24 posts tagged “teaching”
For the Children’s Sake: Foundations for Education, Home, and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
Susan Schaeffer Macaulay is the daughter of Christian philosopher, Francis Schaeffer. This book was particularly interesting because I remember distinctly watching the documentary series that Francis Schaeffer produced when I was in high school (How Should we then Live). I can’t say that I will have anything by way of criticism of this book. On most counts that count, she seems to be insisting that children need to be regarded as people who are not simply bodies that brains use for a host. They need to be educated as people in a holistic way, not has workers in training or short tax-payers or buckets of blank brain tissue. “Many adults now have a child in the same way that they have a washing machine or a collie dog” the author bemoans, and the book is an explanation of what to do about it in the lives of one’s own children.
Much of the book is a celebration of the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason who insists that a child’s mind is the instrument of his education. “His education does not produce his mind.” She insists. P. 15
I tend to think that this is a central dividing point between systems of education and systems of giftedness development. This is why the development of intellectual skills, to the detriment of exposure to experience, nature, and relationship is a recipe for crippling a child. “School hours are like a monster” the author writes,
“however excellent that school maybe, gobbling up the child’s treasure of time. Careful now! We only get to be a child once! . . . The children are hungry! They have an appetite for knowing and experiencing … Life is short and sunny moments need to be snatched. . . . Charlotte Mason’s ideal world for children had nature at the doorstep. She felt that organized lessons should only take up the morning, so the children could freely play in and enjoy the gardens, meadows, woods, and lanes of England every afternoon.”
In conclusion, I think I will take a moment to comment on two assertions that Susan Schaeffer Macaulay makes throughout the book. One is that children NEED to be challenged and that it is far better to give them the world as it is as early as they can digest it. At some point, we all need to be weaned off simple things and challenged with deeper questions and there is no reason why children should be protected from the intellectual challenges that nourish us as adults.
“If you expect what is good, and are not shocked by the reality of the faltering footsteps towards it, you’ll be well on the way to leading. . . . It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the ‘child’s’ level . . . we should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and spiritual life of children . . . “Here’s a word of wisdom. Charlotte Mason addresses those who have been educating children on nutritious mind food. These young people are used to reading on frivolous matter so that they can grapple intellectually. This isn’t talking about stuff that is ‘intellectual for intellectualism’s sake,’ but deep consideration of questions, ideas, and questions . . .”
The other issue is the insistence that the Bible should provide children with their entire world and life view. Both Church and Macaulay insist that the Bible is the portal through which children will discover absolute truth, correct ethical guidance, and moral certainty. More importantly, the Bible is regarded as the portal without which a human being cannot experience God fully. The following quotes may suffice:
“The child should be given the source material on the subject of right and wrong directly from the Bible.” P. 43
“Do not forget that the reading of the Bible will put the child into direct contact with the person of God himself.” P.85
Both Charlotte Mason and Susan Scaeffer Macaulay are strong advocates for experiencial education but they start with the premise that they know where God can be experienced and make that determination for children in many ways. As I read this, I was reminded of the words of George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends,
Here is what one of Fox's coverts, Margaret Fell, had to say about his message the first time she heard him speak in 1652:
"And so he went on, and said, "That Christ was the Light of the world, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and that by this light they might be gathered to God," &c. I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before. And then he went on, and opened the scriptures, and said, "The scriptures were the prophets' words, and Christ's and the apostles' words, and what, as they spoke, they enjoyed and possessed, and had it from the Lord": and said, "Then what had any to do with the scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth? You will say, 'Christ saith this, and the apostles say this;' but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?" &c. This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, "We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves."
What is one to do when they have discovered that God can talk to them through the Bhagavad Gita, the Doa Te Ching, a Chaim Potok Novel, a U2 Song, or a Ken Burns Documentary? Indeed, I some of the best sermons I have ever heard came from the mouth of a child.
Macaulay speaks of the need to be wary of “Christian books” that promote legalism for example.
“One aspect of life is not more Christian than another. So it is Christian to enjoy a juicy melon. That is because I am eating, it is a real event, and I made so that I enjoy cool melon on a hot day. It is Christian to put my arm around someone to love her comfort them. That is because this is a way human beings relate, show they care, enjoy each other. More than this; it must be said that certain Christian books are in fact not so. For instance, some go beyond biblical teaching and, like the Pharisees, burden to people with weighty rules and regulations.” P. 20
And yet, within the Bible itself, there seems to be things that are … well … to the observant, “unbiblical”. When the Apostle Paul says to the church at Corinth that they should not allow women to speak in churches “as the law says” … is he not being “unbiblical”? When Nehemiah starts pulling people’s beards out and splitting families for not being sufficiently apartheid, is he not being “unbiblical”?
It is always assumed that Biblical authors never challenge each other or permit anyone to challenge anything that came before but … I wonder if that is so? Maybe what she says of literature about heroes who are all too perfect and villains who are too entirely bad applies to the Bible:
“Perhaps we are so made that the heroic which is all heroic, the good which is all virtuous, palls upon us.” P. 120
I will close with a great quote from Charlotte Mason:
“Children should have relations with earth and water, should run and leap, ride and swim, should establish the relation of maker to material in as many kinds as may be; should have dear and intimate relations with persons, through present intercourse, through tale or poem, picture or statue; through flint arrowhead or modern motorcar: Beast and bird, herb and tree, they must have familiar acquaintance with. Other peoples and their languages must not be strange to them. Above all they should find that most intimate and highest of relationships, the fulfillment of their being. This is not a bewildering program, because, in all these and more directions children have affinities; and a human being does not fill his place in the universe without putting out tendrils of attachment in the directions proper to him. He must get rid of the notion that to learn the “three R’s” or the Latin grammar well, a child should learn these and nothing else. It is as true for children as for ourselves that, the wider the range of interests, the more intelligent is the apprehension of each.” P. 147
Preach it.
In Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, actor, comedian Ben Stein plays the part of a History Teacher droning on about the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. The function of the scene in the movie is to make it clear that when Ferris Beuller decides to skip school for a day of frolicking, he misses nothing of any importance whatsoever. I confess, as a history teacher myself, the scene is both hilariously funny and tear-jerkingly sad at the same time. It is painful to watch one’s profession roasted so effectively on the spit of a good caricature. But it makes one want to rise to the challenge and show people that in actuality, the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill could be taught in such a way as to enlighten high school students about important issues relating to their lives and futures.
In essence, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff story is a classic tale in American economics and civics. It has antecedents back to the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson (if not further) who battled over the question of Federal economic support for certain sectors of the economy. Hamilton had argued that the country would be best served if its economic elites were made the primary concern of Federal economic policy. Hamilton had a vision for an America that could rival Europe in the manufacture of goods. His policies leaned towards the support of business interests and manufacturing interests and urban interests at the expense of rural interests, agricultural interests, and the interests of the common unskilled laborer. Hamilton was not a “No child Left Behind” sort of guy. He was an “Every Talented Elite Gets Ahead” sort of guy. Thus, he argued for the creation of a National Bank that could loan money to powerful business interests. He also argued for a tax on whiskey, a commodity that Western farmers made heavy use of as it was a primary way of converting crops into something that could be transported and sold even over bad roads for cash. In short, the blue collar workers would work to fund the projects of the white collar workers.
The argument between Hamilton and Jefferson over some of these issues was essentially an argument about competing visions of America. And it is not an argument that is foreign to us today. Are we better off as a country when our resources are invested in each person equally? Or should we invest more heavily in some? either the most talented, bright, and ambitious OR conversely, the least talented, bright, and ambitious? Should we identify certain sectors of the economy to favor with public largesse or public bailouts and others to tax more heavily and regulate more heavily? Should we, for example support agriculture with subsidies and then tax corporations with confiscatory tax rates? Should airlines and banks get bailouts? Should manufacturing get protection from foreign competition? Should Walmart be allowed to provide consumers with low cost goods at the expense of American manufacturing wages?
The Smoot Hawley Tariff question sits smack dab in the middle of this debate and what it should say to a high school student is that those who control the rules under which economic decisions are made will, in most cases, control the economic benefits of the workforce’s labor. Representatives Reed Smoot from Utah and W.C. Hawley from Oregon created this measure originally to protect American farmers from global competition but once the Pandora’s Box of protectionism was in the air, many other Republican business interests saw a means by which they could protect their own industries from competition. By the time the bill was passed, rates on imports for thousands of items were raised like drawbridges to protect industries from low-paid foreign labor. The notion was somewhat simplistic in many ways. It pretended that the countries that were affected by such high tariffs would not retaliate by putting high tariffs on American exports. This was delusional thinking as was soon to be discovered. Dozens of countries simply responded by saying “If you are not going to let our companies sell in America in a fair fight for market share, we are not going to let your companies sell in our countries in a fair fight for market share.” A recent TIMES magazine article puts it this way:
Though some legislators today might be reluctant to make such a promise, no one in Congress is seriously proposing anything as drastic as Smoot-Hawley. Still, the pro-tariff mania that swept Washington 55 years ago remains a danger. "What we are afraid of," says S. Bruce Smart, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, "is that people are so emotional that they will do something that they know is foolish, just to do something."
http://205.188.238.109/time/magazine/article/0,9171,960038,00.html
The Smoot Hawley Tariff then can be used as a great example of how democracies can often make knee-jerk short term emotional decisions without thinking through their long term consequences. In 1929 and 1930, business interests had almost completely taken over the American democratic system, using power and money to buy candidates and influence. The Smoot-Hawley tariff was packaged as a measure to protect American jobs but in all honesty, given the way that companies were failing to distribute profits to the workers, it was a measure that would line the pockets of business owners in the short term but cost jobs in the long term. It was also a measure that frankly inhibited the ability of the American economy to move its human resources into more lucrative areas of money making. Loosing one’s job to foreign competition is painful but at some point in time, it is this pain that causes workers to get higher order skills and the children of those workers to prepare for jobs of the future and not the past. Smoot Hawley protected American schools from having to make a transition to a system of education that would have prepared students for better jobs than their parents had.
Had I been teaching Ferris Beuller’s class on the Hawley-Smoot Teriff Bill, I would have brought in the movie Life and Debt about how the Jamaican economy is being affected by IMF anti-protectionist tariff policies and we would have had a good debate about whether or not globalization – the distribution of different economic niches to different parts of an increasingly interdependent world is a good idea or a bad idea. Should Jamaican farmers give up growing their own onions and producing their own milk so that their farms can be better converted into resort hotels for wealthy Americans?
I might have brought in the documentary American Jobs and looked at how people who are not thinking ahead about global market issues get themselves dependent on jobs that are bound to be moved elsewhere in a global economy that allows business to travel to regions of desperation in search of lower labor costs. In 1930, business interests were pro-protectionism because the factories were located here. In today’s economy, this is often opposite because the factories have been located elsewhere.
We might have watched a documentary on how the government’s intervention in the affairs of the agricultural economy or the economics of the transportation industry or its willingness to subsidize the energy industry’s need for global protection are affecting food prices, food quality, local farming communities, access to prescription drugs, airfares, technological innovation in auto fuel efficiency, and other similar issues of significant concern. We might have watched some excerpts from the debate about NAFTA that politicians fifteen years ago were engaged in and then examined the results of its passing.
Ultimately, students would leave the class with a better understanding of the dangers of taking a Ferris Beuller’s Day Off on election day. We would look at how business interests had managed to take over the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations and how lack of voter turnout in the 18-24 year old age demographic today is amounting to a type of economic serfdom by negligence. Clearly, when the government decides to borrow money instead of raise taxes, it is voting to tax a future generation that either cannot or simply does not care to vote. In some ways, Hamilton and Jefferson’s conflict has become generational in American society as the government leans in favor of those who are voting now and takes that pound of flesh from those who are either not old enough to vote or not interested enough in politics to vote. There is a reason why prescription drugs of the elderly will be getting huge infusions of Federal dollars while Federal funding for college tuition decreases. And it has to do with the tens of thousands and millions of 18-24 year olds that think Ferris Beuller is cool for skipping classes about meaningless topics like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
In the end, the joke’s on Ferris because while he is joy riding around in his friend’s father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, he is NOT learning that the Italian car manufacturer, Enzo Ferrari started his company in the same year that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was being debated (1929). Ferris is NOT learning that American car manufacturer, Henry Ford, personally went in and begged President Herbert Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, convinced that the secret to getting out of the economic crisis was not to be found in initiating trade wars but in paying workers higher wages. What Ferris does not know is that in a country dedicated to high trade barriers, it would have been impossible for his friend’s dad to own a Ferrari and that if Ferris expects to work for profit in a global economy, he will have to realize the importance of trust in developing markets and suppliers. He will soon discover that hacking into a school computer to change his grades is a good short term solution to a problem but it is not an offense that an international business partner will forgive soon if he begins to apply similar strategies to his business dealings.
Francis Fukuyama argues in his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, published a decade after Ferris Beuller’s Day Off came out, that unethical individualism of the sort that Ferris glorifies, is toxic to prosperous economies. As one commentator at Amazon puts it:
“Fukuyama examines the impact of culture on economic life, society, and success in the new global economy. He argues that the most pervasive cultural characteristic influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete is the level of trust or cooperative behavior based upon shared norms. In comparison with low-trust societies (China, France, Italy, Korea), which need to negotiate and often litigate rules and regulations, high-trust societies like those in Germany and Japan are able to develop innovative organizations and hold down the cost of doing business. Fukuyama argues that the United States, like Japan and Germany, has been a high-trust society historically but that this status has eroded in recent years. This well-researched book provides a fresh, new perspective on how economic prosperity is grounded in social life.”
In other words, it may well be Ferris’ approach to basic virtues like honesty, integrity, thrift, and work ethic that will make it impossible for someone in his generation to make the kind of money it takes to own a Ferrari. That said, it may ALSO be Ferris' disdain for tradition and his essential creative audacity that makes him millions. It would make for an interesting debate.
I suspect that someday, a good sequel to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off might be a movie entitled The Day After Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. And in that movie, it would be interesting to see a good history teacher teaching a class on NAFTA. Grin.
There. I have laid down the gauntlet.
Question for Comment: I often say that a good history class is a critical thinking class that uses History as a Medium. Have you ever taken such a class?
“our failure in the educational world exists because we have failed to understand the importance of relationships. . . . The foundational design for the education of children is the parent-child relationship. ”
MY good friend J., a woman who is or has or will be homeschooling a family of ten sent me a book recently about how essential relationship is to education. I will be honest, I do not agree with everything this author has to say. But on this subject of parental involvement in children's education, I am in hearty agreement. So often we send kids into a relational wasteland and expect them to learn while their basic human need to be loved, to belong, to bond, is simply ignored. They are like little monkeys, sent to wire mothers for milk. They have no relationships with their teachers, they are alienated from classmates (particularly if they are unique). They get "lost".
"When the public school students spend thirteen years of his life
switching teachers, classes, friends, what is he being taught about
relationships?” the author asks us.
Ironically, conversations with my son about his first week back in public school this past week have revealed this to be exactly true. It is just dawning on him what a good thing he had going in his private school ... a place where he had a father for a history teacher and a faculty that cared about him as a person, friends, and hope of lasing relationships. What happened to it? Well, in many ways that public school system sucked all the money up for its work and left no resources for those that were not served by it. This of course is not a universal condemnation of public school. Indeed, some of that money goes to make sure that the family atmosphere of my OTHER son's school is maintained for him. There are places that are providing community within the context of education but ... my mind is made up, the closer you can get your children's education to a family system, the better. If money for education is made to create family like experiences for kids, I can support it. If it is going to build better buildings and football teams and programs ... I would rather have it back so I can homeschool them myself, thanks.
Question for Comment: Is anything in an education worth what it costs if you have to give up good relationships to get it?
But there is something compelling to me as well about a movie that shows what it is like for a family to fall apart and collapse into ruin. Everything was so placid and peaceful on the surface of this family, this royal dynasty. The three cousins, King, Kaiser, and Czar grew up together in so many ways.
As one NPR article puts it:
"The three cousins had known one another since childhood. They had shared holidays, visited each other's homes, played together, celebrated each other's birthdays, danced with each other's sisters, and later attended each other's weddings. They were tied to one another by history, and history would tear them apart."
And within a few years, it was so devastated in the smoking ruin of WWI. It reminds me so much of Chiuana Achebe's Things Fall Apart. For those who have built something and invested something ... for these royal families of Europe, the peace was a project they had been working on for centuries. And then, it all melted in the Hurricane."Whereas in any ordinary family the inevitable quarrels and clashes of personality could play themselves out with little damage to anyone else, any private quarrels and rivalries between Georgie, Willy and Nicky were played out in public, on the dangerous stage of international politics. The homosexual scandals surrounding the Kaiser, the power exerted by Alix, the Tsarina, over her vacillating husband Nicky, the snubs regularly meted out to Willy by his English relations– none of these would have had any impact on world events but for the fact that the three cousins were also the King, the Kaiser and the Tsar."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18167335
Watching as Johnny makes his way through all this turmoil so seemingly unscathed because, for whatever reason, he does not see the world like everyone else makes you realize why the world was falling apart. People, hypnotized by Darwin's theory that all things should favor the strong, forgot to care about the weak. Johnny's parents are simply too busy trying to retain their positions of power to set aside time for their son. The movie is a "celebration of apartness" as one commentator puts it. A reminder that sometimes the world would be a better place if it would actually think like the people it excommunicates or is ashamed of. It is also a celebration of Lalla, Johnny's governess - a woman who, like Annie Sullivan in the life of Hellen Keller can SEE what others cannot see in this special but needy child.
Annie Sullivan once said
What if it is the opposite? What if every child is a kind of prophet or genius or artist who must teach US how to think?"Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction. . . . I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think."
"People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved." Annie Sullivan said of her work with Hellen (and you can see how Lalla's work with Prince Johnny was similarly a forgotten labor of love as well.) But then you have these days ... these days when something happens in the lives of your students and you realize that far more has happened than what you could possibly have done. The day Hellen Keller made her "breakthrough, "Annie wrote:
Sigh ... I lost my job teaching at Champlain College two days ago. It makes me sad. No one could possibly know how many hours of my life were invested in this work. No one could ever know. There will be no goodbye dinner. No golden watch. No award for teaching. But I don't really care really. Its those moments when that light of understanding has shone in a student's mind and all things have been changed that rewards those who teach - who simply love people with their gift of teaching. When all is said and done, maybe epileptic prince John will turn out to impact more people's lives for good than the Czars, and Kings, and Kaisers of his day."My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed! "
One last word to the friend who recommended this movie to me. A quote from Annie Sullivan:
"We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about."
;-)
Thanks.
Question for Comment: Skyler and I had a conversation about how public financial support should be distributed. should it flow to the needy? Flow to the most capable? Flow to those in any category with the most ambition?
Skyler suggested that it would be fun to teach a college course on the ideas in Battlestar Galactica and I confess, the idea has been rattling around in my brain ever since. One could easily cover material for a Contemporary World Issues course, a Philosophy and Religion course, an Ethics course, or even a course Politics, Psychology, and Law I suppose.
Consider the possibilities. The 12 Colonies of Kobol seem to have their origins in a lost colony of ancient Greeks or Romans. They name their children and their colonies with primarily Greek names (Athena, Apollo, Gaelen, Kara Thrace (a region in Greece), Agathon, etc.). They worship a pantheon of deities as the Greeks did and yet, like the Ancient Greeks, many doubt their existence as well. They have rituals. They have temples. They have scriptures. They have priests and priestesses. They have codes of morality. They have a eschatology (theology of end-times). They have sects (One of the colonies ascribes to a religion that opposes the use of modern medicine). Orson Scott Card, in his Alvin Maker series imagines a world where Native American religion was essentially an accurate description of how the world works and plays out the possibility of an American history in which THAT world view prevailed. In a way, Battlestar Gallactica, at least so far, is doing something similar with the ancient Greeks. What would it look like if the future was not a continuation of who WE are now but was a continuation of who we were at one point in time? It is an interesting way to consider the study of an ancient culture. What would it look like if no one had interrupted its technological evolution? Stargate does this somewhat with Egyptian culture.
Battlestar Galactica might also make an interesting way to study the various “isms” of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. One could feasibly do an interesting study of Marxism, examining how the Cylons were created to work for the humans, how they rebelled, how the Cylons themselves set up a class system that mirrored the one they rebelled against with different models of Cylons being allowed different measures of political power, social status, and occupational latitude. A whole episode of BSG is devoted to the economic stratification of human society and how Capricans are priviledged while Sagitarians are exploited.
One could easily cover the various tenets of existentialism (Sartre, Camus, Focault, and even Simone De Beauvoir) and their central question of identity. Can a Cylon chose to be a human? Is morality a matter of simply being consistent with the choices one makes about how they will live? Were we “born for a purpose? A destiny? Or is it up to us to make our own story. One could examine the idea of imperialism, looking at the way that the occupied human community on New Caprica reacts to being colonized in ways similar to the way Frantz Fanon predicts they would (and should) in his book The Wretched of the Earth. It would be interesting to look at how imperialism has been justified and opposed throughout human history.
Another interesting “ism” that might be worth addressing through the lens of Battlestar Galactica would be feminism. The culture of Battlestar Galactica does not seem to roil with conflict over gender. Perhaps because the culture seems to be gender blind on the surface, the argument is being made that IF we would just not make an issue of gender, gender would not be an issue. The President of the colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). The best fighter pilot in the fleet is a woman (Kara Thrace). The admiral of the fleet (for a while) is a woman (Admiral Cain). The first Cylon to open the way to new ways of thinking about humans is a woman (Athena). The high priest of Laura Roslin’s religion is a woman (A Black woman at that). Clearly, being a woman does not preclude one from receiving the rewards of meritorious service. But there are still interesting issues of feminist theory to be discussed here. Kara Thrace may be a feminist role model of sorts but there is a sense that she expresses it by being “better than the boys at what boys do.” Is this feminism? We have Laura Roslin as president and we can see that she tends to make decisions by means of an intuitive process that she cannot always explain logically to her male subordinates. All she can say is “you are going to have to trust me on this, Bill.” Is this what feminist leadership should look like? The principle Cylon character in the program (Number Six) also raises questions about the nature of feminism. “Six” exerts a great deal of manipulative influence over Gaius Balthar and she is not afraid to use all of her “feminine wiles” on him in doing so. Every episode it seems, she wears a different red dress and combines it in deadly combination with a breathy voice and body language. One is forced to ask, if a woman can use these “tools” of influence effectively, should she be denied the right to do so by feminists of the Kara Thrace variety. Is there a rule that says woman should not be allowed to actualize themselves by means of tactics that are …. Well … for lack of a better term, feminine? Certain episodes also deal with difficult issues of rape, abortion, pregnancy, homosexuality, child-care, and even sexual harassment.
And then there is the matter of religion. One could find numerous avenues for conversation here. At Gaius Balthar’s trial, the intent to link Gaius to Jesus could not be more obvious. He even looks like the famous portraits of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemene, bathed in light. Captain Adama overtly rejects the notion that for him, it could be acceptable to place all the blame and shame for human sin on one man and “send him out the air lock”. In a way, this is a direct rejection of the Christian notion of substitutionary atonement or the Jewish right of the “scape goat” or “Passover lamb”. But Gaius is a malleable religious figure in the hands of the directors. As he starts his cult of monotheism and challenges the orthodoxy of polytheism, he might also be regarded as a straw man stunt double for Muhammad. Like Muhammad, he has visions. Like Muhammad, he was banished from the community and came back. Like Muhammad, his “partner” is the first to believe his message and indeed, to insist that he go out and testify. Like Muhammad, he is not opposed to the idea of “multiple wives”. Or, if you want, you could easily compare him to Joseph Smith as he starts the church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. Much of the terminology of Battlestar Galactica is borrowed from the Mormon Church and scripture (Kobol/Kolob, the Quarum of Twelve, the notion that humans can be gods someday, etc.)
Along these same lines there is the whole question of life after death that is raised by Cylon “resurrection”. Cylons who die, are simply downloaded (reincarnated) into duplicate bodies where they take the lessons of previous lives into new lives (allowing Kara Thrace to murder her Cylon “husband” Leoben at least five times). This is just a beginning of the possibilities. Discussions about the political use and manipulation of religion, the separation of church and state, the practice of forceful and non-forceful conversion, miracles, the power of prayer, the psychology of cults, the relationship between religion and morality, the issue of fate, free will, and prophecy, and many other issues of religious concern are there for the picking.
I would be remiss not to mention the possibilities for discussion in the field of psychology that present themselves. Clearly, Gaius Balthar in particular would be a field day of possibilities. Is he schizophrenic? How does his intelligence impact his social and emotional IQ? Does he have a learning disability? Is is sociopath? How does he use and employ psychological defense mechanisms in dealing with his guilt? One can imagine how one would try to approach Balthar in therapy. One of the most fascinating themes relating to human psychology that the series deals with is the process by which a person (or a Cylon) comes to understand their “shadow self”. Five humans are, unbeknownst to them at the beginning, actually sleeper Cylons. What does it feel like to begin to gain consciousness about their true identity? How do they each go about integrating their new self concept into their old personality structure? How do they resist the truth and how do they pay when they do? How does their “enlightenment” play out in the relationships they formed before they were conscious of who they were. Is the process they go through similar to the way that many gay people may discover that they are not who they thought they were? I think parallels are hard to miss.
In a similar vein, how about the possibilities for an examination of group psychology, mass psychology, and family system psychology. There is the complex relationship between Admiral Adama and his son to consider (Lee most certainly goes through an individuation process during the later episodes). There is the relationship between Kara Thrace and her mother that always resides in the background of her “acting out”. There is the domestic violence of Chief Tyrel and Caley or Saul Tigh and his wife, Helen or Tigh’s achoholism, or Kat’s drug addiction, or Gina (Six’s) Post-Traumatic stress after the abuse on the Pegasus. Many of the characters have to deal with grief for their various traumas, both personal and shared. Its hard to know where to stop.
It might also be interesting to talk about textual criticism and oral tradition. One can learn a lot about how stories are modified and adapted over time by comparing the original Battlestar Galactica series and the latest version. The ways in which the story is crafted says a great deal about the nature of political debates at the time of creation. The original Battlestar Galactica was a warning against putting too much faith in diplomacy and arms agreements. In that version, the Cylon's attack precicely when the humans have let their guard down. The war STARTS because the humans are being naive in spite of Admiral Adama's warnings that only strength will bring peace (in other words, the original Battlestar Galactica was pro-Reagan). In contrast, the new BSG is pretty obviously anti-Bush. In th enew version, the war starts because Adama was in a pre-emptive mode and stepped over the line hoping to pre-empt an attack. It would be interesting to look at the history of stories and to look at how old stories are redacted to new purposes.
Lastly, I will just highlight some of the obvious connections that could be made in a study of Contemporary World Issues. Clearly, there are connection intentionally being made by the producers and clearly, they intend for their show to raise questions about the modern world. One could discuss the Patriot Act, terrorism, the Iraq War, election fraud, the death penalty, abortion, stem cell research (Who is a human?), resource depletion, population control, democracy, racism, poverty, torture, environmentalism, global warming, or any number of other issues we read about in the papers.
I think it would be easy to construct a curriculum for a
course like this. But who would take it?
Question for Comment: If you were going to take a course that used a popular TV show as its main theme, what television show would you select for that course? Why?
Over a year ago, a history instructor I know made a request that he be allowed to set up a bulletin board discussion group dedicated to the collaborative work of online General Education instructors. The main campus General Education faculty at his college are actually PAID to get together quite often and work collaboratively to improve their courses. It only made sense to do something similar for the online faculty who were all adjuncts. Ironically, despite all his efforts to do so, he could never get the clearance to do so. He was told that the initiative was supported but the money and technological support was never forthcoming. I suspect that the answer to the mystery lies in the following excerpt from Adam Smith.
"What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of.
Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands.
The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the necessity superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders."
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/65/112/frameset.html
So what is Adam Smith saying? In a contemporary context, he is saying that those who hire adjunct faculty do not WANT them to gain access to the tools they need to organize and to communicate their story to one another and to the clients (students). What has been the result of the lack of communication between the adjunct faculty at his college? Well, the following list is a start:
Main campus full time faculty have full time contracts. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have health benefits. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have financial support for Professional Development. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have sick days and personal days. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have pension benefits. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have life insurance. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have job security. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have voting rights in college decisions. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have paid collaborative training days. Online program adjuncts do not.
Main campus full time faculty have promotion, raises, and merit pay. Online program adjuncts do not.
- Main campus full time faculty receive travel grants. Online program adjuncts do not.
The great irony of course is that this portion of Adam Smith quoted above is being assigned in the General Education curriculum of the main campus education program.
Question for Comment: What would you do if you were my friend?
I am reminded that people are often more qualified than they are certified. Orson Scott Card for example has a blog in which he reviews "everything" and because he is an interesting writer, even though one doesn't agree with every review, they make for interesting reading. According to Wikipedia, Card "has won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2007) to win both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years." The following comes from a 1999 Talk City Chat interview with Orson Scott Card
<Alicia-G> I read somewhere that you were an early entrance student in college. Did that have a big effect on how you approach things? I know that all the early entrance students I have met find it easy to identify with your writing.
<OrsonCard> I didn't really enter "early" in the sense that I did have a high school diploma. I went to a private university lab school for my junior year. It was an individual progress school, so I finished two years in one and graduated a year early. I fit in just fine at college -- much better than high school. Less
social pressure toward conformity -- even at a Mormon university! <grin> You have to understand, though, that I have an innate arrogance that makes me assume that I'm ready for anything -- including college, when I was sixteen. And I did OK....
His bio at his HATRACK website reminds me again why I feel challenged by what I do as aHistory teacher.
"Like many young artists in love with their art, Card resented all the hours that the university required him to "waste" on general education requirements; as a novelist, however, he found that those were the most useful parts of his college education."
Question for Comment: What do you assume you are ready for right now that you may or may not be?
The fact is that I have ideas I want to try ... techniques for learning that are working for me and my students ... and only so much time and money.
This is why I constantly need to be learning to use new technologies or old ones in new ways."I've come to the frightening conclusioin that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather." Dr. Haim Ginott
Question for Comment: Could I start a school? Should I?
I just spent the last two or three hours evaluating the documentary Commanding Heights with the boys. I feel like they have a much better grasp of globalization, free-market capitalism, planned economies, socialism, and communism than I ever had. It has been really fun watching them struggle with economic ideas and their cause and effect relationships and watching how these ideas play out in the global marketplace.
What is even more interesting is to talk about the place they think they would like to play in that economy. Whether they want to make money off other people's work by organizing them? Or if they want to make money by acquiring some skill or knowledge that they can sell over and over again (like I do)? Or if they want to invent or create something that can be sold many times? Or if they want to perfect some process? ... etc. etc.
As I watched the movie, I was reminded of what Ken Bain said about people needing to see that their constructs of reality don't work. Systems that have too many layers of people paid to manage too many people unmotivated to work by lack of reward simply cannot work indefinitely. Similarly, systems where too few people get ALL the profit because they have figured out how to eliminate middle management AND relocate them into the exploited class ... and where they have figured out how to externalize costs onto the tax-payer will eventually fail too.
I find myself wondering how I managed to land where I have in the economy. And what choices I need to make to move ahead.
Yesterday's Faculty Collaborative had plenty to get me thinking in it. But briefly ...
1. Collin Ducalon's workshop on "Understanding by Design" reminded me of the importance of being clear about what the "Big Ideas" are in any class I teach.
2. Laurel Bongiorno's workshop on placement and structure in educational settings reminded me of how many messages are sent to students simply by the decision to set chairs and tables in a certain way or structure a discussion in a certain way. The Chalk Talk excercise was particularly useful and i hope to try it out this summer.
3. Michael Lang's presentation on multicultural-ization of a lesson was also stimulating. A number of creative ideas occurred to me in the course of our small group interactions. one of them was simply to ask students to take on a role and comment on other people's work as though they were the person in the role.
4. Karen Klove's workshop on Gender in the educational context was a reminder that there is still a lot of pain around gender issues for many people and that one can never take enough pre-emptive action in creating a safe environment.
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