Knowing, Knowing, Known

"Objective", "analytic," and "experimental' - three words, without which I think the western academy would be virtually speechless.

- Parker Palmer's "Violence of Our Knowledge"

Kitchen Stories embodied these three words right up until the thirty-sixth minute of the film when Isak shares a cup of coffee with Folke (which actually means 'people') Nilsson. This small gesture is the first of many that jeopardize the Swedish research study of which Isak is a subject.

Kitchen Stories shows us the flaws within the positivist and experimental research paradigms. The "gold standard" in research methodology stands firm on the precepts of keeping the "studied" at arm's length or in the case of Folke Nilsson, up in a chair at ceiling's height actually looking down on the activity of Isak. One can only imagine that tension felt by both Folke and Isak at the onset of the research study. This tension is at the heart of the positivist paradigm, but clearly, it is useless. From almost the beginning, Isak renders useless the study of single mens' kitchen habits by beginning to cook in his upstairs bedroom, leaving Folke alone in his chair in the dark. One can almost imagine that Isak's nature has been violated as Palmer (1999) talks about, and therefore the knowledge that the socialist Swedish group seeks to find is "violent" (p.3). 

Applying the lens of Parker Palmer's The Violence of Our Knowledge to the film allowed me to give meaning to and explain the resulting actions that developed the plot of Kitchen Stories. Palmer (1999) says that "there is something powerful about the spiritual understanding that we are not only seeking truth, but truth is seeking us" (p.16). While at first comical to me, I think this idea is reflected in the film when Isak drills a hole in the floor so that he can look down on Folke in the chair, and also when he adds in his own drawing in the field notes when Folke is ill. This shows our desire as humans to know truth about things, and have the truth known about us. 

Palmer (1999) goes on to say that "objectivism allows us always to be the changers and never the changed"(p.17). Folke embodies this notion until he and Isak begin to develop a relationship. Through the sharing of coffee and blankets, Isak picking up cigarettes for Folke, and eventually even bathing in Folke's presence, the two dispel the merits of cold, objective research. It is clear that Folke Nilsson has been "changed" when, in the ultimate symbolic act, he removes from his car the camper supplied to him by the Swedish research group, leaves it on the side of the road, and turns his car back in the direction of Isak's home while "Dr." Malmberg loudly protests and threatens his blacklisting!

This reflection on both the film and Parker Palmer's paper would be a sham without my own commentary on how it relates to my own paradigmatic thinking. As a self-proclaimed paradigm chameleon, both the film and paper spoke to my "want to connect back into community" (Palmer, 1999, p. 12). Like the young people Palmer talks about, in this day and age of narcissistic social media and television, I long to know the "truth" about people and connect it with my own truth. To  answer the question about education being an intervention, I see that it can certainly be one - and that it can affect both young and old in drastically harmful and helpful ways. It is my personal goal as fist, a human, and secondly, an educator, to connect what I know and what I am learning in real, meaningful ways that has a positive (not positivist!) impact on the lives of others and myself.

References

Hamer, B. Kitchen Stories (2003) film

Palmer, P.J. (1999) The Violence of Our Knowledge: Toward a Spirituality of Higher Education.

     The Michael Keenan Memorial Lecture, Berea College, Kentucky. The Seventh Lecture 1993

The Spirit Level

photo source

"Accepting this does not involve a huge theoretical leap" (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2011, p.195).

In this quote from The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett were talking about the notion of accepting that inequality is the common denominator in understanding the enormous variations which exist from one society to another in the level of problems associated with low social status.

This quote expresses my initial reaction when I began reading this book. I thought to myself, "Well, yeah, it seems fairly logical that great disparity in incomes would cause social issues in a society." That's not to say I did not think the idea was a little broad, and I had some questions about the particulars of this seemed correlation. The more I read, the more those particulars came to light.

This book carries with it a certain moral weight and has left me thinking about our society and even my place in it. While, as the text said, I didn't have to make some huge mental shift to accept the "truth" this book presents, the actual reading of it did shift my perspective. Analyzing the graphs and reading the commentary that provides the meaning to and implications of those graphs left me a little despondent. While the positivist side of me kept trying to focus on the line of regression and the facts it presented, the humanitarian, teacher, and feminist inside of me was screaming, "The U.S. has GOT to do someTHING! What is wrong with us?!?"

For me, this book imparts some responsibility as a reader and U.S. citizen, but since that is not exactly the focus of our course or this analysis, I will attempt to take on the role of the research critic and doctoral student. This text also gives responsibility to these roles as well in thinking about the methodology employed in this study and what I glean from it.

(1) What resonates with me/ What I find compelling

• p.76 - I completely agree that our psychological wellbeing has a direct impact on our health. I tend to believe that a key ingredient to overall health is having sound mental health. I have witnessed in several instances where strong feelings of inferiority can cause excessive anxiety and have a truly negative impact on an individual's life.
• p.115 - "We learn best in stimulating environments when we feel sure we can succeed. When we feel threatened, helpless and stressed, our bodies are flooded by the hormone cortisol which inhibits our thinking and memory." As a teacher, I called this amygdala hijacking. The amygdala is the part of our brain responsible for fear responses and pleasure. Basically, when an individual feels threatened in a learning environment by any stimuli (bullying, comparing his/her clothes or backpack to others, not being able to afford the upcoming field trip, etc.), he or she cannot process anything other than keeping him/herself safe from the threatening stimuli. Feelings of inequality are very difficult on children (and many adults as well), and anyone who has worked in an educational environment has most likely seen its effects.
• p.175 - The same data sets (from the UN and the U.S. Census Bureau) were used throughout this study. They were selected for use prior to any analyses and were taken as no "ifs and buts." This is a very positivist way to view the data, and I find it sound.

(2) Where I Raised my Brow in Question

• At first, I was thinking like Saunders; every time, I looked at a graph, I thought that the U.S. seemed to be so far out on its own. I really wondered about this. I wondered if this book was written with too much of a political agenda and so the data was somewhat skewed to "drive home" a point or be overly influential.

(3) Lasting Impressions

• After reading Noble's article, I tend to take the data and implications in this book seriously. The comparison Noble used of the Himalayan Mountain Range and the U.S. included as part of the data set made sense to me. Each country is separate in and of itself, therefore the U.S. cannot just be excluded from the data on terms of it so heavily affecting the line. U.S. facts and just that - the U.S's facts. Also, as a lifelong U.S. citizen, I can justify in my mind how the U.S. could be the metaphorical 29,000 foot mountain that skewed the data. We are a country whose policies undeniably have caused great inequality for a number of reasons. 
• Also, in both the actual book and Noble's article, it is mentioned several times that no one disputes that "other factors" are at play when thinking about social problems, but there is certainly a significant correlation between inequality and the Index of health and social problems put forth by Wilkinson and Pickett.

Overall, I leave The Spirit Level wondering less about the manipulation of regression lines that Saunders suggested, and more reflecting on where I fit into all of this - this unequal society. I am left to reflect on the opportunities I've been provided throughout my life, the health I enjoy, and the pursuit of bettering myself, and my own 2-person familial unit's financial situation. It leaves me questioning the beliefs I've been imparted about wealth obtainment and thinking "at what costs do my comforts come?".  Again, I go back to the paradigms....the positivist in me has respect for the methodology used in this study, and based on fairly convincing evidence, I accept it as "truth," even if not whole truth; the "bleeding heart" human inside of me now feels compelled to do something about it.

References

Noble, H. (2010). The spirit level revisited: Regression lines, correlation, outliers, and multivariate analysis.

Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2011). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger (Pbk ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Press.