Hello dear reader, This week and last week in ASTU we have been discussing the role of interpretative communities in remembering and learning from the academic paper written by Farhat Shazad. In this paper Shazad focuses on interpretative communities are shaping the memories and learning processes of students; she also describes to the reader how this is different to how remembering and learning have previously been interoperated by sociologists such as Wertsch who believe that “speaking, thinking, remembering, and learning involve a process of mediation between two main forces.” This is particularly interesting as Shazad raises multiple points about how memories are formed in communities such as families and groups of friends.

As Shazad explains in her paper students do not only learn in the class room but they bring in their own values and ideas from home and from other communities that they come in contact with. For example, Shazad takes examples of answers that the people she interviewed in her study and how interactions with their family have shaped their memory and how they perceive certain situations. I find this fascinating that this seemingly obvious idea has not been realised earlier by sociologists in the study of how students obtain knowledge. Another example of this is the fact that it seems in her paper that she introduces the idea to her audience that a group of friends can shape the opinion of an individual in the group. This could come from a discussion amongst friends about anything from sports, politics to what kind of drinks are better than others; literally any discussion that happens between friends forms opinions with the individuals within the group. It is important that this has been brought to Shazad’s audience as gives them incite into how interpretative communities such as family and friends because it has been a part of how opinions have been formed for even longer than the media and school classrooms have existed; making the fact that this is portrayed and conceived by the reader as a somewhat “modern” way of thinking is somewhat concerning as to how previous sociologists believed that people formed opinions and learnt about nye everything.

Now we must also remember that the classroom is instrumental in forming how we think and conceive certain information. I went to an International School meaning that all day from 9-4 I was surrounded by hundreds of people from more than 70 different ethnic backgrounds. This was brought to the forefront by my school as we often discussed how certain ideologies would be looked at differently by other societies that were present in the class-room. This was a great opportunity in the class-room to learn about how other people thought about current events and events that transpired in the past. For example, we had a jewish kid in my history class and when discussing the holocaust he said something that I found very interesting as he stated that, “It was something that happened in the past and of course its tragic but it is something that I don’t feel is as big of a deal nowadays as it is being made out to be.” I thought that this was very interesting to hear this from a jewish person as I almost lost family in the holocaust as my Grandfather fell under the half jewish rule and his brother was actually on a train to Auschwitz from which he was lucky enough to escape from. So to hear from a jewish person that it was not as big of a deal as people make it out to be was something that I had not personally thought about, and had it not been for the class-room I would not have this opinion that shapes how I now think of this tragic event that transpired in Nazi Germany. The classroom is important in teaching students new perspectives and the ideologies of the teacher that one has for each class of course also affects how one thinks of the subject and the subject matter that is being taught. Shazad recognises this in her paper but she also says that the previous academics that have covered this subject have neglected the interpretative communities and that we learn as a result of both the school system and other sources such as our families and the media.

Now what questions can we derive from what Shazad has written in her paper? Here are a few that I have thought of, feel free to answer or post your own in the comments.

Is there an even split for the difference in learning from the school system and interpretative communities, or is it different for each person?

Could Shazad be wrong as not all kids talk to their parents and friends about typical “world views” or other things that are taught in school?

Thanks for reading

Shazad’s paper: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/903202568/fulltextPDF?accountid=14656

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