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