Today’s Plan:
- Outline expectations/constraints for the upcoming paper
- Discuss: Dewey
- Read: Gatto
What is Education?
Here is the original description on the website:
At the conclusion of the historic stage of readings, I will ask you to compose a 1000 word essay that offers a purpose for higher education. This essay will draw upon readings from the course to support its definition.
Now, in my postpedagogical spirit (itself somewhat indebted to Dewey), let me elaborate a bit. Your paper has to:
- Be at least five pages
- Be no longer than 10 pages
- Include a detailed investigation and response to one of the following:
- Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
- Isocrates’ notion of Civic Education
- Cicero’s notion of Civic Education
- Lanham’s discussion of Architectonic Rhetoric and/or the Strong Defense
- Petrach’s (or Proctor’s) investment in the arts
- It must also include a detailed investigation and response to one of the following:
- Kant’s notion of Enlightenment or his notion of the higher and lower faculties
- Emerson’s notion self-reliance
- Dewey’s notion of experience
- Freire’s notion of liberatory pedagogy
- Nicholson’s comparison of postmodernism and feminism
- Note: I did not include the Lorde here because that reading is quite short, but you can certainly include it in your paper
- Include a detailed investigation and discussion of one of the following:
- McComiskey, “Disassembling Plato’s Critique of Rhetoric in the Gorgias”
- Zilonis, “Ancient Paideia: The theory of education of the personality”
- Wellman, “Cicero: Education for Humanitatis”
- Leff’s Cicero’s “Pro Murena” and the Strong Case for Rhetoric
- Seigel, “Civic Humanism” or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni”
- Nussbaum, “Still Worthy of Praise”
- Munzel, “Kant on Moral Education, or “Enlightenment” and the Liberal Arts”
- Spencer, “Emerson on Education”
- Miller, Transcendental Learning
- Popkewitz, “Inventing the Modern Self and John Dewey: Modernities and the Traveling of Pragmatism in Education—An Introduction”
- Deans, “Service-Learning in Two Keys: Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy in Relation to John Dewey’s Pragmatism”
- Let’s talk about Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- Let’s talk about Audrey Lorde
- Acker, “Feminist Theory and the Study of Gender and Education”
- Gitlin, “Inquiry, Imagination, and the Search for a Deep Politic”
- Bill Readings, The University in Ruins
- Finally, your paper should include one other article source and one other book source of your choosing. Please share your sources with me as you find them. And please, please visit office hours to talk about your paper as it develops. Note: you are welcome to include as many sources as you wish, these represent minimum expectations
I have a loose, general expectation for the paper. The paper should offer a theoretical definition that answers my prompt: what is education? Of course, in doing so, you will have to explicate my question (do I mean “what is education for an individual? What is education for a society? What is the best way to education people? What can educated people do? What should educated people know? Etc, etc, etc. No, I will not answer these question for you. Yes, I will provide some kind of response to your answer. Yes, my goal will be to frustrate you a lot, unless you are hopelessly lost, in which case my goal will be to make you comfortable enough that I can frustrate you more. I wrote an article about this approach that just so happens to explicate Dewey’s concept of experience.
In addition to offering a theoretical definition, and drawing upon sources to justify this definition, the paper should also put this theory to work somehow; it should apply the theory in the examination of some proposal or problem or person. Show us how/why if we accept your theory we should appreciate a specific policy, or oppose a specific policy, or appreciate a specific program, or oppose a specific program. How might we change an element of contemporary education to match up with your definition, etc, etc.
These papers will be due February 14th.
Dewey
Questions for today:
- Traditional vs. Progressive Education
- Explicating key terms: “experience,” “continuity,” “habit”
- Intertwining Politics and Teaching
Gatto’s “Against School”
I have paper copies to hand out, but here is a link to a digital version.
Homework
I will admit that there’s quite a bit of reading for next class, though this is the last reading in this first set:
- Read the Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed chapter
- Read the Nicholson, “Postmodernism, Feminism, and Education” essay
- Read the Lorde, “Poetry is not a Luxury”
