slightly revised rough draft

hey all,

now back from germany - slightly revised this - give it a look and a comment if you have a chance.

Personal/Political – Tentative Curriculum Map


Most Emphasized Skills:

1. Writing for clarity, power, and interest.
2. College-ready reading.
3. Problematizing and concretizing.
4. Discovering connections.
5. Conducting informal and formal research.
6. Collaborating for insight.
7. Creating in multiple formats.


Unit Plans:


1. Digital: Youth Surrounded by Screens

Key Concepts:

Changes in Consciousness

Compulsion - Short-Cycle Behaviors

Friendship and Community

Self-Presentation - The new celebrity for everybody - we're all in reality TV shows now


Resources:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121063808679386853.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,6248930.story
http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536
Everything Bad Is Good For You - Johnson
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
Generation Digital - Montgomery
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media - Buckingham
The Dumbest Generation - Bauerlein
Information Tribes - http://tagonist.livejournal.com/189177.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/us/06internet.html?hpw
Webcam lessons

2. Cool: Costumes, Shoes, Tattoos, and Blues - Self, Identity, and Social Status
Key Concepts:
Identity
Self-Presentation
Coolness
Mass Media
images of identity
Conformity
Anthropological Perspective
Sociological Perspective
Historical Perspective
Philosophical Perspective
Naturalist Critique
Marxist Critique
Musical Tribes
Sexuality as status symbol
Fashion

Resources:
Merchants of Cool
The Persuaders
Journal of Popular Culture
http://tagonist.livejournal.com/189906.html - Rat Park

3. School: K-16 Education Today

Resources:
Own Educational Narratives
Letters to Teachers
I Love College - Roth
Our Schools Suck - Su
Dumbing Us Down - Gatto
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/progressive_education.aspx#1E1-progrsved
My Pedagogic Creed - Dewey - http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Pedagogic_Creed
http://tagonist.livejournal.com/189906.html - Rat Park
Entre Les Murs
School is Hell - Groening

4. Other People
Friendships, Acquaintances, Colleagues, Lovers, and Family
Listening Skills and Intimacy
How to be effective at work
Different family structures and dynamics and advantages and disadvantages
Empathy
Love

Resources:
NonViolent Communication
Goleman book on Emotional Intelligence
17 Obstacles to Effective Communication

Key Pedagogical Principles:


1. Whether the student learns hugely or smally is primarily the student's responsibility. The student is the one who will enjoy the benefits of the learning for a lifetime - the student is the one to decide how hard to try, how to respond to difficulties, how to motivate herself. The student is the player, the teacher is just the coach.


2. Student interest and engagement and cleverness are important. Study habits and the devotion of effort and time are also important. Combine them and you become an intellectual.


3. Students should be allowed to devote most of their school time to topics of clear relevance to their own lives.


4. In a true collision of ideas the student is able to honestly consider the perspectives of others (including teachers, experts in the field, her own family) and rethink her own perspective, not simply barricade her own perspective or fully adopt the teacher's perspective.


5. The best learning often leads to insight and transformation.


6. Students benefit generally from the chance to deeply explore particularly important and engaging themes - but some contextual information and memorization helps too.


7. The natural phases of learning include- maybe in order although of course we loop a lot:

a. experiencing

b. brainstorming

c. thinking and talking

d. interviewing and surveying

e. quick reading and video viewing and thinking

f. talking and second writing and exchanging

g. deeper reading and thinking and note assembling

h. thinking and writing and

i. creating and embodying.


8. Learning in schools offers many advantages (leadership by teacher, peers to discuss ideas with, resources, set-aside time) and many disadvantages (distraction, coercive structures, competition, grades, etc). Since we will be learning together in a school setting we have to work together to optimise the structures and dynamics of our collaboration.


9. We're allowed to think different. We're also able to choose how much time and effort to devote to this course. And we come to the course with different skills and different abilities. Therefore we will do this course in a way that allows students to make individual and group choices - it can't be "one size fits all".


10. Since the primary function of grades at this level is as signals to colleges the grading structure that I propose is:

A signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a serious college where the majority of the people are there to think and learn and well prepared to do so - Harvard or Oberlin.

B signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a regular college where some people are there primarily to think and learn and are decently prepared to do so - CUNY or SUNY.

C signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a community college or party school - where much learning is possible despite the relatively ill-prepared and disinterested students all around you.

D signifies that you have not demonstrated readiness for college.

F signifies that you have not demonstrated basic readiness for this level of high school - 8o% punctual attendance, some ability to complete assigned work, basic collaborative effort in the classroom.

Some Enduring Understandings I hope to emphasize:

1. We do not live autonomously. No border walls with armed guards successfully prohibit thoughts and energy and matter from crossing our skins and skulls in any direction. No one is an island. We swim together in an ocean, made of the ocean, come from the ocean, return to the ocean at death and with every breath.
2. Reality exists complexly swirled and blurred – everything connects to everything else.
3. People can live consciously – critically consider aspects of our lives that our cultures present uncritically. People can live unconsciously – “we don’t want anyone to mind us - we play the roles that they assigned us.”
4. Greater awareness of connections between aspects of reality allows us to choose – using criteria of beauty, justice, or creativity – where no choice was offered. In other words, critical consciousness reduces the proportion of our lives that we live as dumb puppets of the corporate, political, and traditional power blocs in our culture and increases our ability to resist those blocs – not as autonomous rational bubble-people – but as well-connected and phosphorescent swimmers in a larger ocean.
5. Our culture’s current set-up significantly requires domination, seduction, conformity, and the selling of various commodities and identities to hide the “quiet desperation” of most members of the society.
6. Members of our culture compulsively assemble masks and missions to gain acceptance and to construct a personal narrative.
7. Other paths might be possible but we should be skeptical of cartoon simple answers.


Underlying Resources and Connected Thoughts:
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContStar.htm
New Radicals in the Multiversity
Triads - 2nd commentor has to also comment on 1st comment
Use ASL - hyperlinked alphabet for most repeated comments
Opening routine is crucial
Create examples of various quality levels and their grades, comments too
Video blogging using webcams?
Train facilitators
Daybreaking - 101, contextual study, field trips, street interviews

Rough draft of initial handout for Personal/Political Course

hi you all,

how you doing?

just did 3 days in Paris and liked it. thank goodness i'm not vegan anymore. now i'm back in Germany.

below is the rough and incomplete draft of what I'm thinking of doing as the initial handout in the first week of school. i'd really appreciate detailed feedback - does it seem fair? do any of the things i've written seem disrespectful or likely to get people to be antagonistic? do the unit plans hold much interest? anything that should be added or changed?

thanks in advance for your comments - they will be carefully read and considered.

Personal/Political – Tentative Curriculum Map

Key Pedagogical Principles:

1. Whether the student learns much or little is largely the student's decision. The student is the player, the teacher is just the coach.

2. Student interest and engagement is important. Study habits and the devotion of effort and time are also important. Combine the two and you become an intellectual.

3. Students should be able to devote much of their school time to topics of direct relevance to their own lives.

4. In a true collision of ideas the student is able to honestly and thoughtfully consider the perspectives of others (including teachers, experts in the field, her own family) and rethink her own perspective.

5. The best learning often leads to insight and transformation.

6. Students mostly benefit from the chance to focus in depth on particurly important and engaging themes - but some contextual information and memorization helps too.

7. The natural phases of learning include- generally in order:

a. experiencing

b. brainstorming

c. thinking and talking

d. interviewing and surveying

e. quick reading and video viewing and thinking

f. talking and second writing and exchanging

g. deeper reading and thinking and note assembling

h. writing and thinking and

i. creating and embodying.

8. Learning in schools offers many advantages (leadership by teacher, peers to discuss ideas with, resources, set-aside time) and many disadvantages (distraction, coercive structures, competition, grades, etc). Since we will be learning together in a school setting we have to work together to optimise the structures and dynamics of our collaboration.

9. We're allowed to think different. We're also able to choose how much time and effort to devote to this course. And we come to the course with different skills and different abilities. Therefore we will do this course in a way that allows students to make individual and group choices - it can't be "one size fits all".

10. Since the primary function of grades at this level is as signals to colleges the grading structure that I propose is:

A. An A signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a serious college where the majority of the people are there to think and learn and well prepared to do so - Harvard or Hampshire.

B. A B signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a regular college where some people are there primarily to think and learn and are decently prepared to do so - CUNY or SUNY.

C. A C signifies that you have demonstrated readiness for a community college or party school - where much learning is possible despite the relatively ill-prepared and disinterested students all around you.

D. A D signifies that you have not demonstrated readiness for college.

F. An F signifies that you have not demonstrated basic readiness for this level of high school - 85% attendence and punctuality, some ability to complete assigned work, basic collaborative effort in the classroom.

Some Enduring Understandings I hope to emphasize:

1. We do not live autonomously. No border walls with armed guards successfully prohibit thoughts and energy and matter from crossing our skins and skulls in any direction. No one is an island. We swim together in an ocean, made of the ocean, come from the ocean, return to the ocean at death and with every breath.
2. Reality exists complexly swirled and blurred – everything connects to everything else.
3. People can live consciously – critically consider aspects of our lives that our cultures present uncritically. People can live unconsciously – “play the roles that they assigned us – we don’t want anyone to mind us.”
4. Greater awareness of connections between aspects of reality allows us to choose – using criteria of beauty, justice, or creativity – where no choice was offered. In other words, critical consciousness reduces the proportion of our lives that we live as dumb puppets of the corporate, political, and traditional power blocs in our culture and increases our ability to resist those blocs – not as autonomous rational bubble-people – but as well-connected and phosphorescent swimmers in a larger ocean.
5. Our culture’s functioning consists, in part, of domination, seduction, conformity, and the selling of various commodities and identities to hide the “quiet desperation” of most members of the society.
6. People compulsively assemble masks and missions to gain acceptance and to construct a personal narrative.
7. Another path might be possible.

Most Emphasized Skills:

1. Problematizing and Connecting.
2. Conducting informal and formal research

Unit Plans:

Costumes and the Cool Show: Shoes, Tattoos, and Blues - Self, Identity, and Social Status

Key Concepts:

Identity

Cool – Mass Media images of identity

Conformity

Anthropological Perspective

Sociological Perspective

Historical Perspective

Philosophical Perspective

Naturalist Critique

Marxist Critique

Musical Tribes

Resouces:

Mercharnts of Cool

The Persuaders

Digital Youth: Surrounded by Screens
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121063808679386853.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,6248930.story
http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536
Everything Bad Is Good For You - Johnson
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
Generation Digital - Montgomery
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media - Buckingham
The Dumbest Generation - Bauerlein

K-16: Education Today
Own Educational Narratives
Letters to Teachers
I Love College - Roth
Our Schools Suck - Su
Dumbing Us Down - Gatto
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/progressive_education.aspx#1E1-progrsved
My Pedagogic Creed - Dewey - http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Pedagogic_Creed
Entre Les Murs

Relationships
Friendships, Acquaintances, Colleagues, Lovers, and Family
Listening Skills and Intimacy
How to be effective at work
Different family structures and dynamics and advantages and disadvantages
Empathy
Love

Notes on Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

Tommy's screams and the Hailsham ethos of education despite donations related to Holloway's scream - related to Munch's?

Ishiguro on basic theme of the book.

The non-existence of considerations of escape.

Saramago's allegories and this allegory.

Criticism of the focus on the "being creative" from a novelist.

True love - It isn't in twos, it doesn't save, it does redeem. Do Madame and Ms. Emily love the students?

The maturity of the characters - they don't require each other to be ideal - they accept.

The focus (in Kathy's monologs but also applies as unrealized-larger-analysis) on the unspoken rules/agreements in relationships and how they structure conversation and interaction.

The 4th donation's extra terrors - even a simple death is precluded.

The connection to capitalist labor processes and exploitation in general.

Was Ms. Lucy right? Or Ms. Emily? This matters a lot for Tommy - should it?

Topic: Costuming

A small collection of multi-level observation and analysis of how people present themselves socially/publicly.

Photographs and videos and notes - from people you know to people on the street to celebrities.

How do individuals steer how others feel about them? Why does this seem so important to so many people?

There are physical manipulables -
Make-up, hair, piercings, clothing, tattoos and other plastic surgery, shoes, fragrances, shavings, jewelry, hats, etc.
There are behavioral manipulables -
Walk, talk (register, melody, rhythm, vocabulary, complexity), orientation (very friendly, touchy, cold, distant, etc), goal seeking (harmony, self-aggrandizement, "goodness", sexuality, humor).

What is a sense of style? What social benefits result from successful presentation of image (2nd source)? How does that translate to inner feelings and self-perception?

Is all this effort worth it? Some sources say no.

Activities:
Street interviews
Reading
Journaling
Examining magazines and ads
Changing our style and observing differences in self and other reactions
Role analysis
Subculture analysis
Semiotics
Fit in and be special
etc.

July 1 Notes

Order the recommended basil-walnut pesto sandwich rather than the rabbit food house salad and order the Strawberry Napoleon rather than the carob covered coconut cheesecake.

Much was said.

There will be (probably) 4 parts of the summer project -
1. Blogs - For which there are some guidelines for the first posted below. Of course people should add other thoughts, questions for each other, not just write about what I ask you to write, unless you want to.

2. Books - We've agreed to start reading Never Let Me Go by English author Kazuo Ishiguro. Thereafter we will read a student selection - either Runaway Jury by Grisham or Transforming a Rape Culture edited by Buchwald et al or Intercourse by Dworkin or something else.

3. Adventures - We discussed a bike/scooter trip and we also discussed some other locations. I'll do some research and present options at the next meeting.

4. Curriculum - We've agreed that each of us will post about one curriculum unit/topic and include ideas, activities, provocative questions, etc around that topic. Then when we get back together we will see if we can connect them.

Our next meeting will be at the Cube at Astor Place, a notorious meeting spot, at 7pm Tuesday 7/7.

View Larger Map

Blog Post 1

1. What ideas or feelings do you find yourself focusing on these days?

I'm mostly using my time for self-improvement, getting tasks done, the doing instead of the being. Monday was my first day off and I used it to accomplish the kinds of tasks that I didn't have time for during the school year. Tuesday too.

I have had a couple good talks with Myles about the falseness of the nature/human binary and also about our compulsive identity production.

2. Its weird that school deeply structures your life for 9.5 months - from 7am-3:10pm you're dealing with school and beyond that, with homework and projects. Then all of a sudden you're in summer vacation and have no institutional structure. How does the contrast feel to you? Does family/capitalist-labor/etc conquer the area that the school has temporarily abdicated, leaving you no freer than before or do you have more freedom? Have you been enjoying your time? Are there aspects of school that you miss? Are there aspects of school that you're particularly glad to have a break from? How are you filling/wasting/enjoying the extra time you now have?

Its really too soon for me to answer the school question. The main contrast I can feel now is the chance to wake up when I want, to take an afternoon nap, to have more hours of the day to do the stuff I need/want to do.

3. How many hours a week would you be willing to put towards reading an easyish novel that we were all reading? How many hours a week would you be willing to put towards reading a hardish essay that we were all reading? How many combined?
6,6=12

4. What is a small - 2-7 hour long - adventure that you'd enjoy doing with the rest of us? For instance - make a short film, go to Rockaway Beach, walk on the Appalachian Trail. see a strange movie?
I like all those ideas.

5. Will you be able to meet in the City for the whole summer or do you have a planned excursion for part of the summer - if so, when?
I'll be in Western Kansas for 4 days at the end of July and am hoping to take a 4 week trip to Europe also, in August. But hopefully we could keep doing stuff on the blogs and probably you all could do fine without me, by then.

6. What else would you be interested to address or read other peoples' thoughts on?
Family stuff, reading stuff, dancing and music stuff, the experience of being.

7. Post some comments on other peoples' blogs that respond to the above points.

Summer Project 09 - An initial statement of purposes

I've invited Gavin, Ali Jo, Yu-Xi, Chloe, Andy Lu, Kate, and Dinorah to work with me ove the summer to explore important ideas, make small adventures, and prepare for next year's courses. I believe this project will help us in the following ways:

1. Continue momentum from this last year of a deeper understanding of the world and our place in it.
2. Deepen our sense of teamwork in the coming year and beyond.
3. Continue developing our thinking, writing, reading skills instead of letting them go mostly fallow over break.
4. Prepare for a truly outstanding class next year - both with student-influenced curriculum and perhaps also chunks of student-led lessons.
5. Allow participants to claim an actually meaningful honor/experience for college applications and recommendations.

I acknowledge that this format - invitation only participation - feels unusual. But, based on my experience, its justified and might work well. I picked people who fit the following criteria:
1. Really smart 2. Motivated and consistent 3. Creative &/or Critical 4. High thougthfulness to drama ratio 5. Could exercise leadership next year 6. Likely to enjoy taking part and to make taking part enjoyable.

In preparation for the meeting please post a blog that addresses some or all of the following questions. You can use your old blog, or post a link to a new blog on your old blog.

1. What ideas or feelings do you find yourself focusing on these days?

2. Its weird that school deeply structures your life for 9.5 months - from 7am-3:10pm you're dealing with school and beyond that, with homework and projects. Then all of a sudden you're in summer vacation and have no institutional structure. How does the contrast feel to you? Does family/capitalist-labor/etc conquer the area that the school has temporarily abdicated, leaving you no freer than before or do you have more freedom? Have you been enjoying your time? Are there aspects of school that you miss? Are there aspects of school that you're particularly glad to have a break from? How are you filling/wasting/enjoying the extra time you now have?

3. How many hours a week would you be willing to put towards reading an easyish novel that we were all reading? How many hours a week would you be willing to put towards reading a hardish essay that we were all reading? How many combined?

4. What is a small - 2-7 hour long - adventure that you'd enjoy doing with the rest of us? For instance - make a short film, go to Rockaway Beach, walk on the Appalachian Trail. see a strange movie?

5. Will you be able to meet in the City for the whole summer or do you have a planned excursion for part of the summer - if so, when?

6. What else would you be interested to address or read other peoples' thoughts on?

7. Post some comments on other peoples' blogs that respond to the above points.