The assignment...
In preparation for our trip abroad, we were assigned to read the text Knowledge In The Blood by Jonathan D. Jansen. Initially, as with any class I was none that excited to read the book. After all I have my passport and my bags ready, already. Not to mention we were told that it "wasn't one of the easiest reads". So, why waste 360 pages of my life?
Description...
"This book tells the story of white South African students—how they remember and enact an Apartheid past they were never part of. How is it that young Afrikaners, born at the time of Mandela's release from prison, hold firm views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people, and fatalistic thoughts about the future? Jonathan Jansen, the first black dean of education at the historically white University of Pretoria, was dogged by this question during his tenure, and Knowledge in the Blood seeks to answer it.
Jansen offers an intimate look at the effects of social and political change after Apartheid as white students first experience learning and living alongside black students. He reveals the novel role pedagogical interventions played in confronting the past, as well as critical theory's limits in dealing with conflict in a world where formerly clear-cut notions of victims and perpetrators are blurred." (Amazon)
Post-Procrastination thoughts, aka my review...
So, this is the part where I eat crow.
Alright, down to business. For one, the book is not hard to read nor is it had to get into. I actually found it quite easy to read, minus the parts where I literally had to read the book for fifteen minutes and then put it down for another fifteen minutes otherwise I was going to explode from racial angst and frustration.
One area that we discussed about the book was the idea of the “transmission of knowledge”. Meaning, how does a culture pass down information to future generations. The most striking area in which the “transmission of knowledge” enhanced my understanding of this process was through the issues raised in the section in which Jansen discusses perceptive formation of second generation knowledge. Specifically the seven areas of knowledge, indirectness, transmission, influence, relational, mediated and paradoxical.
Currently I teach tenth grade history (US I) and before that I’ve taught 11th grade history (US II) and “African-American” History. Both of the schools that I have taught in are in the “urban” setting with a large population of “minority” students and a large population of “majority” teachers. It seems like the way that Jansen explains the “transmission of knowledge” pertains to exactly the African-American or wider “non-white” American experience moreover how it is handled, discussed and taught within our classrooms. It literally takes me about three months for my students understand the subject matter in more than just the third level of Bloom’s Taxonomy when discussing the conduct of race, language, culture, etc. The issue that race, ethnicity outside of the W.A.S.P. “American” tradition takes a lot of time to deconstruct, particularly after so much emphasis was and still is put on that ideal as the standard to being "American". The idea that Jansen describes as “knowledge and not experience or trauma or pathology” is not within the social norm of our modern society. The ideas that the Afrikaners expressed as described in the section "On The State of Being Defeated" ad very similar to how we dealt when our country went through desegregation and even grapple with in our farcical "post-racial" Obama society.
It can even be seen within our society as recent as last year when a caucasian woman sued a college under affirmative action for not being allowed entry to a institution due to her race. The very claim of "reverse discrimination" being ludicrous in its very nature (yet similarly claimed by the new generation of Afrikaners as seen on page 119). Racism has an institutional backing, and therefore, has a dramatic impact on the target group's life. This is quite different than bigotry or even personal prejudices that caucasian peoples may feel from other groups.
The very steps of "indirectness, transmission, influence, relational, mediated and paradoxical" come into play, particularly due to my subject area. It is interesting hearing from my current students even "recalling" 9/11 and the Iraq war. Many a time, I do forget how much older I am compared to my students and how different their experiences are from my own. Furthermore, my own upbringing presents a different scope, even on the most basic educational level and fundamental understanding of transmission of knowledge. As an educator, I understand that there is social bias within each group which lives within either country. However, it is the idea that knowledge and NOT experience or trauma or pathology truly be explored within our classrooms, and considered when creating policy and curriculum.
In closing...
It was quite interesting to read about South Africa and have such a connection with the text through my own knowledge of Jim Crow America. By reading Jansen's descriptions of what it was and is like in South Africa, it reminded me of powerful images of stories I have been told all of my life by my mother and maternal aunts about Jim Crow and Southern Life before the Civil Rights movement.
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| Apartheid in South Africa |
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| Jim Crow in America BILL HUDSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES |
1 comments:
This INFORMATION is so nice so sweet,
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