Abstract
D espite the influence of constructionist orientations in educational philoso phy, mainstream American pedagogy continues to conceptualize identity and development predominantly as the individual or autonomous self. Evolving out of Cartesian rationalism, the autonomous self is one in which ego boundaries are perceived as rigid and mature individual consciousness is understood as detached, isolated, and essentialized. Thus, the idea of an autonomous self implies a reality that separates facts from values, privileges scientific detachment, and justifies the domination of nature (Berman, 1 98 1 ; Keller, 1 985/ 1 995) . Learning based on an autonomous model focuses on mastery. Meaning-making is centered on separation-separating the subject/text from the writer, the writer from the reader. Writing and reading are taught as a process of decontextualizing writers and readers so that they can envision a rhetorical situation as separate from self. Students are trained to organize the elements of their particular rhetorical situa tion in a manner best suited to achieving an individually conceived goal. In view of the social nature of all learning, the i solation of an autonomous student is in itself troubling. But even more disturbing is that school curricula and methodol ogy based on the mastery model of autonomy tend to disadvantage young girls and reinforce limiting stereotypes for young boys. Educators need to evolve language arts pedagogy that privileges an osmotic, rather than an autonomous, view of self.
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