week one blog | susana esqueda, desma9

 Week 1 Blog

Hello everyone! My name is Susana González Esqueda, and I am a third-year Anthropology major. I am excited to learn with you all this quarter! This week’s concept of the “two cultures” was really intriguing to me because it articulated a sentiment I have always felt. In my educational experience, I always felt stuck between the schismatic division of the arts and the sciences; my high school emphasized only the sciences, completely neglecting artistic endeavors. Because of this, I internalized a binary understanding of education—one which polarized art and science as two separate entities with no entanglement. 

This week’s content centered on the necessity to disrupt this false dichotomy by, in Snow’s words, “rethinking our education” (Snow 19). Professor Vesna continually reaffirmed this in her lectures, addressing the school system—and society as a whole—continually reinforces the division between art and science. The socialization of stereotypes, especially in education, reproduces unconscious internalized notions which separate both fields (Vesna, Two Cultures Pt.II 12:41). This can also be seen geographically with the division of the buildings on school campuses (Vesna, Two Cultures Pt.III 6:04). Within UCLA this is reflected in the division of North Campus (the humanities, social sciences, and arts buildings), and South Campus (the STEM buildings). Students of these careers are spatially separated, only interacting with other individuals sharing in their majors and disciplines. 

Tak, Nitya and Justin Jung. “A Campus Divided.” Prime from the Daily Bruin, 2021, https://prime.dailybruin.com/justinnorth&southcampus. Date accessed 7 April 2023. 

This model of education is deeply rooted within capitalist frameworks, a product of “the intellectual culture of the enlightenment and economic circumstances of the industrial revolution” (RSA Animate). Schools were modeled after factories, spatially and psychologically. 

Rose, Sara. “FYI: Modern Classroom Design Mirrors Factory Design During the Industrial Revolution.” FYI, 2021, https://vocal.media/fyi/fyi-modern-classroom-design-mirrors-factory-design-during-the-industrial-revolution. Date accessed 7 April 2023.

In other words, the education system is static, grounded in an industrial capitalist framing which prioritizes profit. As a result, children are “anesthetized” to education, rather than stimulated and engaged. This creates an impersonal connection to education, further fostered by the imagined separation between sciences and arts.

Shaw, Anne. “Factory Model vs 21st Century Model of Education.” LinkedIn, August 2016. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/factory-model-vs-21st-century-education-anne-shaw. Date accessed 7 April 2023.

I am grateful to have read and watched the content for this week because it has galvanized me to consciously disrupt the internalized binary through which I’ve viewed academia; I can actively “negotiate the space ‘in between’” (Vesna, Toward a Third Culture 122). It affirms the notion that there is not one linear way of learning; I do not have to narrow myself only to either humanities, or science, or art. I can exist in an imbrication of all.

Works Cited

Rose, Sara. “FYI: Modern Classroom Design Mirrors Factory Design During the Industrial Revolution.” FYI, 2021, https://vocal.media/fyi/fyi-modern-classroom-design-mirrors-factory-design-during-the-industrial-revolution. Date accessed 7 April 2023.

“RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Oct. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&t=1s.  

Shaw, Anne. “Factory Model vs 21st Century Model of Education.” LinkedIn, August 2016. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/factory-model-vs-21st-century-education-anne-shaw. Date accessed 7 April 2023.

Snow, C.P. "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Tak, Nitya and Justin Jung. “A Campus Divided.” Prime from the Daily Bruin, 2021, https://prime.dailybruin.com/justinnorth&southcampus. Date accessed 7 April 2023. 

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo, vol. 38, no. 4, 2001, pp. 121-125.

Vesna, Victoria. “Two Cultures Pt.II” YouTube, YouTube, 31 Mar. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUr4xxZ_0gw&t=447s.  

Vesna, Victoria. “Two Cultures PT.III.” YouTube, YouTube, 2 Apr. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FOEuxrwxd0&t=22s.