Recognition and Rehabilitation

In my Lifelong Learning class, we are reading Mark Bracher's Book, Radical Pedagogy 2006, which examines a psychoanalytic approach to learning.   Bracher talks about the importance of development and integration of three identity registers: affective-physiological (emotion), imagistic (body) and linguistic (language) for healthy identity formation.  These three registers are neither static nor distinct, but rather they are dynamic and fluid as they serve to either influence or impede learning.  The key to learning and development in these identity registers is recognition.  Recognition is the motivational force that determines most human activity including learning.  For example, wealth and material possessions are not ends in themselves but ways for us to be assured of recognition (p. 22).  In the same way, recognition is also the catalyst behind social problems including crime.  I would like to explore Bracher's theory of recognition and identity in the context of my experience working with female federal offenders.  (Please note that I have used female offender and woman/women interchangeably.)

 

In my current role as a parole officer, my job is to analyze the level of risk inmates present to themselves and society.  Once the risk areas are identified, the Correctional Intervention Board (CIB) makes recommendations for program interventions in an effort to reduce the identified risk areas.  There are seven risk areas that I assess: substance abuse, personal/emotional, associates, marital/family, attitude, community functioning and education/employment.  I have observed that it is very common for women offenders who have substance abuse problems to suffer from personal/emotional difficulties.  Personal/emotional issues usually include mental health problems brought on from past abuse experiences. Drugs and alcohol serve as coping mechanisms to numb painful  emotions.  The results impact and inhibit learning in every area of a woman offender's life including the other risk areas listed above.  For example, the average grade level of a female offender is grade 7.  The majority of female offenders has suffered damage to the personal/emotional risk area, which corresponds to Bracher's affective-physiological identity register.  


When the maladaptive coping mechanisms like mind-altering substances are  removed, raw emotions emerge and completely overwhelm many female offenders. The treatment offered to address emotional distress and the accompanying behavioural difficulties is Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT).  Female offenders voluntarily enter an intensive treatment unit called the Structured Living Environment (SLE) where they have in-class instruction and staff support to help them implement their new skills.  One of DBT's premises is to recognize the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours.  For example, if I think that you are spreading rumours about me, I will dislike you and find some friends to help me beat you up.  The link between thoughts, feelings and behaviours seems like a simple concept, in that, once a woman can identify her hurt and angry feelings, she will be able to stop her acting-out behaviour.  However, I soon learned that many of the women could not make the link because they could not identify how they were feeling.

Bracher asserts that alexithymia, the inability to name one's affective-physiological states, is a major integrative deficiency that impacts on identity (p. 65).  "Being out of touch with one's feelings deprives one of the most fundamental evidence of one's ongoing being, the core of one's sense of self" (p. 65).  One of the ways to deal with overwhelming feelings that cannot be expressed is to alter one's mind with substances (p. 65).

DBT provides treatment tools to help the women offenders identify and understand their overwhelming emotions.  One of the treatment tools is called an Emotion Worksheet. The women offenders are encouraged to fill out these sheets whenever they experience an overwhelming emotion that they cannot identify.  The sheet prompts them to describe the emotion, the prompting event, their physical sensations, their action urges, the resulting behaviour(s), and their after-effect of the emotion.  Participation in the community of practice of the mental health unit allows the female offender to learn to feel her emotions as outlined in the reified worksheet.  

The understanding and feeling of emotions will help the emotionally-deficient woman offender develop her affective-physiological identity register.  The emotions will also serve as a function in the woman's day-to-day activities.  In his book, Emotional Intelligence 1995, Daniel Goleman makes reference to the emotional mind and the rational mind.  The emotional mind is impulsive and springs into action without consideration, whereas the rational mind is analytic, deliberate and slower to respond (p. 291).  DBT refers to the combination of the emotional mind and the rational mind as the wise mind.  The diagram below illustrates the wise mind as it intersects the emotional mind and the rational/reasonable mind.   

Support staff have a critical role to play as the woman offender begins her healing journey.  Staff recognize through validation the woman's efforts and any new pro-social behaviours.  The validation includes acknowledgement, encouragement, and social engagement.  When a woman in treatment exhibits maladaptive behaviours, staff disengage any social activity and are careful not to give negative attention.  Treatment tools are encouraged and staff interactions are matter-of-fact.  Typically, the woman expects and wants negative attention because it reaffirms her identity.  Bracher asserts that different people have different vitality affects, the feeling of aliveness, at the core of their identities.  For some, anger provides the greatest vitality affect (p. 46).  The challenge is to engage and validate the woman when she is demonstrating positive behaviours so that she can experience new vitality affects. 

Certainly, a prison is not the best place to learn and develop a new identity.  The loss of freedom and influences of a negative peer group automatically constitute prison as a negative learning environment.  It is quite common to see a female offender's affective-physiological register in opposition to a context of her imagistic or linguistic register, such as the oppositions between affects of tenderness and an identity-bearing signifier such as "tough" (Bracher, p. 60).  If a female offender has achieved recognition for being tough, she will perceive participation in programs as weak, even though she may want to get help.  Therefore, her identity is in conflict.

Recognition for positive behaviours will help female offenders as they journey on their long paths to healing.  As women offenders come to terms with their pasts without the aid of mind-altering substances, they learn to deal with and experience their unpleasant emotions.  As they enter into an intense treatment unit like the SLE community of practice and participate in DBT, the women learn how to integrate their affective-physiological states into their identity.  Although there are many challenges to learning, including conflict between identity registers, growth is possible.

Struggle for Identity

In my Lifelong Learning class, we recently watched the Academy Award-winning movie Crash, directed by Paul Haffis, 2004.  Our professor challenged us to watch the film from the perspective of how people learn and find identity within and between communities of practice. Set in present-day Los Angeles, several stories about racial and social tensions interweave within a two-day period and reflect how rigid boundaries reject the meanings of other cultures thereby creating creating conflict, stereotypes, and power struggles.  Sometimes individuals find themselves balancing membership within two competing communities of practice.  An ensuing struggle for identity occurs as individuals seek to find their place within each group.  

The movie, Crash, portrays how identity is impacted by the demands of multimembership within communities of practice that oppose each other. One character, Cameron is a very successful Hollywood film director, who happens to be African-American. His participation and success within his workplace has marginalized him within his own ethnic group. Rigid boundaries contribute to stereotypes and unfortunately the stereotype of a black man living in Los Angeles is not that of a successful film director. 

In his book, Communities of Practice 1998, Etienne Wenger says that full participation in one boundary often means marginalization in the other.  Being inside a community of practice implies, and is largely defined in terms of, being outside of the other community of practice.  Non-participation then is a defining constituent of participation. This situation makes boundary crossing difficult because each side is defined by opposition to the other and membership in one community implies marginalization in another. Multimembership requires some work to reconcile the different forms of membership that corresponds to a single identity (p. 159).

The resulting conflict of Cameron's multimembership within his family, work and ethnic group largely impacts on his  identity.  During an argument, Cameron's wife, Christine, tells him that he is not black because he does not know the hardships that come with being black in L.A.  At work, his colleague tells him that a black actor was not speaking “black enough" and he tells Cameron to shoot the scene again. These covert and subtle acts of racism are difficult for Cameron to process. As Cameron participates in his work practice, he moves further to the margins within his own ethnic group.

In contrast, the overt acts of a racist, white police officer redirects Cameron's trajectory  within his own oppressed cultural group.  Cameron's dignity and power are taken away when he is pulled over for a supposed traffic violation.  Under the guise of a pat-down search, Officer Ryan sexually molests Christine.  Ryan then gives Cameron and his wife the choice of being arrested for the traffic violation or apologizing to him and going home. Numb, Cameron decides to apologize and go home.  Later as he and his wife argue, it is clear that Cameron felt powerless because he is a black man up against a racist, white police officer with a gun.  Cameron's powerlessness caused him to identify more fully within his own cultural group.  He realized that his identity as a black man in L.A. left him powerless and that even his position of affluence as a successful film director could not afford his or his wife's dignity.

Later in the movie, Cameron comes face-to-face with black car-jackers who fit the cultural stereotype he has tried hard to escape.  It is interesting that Cameron chooses to fight back.  It could simply be that he has reached a breaking point, but I think there is significance in his action to fight the black men who try to steal his vehicle. In essence, he is fighting the stereotype he deals with everyday of his life both covertly and overtly. When the police come upon the fight, Cameron challenges them and refuses to submit to their commands thereby becoming the stereotype that the police expect. When the ordeal ends, Cameron tells the speechless car-jacker that he embarrasses both Cameron and himself.

In an interesting twist, Cameron then seeks to reclaim a part of his identity within his cultural group when he joins other black youth and men who are throwing garbage into a burning car. His experience of oppression causes him to fight back.  As a result, Cameron renegotiates his identity within his cultural group, leaves the margins and redirects his trajectory towards the centre of his cultural community of practice.   

Cameron's identity crisis causes him to constantly relocate his position within each community of practice's social landscape (p. 167).  In order to be successful at work, Cameron chooses not to participate within his cultural community of practice.  Wenger refers to non-participation as strategy whereby identity lays outside of his culture (p. 170).  Of course, Cameron's choice is dictated to him through the systemic racism referred to by Wenger as Institutional non-participation (p. 169).

Identities are not something we turn off and on (Wenger, 159).  We can act a certain way within one community of practice and a totally different way within another community of practice.  However, we carry our memberships with us and we constantly reconcile our different forms of membership within a single identity (p. 159).  For Cameron, reconciliation was difficult because he was a member within two opposing communities of practice.

Cameron's struggle rings true for many minorities throughout North America and Europe.  Cultural communities of practice have been stereotyped, which makes crossing over to other communities of practice difficult.  As seen in Cameron's case, the reconciliation work was not harmonious and the process was not done once and for all.  As long as racism continues to form divisions and rigid boundaries, multimembership will involve ongoing tensions that will never be resolved (p. 160). 

The Negotiation of Meaning at Work.

As I read Etienne Wenger's book, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity 1998, I considered my experiences as a corrections officer and the changes within my community of practice at my place of employment since I started my career in 2001.  The reification of a major document called Creating Choices 1990, shaped a new kind of corrections for female offenders: one that emphasized their needs versus security-related issues.  Over time, however, the social and historical implications that supported a more security-related practice seemed to strengthen with the emergence of a new union. Women's corrections would be redirected on another new path.

As a result, my role has been shaped and reshaped as I continue to negotiate meaning within my community of practice.  Wenger tells us that meaning is influenced by the continuous negotiation between participation and reification (p. 54, 55). Participation is a complex process that is both personal and social, and combines doing, talking, thinking, and belonging (p. 56).  Reification is the process by which an abstract concept is treated as though it were a concrete thing or a physical object.  For example, a law is an abstract idea until it is written down and projected into the world (p. 58).  Reification guides participation within a group while participation provides a context for reification (p. 68).

The diagram below provides a visual of the interplay between the duality of reification and participation. 

When the Prison for Women (PFW) located in Kingston, ON closed in 2000, women's corrections in Canada changed direction. This turnabout was primarily due to the many investigations of PFW over the years that criticized the over-incarceration of women.  One such investigation was referred to as the 1990 Task Force for Federally Sentenced Women.  Its report, Creating Choices, focused on social justice issues and had the following criticisms: the centralized location of the prison kept many female offenders away from their families; the secure construction of the building was equivalent to a male maximum security prison which was not necessary for many of the female offenders; and, the program interventions were not gender-specific as they were originally developed for male offenders.  The findings and recommendations provided the landscape for a new era in women's corrections.

Consequently, the recommendations outlined in the Creating Choices document included the opening of five federal facilities across the country so that female offenders could be closer to their families.  The facilities reflected communal living and new programs were developed specifically for women offenders.  In 1995, Creating Choices was referred to as a living document, when Nova Institution for Women, the first of five federal women's institutions, opened in Truro, Nova Scotia.  The cement walls and steel bars of PFW were replaced with townhouses.  The absence of the fence, though, was optimistic and short-lived, once the female offenders began to walk away.

The Creating Choices document became the focus for the negotiation of meaning, as policy makers used the document to organize the various communities of practices found within the women's prisons (Wenger, p. 59).  In 2001, when I started my career, women's corrections was still in its infancy and the Creating Choices document defined my role as a corrections officer within a women's prison.  For example, instead of being called a corrections officer, my title was primary worker; and, instead of wearing a uniform, I wore civilian clothes.  The role required dynamic security which entailed a lot of interactions between the officers and the inmates. This dynamic security was considerably different from the static posts found in male prisons.  The very structure of these static posts minimized the interactions between officers and inmates. Of course, it was easier to provide dynamic security in a female institution since the numbers of federally-sentenced women are much smaller than that of federally-sentenced men.

As a consequence of the changes implemented, the relationships between corrections officers working in women's institutions and corrections officers working in men's institutions became strained (Wenger, p. 114, 115). Although both groups trained together and consulted with one another on an ongoing basis, primary workers in women's institutions needed a university degree to be accepted into basic training whereas corrections officers working in male institutions required only a grade 10 education.  The university requirement was added because primary workers in women's institutions had a considerable amount of casework duties compared to their counterparts in men's institutions.  Therefore, corrections officers working in male prisons could not easily transfer into a women's prisons like they could to another male prison.  In order to transfer, officers required not only a university degree, but they were required to take a course called Women Centred Principles.  If they failed the test, they would not be permitted to transfer to a women's prison. However, these same officers denied full access to our community of practice were given temporary and partial access to cover staffing shortages.

The reificaton of the Creating Choices document defined my participation within my community of practice. The reificaton was reinforced by advocacy groups such as Elizabeth Fry Society and the Citizens Advisory Committee. According to Wenger, these groups are examples of a periphery of practice which has opened the service up to public scrutiny (Wenger, p. 117). My participation and that of my colleagues provided a context for the Creating Choices document.

According to Wenger, participation is characterized by mutual recognition which is a source of identity (p. 56). In 2001, the identities of corrections officers across the country were strengthened through mutual recognition when they voted to form the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO); a union that would represent their specific needs. Previously, corrections officers were represented by Public Service Alliance Committee (PSAC) which represents a variety of different government workers.

Participation in UCCO unified corrections officers working in women's and men's institutions. The meanings of inequalities were subsequently negotiated. The fact that primary workers and corrections officers have the same classification and pay scale created tensions in terms of differences in case work. The cost of clothing was also an issue for the non-uniformed officer. Over time, primary workers lost many of their case management duties. In 2003, uniforms were implemented in women's institutions. The term primary worker still exists but officers in women's institutions now identify themselves as correctional officers. A university degree is no longer required to work within a women's prison.

Wenger would identity the union's role as that of a boundary practice (p. 114). The participation of corrections officers who work in women's prisons in the boundary practice has redefined their role within their own communities of practice. The union's concern for staff safety has again changed the infrastructure of women's corrections with the construction of maximum security units. The reification of Creating Choices is still present; however, it no longer predominates the practice. A possible reason might be that participation in the boundary practice of UCCO has created a much larger social and historical contexts in which to negotiate meaning.

As I continue to negotiate meaning in an ever-changing environment, my goal is to balance the principles of Creating Choices with my security-related duties. Wenger warns about danger of participating in a boundary practice to the point where it becomes insulated from the practices they are supposed to connect (p. 115). In practice, I am an executive member of my union and I facilitate Women Centred Training for new recruits. I have learned that these dualities are important as I negotiate meaning within my community of practice.

Apprenticeship: A Model Of Effective Learning.

In my Lifelong Learning Processes class 2011, we continue to explore the ways in which humans learn. We have just finished reading, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation 1991, by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. Legitimate peripheral participation is a process by which an individual learns through active engagement in a community of practice.  Lave and Wenger have based their work on legitimate peripheral participation on case studies that reflect learning through apprenticeship. Initially, I wondered why the authors considered forms of apprenticeship, rather than the educational school system, as models for effective learning. Through closer examination and class discussions, the concepts of legitimate peripheral participation and effective learning became clearer. In this blog, I will first draw your attention to learning as social practice and will then look at the effectiveness of learning through apprenticeship and the ineffectiveness of learning through the school system.

The diagram below illustrates how a newcomer enters into a community of practice.  As the newcomer enters into a practice, she remains on the periphery and is engaged in hands-on learning which is referred to as "situated learning" (Lave and Wenger, p. 31).  Over time, as the newcomer learns the practice in which she is engaged, she moves toward the core of the community of practice; thereby, changing her status from a newcomer to an old-timer.  Learning therefore is an evolving form of membership (p. 53). 

Moreover, situated learning involves the construction of identities (Lave and Wenger, p. 53).  "As an aspect of social practice, learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but to a relation to social communities - it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person" (p. 53). With this in mind, Lave and Wenger examine apprenticeship in terms of how people engage holistically into a practice and learn without necessarily being taught their crafts.  The relationship with their masters is one of mentorship and learning through participation is the focus. 


One of the case studies that Lave and Wenger chose for a community of practice was the apprenticeship of Yucatec (Mexican) midwives.  The young women were the daughters of experienced midwives and the specialized knowledge was passed down within the families (Lave and Wenger, p. 66).  The interesting aspect of the young midwives' learning was that no teaching effort was recognized at all.  The specific knowledge was simply gained in the process of growing up (p. 68).  Over many years, the young women proceeded from the periphery to full participation within the community of practice by a series of social learning practices which included: observing the lives of their mothers; hearing stories of difficult deliveries; collecting herbs; running errands; accompanying their mothers; providing massages; and, delivering babies.  Full participation is reached with the delivery of the placenta which significant to the Yucatan culture (p. 67, 68, 69).


The young midwives understood themselves and forged their identities through participation in their social environments.  This kind of social learning parallels Michael Tomasello's reference to culture as an ontogenetic niche.   In his book, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition 1999, Tomasello asserts that "the human cultural environment sets the context for the cognitive development of children: as cognitive 'habitus' and as a source of active instruction from adults" (Tomasello, p. 79).  Habitus refers to "engaging in the normal practices of the people with whom she grows up ..." (p. 79).  Learning in this sense is synonymous with cultural stimuli.


Of course, some forms of apprenticeship are more explicit in terms of instruction as children move away from domestic production in which they learned subsistence skills from their same-sex parent to learning a specialized occupation from a specialist master (Lave & Wenger, p. 69).  However, situated learning remains the focus of the experience and not that of the instruction. 

In fact, the apprenticeship of Vai and Gola Tailors (Liberia) demonstrate that situated learning is more effective than instruction because it does not merely reproduce the sequence of production processes. The learning curriculum actually reverses the production steps so apprentices begin by learning the finishing stages of producing a garment. They then go on to learn to sew the garment, and only later learn to cut out the design.  As the apprentices handle garments by attaching buttons and hemming cuffs, they focus on the broad outlines of garment construction. The sewing turns their attention to logic order, which explains why the garments are cut out in their design.  This reverse ordering provides hands-on logic and minimizes the experiences of failure (Lave and Wenger, p. 72).


Now compare these situated learning experiences to abstract concepts taught within a teaching curriculum of the school systems.  When children are being taught math in a classroom, they are not engaged in math but rather they are engaged in the dynamics of the classroom.  Therefore, the community of practice is not a carpentry shop or an engineering workshop; but rather, the community of practice is a classroom. The primary acquired learning objective in the community of practice of the classroom is how to abide by the rules under the authority of a teacher.  In an article entitled, The Curriculum of Necessity or What Must an Educated Person Know?, educator, John Taylor Gatto, exclaimed that "schools are a means of behavioral, attitudinal indoctrination, places in which the development of the mind is only a rhetorical genuflection" (Gatto, para. 10).


The video below features John Taylor Gatto, a visionary school teacher who works within a system of which he is greatly critical.  Gatto teaches in the classroom because he has to, but his real curriculum combines independent study, class field projects, community services and apprenticeships.  He works hard at getting kids out of the classroom and into the community so the kids can forge their own identities.  He asserts that the formation of identity cannot take place when an authority figure is filling your head on a constant basis. 

A teaching curriculum, therefore, limits resources as the focus projects to the teacher, the classroom rules, and to the abstract views of knowing (Lave & Wenger, p. 97). The classroom takes children out of their social worlds, seats them in rows, monitors their movement, corrects their behaviour, stifles their creativity, and exchanges the value of their learning for test scores.  As a result, learning the expected outcomes becomes secondary (p. 68).  On the other hand, learning curriculums that occur in apprenticeships are social, and occur in the course of daily life.  It may not be recognized as teaching at all (p. 68). 

This is not to say that learning through apprenticeship is perfect.  Sometimes it is difficult for the participant to penetrate the boundary of a community of practice.  Sometimes the old-timers are not receptive to newcomers and therefore learning is inhibited (p. 76).  Sometime the commoditization of labour, as seen in Lave and Wenger's example of the apprenticeship of meat cutters, transforms apprentices into unskilled labourers, denying them access to activities in the arenas of mature practice (p. 76).  Certainly, access and legitimacy are fundamental to peripheral participation in a community of practice and are central to learning and identity (p. 85).  

Learning involves the construction of identities and that is why it is crucial that the predominant educational system be transformed to provide students with apprenticeship opportunities.  The educational school system is a bad experience for far too many minds who have been disillusioned with the frustrations of abstract learning.  Indeed, comprehensive understanding involves the whole person rather than receiving a body of factual knowledge about the world (Lave and Wenger, p. 33).   Legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice allows students to understand their learning (p. 33).

Exploring The Uncanny Valley.

Since last Tuesday's class in Lifelong Learning Processes and our class discussion of The Uncanny Valley, I have been thinking a lot about Michael Tomasello's views on biological and cultural evolution.  The Uncanny Valley is a theory that measures the human response of revulsion to robotics, or in the case of evolution, the great apes who attain human-likeness.  As a Christian person, I would not describe my initial reaction to common descent between apes and humans as one of revulsion, but rather discomfort.  Although I have not given the topic of evolution much attention, my personal beliefs have influenced my direction towards Intelligent Design.  Of course, my spiritual experiences are personal and therefore outside the realms of science. Nonetheless, I welcome the challenge to journey into The Uncanny Valley.

The above video shows endearing robots such as Wall-e, R2D2 and C3PO gaining human responses of empathy.  Although they share some human characteristics, they are different enough to stay within our comfort zone.  However, as the images attain human-likeness, they plummet into the valley of repulsion.   Professor Plumb pointed out that the revulsion only happens when we get close to who we are as humans.  This revulsion occurs because these images remind of us our own mortality and therefore evoke a fear of death and dying (Plumb, 2011).

As a way to compensate, humans work to attain a strong sense of self, which is usually reflected bodily.   The movie Avatar was likely successful because the avatar creatures were physically strong, fast, and agile.  They also elicited noble human virtues such as peace, love and respect for their planet.  Therefore, movie viewers responded by empathizing with the avatars.  Although the avatars would have been in The Uncanny Valley at the onset of the movie, they were able to pass through the valley reflecting a super-human-like status.

In contrast, meet Wilma, pictured below, of the species Homo Neanderthalensis.   An article entitled, Meet Wilma: The face of Neanderthal woman revealed for the first time 2008, reveals that artists and scientists have created the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.  Wilma has been put together using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalized.  Paleontologists claim that Neanderthals are the closest relatives to humans.

In reference to my class notes, the study of fossils found in Europe suggests that humans and Neanderthals lived at the same time and may have even mated.  It is believed that Neanderthals were eventually forced into extinction by humans (Plumb, 2011).

The human-likeness of Neanderthal skin, hair, facial features and facial expressions are indeed uncanny.  Because Neanderthals are considered brutish and unintelligent, they plummet into The Uncanny Valley of revulsion.  However, once we become familiarized with the Homo Neanderthalensis species, we can  establish a connection and overcome our revulsion.  According to Viktor Deak's book, The Last Human- A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans 2007, Neanderthals were skilled tool-makers and hunters.  A Neanderthal brain was larger and its skull was shaped quite distinctly from the human skull.  Their larger skeletons indicated an adaptation to the colder climate.  Their material culture indicates that they were capable of speech.  They even buried their dead in a ritualistic fashion, which indicates a belief in an afterlife.

So as our non-human ancestors, the Neanderthals, emerge from The Uncanny Valley, I ponder about their way of life, their skills, their spiritual beliefs and practices.  The question emerges: can I as a Christian believe in evolution?  Yes, I believe so.  The difference is that I acknowledge the Designer who moved the whole process along.

One of my theology teachers, Ken Perkins, had this to say on the topic of the evolution/creation debate: “Biblical creationists have often boxed themselves into a short time-frame: six-day creation, young earth (6,000 to 20,000 years old). That argument is very difficult to sustain” (Perkins, 2011).  As to the age of the earth, he pointed out that “both creation stories begin with the earth already in existence” (Genesis 1.2 and Genesis 2.5). Therefore, he agrees that the formation of the universe could well have taken billions of years (Perkins, 2011).

Unfortunately, this point of view is not accepted in many Christian circles.  Mr. Perkins made reference to his former professor, Bruce Waltke who was forced to resign under pressure from Reformed Theological Seminary because he had stated on a video, “If the data is overwhelming in favour of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult.”  The fact that Mr. Waltke was forced to resign is a sad indication that discussing evolution in conservative Christian traditions is difficult.

In an article entitled, “Science in America: Religious Belief and Public Attitudes” 2007, a poll among church-goers concluded that only 25% of evangelicals believe in evolution, and only 10% believe that evolution occurred through natural selection. When the Church as a whole thinks so differently about something so important, it takes courage to present a view that challenges the status quo. Academics like Bruce Waltke put their careers on the line if they accept the scientific data that God created through natural selection.

However, there is growing support for Christians who believe in evolution. The BioLogos Foundation is a group of Christians who are made up of professional scientists, philosophers, educators, theologians, biblical scholars, and pastors who are concerned about the long history of disharmony between the findings of science and large sectors of the Christian faith. Through dialogue, the BioLogos Foundation addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of the Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life.

The idea of theistic evolution is a revulsion for many Christians.  Maybe this revulsion has to do with the idea that the Bible says that humans are created in the image of God.  I suppose the question is what does this image look like?  According to Mr. Perkins, "Being created in the image of God is not about our appearance or our capacities, it is about our function."  Mr. Perkins uses the analogy of a monarch whose authority is exercised by deputies, and so humans are deputized as caretakers of God's world (Perkins, 2011).

No matter what our belief systems, our goal as humans should be that of caretakers of our world and ignoring the history and scientific evidence will make that very difficult to do.  As a Christian, I do not believe that evolution is an antithesis to Christianity and I plan to do more exploring of theistic evolution.  Through my studies in theology, I have learned not to box myself into any religious doctrine or dogma, so that I can think critically about my own beliefs and the world in which I live and avoid falling into the "group think".

Non-electronic Bibliography:

K. Perkins, personal communication, January 21, 2011.

Plumb, D. (2011, January 25). Class Notes: Lifelong Learning Processes. Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS.

Language Acquisition in Young Children

I just finished reading Michael Tomasello's book, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999), and I was quite interested in his views concerning language acquisition in young children. Tomasello describes the dynamics between a parent and a child and how learned behaviour, including language, is the result of the communicative relationships between them. He asserts that language acquisition depends on a child's exposure to cultural stimuli, so that the child can develop linguistic capacities such as imitation, joint attention, and discourse. This theory demonstrates that the acquisition of language depends on the acquisition of culture. This blog post follows Tomasello's argument and contrasts with linguist, Noam Chomsky, who asserts that language acquisition is innate.  The emerging question from my research is: "What happens to a child if she is deprived of culture during the formative years?"

Tomasello rejects Noam Chomsky's theory of innate language development. In his book, The Chomsky/Foucault Debate (2006), Noam Chomsky asserts that universal grammar is hard-wired into the brain and manifests without being taught.  He supports his theory by offering an analogy of a lamb who is taken away from its mother and raised in isolation. The result is that the lamb will not develop depth perception. Chomsky asserts that the mother does not teach the lamb depth perception, but that she somehow enables the lamb's visual system to work the way in which it is designed (p. 173). He suspects that language acquisition in the human brain works the same way (p. 179). 
 
In contrast, Tomasello argues that an infant's brain is genetically prepared versus hard-wired.  In his book, Constructing a Language (2003), Tomasello asserts that the genetic preparation cannot be too specific.  He states that children must be flexible enough to learn not only hundreds of thousands of individual words, expressions, constructions and conventional expressions of language, but also the different types of abstract constructional patterns that language has grammaticized historically (p. 1,2). 
 

Research in neuroscience tends to support Tomasello's theory.  In an article entitled, Building Baby's Brain: The Basics (1998), Dr Diane Bale describes the genetic preparation for the learning process. She describes how a baby's brain has more than one hundred billion brain cells. Bale says that most of the connections are done after the baby is born except connections needed for physical body functions such as heart beat and motor functions which develop in utero. However, through learning, the child's brain cells have made many more connections by the age of three.  The brain keeps track of connections that the baby uses most.  In time, the brain gets rid of the connections that it does not use regularly.

Human infants are born completely helpless. Their helplessness may be the reason they are social from birth; their very survival depends on it.  Tomasello describes that much of the initial engagements between a parent and child “involve looking, touching and vocalizing in ways that serve to express and share basic emotions” (Tomasello, 1999, p. 59). As infants develop, they learn through mimicking with basic “tongue protrusions, mouth openings, and head movements” (p 59). Then Tomasello refers to the “nine month revolution where infants begin to behave in ways to suggest that they understand their social worlds (p. 61). He refers to these behaviours as joint attentional behaviours that indicate an emergence of the self and others as distinct ( p. 62). At around eight months of age, infants begin to act with intention toward a goal which indicates a higher level of functioning (p. 73).

As a mother, I am especially interested in the discourse that takes place between a parent and infant and the resulting development of vocabulary and understanding of social contexts. Tomasello suggests that parents who spend time talking to their infants have infants who develop larger vocabularies (Tomasello, 1999, p. 110).  It is interesting to note that discourse surrounding an object that the infant is focused on is more beneficial to the infant's vocabulary than a parent who directs the infant's attention away from the object to something new (p. 110). As shared relationships continue through joint-attention, infants learn to internalize perspectives of themselves and perspectives of another other person. Around two years of age, children are able to think abstractly by using objects as symbols. “For example, a twenty-four-month-old year old might push a block along the floor and make noises such as 'Vroom!'” (p. 129). Tomasello proposes that “children learn to use objects as symbols in much the same way they learn to use linguistic symbols” (p. 129). Note that children's use of objects as symbols and their acquisition of linguistic symbols emerge around the same time (p. 129).

Tomasello's work has left me deeply curious about feral children and/or children who are otherwise isolated from social contact and culture. Not much credibility is given to accounts of feral children due to the lack of documentation and and sensational media stories which gives rise to hoaxes. I did however come across one heartbreaking story of abuse and neglect: Genie: A Scientific Tragedy (1993). Genie was kept isolated in a room from birth until her rescue at age 13. Most of her days were spent tied to a potty chair. When she was rescued, she could not speak and could hardly walk. She was subsequently subject to scientific trials, later coined "The Forbidden Experiment", to see if she could learn to speak after the critical period for language acquisition during the formative years. The scientists had some success and her vocabulary increased to approximately one hundred words. However, she had difficulty with pronunciation and did not have the ability to form a coherent sentence. She would say, “applesauce store buy” instead of, "buy applesauce at the store". Unfortunately, her story does not have a happy ending. Genie regressed after she was abused in a foster home. She never spoke again.

I recommend viewing the rest of Genie's story which is a six part video series.  There are a lot of unknown variables in terms of assessing Genie's ability or inability to acquire language.  For example, it is clear that she was exposed to language throughout her isolation although the words were likely minimal and negative.  Her personal history was so disastrous that it would not be at all clear why she had been unable to make progress.  According to Chomsky's theory, Genie did not progress because she would have surpassed the critical time to develop language.  According to Tomasello's theory, Genie did not progress because she was not exposed to cultural stimuli during the formative years.  There seems to be a general consensus among theorists that something happens in the brain at puberty that makes language acquisition at an older age very difficult.    

Overall, it is difficult to measure language acquisition in infants without a controlled environment deprived of cultural stimuli and that would be unethical, cruel and inhumane.  As in Genie's case, it would be a forbidden experiment.  In terms of theories, I tend to agree with Tomasello's theory on language acquisition: if an infant is exposed to the cultural stimuli which includes parents who are engaged with her, she will learn language.  Language is a web of complex linguistic symbols that serve to organize and express communicative thoughts.  Therefore, learned language is synonymous with cognitive development and it is a reflection of culture.