Sharing Equals Caring

While I was away at the NAVSA conference last week, a debate on the ethics of live-tweeting of panels exploded on Twitter under the hashtag #twittergate.

There have been many insightful posts about this issue over the past week. Larger issues surrounding the accessibility of knowledge, whose knowledge is it anyway, and professional courtesy have been debated both on blogs and on Twitter.

These posts and Tweets have summarized the issue very thoroughly and I do not wish to rehash concepts that have been aptly covered by others (like @qui_oui, for example). However, what I have been left pondering relates to what happens when one goes to a larger conferences like NAVSA or MLA. At NAVSA for example, there were at any one time approximately 15 concurrent panels happening. Many great papers that I wanted to hear I had to forgo in lieu of others. As academics and conference goers we make this conscientious decision as we peruse the conference schedule. Twitter allows us to find out what we missed in that Braddon panel when we were focused on Wilkie Collins in the next meeting room.

However, more importantly is the underlying reason why most of us go to conferences. Sure it is a great opportunity to network, but the work we are presenting at these conferences are often works in progress and thus we would really value and benefit from the constructive feedback of the audience. When there are many concurrent panels the opportunity for feedback decreases. There are only so many delegates and these delegates are not always evenly distributed amongst the panels.

Twitter allows me to share not only my research but also concepts of interest in other panels. Truly this is very much a sharing equals caring situation. And not caring in a selfish self-promotion sort of way, but caring about how your work (at least in my case) intersects with larger concepts and issues that others may be working on. Is there a text you think would work well here? A concept that I may be interested in? I am truly invested in creating a collaborative model of learning, and what better place than at a conference.

Thus, in the interest of carrying these ideas forward, and for the benefit of those who could not be at my NAVSA panel, here is the abstract to my paper and I welcome comments and discussion.

Networked Education: Apperception, Tactility, and Pedagogical Depictions in Hardy and Ruskin

Dr.Ann Gagne 

NAVSA 2012

                When addressing the use of the sensory in education, critical listening has often taken primacy over the analysis of other sensory skills used in the classroom. This paper will look at the nineteenth century theory and use of tactility within a pedagogical space through reference to Johann Friedrich Herbart’s definition of apperception. I will explore how Herbartian apperception can specifically refer to the use of tactility as a way to highlight ethics and morals in pedagogy. This use of tactility to reinforce a moral pedagogy is seen in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure as well as John Ruskin’s “Of Queens’ Gardens.”

                Herbart’s apperception is a key component to the moral pedagogy that he set out in Psychologie als Wissenschaft (1825) and later in ABC of Sense Perception (trans. 1896). Apperception as seen by Herbart is a “process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience to form a new whole” (Hersen 299).  As I will argue, this residuum of past experience is what remains in all tactile interaction.  In fact, tactility complicates this subjective and objective divides in moral education as laid out by Herbart and necessarily requires the student to take the other into account in order to achieve ethical relations, within the classroom space and beyond. 

                The guiding principles behind Herbart’s moral education appear in many Victorian texts.  An emphasis on tactility and the residuum of the past creating new learning experience is seen in Jude the Obscure  and in “ Of Queens’ Gardens”.  Hardy emphasizes the necessity of a teacher’s morality and demonstrates how, “the private eccentricities of a teacher [...] touched the morals of those he taught” (Hardy 217). Similarly, Ruskin specifies how “well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate” (Ruskin 109). More specifically, Ruskin suggests that we should all strive towards kingship “which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise them” (110). Touch remains a strong residue of past experience, especially for Ruskin, and becomes a necessary part of the learning process.

                It is becoming more important than ever to look to a moral and ethical pedagogy especially in the face of an increase use of educational technology which put ideas of privacy and information accessibility to the fore.  However, Hardy and Ruskin were already dealing with these very complex issues by the turn of the century, demonstrating the continued importance of apperception and morality in education.

Work Cited

Hardy, Thomas.  Jude the Obscure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Hersen, Michael. The Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment.  Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2004.  Print.

Ruskin, John. “Of Queens’ Gardens.” Sesame and Lilies. Vol. 18 Ed.  E.T. Cook and Alexander       Wedderburn. London: Longmans, 1903. 109-144. Print.