Opening scene: 1943. The NYS Industrial Commissioner registers an IBEW apprenticeship program.

Situs: after ORLD 5815,
tacking towards PD-DL#5,
applying references.

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1. We remain within Gramsci’s organic crisis.
2. A significant part of our Chapter express resistance towards picking up digital tools for their craft. This is not a bad thing, it is an expression of biopower.
3. Circling these two points, a vector: having uncovered new shared meanings in consultative situations, next year’s manifest should retrace this year’s plots: 6 more chapter Digital Literacy PD workshops.

Teaching under DOL, not DOE, authority, every time I dock near the island where Roar-ee lurks and growls among the schist, I become more conscious of Block 1975 assumptions. Standards, in my learning community, relate back to trade secrets, which protected workers from pauperhood from Tudor times to the Industrial Revolution. IBEW Local 3 recently published a “Code.” A code, not standards, and only applicable to Local 3 in NYC of the IBEW. This makes any PD training for us problematic, because of Gramsci’s “organic crisis.” Compared to DOE hegenomies, where standards are assumed,

a gap is revealed:

DOL education is more likely "plugged out"
than at DOE schools.

This is not to say DOL courses lack technological prowess, indeed, apprentices master more technology skills than students in many “academic” classes, just as Luddites honed their ICT skills better than the tittle-tattlers Pitt’s Home Office paid. Both in fact are more proficient with technology than dominant hegenomies.

“Trade mysteries” date back centuries to the guilds, and then back to ancient times. This tradition of knowledge/power is easy to see, even for DOE educators. But I think it’s likely that academic intellectuals rarely consider Gramsci’s “organic crisis” when designing DL PD for workforce instructors.

Part of praxis means being willing to accept you realize you are standing on even more sand after an iteration of critical analysis. After many years of it,
I am tuned to a guiding resonance:

this process of differentiation and specialization has taken place chaotically, without clear and precise principles, without a well thought out and consciously fixed plan.

, The Organization of Education and Culture

How can my learning community gain digital literacy skills across such disparate content areas? Gramsci imagines a “creative school,” where original, spontaneous methods of research can be pursued in seminars, libraries and laboratories.

I’m not one of those who try to elicit the effects of power at the level of ideology. Indeed I wonder whether, before one poses the question of ideology, it wouldn’t be more materialistic to study first the question of the body and the effects of power on it. Because what troubles me with these analyses which prioritise ideology is that there is always presupposed a human subject on the lines of the model provided by classical philosophy, endowed with a consciousness which power is then thought to seize on. …It was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it became possible.

, Body/Power

Simply building labs for our members to explore digital literacy won’t work, because of “biopower.”

From any standard or rubric, I think its fair to say our PD failed its objectives. One data point: I spent 5 minutes troubleshooting why a member could see the Post Training Satisfaction Survey on her screen, but couldn’t type into it. Handing the problem off to a fellow member, he saw the problem, she was trying to click into the Zoom shared screen.

In consultative situations stakeholders treat each other as allies or misguided foes. No enemies exist here. The parties know and trust each other; their common interests vastly outweigh conflicting ones; and interactants work in mutually supportive ways. The injuries inflicted in such situations are unintended, and relatively inconsequential—resulting truly from mistakes, ineptitude, neuroses, and such like. Consultative situations demand consultative strategies and tactics—non-coercive, communicative actions in which information and resources are freely shared between and among stakeholders.

Even though I expected, indeed, designed the PD to gauge biopower resistances, my patience was stressed when actually within huracan. I held the rudder tight, upon reflection I should have let go much earlier than the 5 minutes I did. When in a UFT-CWE DL-PD, no malfeasance is willed towards me.

[Update, 08/16/24: Upon reflection for some time now, I think my best crystallization of “consultative situations” is a memory I have about Stanley Aronowitz — his demeanor in a union meeting was downright contrite, compared to other places. ]

Stance

Where I spend my time.

How I ended up dry docked at the ORLD 5815 workshop,
Critical Theory & Adult Learning,
is not an easy tale to tell.

Watchmen, Chapter V: Fearful Symmetry

A post from the log must suffice:

The authority to sponsor an apprenticeship program in New York lies not with the Regents, but the Department of Labor. For example, the Industrial Commissioner of the NY DOL registered the NYC Electricians apprenticeship program in 1943.

Praxis

ORLD 5815 ended on Veterans Day. Nov 18^th, I led a Digital Literacy Professional Development (my 5^th of the year) for my fellow members of the UFT’s CWE chapter.