In class Tuesday and homework for Thursday

First, take this poll on blog groups.

Next, contemplate if you want to read part of our reading of Brave New World today. I'll ask for volunteers in a couple minutes. (But no pressure––we don't need many readers, though we have plenty of prose to share if a bunch of people want to read.)

Homework for Thursday:

Please follow the syllabus and read through whatever reading your section has been assigned for Thursday:

• Fourth period, read chapter three of Brave New World and complete the journal assignment indicated on the blog.
• Fifth period, read chapters three through five of of Brave New World and complete the journal assignment indicated for Wednesday, but incorporate all three chapters into this entry.

The Master-Plan-in-Progress

Below are two links to our master-plan-in-progress, one for each section. I would like everyone to read at least as far as the "digested priorities list" and make a few comments by class time tomorrow. You can comment in four ways:

• Sidebar comments on the doc 
• End comments at the bottom of the doc
• Email comments to emajerus07@gmail.com
• Comments in class during our 20-minute discussion tomorrow

Here's the link for fourth period comments is here, and the link for fifth period comments.

Tomorrow (Friday) we'll spend part of the period in discussion of the master plan, and the rest of the period doing independent reading.

In class Wednesday and reading for Thursday

Here is the draft of my master class proposal so far.

And here's your reading for tomorrow, located on page 77 to 93 of The Utopias Reader, and which I'll hopefully give you time to get started on tonight. As you read, please take notes on aspects of the original Utopia that seem desirable to you, aspects that seem undesirable, and aspects that you just found funny or bizarre, and then write one paragraph generally responding to More's vision of his ideal society. Does this seem ideal to you? Ideal-ish? or far from ideal? And why?

In-class Tuesday

To begin, I'd like you to write about two things in your workbook/journal for five or six minutes:

1. What norm would you most like to see our class abide by? (You can include two for three if you have more than one idea that's important to you.)
2. Now that you've heard everyone's basic ideas for our class proposed last week and done some significant work on your own groups ideas, what two or three priorities or ideas emerge as the most exciting or important to you?

Now get into groups of three or four and discuss what you wrote in your notebook. Try to distill all of your ideas into between two or three norms and between three and five priorities for class. Add those to the lists in the Working Doc for fifth period.

After everyone has added their ideas to the working doc, we'll listen to about ten minutes of a podcast with poet Eve Ewing that touches on the importance of Dystopian fiction. As you listen, jot down any ideas that Ewing mentions that seem important or significant to you (or that the hosts, Danez Smith and Franny Choi mention).

A few sources related to reading quizzes

They Haven’t Done the Reading. Again.

We Should Give Students More Tests. Seriously.

Increasing Reading Compliance of Undergraduates: An Evaluation of Compliance Methods

Improving reading compliance with whole class qualitative quiz questions

A few education-related resources

A few resources I've come across, in case your group is interested:

On the value of independent reading:

Independent Reading and School Achievement

The impact of Pleasure Reading on Academic Success

What Does Research Say Adolescent Readers Need?

On reading aloud for older students/kids:

Reading Aloud—Is It Worth It?

The hidden benefits of reading aloud — even for older kids

On low- or no-tech school environments:

Why low-tech and outdoor play is trending in education

Tech-free schools for children of Silicon Valley

The 'no-tech' school where screens are off limits – even at home

Researching Educational Experiment, Idealism, and Utopianism

Today and for several days next week, you'll be doing some research into educational institutions, systems, and ideas that have utopian, reform-oriented, or idealistically experimental aspects. The goal of this research is to help you envision more engaging, socially responsive, equitable, and/or forward-looking forms of and practices in education, which might in turn help us to come up with ideas for making the most of the experimental nature of our class and its potential for trying out ideas to make our learning as dynamic and meaningful as we can.

You all have experience looking for things you're interested in or need to know on the internet, and so one way to go about this research is simply to use your experience, common sense, and what you've learned about researching online to go forward and find sources that will give you information about experiments, alternative practices, and innovative ideas in education. You might begin with an idea that has already piqued your interest from the conversations we've had so far, beginning with a specific search idea like "sleep and student achievement," "learning life skills secondary school, " or "reading aloud learning benefits." You could use Sweet Search or Google Scholar to explore more reliable sources, go to the University of Illinois A-Z Databases and see which databases seem likely to turn up results for this topic of inquiry, or use some knowledge you already have to lead you down a particular research path (exploring, for example, what contemporary education scholars are saying about the legacy of a famous educational reformer like John Dewey).

If you're having trouble finding anything you're satisfied with, here are a couple of portals I've discovered with that may lead you to some interesting sources:

Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's resource for educators

Relevant articles: “Student-Led Culture Change" and “Igniting a Passion for Reading”


The Journal of Experimental Education, an academic journal devoted to research and scholarship on educational innovation

Relevant article: “Social Goals and Well-Being”


Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center's resource for teachers and administrators

Relevant articles: “Secret Agents of Kindness: A teacher gave students a simple task: Be kind, but selfless. The results illustrate the contagious effects of humanity,” “Community Walks: A Day of Learning for Schools,” or “Yoga in Public Schools”


And here are a couple of links the wonderful Uni library staff found that might be of interest:

The Global Utopias project, which is focused on education.

The Philosopher's Mail, which gives concrete examples of what a utopian school system might look like. It is from The School of Life, a company that seems to publish articles on philosophy and emotional intelligence. Its articles are not the most scholarly, but it might give you some ideas.

Remember that ultimately you'll be proposing ideas in some or all of the following areas (and possibly others you decide are important):

Learning environment
Policies and habits
Activities 
Assignments 
Weekly schedule

Drawing from Freire's ideas

Freire identifies “banking education” as a fundamental problem, and roles of teacher/students cast as “the teacher-of-the-students” and “students-of-the-teacher” as a major element of this problem. What alternatives or antidotes does he pose to “banking education” and the roles of “the teacher-of-the-students” and “students-of-the-teacher”? In groups of three or so, find the terms he uses for the more liberatory and dynamic alternatives to these concepts, and then try to draw the “banking” version and the alternatives. 

Reading and questions for Thursday, January 10

For Wednesday, please read "The ‘Banking Concept’ of Education" by Paolo Freire from his best-known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (I will give you a handout in class, but you can also find the PDF here.) This book was published in 1968, and it has been widely influential (it is often read in university classes, both in schools of education and in various fields of the humanities), yet many schools still bear some of the marks of the "banking" dynamics Freire describes here. 

After you read the chapter, write a two- or three-paragraph response to Freire's ideas in your journal. Does his description of "banking" education (summed up in the lettered list on page 2 of our handout) sound familiar, or do you feel like your education has been more of what he calls the "problem-posing" variety? In what ways have you been the recipient of the "student as receptacle" strategies from schools and teachers, and how has that affected your learning? What experiences have you had that are not like the "filling the student" narrative Freire describes, but more active, collaborative, and "problem-posing," and how have those affected your learning? Does this "banking" narrative seem to be at work in public schools in the US in general, based on what you know? (And if so, what evidence do you see of this?) What changes in direction for our nation's education practices does Freire's chapters seem to you to point to?

At various points in this chapter, Freire speaks of “the oppressors.” This phrase had a particular institutional/authoritarian meaning in his world (as evidenced by the fact that this work was written during his 16 years of political exile from Brazil's military dictatorship), but Freire's analysis of the dynamics between "the oppressed" and "the oppressors" may also seem relevant to our time in any number of ways and in a variety of locations. Feel free to consider Freire's discussion of oppressor/oppressed as part of your response. How does Freire's discussion of the relationship between these groups strike you, reading it 2019 in the context in which you live? Which passages seemed especially to describe political dynamics at work in our time, or not? Do you think of your world as having “oppressors” and "oppressed," do you identify with either of these groups (and if not, who do you see them as representing), and how does that affect they way you respond to Freire’s ideas?

For Wednesday, January 9

Read at least three of the following three articles, note in your journal which you chose (you can simply list the sources if you like) and, as you read, list at least six facts in your journal that you find interesting or important about Finish education:

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? from Smithsonian

From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model from The New York Times

Educator: In Finland, I realized how 'mean-spirited’ the U.S. education system really is from The Washington Post

How Finland broke every rule—and created a top school system from The Hechinger Report

Once you're done with three of the articles (or all four, if you're curious) and have listed your six or more facts-that-you-find-interesting-or-important, write a paragraph discussing at least one way that you wish American schools were more like Finish schools. (Feel free to choose more than one.) What would you want to import from Finland?

For Tuesday, January 8

For class on Tuesday, January 8, read “Redesigning American High Schools for the 21st Century” by Patrick Cook-Deegan from The Stanford Social Innovation Review. In your journal / workbook, make note of at least two things Cook-Deegan criticizes about American secondary education that you agree are problematic, outmoded, or counterproductive, and note at least one aspect of American high school practices he criticizes that you feel is actually worthwhile or valid. Then write a couple of paragraphs responding to the essay's suggestions about what high school might or should be. What are we not doing in school that you think is essential, or at least more important than the outmoded or counterproductive aspects of school you currently experience? What aspects of high school might once have been worthwhile that are no longer relevant in the twenty-first century? If you like, comment on Uni and the extent to which our school is doing better (or not) than high schools conjured up by Cook-Deegan's generalizations.