The assignments in college are so different than assignments in highschool. I feel as if I am swamped in papers, reading and studying. It's actually, for once, nice to have math! I notice that I am tending to save my math homework for in-between breaks when I get bored of reading or studying. What is also different from highschool is the context of the reading. For the last ten years, when asked to read for homework, it was generally out of a textbook. Reading for college is completely different. You are given novels that hold some sort of underlying meaning which relates to the class. From this novel, you are challenged to make the connection as to what that is. I am actually enjoying this way of learning much better. Textbooks were never appealing, and at least with the novels, they hold stories and plots.
One novel that I was asked to read for Human Behavior was "The Sane Society" by Fromm. This novel essentially outlined why the United States is not a sane society. For a paper due Friday, we are asked to propose one change that would make the United States sane. This change needs to be something that we, the students, can change on our own on campus. Along with that, the change needs to be significant enough that if everyone did it, the world would be more logical. I have tried thinking so much about this so much that it seems to be driving me crazy. I am going in so many different directions with where I could go with this assignment. First off, I could talk about censors and media. This is a HUGE topic and is very controversial. Obviously, the censoring of media would provide a sense of more self-importance and self-confidence. When I was almost certain that I was going to write about that, I did my homework for lit class. For homework, we were asked to read about the banking concept of education. After reading this, I was thinking how if all classes were held as discussions, the campus would be more sane. This "sane society" would arise because people would feel more comfortable in the classroom. So, thanks to Lit, I think that I have found the topic for my paper. After just writing this blog, I came up with even more ideas of where I can go from that. I believe that from there, I am going to talk about the idea of pass/fail instead of GPA grading. Writing everything down in this blog certainly helped me find out which argument would be more convincing and more powerful. Now off to write that paper!
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2 comments:
Stephanie...you can imagine my excitement in reading these past two blog postings. Let me get this straight...you have this assignment in another class, about how to make the U.S. a saner place and it has to connect to this campus, to all of us here at RWU (what a GREAT assignment, by the way!). And, for this assignment, you decided to draw on Freire's piece in which he outlines the "banking" concept of education and proposes the "problem-posing" method as an alternative? I mean, is this really happening? Is this really a connection across classes? I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited to hear what your prof says back about all this (and a bit nervous, too...).
Did you have to quote from Freire in your paper? How did you handle all this? Maybe you could post the paper as a blog entry and then comment a bit about it at the end?
Really exciting stuff here. The two things that make education meaningful are:
1. Connections
2. Surprises
It seems you've had both in this assignment. Keep cultivating these...
mm
one more thing...technical and nit-picky. Novels are works of fiction. I'm thinking that most of the books you are reading here at RWU are not works of fiction. For example, Rebekah Nathan's book is not a novel. It's a work of non-fiction. I'm guessing that most of the books you are reading are books of non-fiction and not novels.
Also, you are right. Textbooks are a problem. One could write an entire essay on "the textbook as banking method"...I mean, think about it--it's like the way the chairs are set up in our room: they direct all attention at me and take the emphasis off you all, or us. The important person, the room set-up suggests, is the professor. Textbooks do the same thing, sort of (I'm just making this up as I go here). Textbooks organize students' entire learning experiences for them and tell them "everything they should know." They are written by those who, in theory, have all the "knowledge" already and its the job of the textbook to transmit that knowledge to the students. The textbook is the "vehicle" by which banking is accomplished, right? Wow, I never thought of this before. I just learned something. I'm going to write about this on my blog.
Thanks Steph.
mm
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