[P2P-F] Fwd: Matriarchal Studies

Wed Aug 20 14:34:50 CEST 2014

Dear Anna and Denis (and anyone else interested) -

I would really enjoy further discussion on these "essential" issues I think, at the root of any vision for a more commons based, healthy humanity focused world.  I do think that these issues from childhood and learned structures of social vs. autonomous structures or as Denis suggests, "that political relationships evolve in the direction of mirroring how power is experienced via childcare" are too critical to remain unexplored or unexamined, as they consistently show up in all our communication and work together, particularly across the needed diversity in communication and understanding essential, imho, to getting to truly viable solutions.

This has been the critical focus of my own work in Transformative Education and the organization I started to examine these core issues, at least in educational models -- the Transformative Education Forum (TEF-Global.org - new website) and its recent work on a potential TEF-Bristol, to be held in conjunction with the Bristol European Green Capital 2015 campaign.

So would love to follow up with you both, perhaps in September when you are back Denis and with you Anna on skype, as you suggest.  And again, with anyone else interested in these issues, nearby or far?

What I am personally certain of is that we are not the only ones aware of how critical this "learning" of internalized power structures and sense of personal efficacy or not, is constructed in childhood.  I believe that many corporate and  deeply patriarchal/hierarchical based ideologies have also seen fit to enter and control earlier childhood educational systems that had before been left more primarily to women as unvalued "women's work" extensions of child rearing.  My work has shown me how very consciously and ultimately destructively this started in the US in the mid-1970's and is now being exported to educational systems around the world.  It is why even now in the UK, "No Child Left Behind" (even under the same name!), increased standardized testing and the corporate-backed push for more use of "instructional technology" -- a playbook drawn up by the same corporate-patriarchal control now dominant in the US educational system -- have become
 the newest "innovations" pushed by the current UK administration.  And in other places (e.g. Africa), particularly the replacement of indigenous teachers by computers, argued for by "economic expediency".  (It is not obviously, that the technology cannot be a helpful tool educationally, but I believe it is critical to understand how that depends upon who controls it and for what ends and what indigenous and more human-oriented learning it is indeed used to replace?)

At any rate, would very much enjoy further discussion on these critical issues and will be in touch with you both and anyone else who would like to join us in that discussion.

________________________________
 From: Anna <anna at shsh.co.uk>
To: "denis at postle.net" <denis at postle.net>; P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org> 
Cc: June Gorman <june_gorman at sbcglobal.net>; "denis at postle.net" <denis at postle.net>; "p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org" <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2014 8:42 AM
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: Matriarchal Studies

Hi June and Denis,

Unfortunately I am in West Yorkshire, not in London, but I would be interested to join your discussion. By Skype?

I also believe that child rearing practices form a foundation of later values. Many political radicals ignore this aspect of their own behaviour with regard to their own families, perhaps as a result of their own experience as a child.

Anna

On 20 Aug 2014, at 07:16, Denis Postle <d.postle at btinternet.com> wrote:

On 19/08/2014 17:09, June Gorman wrote:

I understand that internal need created by the initial "innocence" fracture, taught in sexist, racist. classist societies that want to maintain that inequitable status quo, but I don't think we can continue to suggest we can truly get anywhere different if we don't start acknowledging and addressing it, in all of us who came from those kinds of societies.
>
>
>It is therefore, and unfortunately because truly difficult work, not at all peripheral to these essential questions of sustainability and healthiness of humanity and the planet, but the core issues to address in truly getting to anywhere socially, economically and emotionally different.
Yes indeed.

I have been baffled for some time about how to introduce these
    concerns and what has been learned, however as you say this is
    'tough stuff'.

Maybe some kind of face to face inquiry node on these topics
    alongside the list would be valuable. And if we are both in London
    (and anyone else, I am also based in Brussels) we could perhaps see
    if that idea had legs. I'll send my contact details off-line.

A last thought that might nourish anyone looking in, or draw acute
    scepticism! Few people seem in touch with the long term research of
    the psychohistorians. A key element of their study of the evolution
    of childhood and its relation to political realities suggests that
    the possible politics to some degree tracks changes in child,
    especially infant, child care. ie that political relationships
    elvolve in the direction of mirroring how power is experienced via
    childcare. It could be that the extent to which men are much more
    involved in childcare and that it seems increasingly more
    child-centered, might result in a contradiction of patriarchal
    politics. This has been my personal or local experience. Your
    thoughts?
Denis

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