Topics:
1. Academics: The university, its history and role in society
2. Sign up for individual meetings with your instructor next week
Required reading / viewing / listening:
Three anonymous student essays, to be posted below.
Read two articles: the article related to your major, plus one of the other articles, from the list below:
BUS: Sturman, Walsh, & Cheramie, "The Value of Human Capital Specificity Versus Transferability"
COM: Brown, Campbell, & Fischer, "American Adolescents and Music Videos: Why Do They Watch?"
ENG: Moretti, "The Slaughterhouse of Literature"
IER: Hidalgo-Redondo, "Electoral and non-electoral lessons of the crisis of Spanish leftist alliance Izquierda Unida"
PSY: Preiss and Fráňová, "Depressive symptoms, academic achievement, and intelligence"
Homework due:
Homework 8 (2 points)
Read the three (anonymous) student essays (to be posted below), and write a brief (250 to 400 words) page in which make a claim for one of them as the more effective essay. Be sure to refer to specific examples from the essays to support or illustrate your claims.
Sample student essay #1
Paolo Freire in his essay "The Banking Concept of Education" describes and compares two types of education: problem-posing class and the banking education. He analyzes possible problematic outcomes of each approach. Richard Rodriguez in his biographic essay "The Achievement of Desire" describes the education he obtained. Freire would interpret Rodriguez's schooling as a typical case of banking education.
Rodriguez describes his attitude to learning through his schooling. He admired his teachers, especially the nuns, and he wanted to become a teacher, not because he wanted to teach somebody, but he aspired to have the same authority and knowledge as his teachers. Freire would interpret this attitude as confusing "the authority of knowledge with his or her (teacher's) professional authority", which is one of the basic point of the banking education. Another major point is that the banking concept will never propose to students to critically consider reality. That was exactly what Rodriguez did when he read all the books without understanding them. Moreover, when he had personal troubles, he tried to find the solution in his books, what seems to be a bit comical.
Another evidence that Rodriguez's education was an example of the banking education, is that he later realized his schoolwork took him away from his family. Freire would say that he discovered that his present way of life is inconsistent with competence of being human.
In my opinion, Freire would conclude that Rodriguez dealt with the problems of banking approach successfully although his life could be easier if he was taught in problem-posing classes.
Sample student essay #2
Results of educational system
The whole reading is connected with Freire's description of the banking system. This is understandably because of educational system that the text is telling us about.
In the beginning we can see one of the most fundamental conflicts between school and family life. Children only change one authority. They do not cooperate with teacher. Teacher is for them the vessel of knowledge. The knowledge is being given as finished or unchangeable and without any linkage. Children that start to attend the school like it. This imposes them. It is possible not to always obey parents. However teacher is a big authority. As the result parents become inferior. Children see their future in teacher's personality.
Teacher shows them the world as run of events. He does not show how to influence these events. The problem posing education shows this problem. Even thought the system of education is not suitable, parents have to pay a large amount of money to let their children study. The results of banking system are also shown in the second part of the text. I mean the part of text where scholarship boy lies in books. Books should act as collection of knowledge. In text books are described as another well of knowledge. Scholarship boy remembers books and then cites them. He does not think about their meaning. He is not as good in solving problems. Teachers who use the banking education like this type of students. It is possible to say that scholarship is the collector of thoughts. However he is not the creator of thoughts. Then a scholarship boy realizes that the life is on only about memorizing books. Freire would say that it scholarship boy had been educated in problem posing education, he would not have felt any dissatisfaction with his status.
Sample student essay #3
Rodriguez appears to be very conscious about his educational path. He often refers to himself as a "scholarship boy". Out of this concept it is understandable that anyone attaining a scholarship is somewhat intelligent as well as hard working. Indeed, Rodriguez worked hard in school, he brought home trophies and all sorts of prizes. However, Rodriguez tries to explain that there were many moments where he became "too anxious, too eager." He was anxious about schooling and failed to separate life from school. He was encouraged by his parents almost too much and he explains that there also many other types of students who are not scholarship boys who very often fail school because of the lack of encouragement from their "middle class homes."
But slowly his view on things changed. He started embracing the concept of his schooling. He no longer minded being above average, the ambitious pupil, yearning to solve the problems written on the black board. He didn't feel any anger towards his parents who had continuously encouraged him in his academic work. In his family education was a key point to success. He explains his mothers life and her benefits as an educated woman. At the end of the day, she became an educated woman without having gone to college.
Education I believe is probably one of the most important things in life today. Without it we wouldn't advance. The question remains how far you are willing to go to make these changes. Rodriguez was a scholarship boy. He is a "collector of thoughts, not a thinker, the very last person in class who ever feels obliged to have an opinion of his own."
In my opinion I find that Rodriguez is extremely modest by calling himself a "bad scholar." He may not have studied as much as other peopl would to get accepted to Stanford, but it should never mean that he was bad. The only thing I would put the blame on are the schooling methods that Freire describes in his text. One method is set out more for the scholars advancement in life one could say exercizes that require applied knowledge, while the other requires less thinking and basic structured tasks. Looking at the text, there is always a mix of the two teaching methods and that is how it is even today in all schools. Rodriguez isn't a bad student and It is good that his parents were enthusiastic for the greater bits of his school and university life.
Written assessment:
Quiz 8
Quiz terms will be drawn from the academic articles you read for this week. You will not have a list of questions in advance.
