I'M DONE!!!

“What does it mean to be a winner at learning? Winners are judged by some external criteria set by anyone other than the learner. If you answer more of someone else’s questions, score higher on someone else’s test, or complete more of someone else’s assignments according to their specifications, then you will be considered a learning winner over your peers. Under these circumstances, the goal of such schooling is to do more of someone else’s bidding. This separates learners from their learning because they control neither its content nor its consequences. In classrooms that feature learning competitions, learning is about winning – about gains, prestige, and satisfaction. It has more to do with ego involvement than with performance, coming to know yourself, your own and other cultures, and the workings of the world” 

I love this excerpt from Patrick Shannon's book Text, Lies, and Videotape. It was one of many I've read (or at least browsed) over the past month in preparation for a theory paper I was writing for one of my classes.  This paper took far longer than I expected .

However,  I'm proud to say that after holing up in the library on Wednesday I was able to finally finish the paper, as well as a research proposal and accompanying Power Point presentation. By the time I entered that final reference and hit "save" I was almost in disbelief that I could actually be done with everything. It's been a long, but rewarding, haul.

After attending my final classes on Monday and Tuesday I'll have five weeks off before classes start up again. As overwhelmed as I get at times trying to keep up with my coursework I have to say that I do enjoy it. I like having lots to do. When I don't I feel kind of lost, not knowing exactly what I should be doing. I imagine I'll probably play more guitar, clear out some fallen trees and limbs around the house, and go for bike rides with the kids. It's not such a bad job trying to find ways to spend downtime!

While I won't share my paper on critical literacy I will pass along three or four of my favorite quotes (as pulled from the writing of some seriously smart people). 

 *****

"If the mass media are showing kids how to resolve their conflicts through violence or unfettered consumerism, we have to encourage them to reflect. We have a responsibility to help them question their ideas and values, to figure out where these ideas come from and whose interests they serve."


“What knowledge is most worthy? and its corollary, What should we teach our children? are deceptively simple questions….In recent years, the question of what knowledge is most worthy has emerged as part of the contemporary debate on education and schooling. It is related to the larger questions of who and what is an American? Contemporary conservative critics…believe they have the answer. America is what its most successful and powerful people have been- their literature, history, personal stories, and traditions” 

“Education is suffering from narration sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable…His task is to ‘fill’ the students with the contents of his narration – contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity”