Today’s plan:
- Discuss Readings
- Review Paper Assignment / Questions
- Homework
Freire and Lorde
According to the Open Syllabus Project, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the 99th most assigned text in America, and the 2nd most assigned text in education classes. Let’s determine why. I want to begin by having you identify a few key words that stuck out for you. I have a few in mind too.
I also want to make sure we directly address how we can put the Lorde reading in conversation with Freire. Things to highlight:
- The European vs. the Black views of living
- What is authentic vs. inauthentic poetry?
- How can we link Freire’s notions of praxis to Lorde’s notion of poetry?
“What Is Higher Education?” Essay Assignment
To wrap up our first unit this semester, I am asking you to write a 550 word essay that answers the question “What is Higher Education?” I am asking you to address 4 of the readings in your response. I use the word address because I want to leave room for you to think about how to address these readings, how to group them together, what you would want from each of them. I also want you to be free to construct your response idealistically, realistically, etc.
Given that this is an advanced composition class, I do want to explicate what it means to address a reading. It means more than merely using a name or providing a quote. It means contextualizing a source, providing your reader with information that helps her understand its importance (you should never assume that a reader will know or have read sources you reference). I tend to use the following sentences to do this.
When I argue that humanists should reconnect to the public sphere, I am thinking particularly of the recent work by Bruno Latour. Latour, in his 2004 book Politics of Nature, argues that, since Plato, humanists have privileged private experience and individual growth over political change and social challenges. They do this, he argues, because personal introspection saves them from the messy, chaotic, and oftentimes frustrating agitation of working in public spheres. Of specific interest to the idea of reinvigorating the public sphere is his plan to organize academics as one quarter of a new political collective, composed of scientists, politicians, economists, and “moralists” (his term for what I am calling humanists).
Here’s another example of how I might bring in a source:
Those in rhetoric might recognize an earlier precursor to Latour’s idea of a collective public: Cicero’s notion of oratory. Writing during the height of the Roman republic, in the last century BC, Cicero argued that education needed to center on producing citizens capable of participating in political processes. Cicero found value in Platonic philosophy and dialectic, however he was adamantly against the notion of learning for learning’s sake or for mere individual growth. In fact, in his On Oratory, Cicero argues that the value of the ancient Greeks lies in their ability to exercise our minds in ways that make us more responsive, inventive, and capable debaters: “[imagine quote here].” Commenting on Cicero’s commitments, Barlow notes how his entire approach to education is tied to the notion of the “statesman.” Barlow identifies two central elements of a statesmen, A and B. These elements speak directly to Latour’s investment in producing academics more capable of engaging the messy world of political decision-making.
When I bring in a source or a name, I tend to do a few things:
- Provide a time when the piece was written. This isn’t always a date.
- Provide a one sentence summary of the purpose of the work. This is often hard to do. It requires you can condense something down quite a bit.
- Focus attention on a particular part of the work and set up what’s going on around it.
Additionally, I’ll review some quick “best practices” for a short essay. First, every paragraph should make some kind of claim, an argumentative position that the rest of the paragraph will defend. Second, every paragraph should conclude connecting back to the main idea of the paper, making concrete connections to previous positions (note, in the second paragraph above, how the first sentence makes a transition from the previous and how the last sentence speaks to an overarching argument, what we might call the thesis).
To sum up, I am asking for a paper that:
- Is about 550 words
- Addresses for readings
- Offers a vision of the End (purpose) of Higher Education (note that it can also address means)
- Puts personal experience in conversation with our readings
Homework
Please complete your essay before Tuesday’s class. We will be focusing on Twitter and what has been retweeted with the course hash tag in next class, so if you haven’t been reading anything, you have some work to do here, too.
