Monday, November 3, 2014

What does this learning community ask of me?

Recently I was reading a philosophical text by the German theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt wrote about collective responsibility and I thought perhaps this is something we could consider within our group. Arendt said "I must be held responsible for something I have not done, and the reason for my responsibility must be my membership in a group (collective) which no voluntary act of mine can dissolve." (The Human Condition, 1958). This quote leads me to think about what our learning community asks of us. What are we called to do within this community? How are we responsible even when we choose to not participate? One of the central ways we can come to know each other's work/practice is through participation in the project blog. Collective responsibility does not demand that we are prolific or eloquent writers, but we are none the less called to participate in a conversation as members of this group. There may be a hesitation at first to write but responding to each others' ideas is a good place to start. Write a comment inside or outside of the comment box as Olivia did. I am personally moved to write about Olivia's statement - The weird illusion is that somehow we now have objective data when we quantify subjective judgments. Right, we can never remove our subjectivity from assessing works of art. We wouldn't want to remove this subjectivity. How do we call this subjectivity forward within assessment? 

You have joined this group and have already chosen collective responsibility. I know you're there. 

No comments:

Post a Comment