Framing Questions for November 15, 2010 Class
from Joy

Pitzer College Visit –

1. Discuss your reactions to last week’s visit to Pitzer College. How does the Pitzer classroom compare to the Johnston classroom?

Course Readings –

(Students to facilitate discussions on their assigned readings – additional questions welcome.)

1. Parker Palmer writes: The question is not “What made your mentor great,” but “What was it about you that allowed great mentoring to happen?” Tell the story of your mentor. Who was he or she? Was he or she a gifted teacher? What was it about you that allowed great mentoring to happen.
   
   
2. Palmer emphasizes the importance of the inner life of the teacher – how critical is it that as teachers, we embrace our fears and anxieties, our perceived faults? How do we do this and how does this enable us to become better teachers?
   
   
3. Yash Owada refers to learning as a reciprocal relationship between the professor and learner. To what extent is the process of teaching and learning (“learning how to learn”) as important as the content of what we teach?
   
   
4. In reflecting upon their classroom experiences at Evergreen and Antioch, the students in John McCann’s chapter speak of interdisciplinary programs as being “a natural way to learn.” How do interdisciplinary, connected pedagogical approaches provide for more authentic learning?
   
   
5. John McCann and William H. Newell both emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary education in their chapters. How do McCann and Newell’s approaches and perspectives differ (consider style, voice).
   
   
6. Please add your framing questions on Finkel's book, Teaching with Your Mouth Shut.

Discussion Questions for Journal of Humanistic Psychology Articles

Here are some questions for our discussion of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology articles.

Joy

1. Many of the authors discuss emotions, the affective dimension, as a critical component of learning. John Watt, for example, speaks of education of “the heart and the mind.” Glenn Whitlock asserts that feelings precede knowledge. What is the role of emotions in the teaching and learning experience at innovative colleges?

2. Over the years, innovative colleges have come up against various stereotypes and image problems (e.g., perceptions of the campuses as weird, far-out, hippie places) – how have stereotypes impacted innovative higher education? How do we deal with this?

3. Frank Blume describes students as “Gooeys” and “Pricklies” – what do you think of these characterizations and the methodology that he employs? To what extent are the students’ changes during college attributable Johnston’s personal growth groups vs. the students’ own characteristics or maturation?

4. Tom Greening addresses issues of power and coercion – what do you see as the benefits of these dynamics in higher education. How does Greening’s discussion fit in with the rest of the articles that we read?

5. What was your overall impression of the articles? Would you say that these voices are an accurate reflection of Johnston College circa 1981 – what should be added/removed? What is missing from the discussion?

Framing Questions for Journal of Humanistic Psych (Johnston issue)

A few questions from Patricia(Joy may put a few up as well):

Having read the obituaries of Johnston College, what continuities to you see in the resurrection of the Johnston Center?

So much of the early struggles were concerned with living arrangements and cultural battles that are now taken for granted in almost every institution of higher learning in America. What lessons from those early, traumatic battles still obtain in innovative colleges such as Johnston?

Journal on Johnston's origins

This is the reading for next week; framing questions to be up shortly

Journal of Humanistic Psychology Spring 1981 Vol. 21 No 2

pp. 3-63; 97-118

Special issue on Johnston College and Humanistic Higher Education—

Articles by:

Tom Greening, Ed Williams, Lyle Thompson, John Watt, Frank Blume,

Tom Greening, Glenn Whitlock

Also available on Microfilm BF1.J645 in Armacost

Framing Questions for first paper: Due October 25

Framing Questions for first cumulative paper (~5 pages, due Oct. 25 by email)

Please choose one or more of these questions or one of your own and write approximately 5 pages, due by class on Oct. 25. Please identify which question(s) you are addressing.
As you will see, several of the questions emerge from posts in our class blog.

I. In the campuses and programs we have examined thus far, how have innovative practices or pedagogical approaches been conserved? For schools that have endured over time (e.g., St. Johns, Berea College, Deep Springs), are innovative practices established at the founding of the colleges still innovative? For those that have folded, such as Black Mountain, Hutchins or the Experimental College, how did their innovations endure in other ways? How did the participants in the early educational innovations make meaning from their experiences? How does their history and identity inform the present?

II. Pick two institutions or programs that we have examined thus far and consider how each addresses the relationship between the classroom and the community.

III. “We are not impressed with current tendencies to allow or encourage each student to pursue his own ‘interests’ or to encourage students collectively to participate in curriculum determination. Students will have the rest of their lives to plan their own learning programs; in college, such planning is still the responsibility of the faculty.” (Experiment at Berkeley, 1969, p. 112)

This statement, by Alexander Meicklejohn’s student, Joseph Tussman, founder of the Experimental College at UC Berkeley, reflects the reality that schools with widely different pedagogies such as St. Johns and Black Mountain share the appellation “experimental” or “innovative”. What are the virtues or drawbacks of a fixed neo-classical curriculum vs. a progressive student-initiated curriculum. Where do experimenters such as Hutchins and Dewey agree? Where do they diverge? Why?

IV. What is the role of student labor such as is found at Berea, Antioch or Deep Springs and/or experiential learning as a component of the learning experience? Should education be preparation for a career? How might the desire to prepare for a livelihood inhibit or enhance educational innovation?

V. Discuss the role of leadership and vision in educational innovation. How essential is a strong leader? What is the responsibility of the community or leadership emerging from the grass roots? How has consensus played a role in educational innovation? Discuss, as well, the importance of an elaborated and thought-out educational plan or philosophy vs. a more organic, experiential one in the creation of innovative or experimenting campuses.

VII. In The Perpetual Dream, Grant and Reisman contend, “Perhaps both groups [of educational reformers] do share one common failing, again characteristically American: namely, to overestimate what education itself can do. Their hope was either to change the general culture….or, a bit more modestly, to produce a new generation of self-motivated, deeply interested students, not only in the selective colleges but also in the exploding institutions of near-universal higher education….” ( p. 7).

In response to this quote, do you think that the notion of education as a force for social change misguided or essential and why? How does the role of education in a democracy manifest in the colleges we have examined thus far?

VII. In Against the Current: Reform and Experimentation in Higher Education, J. Peter Euben
writes, “..alternative education has a special obligation to be both radical and conservative. It needs to be both because the modern state promotes cultural homogenization and personal fragmentation. We must be radical in resisting the homogenization not only in what we teach, but in how we teach it, to whom and where. But we also need to be conservative and traditional. We need, I think, to resist the blandishments of the here and now; and to nurture ideas, relationships and educational forms whose very persistence would be exemplary. (pp. 38-40)

Discuss Euben’s belief that alternative education ought to be both radical and conservative. How has this manifested in the campuses we have studied thus far?

Framing Questions for readings on October 18

Framing questions for “Reform Meets the Sixties” readings for 10/18


I. Several of the texts assert that economics play a significant role in the success or failure of experimenting colleges. While some experimental campuses closed in times of economic downturns, others were spurred to innovation out of financial hardship. What do you understand the role of economic confidence or uncertainty to be? (Consider how this may play out for students, faculty, parents as well as institutions.)

II. Clearly a cultural moment like the Sixties plays a large role in students’ (and parents’) responsiveness to experimentation. What qualities of that cultural moment foster or deter innovation? How does this compare to the cultural moment we are currently in?

III. What are the pitfalls and/or advantages of the Communal-Expressive telic institutions?

IV. In The Perpetual Dream Grant and Reisman write, “And when [Microbiologist Robert Edgar, founding provost of Kresge College] consciously tried to open up and relate more directly to students, he found they were afraid of him. As he thought about it, maybe he had been afraid of them, afraid of being attacked or put down; perhaps he had “poured it on” in order to silence them.”(p. 79)

What is the role of fears, anxieties and hierarchy in Communal-Expressive campuses? How is this different than or similar to faculty/student relationships in other kinds of campuses (i.e. conventional, neo-classical, popular reforms)?

Discussion/Decisions/Ideas Generated by “Innovating the Curriculum”

Discussion/Decisions/Ideas Generated by “Innovating the Curriculum”


Thank you for the thinking and initiative in composing “Innovating the Curriculum.” It is a thoughtful manifestation of student-initiated learning, innovation and the importance of process to Johnston (contrary to Grant/Riesman!)

Thanks as well to Mr. Kramer and Ms. Cornell for serving as our St. John’s tutors.

Here are our recollections of the discussion and determinations. If there are things we didn’t get right, please improve upon our memories.

Decisions/Ideas:
• Joy and Patricia will add framing questions for the reading on the blog.
• We will reproduce 3 copies of texts that are difficult to get hold of and leave them for exchange in the Johnston office.
• Students will meet weekly (Sunday nights) to discuss/reflect on readings. This meeting with result in a weekly shared reflection paper to guide each Monday’s discussion.
• We will meet in the Bekins lounge (let’s check in re: distractions—was it preferable to the classroom even with various people walking in and out of the building and occasionally needing to be let in?) We can also check again to see if the Browsing Room can be made available.
• Joy will check into a visit to Pitzer and find out who to be in touch with for a visit to Deep Springs.
• With regard to writing, there will be two mid-semester papers in addition to a cumulative paper/research project at the end of the semester. The first, due October 25, will be approximately five pages, addressing what we have learned so far and using a framing question, if desired. While we didn’t discuss further dates, Joy and Patricia propose that the second paper be turned in by November 29 so we are prepared for a robust discussion with the Deep Springs president(s) and can take the lead in a public forum to share innovative/distinctive education issues.
• For October 18, Joy will offer a mini-lecture on her chapter on the history of the innovative higher education movement of the sixties and early 1970s. Students will share on or before Sunday, Oct. 17, how they wish to structure the rest of the class (determining which participants will teach the other assigned readings and what else they’d like to explore).
• We will “divide and teach” some readings. For October 25, Mary will read and teach us from Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and Eli will read and teach us about Prescott College. The rest of the week’s readings will be read by all.
• Students will facilitate class sessions, using different pedagogical styles.
• We will determine facilitation and clarify subject matter for future classes in the next few weeks.





Note: we didn’t discuss directly the learning outcomes; they can serve partly as framing questions and touchstones; Let’s check in about them