Welcome to the homepage for
"Education, Knowledge, &
Culture"
a Drew University First
Year Seminar, Fall 1998.
Sandra
Jamieson, Associate Professor of English
Course Description
In this seminar we will explore what it means to
be “educated” in the United States of America in 1998 with an emphasis
on cultural knowledge. The issue of what one needs to know in order to
be considered “culturally literate” may be one of the hottest issues in
education today, both inside and outside of the academy, and this course
will consider as many different positions as possible. E.D. Hirsch argues
that one needs a certain degree of cultural literacy in order to write
and read in the university; so, we will investigate exactly how much one
needs to know in order to understand a piece of writing and write intelligently
about a particular topic. Because our investigation occurs at a Liberal
Arts College in the 1990s, will also discuss the cultural implications
of this knowledge. What does it mean to be part of a cultural group? How
does specific knowledge grant or deny membership? To what extent does Drew
have a culture that demands/teaches specific cultural knowledge/literacy?
How does one learn that knowledge? What happens if one doesn't? What about
the internet? The United States as a whole? In addition to E.D.Hirsch,
we will read essays by a number of authors discussing the wasy that cultural
knowledge or lack of knowledge influenced their writing. We will also read
two novels--Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and Paradise,
by Toni Morrison--in which characters try to find a way to establish an
identity that is shaped but not limited by their cultural knowledge and
lack of knowledge.
In the process of this you will strengthen your
skills as writers, readers, speakers, and critical thinkers. This seminar
will function as a workshop for your ideas. We will discuss readings together,
and you will break into smaller groups to present secondary material to
the class. For each reading a team of two students will develop questions
and connections to prompt discussion and help everyone else address key
issues in the text--as determined by the presenters. There will also be
a lot of reading, writing, thinking, and talking in this class, so prepare
to flex the muscles of your mind!
Books and other necessities
• E.D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy: What Every American
Needs to Know. (Houghton Mifflin, 1987)
• Rick Simonson & Scott Walker, Multi-Cultural
Literacy. (Graywolf Press, 1988)
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. (Penguin,
1977)
• Toni Morrison, Paradise. (Knopf, 1998)
• Anson and Schwegler, The Longman Handbook
for Writers and Readers. (Longman, 1997).
• A notebook of your choice for Writer’s Journal
entries.
• TWO 3.5” computer disks (for backups)
• At least two manila folders in which you will
hand in writing assignments (don’t get the fancy plastic kind).
"Education, Knowledge,
and Culture" and the FYS goals:
The first year seminar program is designed to help
you develop skills in three essential areas: Computer literacy, Critical
Thinking, and Communication (written and spoken). While these areas tend
to overlap, the seminar is designed to meet them in the following specific
ways:
Communication skills:
-
Writing Assignments: In this class you will
be asked to adopt a range of writing styles from informal computer conversations
and journal entries to a formal annotated bibliography and analysis papers.
The former requires you to write once a week in the class Journal. You
will post your responses to some of the issues raised in class or other
journal entries to a newsgroup established
for the class). In addition to this, you will be asked to keep a Writers
Journal. This is not the same as a “diary” and should not be thought
of as the last thing you do after all of your other homework. Your Journal
entries are an integral part of the class, and you must write in it at
least 4 times a week. As we read each essay you will write a brief summary
and response to it (these count as journal entries), you will also write
an entry on it for the annotated bibliography you will produce for your
final
portfolio. Papers will require analytical, evaluative and comparative
skills, which you will perfect through revisions using peer tutoring and
feedback from myself and other students in the class.
In addition to responses and other journal entries
and the annotated bibliography, you will write five formal papers for this
class. The first two will be brief position
papers, the third will be a comparison
paper, and the last two will be critical
analysis papers. You will receive four letter grades for these papers
(the first position paper will not be graded), and will select two to revise
for your final portfolio. You will also write a 1 to 2-page collaborative
summary/description
paper after your visit to the library. All of your writing will be
collected in a portfolio
that I will collect at the end of the semester. From this portfolio you
and I will be able to assess your academic progress and you will be able
to trace how your thinking has evolved and deepened over the semester.
-
Oral Component: Each student will be responsible
for at least 4 oral presentations to the class this semester. Three will
be as a member of a two- or three-person team and will be a 20-minute presentation
on a reading assigned to the class. Presentations should be designed to
stimulate class discussion and critical thinking and will be graded by
how well they achieve this (i.e.: if you can get your classmates to discuss
the material intelligently, you will earn an A). The final presentation
will be as part of a three-person team and will be on material that is
unfamiliar to the rest of the class. These presentations will be about
ten minutes long and your task will be to make your classmates rethink
the class reading or make connections they had not previously made. The
group will be graded according to its ability to stimulate critical thinking
and discussion in class in addition to its overall presentation skills.
Before you make these presentations, we sill discuss effective strategies,
and I will give you feedback on ways to strengthen your oral skills as
the class progresses.
Critical Thinking Skills:
-
Learning to think critically: Critical thinking
is a key element of the seminar. To think critically is to refuse to accept
things at face value, to always ask "why?" "how?" and "what are the implications
of this?" In the Orientation Program Common Reading, Ship Fever,
we see instance after instance of people who always want to know more and
refuse to settle for the superficial. We also see examples of people who
stop asking questions. The story "Rare Bird" is a good example of both
of these things. Some of the gentlemen scholars share Linnaeus's belief
that swallows spend the winter under water and refuse to conside other
alternatives, even though their theories are based on annecdotes and tradition
rather than hard evidence. Sarah Anne and Catherine, on the other hand,
explore other possibilities and propose experiments to test their theories.
They are using critical thinking skills to explore a situation and find
solutions to problems; the others are not. Critical thinking is at the
heart of the academic endeavor, but more than that, as you develop the
art of critical thinking you will find yourself able to take control over
your own life, make reasoned decisions, and approach difficult problems.
The more skilled you are at weighing options and exploring possibilities,
the easier you will find everything--from registering for classes to selecting
a career. Enhanced critical thinking skills will help you to develop more
effective papers, research projects, and reports--and may even help you
to become a better judge of character. Most of the assignments in this
seminar have been developed to help you strengthen your critical thinking
skills and your ability to apply them to every aspect of your life.
-
Learning to Think-in-writing: Writing the
kind of journal entries required for this class every day has the same
impact on a person's writing and critical thinking skills as working out
has on his or her body, which is why every student will keep a Writer's
Journal as part of this class. Entries must be made in the Writer's Journal
at least four times a week (every day is the ideal, but is not always realistic).
While students will not be graded on the content of the Journal, they will
be graded on the seriousness with which they address the issues raised
and the frequency with which they write (I will give extra consideration
to people who write an entry every day). The great our ability to think-in-writing,
the easier academic writing, note-taking, and detailed explorations of
complex ideas and questions become.
Computer Literacy
-
Computer training: As part of this seminar
you will attend classes run by the Academic Technology faculty who will
teach you computer skills ranging from how to use word processing software
to how to make spreadsheets, use the internet, and navigate the Drew CWIS
(Campus Wide Information System).
-
The Internet: This seminar has a web-based
syllabus that you can access this page from the network connection in your
room, in the residence hall lounges, in the library, and even in the Snack
Bar, and I will invite you to add to that list of links.
-
Student web pages: By the end of this semester,
each student in this class will have made a personal web page. Students
who took the seminar in 1996 will also be developing web sites (if they
have not already done so) and these will be linked too. Once you are no
longer in this seminar, you will all be able to keep track of each other
and the interesting things you do through the web links--and you will also
be building a résumé ready for life after Drew.
-
The Class Newsgroup: This class has a newsgroup
open to all current and former members of this seminar. On this group you
will post responses, messages, connections, and comments related to this
class. Many of the former students will also join the conversation (although
they have promised not to reveal the end of the novels!).
-
Electronic Mail: I encourage you to contact
me via e-mail to discuss questions, problems, and triumphs--or just to
"check in" and tell me how you did on a paper, test, etc.
Seminar Ground Rules:
A seminar is only as strong as its laziest member,
so it is essential that each member of the seminar accepts her or his responsibility
to the other members. Thus:
1) You will be expected to attend every class
prepared to participate and share your ideas and writing with your writing
colleagues. If you are unprepared, the workshop will not work, your colleagues
will suffer, and you will be marked as absent. Three unexplained absences
will result in your final grade being lowered by one letter;
2) You must respect your fellow writers. This
means that you must take them and their ideas and writing seriously and
comment constructively with sensitivity to their feelings. Failure to do
this will result in a collapse of the trust necessary for a workshop and
you will be asked to leave (and marked as absent). Lack of respect ranges
from discriminating comments (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), to yawns,
the pulling of faces, asides to other members of the seminar and so on.
Grades:
The purpose of this seminar is to help you become
more accomplished college-level writers, critical thinkers, active readers,
and effective public speakers, thus I will grade your overall behavior
as students as well as individual pieces of writing. I will not grade your
Writer’s Journal entries, but I will write comments and penalize you for
not writing at least four entries per week.
The final grade will be based upon the following:
1) Participation in class discussion, oral presentations
to the class (x4), regularity of Writer's Journal entries;
2) The effort at improving your writing, thinking,
reading, and speaking that I see reflected in your drafts
and meetings with tutors and myself;
3) The extent that you actually strengthen your
writing and thinking skills (demonstrated in revisions and
your final portfolio of writing).
I will give you a grade at mid-term to allow you
to chart your progress.
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