Relating to Strike

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Spring Break filled with Dewey and Strike!

Hey everyone, this is Hayley and Ashley and we are going to be presenting The Child and the Curriculum by Dewey and Chapter 4 of the Strike text. We know that it is Spring Break and most of you are taking a break from school work and reading, but we wanted to go ahead and give you the questions and material that you will need to read and prepared to discuss next Wednesday!
Questions for Dewey:
1. On page 237, Dewey talks about how the child goes to school, and various studies divide and fractionize the world for that student. How much do you agree with this. Why or why not? Do you think that sometimes schools fractionize material too much so that the child has little room for self-exploration?

2. Dewey thinks that the logical and psychological aspects of experience are dependent upon on another, why is this and do you agree with his reasoning?

3. On page 242, Dewey describes the difference between a scientist and a teacher. According to his decription of a teacher is he accurate or are there parts of the job description that he is missing? If so, which ones and why?

4. Can an individual really gain interest in material if given the appropriate stimuli?

5. Would you agree with Dewey on his main ideas of how the curriculum is developed? Does it really focus on the child or not?

Questions for Strike:
1. Should Teshan be given a chance, why or why not?

2. How would you deal with Susan's disability in your classroom when resources are limited? How could you make the time spent with her fair to the others who are there to learn?

3. It is clearer how we can not discriminate upon race, gender, etc, but when we look at differences in people it can he harder to create equality among all students especially when each child is different, how would you address this in your classroom?

Here is an article that relates to the readings for this week:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/comparability.html

I hope you enjoy this weeks readings although they are long! Have a wonderful Spring Break and Hayley and I look forward to hearing your reactions to this weeks Dewey and Strike discussion!

Sincerely,
Hayley and Ashley

Great Clip: Literacy Outreach

All-
Not sure if anyone saw this on CNN the other week, but I thought it was so inspiring, and I wanted to share it.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/25/cnnheroes.soriano/index.html

Hope everyone has a great Spring Break.
-Lauren

Law Presentation and Live Text

For reporting issues, I've made put the law presentation on LiveText (which I assume you are all familiar with by now). Here's what you need to do:

1. Each member of your group should upload the handout you've prepared for the class as your submission for the assignment. There's an attached rubric which I'll use to assess it. The rubric isn't just for the handout, but for the whole presentation. Don't worry -- it's just the assignment description put in rubric form with levels and such.
2. If you don't get this done before your presentation tomorrow, that's fine, but please upload it before Spring Break.
3. Let me know if you have any questions.
   

Logic and Universalism

I went and found some more clips by Professor Hickman from the previous Dewey clip and in this particular clip he describes much of what we were talking about last week on the idea of "universals" and uses a great example of opening/closing a door and the importance of context. Hickman describes the importance of context and Dewey's emphasis of context and its importance in logical form.

Dewey believes logical forms grow out of experience, and they are subject to experience. All knowledge is contextual and has to do with particular cases, and this goes back to what we discussed in class and the idea that logic is the formalization of the problem-solving humans begin to do everyday in a way it will be helpful for them in the future.

This is a video I found that was created at Southern Illinois Unviersity by Larry Hickman, about the life of John Dewey and his views on philosophy, psychology, and education. The clip goes on to define Democracy through Dewey's words, as "a belief in the ability of human experience to generate the aims and methods by which further experience shall grow in ordered richness."

I believe this clip provided a good background sense in Dewey's psychological theories and can be related to his political views on democracy. Hickman has devoted much of his professional life to the study of Dewey and it would be interesting to do more research on articles he may have published that provide more insight into Dewey's beliefs and theories.