Traditional courses and higher education are about passing the courses and the syllabus and curriculum of the course.
There are lectures, seminars and reading materials that are designed to do this.
In contrast
The suggested foundation course is designed to produce tension between contradictions
Contradictory ideas are being presented and looked at individually, what they mean, false, strength, problems, issues. They are looked at within an enquiry in the like of how to create a better society, life and world? And creating a third idea that was not there before. The ideas are not to be contradicted and eliminated directly but within the above question and reflection, reflective enquiry, and dialogue and co-enquiry with other people on this question.
1. freedom and free-thinking and oppression, hegemony and control,
2. liberalism and progressivism and dogmatism, illiberalism,
3. democracy and autocracy,
4. individualism and collectivism,
5. freewill and determinism
6. capitalism and neo-liberalism – Marxism
7. social and alienation,
8. dialogue and monologue
9. Africa and Europe
10. Western non-Western
11. history, present and future
12. clashes of values
13. nationalism and universalism
14. religion and secularism
15. quality of life and quantity of life
16. God and no God
17. human beings and other species
18. ecologism and materialism (material exploitation, mining)
19. State and world
20. developed world and developing world
21 imposition and letting be and just accepting unconditionally
22. Being happy and being responsible
23. positivistic quantitative approaches and post-positivistic qualitative approaches
24. Positivism and post-positivism
25. English and the hegemony of English and the African languages as official and equal languages
We are not debating with a view to eliminate and discard the contradictory position, concept, idea and value and validate our ideas and positions in the processes.
We are delving inside the contradictions, studying them as ideas, reading their advocates and engaging with them, trying to understand them in their own terms.
We do this as we enquire into the questions of what is a life worth living? a meaningful one? What type of society do we want? What type of society do we want to live in? What kinds of human beings do we want to become and be? What is valuable and prospering society for all? We use and fuse all these contradictory insights, learning and ideas to co-enquire together and produce thoughts.
We shall do this so that these concepts can be discussed and analysed, within both critical reflection and dialogue of equals, in an effort to carry about the praxis of how to work out a society of a participatory democracy of and for all in dignity, humanity, wellbeing, growth and empowerment and equality.
What society do we want? What kind of human beings we want ourselves to be? What future do we want? How do we attain this future?
formulating questions together.
We shall discuss these contradictory ideas and read about them in the classics as they clash with each other. We will produce a constructive tension that we shall draw on to understand the world, attain life-long skills in critical and independent thinking, analysis of different ideas, and critical engagement with contradictory ideas and fusing. We shall learn to use these contradictions and the tension between them to work out original and personal theses, ideas, arguments and convictions and defend them within a dialectical transformative conversations with other people as opposed to winning debates and outweighing and eliminating the ideas of others.
We shall provide journal (diary) writing exercises (electronic), discussion forums, co-enquiring forums, public speaking exercises, and more.
the participants will be
We record the sessions and see what happens. We provide questionnaires that evaluate the course, how unique, different from other courses, and helpful it was, what skills the participants learnt and acquired, what they think of the course, etc. We see what comes out.
http://connect.nmmu.ac.za/Blogs/Developing-and-Testing-An-Applied-Applied-Dialecti/July-2014/Dialectical-tension
Dialectical tension
I am being criticized for responding harshly and critiquing. There is a tendency to see dialectics as an 'inclusional' interaction that is warm and pleasant for the participants. This is not my dialectics.
I have selected Francis Fukuyama’s (1992). The End of History And the Last Man for the course on preparing students to the future to show the importance of tension between contradictions for the qualitative transformation and progression of knowledge, history and human kind. It is this tension that keeps us on the edge, hungry, eager, passionate and working hard on our moving forward. The demise of this tension makes us satiated.
The book was written in response to criticisms of Fukayama’s (1989) article The End of History in The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989) which argued that liberal democracy constitutes the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the ultimate form of human government and in turn the end of history.
Fukayama follows the dialectical idea that movement and progress is achieved through contradictions and tension between them and as soon as the contradictions resolve and cease to exist a standstill and the end of movement takes place which leads to standstill, boredom and the “last man”. The contradictions he draws on are the passionate and irrational human’s desire for glory, recognition, domination and superiority over others vs. the human desire to live a peaceful existence as free, equal, self-creating, prospering and autonomous people. Individuals who are leading a calm, secure and boring life. Another contradiction is the one between the irrational desire for glory, domination and superiority and the rational desire to live a safe, secure and prospering life.
The book draws on ideas from Plato, Hegel, through the modern interpretation of Alexadre Kojève, Marx, Adam Smith, Locke, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, and Heidegger and brings good introduction to those thinkers in light of the meanings of what constitutes enlightened liberalism which is a system that enables and nourishes a free, autonomous and dignified human being.
Fukayama discusses issues of equality between human beings and argues that such equality is a myth that is unnatural, cultural differences among nations and ethnicities that ultimately lead to greater prosperity among some countries over others. He compares and contrasts liberalism and democracy and provides political and historical analysis and demonstrations of the ways progress is follows and all countries seek economic prosperity.
My dialectics is based on a creative tension and crisis that is delved inside, analyzed and utilized for the transformation, learning and improvement on wellbeing.
The trick is not to be overwhelmed and destroyed by the feeling of creative tension - that is very unpleasant and destabilizing - but to critically reflect on what is happening and use.
The trick is also to learn to distinguish between a destructive tension and crisis that intends to destroy, invalidate and eliminate and a constructive one that intends as an education to learn from and transform/improve.
Understanding the difference and the creative tension and how to use it constructively for betterment and qualitative transformation.
An interaction and relationship - which the relationship and interaction with oneself - that is indulging and self-indulging and warm and sweet is not a dialectical one - nor for that matter an educational, epistemological or ontological. It is not even cathartic or authentic. It is a Sartrean mouvaise foi or bad faith of inauthenticity.
We learn to discuss ideas with other people and to think critically, to accept criticisms and to examine and critically engage with the ideas of others and one's own ideas.
I am interested in evaluating what happens and the transformation, progress, development and learning that takes place as a result of the dialectical exercises.
writing a page to other people in writerly, reflective, and readerly, communicative, for others, texts, on the contradictory ideas, and responding to writings in a way that can transform them rather than dismiss and eradicate them.