5. Commentary on the School of the Dialogue of Cultures

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 49, no. 2,
March–April 2011, pp. 56–61.
© 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2011 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/RPO1061-0405490208
Paul Sullivan

In this commentary, I critically examine the School of the Dialogue of Cultures approach to education using “polyphonic teaching” and “the existential learner” as headings. I draw on the work of Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Kierkegaard to argue that the School of the Dialogue of Cultures is an exciting approach to education but one that could benefit from a more critical engagement with relationships of authority and individual desire.
I found the series of articles on the School of the Dialogue of Cultures to be immensely interesting, challenging, and important, not only for how we do education but also in terms of psychology. 1 In this commentary, I intend to highlight what I see as two particularly interesting “points of wonder”: (1) polyphonic teaching, and (2) the existential learner. Within these points of wonder, I feel both admiration and skepticism. We are presented with a glowing report about the benefits of the School of the Dialogue of Cultures (SDC) but there is little sense of failure—either from the students, the system, or indeed the practitioners, which seems unavoidable for any practice. In this way, there is something almost utopian about this system. It is a system where all the students are interested and even the teachers get to be genuinely educated and willingly self-educate—as part of a value system that champions equality. While heart-warming, it does beg the question of how inequality and failure are dealt with. So I will temper my wonder with some degree of healthy skepticism in what follows.
Polyphonic teaching
An equality of consciousness between participants in dialogue appears as a significant feature of the SDC. Matusov (2009) comments favorably on this, arguing that he is eager to join such equality. I think this is a lovely aspiration and it contrasts with the traditional, commonsense view that education is a one-way street from expert to the novice. What is particularly important in enabling such equality is the concept of “points of wonder” for younger grades moving to the “person of culture” for older grades (Solomadin and Kurganov, 2009). Bibler (2009, p. 39) outlines “points of wonder” as analogous to knots and puzzles. They include puzzles of the word, number, nature, and history. Knowledge, here, is not given but emerges out of interaction with the puzzles of the social world. Different systems of logic are considered to interact within these puzzles—for example, antiquity, the middle ages, the new time. As such, there is no ultimate authority. Moreover, the teacher does not insist on giving priority to one logic system over another or to one student voice over another. In this sense, as Solomadin and Kurganov (2009) argue, the teachers are encouraged to adopt a polyphonic style of teaching. In polyphony, the author is surprised by the characters and the plot is secondary to the dialogue. The author has the most minimal involvement with the plot and this capacity to remain surprised is key. Indeed, Kurganov (2009) gives us examples of genuine teacher surprise in Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish,” and tells us that in practical terms, the teacher is both a “conductor” and an “active participant” in the dialogue. The resonances with Dostoevsky, as seen by Bakhtin (1984), are striking here, and the empirical examples also testify to this. I think if the “novel” could be materialized in a social process, then it would look something like the SDC.
It is the concept of polyphony, however, that has undergone much scrutiny in the literature with some commentators (e.g., Hirschkop, 1999) arguing that it is naive and places too much faith in the speaking voice as opposed to social, historical, and institutional processes of power and authority. Inspired by polyphony, power is also the elephant in the room here. What we get are the reported movements toward the “internally persuasive discourse” in the empirical data, and this is valorized as being good. In the extracts, we get a sense of a school environment that encourages open disagreement and questioning of authority. However, the potential anarchy of multiple viewpoints and agendas as well as the struggle to control them tends to be left unexplored. I find it very odd that Matusov (2009) struggled to get answers to questions about classroom management and the imposition of a structure in the school environment. It seems strikingly at odds with Bibler’s philosophy of education.
The variety of reactions that Socrates elicits resonates with my own experience of teaching in higher education. Many of the students dutifully show up for the lectures but others do not. Many of the students who do show up at the lectures feel that they have done enough by showing up and do not need to participate any more than that now that their body is in the room. I find that when I remind the students that I would like them to contribute to various discussions and that I will not be offended if they decide they would prefer to be somewhere else, many of them do indeed walk away from the discussion after this frank confession on my part, for whatever reason. Perhaps because of my teaching style or perhaps because of their history of education or both, they seem to link knowledge with information transmission and place little value on discussion. On the other hand, I should also point out that a minority do stay, they are enthused by the discussion, and feel liberated to say what they like apart from an atmosphere of gloomy silence.
There is one comment in particular I would like to make about the inequality of interest in student participation that arises from my reading of Kierkegaard.
According to Holquist (2004), Bakhtin read Kierkegaard quite a bit. In contrast to thinkers such as Hegel, who viewed the self as part of a structural system, and of the conquering power of reason in resolving paradoxes, Kierkegaard (1849/1989) was interested in the self or what he called “spirit” as an “exception” or as a unique being that cannot resolve paradox (e.g., life and death). This is partly because the self exists both inside (through abstract knowledge) and outside the system (through the uniqueness of lived experience). He championed the Socratic quest of life to “know thyself” in the midst of contradictory relations. What drives this impulse is eros, and Socrates, for Kierkegaard, has an erotic desire for wisdom. Again, not everybody has this desire, and, like all desires, it cannot be willed. At best, desire can be provoked, but there is no guarantee as to the response (Howland, 2006).
For Bakhtin, the self is a boundary phenomenon, while otherness has the potential to enrich consciousness and we are strangely attracted to it. Like Kierkegaard, he views the self as caught between I-for-myself (spirit) and I-for-others/others-forme (soul). We are motivated by a passionate desire to consummate otherness—to understand it completely, to put boundaries around it, give it a shape, and fix it in space. The aesthetic task, or project of selfhood, however, is to resist the full impulse to do this. We need to give the other the space to provoke and stimulate us—to receive it rather than will it to order. Like Kierkegaard, he sees this as a difficult and very personal task. It takes risk to genuinely encounter otherness with the prospect of being changed. Entrenchment and offense is far easier, as some of Socrates’s interlocutors show.
It is the “I-for-myself” that eludes, perhaps rightly, any system of education. I do not believe this has anything to do with “ability,” but it has much to do with desire and interest. Much as there is no single aesthetic, the system cannot underwrite or guarantee the response of its participants—who will exist within and outside the system. The system can provoke and try to stimulate, but, like any system, it can sometimes meet its limits against the rocky shores of the individual subject.
As Morson (1991) points out, genuine responsivity and creativity depends on the lack of guarantee from any system.
In conclusion, I think the SDC is a very significant departure for pedagogy and a very positive development for psychology. Organizing the curriculum around flexible points of wonder and bringing cultural systems together by promoting democracy in the classroom and by championing equality of participation through polyphony at every level (in practice and theory), we are brought to a new and exciting dimension in education. However, I also think that it tries too hard to persuade us of its merits, at least here—perhaps because of the opposition it faces.
However, this means I am left in a lacuna and with raised eyebrows as a result.
How does this work with the uninterested, the disengaged, amid gender politics, class, institutional strictures—where are the limits? I feel there is a dialogue to be had here with moments of frustration, disappointment, and pain in the evolution of the SDC—dialogue that could enrich it even further.

Note
1. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1 (January–February
2009) and vol. 47, no. 2 (March–April 2009).
References
Bakhtin, M.M. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. C. Emerson.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Berlyand, I.E. 2009. “Puzzles of the Number and Dialogue in the Early Grades of
the School of the Dialogue of Cultures.” Journal of Russian and East European
Psychology, vol. 47, no. 1 (January–February), pp. 61–95.
Bibler, V.S. 2009. “The Foundations of the School of the Dialogue of Cultures Program.”
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Cheyne, J.A., and D. Tarulli. 1999. “Dialogue, Difference and Voice in the Zone of
Proximal Development.” Theory and Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 2–28.
Hirschkop, K. 1999. Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford
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Holquist, M. 2004. Dialogism. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
Howland, J. 2006. Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith.
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Morson, G.S. 1991. “Bakhtin and the Present Moment.” American Scholar, vol. 60, no.
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of the Middle and High Schools of the Dialogue of Cultures.”Journal of Russian and
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Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological
Processes, ed. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, E. Souberman. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
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Paul Sullivan is a lecturer in social psychology at the University of Bradford, UK.
His research focuses on the implications of dialogism in psychology, with particular reference to qualitative methods, organizational processes, and identity in the fields of art and education.
E-mail: p.sullivan@bradford.ac.uk.