Semi-Intellectual Musings

Matt gets ready to be a father by painting a room; Phil picked up Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb but lost it on his bookshelf ...he’ll delay reporting back to us about what he learns/finds out. Phil then makes Matt realize that the Blue Jays season is over after the first 12 games and that the evil empire (The Yankees) have returned to dominate the division.

Resilience and Mental Health in the Classroom (14:50): We wanted our first episode to initiate an ongoing conversation about the challenges students, teachers and administrators face around mental health within academic/scholastic settings. We both feel there is a persistent stigma around admitting one is “struggling” which often can create a barrier to finding help despite the growing resources provided.

Phil talks about three articles related to resilience and we discussed the amorphous character of the concept. There was an historical bent to the whole discussion. Phil suggests that the concept is a static one, which made Matt think for a second before suggesting that ‘vulnerability’, a term often associated with resilience, could denote change. We looked deep into each others eye’s, agreed, somewhat (Phil wasn’t as convinced) and then settled on the idea that all students and all teachers need guides.

We pondered whether resilience was a thing (materialistic) or an idea (object for analysis). Maybe it’s a multiplicity. Phil convinced Matt that we all undergo ‘switching’ between conceptualizations of resilience constantly, who then hinted at the dynamics of imposed meaning (defined by an other) and how intent and meaning interplay within an individual's experience of resilience and vulnerability. The conversation took a serious tone for a moment there.

Links: •Jessica Riddell “Building resilience into the classroom” (appearing in University Affairs, April 11, 2017). 

•Daniel R. Curtis “Coping with crisis: The resilience and vulnerability of pre-industrial settlements”  It's a book Phil reviewed for Histoire Sociale/Social History 

•Ben Anderson “What kind of thing is resilience?” (appearing in Politics, Vol.35(1), 2015)

Recommendations (49:35): Matt brought in two books: 1491 by Charles C. Mann and The Plague by Albert Camus. He wants everyone to know that 1491 made him reconsider everything he learned in archaeology class, it's an account written by a science journalist about the history of North, Central and South America up to the year before Columbus and his Merry Men arrived. The political bent is that it challenges the colonialist-reading of ‘their history’. The Plague (available in audio) is the second most popular book by Camus, it's about the quarantining of a Algerian city during an outbreak of some kind of plague, but is more a vehicle for Camus to work through many philosophic themes (ugh).

Phil recommended a podcast about Star Trek while Matt tried to ask questions with a straight face. Phil attempted to justify his actions (to whom, exactly?). To be continued...

Concluding thought: failure can be good.

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Music: Song "Soul Challenger" appearing on "Cullahnary School" by Cullah Available at: http://www.cullah.com Under CC BY SA license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/