Underlying Themes—Who Are The Intellectuals?
From Learning Activities Using "The Yes Men Fix the World"
Contents |
1 Underlying Themes In The Film to Discuss As You Refine Your Project Plan—Who Are The Intellectuals?
| “ | The intellectual activity of those without power is always labeled non-intellectual. | ” |
| — Paulo Freire & Donaldo Macedo |
The Yes Men’s actions are a vivid and clear challenge to the hierarchy of "expertise." Remember when, after the serious presentation of the ridiculous Survivaball, one of the people in the audience asks how the ball could be used in a terrorist threat? Andy relates that: "Afterwards, we had a conversation with the two organizers and the two guys who had been in the ball. And they suggested that perhaps we might want to make it more comfortable. And also they had a problem with the price but came to the conclusion that the people who needed it could afford it." And remember all the business cards they were given, real-life "yes men" wanting to network with The Yes Men, even though The Yes Men are trying so hard to get their audiences to see that The Yes Men are really "The No Men." And, the BBC anchor never once questioned that Dow would take such an "un-corporate" action and announce it on TV? Even those who have more power than most, like the people in the audiences of The Yes Men, including the journalists, are deferential in the face of "powerful experts."
And, most people, including those who are not in power, disrespect the knowledge of those who are not in power, those who have not been labeled "experts" by some powerful institution. I think one of the most important educational experiences people can have is to understand that all people have knowledge, all people are continually creating knowledge, doing intellectual work, and all of us have a lot to learn. The misinformation that so many in the U.S. believe, and the fear that blocks so many in the U.S. from evidence-based reasoning, is not fixed, it is not static; it can be fixed. With lots of time and hard work. And it is not universal.
The first time I visited an encampment of the Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST, Landless Rural Worker’s Movement), over 100 people, of all ages, came to ask me questions. They were living in very rudimentary shelters, as they were occupying the land and in the midst of a struggle to gain ownership. My friend and colleague, Brazilian Professor Gelsa Knijnik, whose political and intellectual work is with the MST, told me that most could not read or write. The first question a young man asked me was why is the United States blockading Cuba? Then a middle-aged person asked me a technical question about Monsanto’s genetically engineered seeds. These people are "illiterate" in terms of reading and writing, but they have not been de-educated, and they have access to information and ideas through radio stations that present international news from the perspective of those outside the circles of power.
Following are examples of how the knowledge of people who are not in power has been discounted based on stereotypical assumptions of who those people were. You can present the initial mistaken disrespect of the knowledge, and have students think about what might be wrong with the reasoning of the person who discounted the knowledge. Then, you can present the alternative interpretations that show the serious reasoning involved.
- Ascher and Ascher[1] present a widely disseminated anecdote about a trade between an African Demara sheepherder and an explorer. The herder agrees to accept two sticks of tobacco for one sheep but becomes confused and upset when given four sticks of tobacco for two sheep. The story was originally told with a racist sub-text that the African herder was so stupid he could not comprehend that 2 + 2 = 4. An alternative interpretation, respecting the herder’s knowledge, "raises the issue of the difference between a mathematical concept and its application"[2] since sheep are not standardized units. So it is logical that a second, different animal would not also be worth two sticks of tobacco. "[T]he applicability of even the simplest of mathematical models becomes a question of cultural categorization"[3].[endnotes 1] Zaslavsky[4] relates that Howard Eves concludes his discussion of this anecdote in his book, In Mathematical Circles 9°, where he observes
Yet these Demaras were not unintelligent. They knew precisely the size of a flock of sheep or a herd of oxen, and would miss an individual at once, because they knew the faces of all the animals. To us, this form of intelligence, which is true and keen observation, would be infinitely more difficult to cultivate than that involved in counting.
- When I have used this example in class, students also speculate that a contract for the first sheep must be renegotiated when the initial terms change (i.e., a second sheep is added to the deal). When students reflect on this example, they begin to develop respect for their own logic, and a respectful attitude of interest to learn from others about how they think and why they give the answers they do.
- Another example that Ascher and Ascher discuss is from Lévy-Brühl’s 1910 work in anthropology, How Natives Think. He felt that the occasional substitution of 3, 7, or 9 for each other in the Indian Veddic religion, rituals, and legends was "an absurdity in logical thought…quite natural to prelogical mentality, for the latter, preoccupied with the mystic participation, does not regard these numbers in abstract relation to other numbers, or with respect to the arithmetical laws in which they originate"[5]. Ascher and Ascher counter his conclusion with information from a recent field study of the Kédang who also use this kind of number substitution: "When used in symbolic contexts, odd numbers are associated with life and even numbers with death. Substitutions within these classes are possible if circumstances require it. If, for example, a ceremonial period of four days is stipulated but cannot be met, 2 days will do but 3 would be a serious infringement…The formation of these equivalence classes is an example of an abstract idea about number[6]."
- The Navajo concepts of space, discussed by Shulman[7] in her summary of Bradley, Basham, Axelrod, and Jones’[8] research about language and its impact on mathematics learning among various nations of Native American students also challenge the universality of the traditional hierarchies of knowledge in mathematics:
The authors observed that ’the Western world developed the notion of fractions and decimals out of a need to divide or segment a whole. The Navajo worldview consistently appears not to segment the whole of an entity[9].’ Among their conclusions are suggestions that ’non-Euclidean geometry, motion theories, and/or fundamentals of calculus may be naturally compatible with Navajo spatial knowledge. Math classes should begin with these notions and continue de-emphasizing the segmentation of notions into smaller parts[10].’ In other words, for some students, it might be appropriate to teach calculus as elementary mathematics, and fractions in college!
- A non-mathematical example involves how Helen Keller was treated when she became an active socialist. The Brooklyn Eagle, a newspaper that had previously treated her as a hero, wrote "her mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development." Howard Zinn [11] relates that the Eagle did not print her reply to their disrespect, in which she wrote that when she had met the editor of the Eagle, he had complimented her lavishly:
but now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. . . . Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird it is! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.
…The Eagle and I are at war. I hate the system which it represents. . . . When it fights back, let it fight fair. . . . It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read all the socialist books I have time for in English, German and French. If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man, and make a better newspaper. If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness[12].
- Classically, many people who are in positions where they exploit others, often think that their positions in the structural hierarchy of their society are the result of their superior intelligence. There is a wonderful joke about one Native American saying to another Native American, as the cavalry approaches, "There goes Western Civilization as we know it." A cartoon along the same lines by Doug Marlette shows pilgrims happy at the gift of tobacco some Native Americans have just given them as thanks "for all we’ve done for them." Strangely, the package of "Natural American Spirit" cigarettes plays on this joke, using a picture of a Native American smoking a peace pipe. Check the company website for their claims that their company is socially responsible and earth friendly, material for some exercises about unintended satire. Check an alternate view of these cigarettes, which are marketed as "100% Chemical Additive-Free Tobacco," although they "contain 36 percent free-base nicotine, compared with 9.6 percent in a Marlboro, 2.7 percent in a Camel, and 6.2 percent in a Winston."
- Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?[13] is a hysterical, serious film about what counts as valuable in the art market, and who knows. It follows a 73-year-old former truck driver who buys a $5 painting in a junk store for her friend, and ends with her taking on the powerful in the art world to prove she has a genuine Pollack.
Underlying all these specific examples are more general concerns about what counts as knowledge and why. I think that one of the most significant contributions of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire[14] to the development of a critical literacy is the idea that:
Our task is not to teach students to think - they can already think, but to exchange our ways of thinking with each other and look together for better ways of approaching the decodification of an object.
This idea is critically important because it implies a fundamentally different set of assumptions about people, pedagogy and knowledge-creation. Because some people in the United States, for example, need to learn to write in "standard" English, it does not follow that they cannot express very complex analyses of social, political, economic, ethical and other issues. And many people with an excellent grasp of reading, writing and mathematics skills need to learn about the world, about philosophy, about psychology, about justice and many other areas in order to deepen their understandings. Marcuse [15] has even argued that in our society the rational, sophisticated calculations of, for example, nuclear kill and over-kill, are truly irrational, obscuring the only rational response to nuclear holocaust—resistance:
In this society, the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective mystification…For example, the scientific approach to the vexing problem of mutual annihilation—the mathematics and calculations of kill an over-kill, the measurement of spreading or not-quite-so-spreading fallout…is mystifying to the extent to which it promotes (and even demands) behavior which accepts the insanity. It thus counteracts a truly rational behavior—namely, the refusal to go along, and the effort to do away with the conditions which produce the insanity[16].
In a non-trivial way we can learn a great deal from intellectual diversity. Most of the burning social, political, economic and ethical questions of our time remain unanswered. In the United States we live in a society of enormous wealth and we have significant hunger and homelessness; although we have engaged in medical and scientific research for scores of years, we are not any closer to changing the prognosis for most cancers. Certainly we can learn from the perspectives and philosophies of people whose knowledge has developed in a variety of intellectual and experiential conditions.
One of the people who contributed to this guide stated how seeing all those highly educated people, including journalists, fall for The Yes Men’s outrageous pranks, could inspire citizens who felt intimidated speaking to politicians and other "leaders," to realize that those in power are not necessarily more knowledgeable. Indeed, those in powerful positions can often learn a lot from listening to and respecting the knowledge of those who are currently in less powerful positions. And, through interventions like The Yes Men’s, those in power can be made to pay attention.
1.1 Endnotes
- ↑ Zaslavsky (1973/1999) relates that Sir Frances Galton first told this tale after he visited Africa. Galton, who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883, considered measurement “the primary criterion of a scientific study” (Gould, 1981, p. 75). In essence, he tried to “standardize” anything that might possibly be measured, including prayer, beauty, and boredom—the latter by “counting the number of [a person’s] fidgets”(Galton, 1909, p. 278; as quoted in Gould, 1981, p. 75). He further believed that nearly everything he could measure was inheritable. When his cousin Charles Darwin pointed out that “men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work,” Galton countered that “the aptitude for work is heritable like every other faculty” (Galton, 1909, p. 290; as quoted in Gould, 1981, p. 77). So, it is not surprising that Galton could not see a more sophisticated reason for the sheep herder’s confusion. Moreover, an important note for the politics of knowledge is that Galton was considered a leading intellect of his time and his “scholarship” had significant influence on the development of modern statistics (Gould, 1981, pp. 75 and 77).
