RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER - Fairmont State University

RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.

We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, Tied into a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)

Fairmont Community and Technical College

and FAIRMONT STATE COLLEGE

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist.

The they came for the Jews

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t Jewish,

Then they came for the trade unionist, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,

And I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they cam for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.

Rev. Martin Niemoeller German Lutheran Pastor

COVER EXPLANATORY NOTE: The three interrelated clusters superimposed over the points of the triangle symbolize the integrative dynamics of Race, Class, and Gender. This metaphor of reality is suggested by Linda Olds in her Metaphors of Interrelatedness. For the central image of reality she sees the metaphor of Indra’s net. “Every intersection of intertwining web is set with a glistening jewel, in which all parts of the whole are reflected, mirroring the intricate inter-connectedness of all reality and its intercausality.”

CONTENTS

Message From the President ……………………………………………………… 1 Assessing the Problem ……………………………………………………………… 2 Nature of the Course ………………………………………………………………… 3 Reading, Reflection, Dialog ………………………………………………………… 4 Thematic Concepts …………………………………………………………………… 5 Class Attendance ……………………………………………………………………… 6 Journaling ……………………………………………………………………………… 7 Journaling Entry Sample Format …………………………………………………… 8 Journaling Entry Sample Format …………………………………………………… 9 Personal and Social Transformation Model ………………………………………… 10 Instructor’s Hopes …………………………………………………………………… 13 Orozco Mural ………………………………………………………………………… 15 A Parable ……………………………………………………………………………… 17 Focusing the Paradigm ………………………………………………………………… 18 Obstacles and Complexities …………………………………………………………… 21 Methodological Goals and Objectives ………………………………………………… 22 Specific Methodological Competencies ……………………………………………… 25 Responsibility for Choice ……………………………………………………………… 26 Methodology for Learning …………………………………………………………… 29 The Dynamics of Social Systems ……………………………………………………… 32 Global Transformation ………………………………………………………………… 33

FROM THE PRESIDENT In 1963 John Fitzgerald Kennedy wrote: "If we cannot end now our differences, of least we can help make the world safe for diversity." Prophetic words, in a sense, yet now, more than three decades later, we realize that not all differences should or can be put aside. We can rejoice in the human diversity that is brought about by global economy and growing multiculturalism within our own borders. Our country is changing rapidly, exponentially. Fairmont State College seeks to prepare students for the increasingly diverse society in which we live. The College's strategic plan calls for a greater awareness and understanding of issues relating to ethnicity, race, gender, class, and sexual preference. We embrace these goals not out of political correctness, but because only in an, understanding we can we appreciate the richness of the human experience.

At the same time that we at Fairmont State College acknowledge and take pride in our differences,

we reaffirm certain common values: integrity, high standards, dignity, and fairness. Together, all of us must strive to overcome prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. Our campus is a microcosm of the world. As such, we at Fairmont State College are part of a multicultural environment in which individuals must work together, with compassion for one another, if we are to realize our potential as human beings.

As President of Fairmont State College, I strongly commit myself to the goal of inclusiveness and

diversity. I will insist that all members of the campus community conduct themselves according to the basic principles of human civility. But my own commitment is not enough. In order for members of the college community to work and live productively, all students, faculty, and staff must also accept responsibility for creating a safe, friendly atmosphere. Please join me in the effort to make Fairmont State College a place where we not only tolerate, but celebrate human diversity.

Dan Bradley

1

Assessing The Problem: The Challenge of Change

As we begin a new millennium the college campus in the United States is in a transformational phase. Colleges and universities are be-coming more diverse, a microcosm of a correspondingly diverse, complex and heterogeneous society.

Less than a century ago, only 8 percent of Americans enrolled in college. Currently, the

college-going rate is approaching 60 percent. The United States, West Virginia, Fairmont State College, and Fairmont Community and Technical College have moved from elitism to mass higher education. College campuses are now more reflective of the emerging global and multi-cultural society. The future will be increasingly multi-ethnic and diverse. By the year 2020, forty percent will be non-white, and by the middle of the 21st Century, a time well within the lifespan of today's teenagers, Caucasians will be the minority.

A more diverse college, campus is, at the same time, a more exciting arid challenging place to be. It is a place where different languages are heard; it is a place where diverse cultural experiences will be shared which expand students' horizons.

Many of our West Virginia students, coming from a relatively homogeneous culture, find it awkward to be nudged into institutionalized multi-culturalism. Our students, like most individuals, need assistance in expanding their world view, in becoming less provincial, and more aware of issues concerning race, class, and gender.

Colleges have not found it easy to manage this increasing diversity or the pressure of accelerated social change and equity. Increases of diverse students have resulted in tensions which remain sometimes just below the surface, as hidden injuries, even unconscious slights, innuendo, and "subliminal messages." Language or slang may be used to dehumanize and become a precursor to discrimination, intimidation, isolation, and violence. Sometimes, increased racial, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic tensions erupt blatantly. These are forms of bigotry which, of course, are not new to, college campuses. There is a dreary chain reaction of bigoted causality, perpetuated generation upon generation, that must be broken. The irony is that while there may have been a decline in institutional discrimination, there has been a corresponding increase in individual and collective resentment and incidents of bigotry, hate, harassment, intimidation, ethnic-related polarization and violence. We should reflect on California's Passage of Proposition 187 and the attacks on Affirmative Action. There also has been a national perception of decreased commitment to civil rights. Racial politics has been remarkably successful in exploiting code words like "crime," "quotas," and "welfare," especially in times of economic downturn. In times of economic strain and high unemployment rates, tensions often take the form of racial or ethnic resentments and

2

"scapegoating." As the old saying puts it, "when the feed-box is empty, the horses soon begin to bite each other."

The second half of the 20th century also saw dramatic changes in the lives and roles of

women. The "feminization of poverty," females marrying later in life, bearing fewer children, and refocusing their energies from primary family and child caretakers to increasing participation in the paid work force all lead to the questioning of sex roles and sex role stereotypes. While the specifics of male-female sex roles may vary across time, place, race, and culture, the ethos of male dominance and phallocentric prejudice is older than the story of Genesis itself. There has been a remarkable lack of recognition and attention to this topic. Maybe it is not that the fear of women has gone unrecognized, but that the consequences of that fear for the patriarchal nature of societies have not been sufficiently understood.

While the relationships between prejudice and hate, and hate and violence remain murky, it is clear

that hatred breeds hatred. It remains just as clear, however, that on a college campus, and in the community at large, outbreaks of antagonism, hostility, or violence have no place. These negative energies must be transformed and channeled into healthy personal adjustment and nurturing relationships which will, in turn, enable an atmosphere more conducive to the quest for such values as wisdom, truth, freedom, justice, love, and diversity. People of conscience are struggling for justice all around the world. It is a struggle of liberation. The Nature of the Study of Race, Class, and Gender

This is an experimental course in diversity and multiculturalism as we begin the Third Millennium. It also will project our future alternative historical institutions, ideas, and values. It will be an experiment in that it carries no guarantee of success, only a challenge. Our approach will be conceptual rather than factual. It will emphasize understanding, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and dialog rather than memorization. It will stress methods of inquiry, tolerance, and individual and collective choice.

Our study will be projections of personal and social self-consciousness; our study will provide us with half-truths, legends, prejudices, contradictory opinions, folly, fraud, impressionistic accounts of mankind's superior irrationality, defeated alternatives, and madness. It also will reveal human triumphs, great qualities of imagination, vision, courage and traditions worthy of respect--all of which may enlarge our frame of reference and provide hope for the future.

Each of us will become participants, not spectators. You should reject the concept that the only time

learning takes place is when the instructors are talking. You will be escaping the

3

FROM THE PRESIDENT In 1963 John Fitzgerald Kennedy wrote: "If we cannot end now our differences, of least we can help make the world safe for diversity." Prophetic words, in a sense, yet now, more than three decades later, we realize that not all differences should or can be put aside. We can rejoice in the human diversity that is brought about by global economy and growing multiculturalism within our own borders. Our country is changing rapidly, exponentially. Fairmont State College seeks to prepare students for the increasingly diverse society in which we live. The College's strategic plan calls for a greater awareness and understanding of issues relating to ethnicity, race, gender, class, and sexual preference. We embrace these goals not out of political correctness, but because only in an, understanding we can we appreciate the richness of the human experience.

At the same time that we at Fairmont State College acknowledge and take pride in our differences,

we reaffirm certain common values: integrity, high standards, dignity, and fairness. Together, all of us must strive to overcome prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. Our campus is a microcosm of the world. As such, we at Fairmont State College are part of a multicultural environment in which individuals must work together, with compassion for one another, if we are to realize our potential as human beings.

As President of Fairmont State College, I strongly commit myself to the goal of inclusiveness and

diversity. I will insist that all members of the campus community conduct themselves according to the basic principles of human civility. But my own commitment is not enough. In order for members of the college community to work and live productively, all students, faculty, and staff must also accept responsibility for creating a safe, friendly atmosphere. Please join me in the effort to make Fairmont State College a place where we not only tolerate, but celebrate human diversity.

Dan Bradley

1

Assessing The Problem: The Challenge of Change

As we begin a new millennium the college campus in the United States is in a transformational phase. Colleges and universities are be-coming more diverse, a microcosm of a correspondingly diverse, complex and heterogeneous society.

Less than a century ago, only 8 percent of Americans enrolled in college. Currently, the

college-going rate is approaching 60 percent. The United States, West Virginia, Fairmont State College, and Fairmont Community and Technical College have moved from elitism to mass higher education. College campuses are now more reflective of the emerging global and multi-cultural society. The future will be increasingly multi-ethnic and diverse. By the year 2020, forty percent will be non-white, and by the middle of the 21st Century, a time well within the lifespan of today's teenagers, Caucasians will be the minority.

A more diverse college, campus is, at the same time, a more exciting arid challenging place to be. It is a place where different languages are heard; it is a place where diverse cultural experiences will be shared which expand students' horizons.

Many of our West Virginia students, coming from a relatively homogeneous culture, find it awkward to be nudged into institutionalized multi-culturalism. Our students, like most individuals, need assistance in expanding their world view, in becoming less provincial, and more aware of issues concerning race, class, and gender.

Colleges have not found it easy to manage this increasing diversity or the pressure of accelerated social change and equity. Increases of diverse students have resulted in tensions which remain sometimes just below the surface, as hidden injuries, even unconscious slights, innuendo, and "subliminal messages." Language or slang may be used to dehumanize and become a precursor to discrimination, intimidation, isolation, and violence. Sometimes, increased racial, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic tensions erupt blatantly. These are forms of bigotry which, of course, are not new to, college campuses. There is a dreary chain reaction of bigoted causality, perpetuated generation upon generation, that must be broken. The irony is that while there may have been a decline in institutional discrimination, there has been a corresponding increase in individual and collective resentment and incidents of bigotry, hate, harassment, intimidation, ethnic-related polarization and violence. We should reflect on California's Passage of Proposition 187 and the attacks on Affirmative Action. There also has been a national perception of decreased commitment to civil rights. Racial politics has been remarkably successful in exploiting code words like "crime," "quotas," and "welfare," especially in times of economic downturn. In times of economic strain and high unemployment rates, tensions often take the form of racial or ethnic resentments and

2

"scapegoating." As the old saying puts it, "when the feed-box is empty, the horses soon begin to bite each other."

The second half of the 20th century also saw dramatic changes in the lives and roles of

women. The "feminization of poverty," females marrying later in life, bearing fewer children, and refocusing their energies from primary family and child caretakers to increasing participation in the paid work force all lead to the questioning of sex roles and sex role stereotypes. While the specifics of male-female sex roles may vary across time, place, race, and culture, the ethos of male dominance and phallocentric prejudice is older than the story of Genesis itself. There has been a remarkable lack of recognition and attention to this topic. Maybe it is not that the fear of women has gone unrecognized, but that the consequences of that fear for the patriarchal nature of societies have not been sufficiently understood.

While the relationships between prejudice and hate, and hate and violence remain murky, it is clear

that hatred breeds hatred. It remains just as clear, however, that on a college campus, and in the community at large, outbreaks of antagonism, hostility, or violence have no place. These negative energies must be transformed and channeled into healthy personal adjustment and nurturing relationships which will, in turn, enable an atmosphere more conducive to the quest for such values as wisdom, truth, freedom, justice, love, and diversity. People of conscience are struggling for justice all around the world. It is a struggle of liberation. The Nature of the Study of Race, Class, and Gender

This is an experimental course in diversity and multiculturalism as we begin the Third Millennium. It also will project our future alternative historical institutions, ideas, and values. It will be an experiment in that it carries no guarantee of success, only a challenge. Our approach will be conceptual rather than factual. It will emphasize understanding, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and dialog rather than memorization. It will stress methods of inquiry, tolerance, and individual and collective choice.

Our study will be projections of personal and social self-consciousness; our study will provide us with half-truths, legends, prejudices, contradictory opinions, folly, fraud, impressionistic accounts of mankind's superior irrationality, defeated alternatives, and madness. It also will reveal human triumphs, great qualities of imagination, vision, courage and traditions worthy of respect--all of which may enlarge our frame of reference and provide hope for the future.

Each of us will become participants, not spectators. You should reject the concept that the only time

learning takes place is when the instructors are talking. You will be escaping the

3

escaping the "tell-'em-and-test-'em" process of "education." The thought here is that learning increases when conclusions are arrived at rather than imposed. Please do not guess about how the instructor expects you to think or respond. Rather let everything pass through the filter of your own mind. Make your own observations. Please go beyond the readings and the instructor. Do not unquestioningly accept what the "authorities" have to say. Judge for yourself! Do not expect the instructor to arrive at your conclusions for you; his/her aim will be merely to set off intellectual and relational chain reactions. Find your own meanings through self-discovery. Parker Palmer reminds us that "The beginning of wisdom. . . is not answering but questioning . . . .Teachers so often fall into the trap of giving the answers without waiting for the question." Questions should be deferred to the class so that students can develop their own answers. Each of us brings with him or her to the course clusters of established study habits: reading, underlining, outlining, etc.--but you are urged, in addition to whatever methods or techniques of study you employ, to acquire a questioning and critical attitude. Just to have read the assignments will not be satisfactory. Rather than taking meaningless notes, you will be encouraged to take very few notes. You may find that the most significant contributions come from other students. You will be exposed to controversy and conflicts; examine and reexamine your own beliefs and assumptions; become aware of your frame of reference; and learn to distinguish what is significant from what is insignificant, central, from what is peripheral.

Reading, Reflection, Dialog

As you read, be aware of a conceptual framework; find the central thesis and also look for an unstated, implicit thesis. What are the subordinate issues? Discover patterns, assign meanings. Learn the "art" of asking relevant, substantive questions. In addition to locating the basic ideas, core issues and supporting problems, identify the mood of what you are reading. Notice the reading's strengths and weaknesses. Above all, learn how to ask questions. Reapply values and generalizations to new situations. Ask what the implications are of what you are reading for the issues of Race, Class, and Gender and the dynamics of their interrelationships. Relate what you are learning to the past, present and future.

Studying collections of disjointed "facts" will result in disaster. Do not allow yourself to become caught in a thicket of memorized detail. If you think in bits and pieces, there is something wrong with your thinking. Study in "wholes" whenever possible--that is, read within the structure of a given theme so as to see the relatedness of the subject. You will learn to carry the related approaches of the social sciences and the humanities together so that in the process they simultaneously work upon each other and modify each other. Strive for a kind of interrelated simultaneous thinking: Your goal is insight, synthesis, making connections' and wisdom. We will come under the influence of various disciplines which, if we are successful, will reveal a multidimensional approach to the dynamics of the social sciences and the humanities. Traditional valueless “academic.” “neutral,” “detached”, or “impersonal” methodologies of learning are both irrelevant and dangerous.

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The values explicit approach of the humanities and social sciences will explore the dimensions of evil and irrationality. Values are, as Jacob Bronowski has pointed out in Science and Human Values, "those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline."

Much of contemporary social analysis has often been critical to the point of despair. The social sciences and humanities have much to offer in leading us beyond despair; they can help us search for the basis of responsibility, commitment, hope, justice, and moral sensibilities. The humanities can play an important role in overcoming our pathological national reluctance to debate the crucial issues of race, class, and gender.

Each of us must attempt to gain satisfaction from the learning experience itself rather than from artificial or external standards; nothing is important here but you! Learn for keeps, not to give material back to the instructor. The instructor's views may be merely polemic; they may represent his own opinions; or they may be very wrong. In any case, only you can decide and to do that you must form your own judgments and know what you think about each issue. The course will be a dialog rather than the instructor's monologue. It is hoped that class discussions will become controversies from which will evolve a dialectical progression of intellectual and relational growth and awareness. You cannot be successfully motivated unless you feel a certain excitement about what you are doing--that is, the love of curiosity and the capacity to use your mind, the joy of being your own teacher, and satisfaction from the lifelong process of learning and thinking. Learn to grasp the learning process yourself and say: 'There is no one I can trust to do these things for me." It is hoped that you will love to learn and learn to love.

What will you take away with you upon completion of this course? Perhaps only a few new attitudes and perspectives, ways of thinking, ways of relating, was of structuring certain problems, or an expanded awareness. It is with the student, of course, that the ultimate responsibility lies for making analytical sense of the subtleties and ambiguities of an admittedly difficult, complex, and interrelated subject like Race, Class, and Gender.

Thematic Concepts

Each of you will design your own themes which like magnets will draw meaning from the chaos of fragments. There will be little attempt to superimpose these concepts upon your thinking. The liberation and strengthening of your initiative, personhood, and independence are much more important than any collection of themes or the instructors’ preconceived ideas. Your opinions are wisdom in the making. Your reactions are insights into who you are. Construct your own thematic concepts and be aware of the infinite possibilities of how these themes of equity and justice are interrelated. Only the general themes of Identity, Power, and Change have been proposed to provide structure, along with Awareness, Analysis, Competence, Reflection, and Change.

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CLASS ATTENDANCE

The heart of this course is classroom dialog, discussion, and journaling based on the readings and class participation. Therefore, regular attendance for every class meeting is essential. Absences do not relieve a student from the day's class activities and/or assignment. In other words, it is the student's responsibility to consult with the instructor or other students about the class activities and/or assignment on the day the student was absent. NOTE: A specific attendance requirement may apply to your section. You can’t participate if you don’t show up.

PARTICIPATION

You are expected to participate each class session in discussion and assignmentsto demonstrate that you have thoughtfully completed the readings and projects. Be prepared to give of yourself spontaneity follows trust.

COURSE EVALUATION

The total course grade will consist of the following: Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% Journal (Weekly) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30% Mid-Term Mega-Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15% Three Quizzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15% Final Mega-Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100% NOTE: Your section may modify course evaluation percentages and/or add to the above list.

JOURNALING

You are required to maintain a weekly journal throughout the semester. Your journal will consist of a number of entries which reflect your personal observations or experiences relating to each topic under study. Journal entries should be kept in a consolidated format (e.g., a loose leaf notebook), used only for Journal entries’ it should not be used for regular class notes. Moreover, each typed journal entry should be titled with a specific weekly Race, Class, and Gender topic and be dated. Journals are turned in weekly. A specific rule may apply to your section regarding late journal submission.

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There are several reasons you need to keep a journal: First, journals reinforce an active learning approach by encouraging reflection about yourself and those around you. Journals provide an opportunity to respond in a personal way to ideas about the readings, class activities, the media, or expressed in personal conversations. Second, journals provide a record that you can return to later and view through the alternative perspectives discussed later in the course. Third, we will use your entries to gauge your growth during the course and your understanding of various topics.

You might enjoy being your own teacher. It's a chance for more in-depth exploration on your

own. It is common fallacy of both faculty and students that what is learned must be taught.

You might learn the art of asking, "What are the implications of what I am learning?" "What premises are emerging?" You will recognize and cultivate your own creative possibilities. You will be moving from dependency to responsibility. You will form an independent inner point of view and trust your feelings, intuition, and emotional perceptions. Through reflection you will want to clarify ambiguous and subjective experiences.

You are a participant, not a spectator. You will want to learn to recognize contradictions and gaps between what is and what is not possible. Remember that your subjective interpretations have to be invented. You may even find that you have increased your moral ca acit to respond as you develop a sense of growth and self-realization.

Journaling is just a learning tool. You are beginning a new intellectual journey that is worthy of being recorded. You are not dependent upon the instructor, other members of the class, or any other authority figure. Rather, in a self-conscious way, you will have to support the integrity of your own learning process and say, "There is no one I can trust to do my thinking for me." Through self-guidance you will have to find meaning, identify your own goals, seek out new insights, and validate your own personal growth.

As you create your journal ask yourself questions like:

1. What have I learned that is most significant? 2. What are the most significant themes and issues? 3. What are the possible options and alternatives? What choices have to be made? 4. What are my insights and reflections? 5. What do I think? Where do I stand on this issue? 6. What do I feel? What does my intuition tell me or explain? 7. What is it I don't understand? What are my frustrations?

What are the unanswered. questions? 8. What is it I most disagree with? What are the implications?

What are the unasked questions?

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The brilliantly imaginative creator of Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry, recently described a study method of creating a dialog with an alien visitor. "I draw a line down the center of a blank sheet of paper, then begin questioning the character. Soon, says Roddenberry, "that character begins asking you questions."

The extra terrestrial's name is Gaan. "I have difficulty seeing a better way to gain new perspectives and test old perspectives on the happenings of today," says Roddenberry.

"All that one sees through Gaan's eyes What exists? What is happenings At what rates and Affected bar what other factors?"

"Those capable of using an extra terrestrial's eyes as an exercise, as a challenge, as an exciting game, improve on their ability to estimate where today may be taking us. "Shouldn't we be considering possible scenarios, recommending options and limits?" asks the author.

"When Gaan looks at the topics we are studying today," Roddenberry says, "he confesses some puzzlement over why we are not paying more attention to the following questions." And then you have to take it from there. So you might try drawing a line down the center of a blank sheet of paper and start asking questions of yourself and see what premises start emerging. A dialog with yourself is a good summing up process of transformation of information into knowledge and wisdom.

If you don't like the thought of dialog with an alien then write a letter to a future descendant or create some other technique. Write to a grandparent. Create your own journal strategies, but since journaling is largely an autobiographical and personal exercise, you should write in the first person. Many issues, concepts, and ideas need to be wrestled with and then expressed. Marshall McLuhan once said that he never knew what it was he thought until he had said it or had written it down. Most of us are like that. Students in class frequently find themselves holding back. Even though you can be more open and candid in a journal than you might be in class, nevertheless, there is still the tension between confidentiality and sharing with the instructor who will be reading your journal. Remember that even though a class journal is not intended to be confidential, there is no need to give away more than you intend to. Good luck on your intellectual journey! Remember, you are telling a story. Create a drama. All life is theater.

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JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE FORMAT Goal: Begin each journal entry with a significant quote from the week's source materials.

Goal: Diagnosis of the problems as a basis of dialog Objectives:

• Develop the ability to analyze and focus the problem and secondary issues • Examine key themes • Examine multiple interpretations • Examine misperceptions • Examine contradictions

Goal: Create an appropriate prescription for action Objectives:

• Determine what is to be done - alternatives • Focus the appropriate paradigm shift - from what to what? • Values clashes

Goal: Select conclusions, critical comments, and prognosis Objectives:

• What are the implications? • Ask "what is my personal responsibility/response?": Praxis – commitments to action that

define our lives • Re-examine hopes and fears • Write an epilogue

The ancient Greeks had a way of having the last word. They called it the Epilogue, the speech that came at the end of the drama to interpret the crucial intent, provide conclusion, resolution and catharsis. This epilogue or credo means "I believe. . . " Goal: Designate the unanswered questions Objective:

• Determine the need for further research/study Goal: Select glossary of terms

9

PERSONAL AND SOCIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION MODEL Dimensions of Learning

As we explore the three themes of Identity, Power, and Change keep in mind Four Sequential

Dimensions of Learning. Awareness asks "what are the actual conditions of life?" But there is no handy blueprint of reality. We have to make do with our subjective perception of objective events. Appearance is not always reality. Some truths are unpleasant. That in part explains why 76 million valium are taken every day in this country. We try, however, to make the unconscious conscious. So the first step is "seeing."

The second step is Analysis, which is a matter of judgment based on perception. This stage of diagnosis often uses empiricism, the learning from experience; it helps us form a body of knowledge.

Step three involves Action as application or prescription; it is active praxis not merely objectifying

or intellectualizing about something. Henri Nouwen put it this way: ". . . you don't think your way into a new kind of living but live your way into a new kind of thinking." It requires commitment. You have to do something; it is lived, experienced. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us about the "paralysis of analysis." As Henry Adams put it: thought is degraded action.

The fourth and last step is Reflection. Here self-discovery and private belief usually require public

commitment of values. It involves personal growth and renewal. This is a stage of synthesis and reevaluation.

Perhaps it is helpful to think of these four stages as being dialectical - an upward unfolding rather

than linear - from left to right - because this cycle is on-going in a recurring upward spiral. Social Action Process

The Social Action Process concerns the analysis of social conditions. Our critical thinking

identifies value conflicts and contradictions. Then we ask, "What is unacceptable?" and we are required to get in touch with our moral outrage and our sources of alienation. In the 1950's Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan, both now dead, starred in a movie called "Bad Day at Black Rock." In this movie we hear the line, "We are as big as the things that make us mad." Some things call for creative negation and a splendid resistance.

Following critical social analysis is the search for more desirable alternatives. To do that we need

to get in touch with our aspirations, hopes, visions, and dreams. Often you will find that there are not so much "answers," but only alternatives; some possibilities are more desirable than others. When we have to pick from poor to bad choices we have a dilemma. Pessimism, however, you will find, has no survival value.

The third step requires the examination of the sources and uses of power. Power is a structural

element. Notice that analysis and diagnosis determine the prescription. The historical dimensions of power are significant. Who gets what? Remember that power follows the wealth, and wealth follows the power. It is a deadly embrace. These issues are complex. Focus on the whole, not the pieces or elements. This requires you to take a holistic analysis.

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GUIDELINES FOR CLASSROOM DYNAMICS

1. Heuristic Learning

It is not by accident that both the content and the methodology of this course have been based on an active learning participatory model—an eaglitarian flattening of the teacher-dominated classroom power pyramid. This may be thought of as a kind of academic equivalent of recent forms of “participatory management and empowerment” in business and industry. Learning by group inquiry, questioning and discovery require active participation and interaction. Dialog is the teaching strategy. Of course, the art of questioning and waiting for responses has to be learned. The roles of the students and faculty/facilitators are to ask “what is most significant?” We have to get involved in the active learning process. Perhaps the most challenging task required of the facilitators is to be patient as they endure the occasional terrifying silence waiting for student responses. Silence, however, can be active, creative, thoughtful, and reflective. Facculty have a tendency to crash through the sound barrier to fill the vacuum of silence in the classroom. Facilitators need to keep quiet. Listening is an art-form. There can be texture in the pauses. The secret is” the lecture is dead. Blame it on the printing press. Don’t tell anyone.

2. Trust and Respect: Checking the “Forked Tongues”

The content of the course, which may frequently include emotionally-charged subject matter and emphasis on dialog and questioning, requires a climate of tolerance, open-mindedness, trust, and acceptance. The excitement of intellectual exchange should not negate a respect for diversity of opinions. Conflicts and disagreements are inevitable and should be encouraged. Each contribution is a “gift” worthy of our respect. “Put downs,” “cheap shots,” and verbal and nonverbal ridicule only inhibit open discussion and active learning. We are all vulnerable; we are all afraid’ we are also deserving of mutual respect and courtesy.

3. Beyond the Chains of Illusion” Correcting “Forked Eves”

May sterotypes have to be unlearned. Related to awareness and acceptance of responsibility for conscious and unconscious denial of failed leadership styles is recognition that we have been not only misinformed and learned things that are wrong, but also that many of our illusions are lies. We are, therefore, prisoners of our illusions. We lack clear perception. (see Plato’s Cave). We lack enlightenment and liberation from the systematic blindness of arcane leadership styles. So we have to be open to changing our minds and becoming change agents to ourselves and others and we admit as we do in song that “we had to be taught to hate.” In short, we are all in need of transformation.

4. Overcoming Denial

Our quest will be to become aware of and to accept awareness of personal and institutional power and status inequities as they relate to empowering leadership roles. This means transformation of perception through awareness. As Pogo put it, “the enemy is us.” Of course everyone’s first response will be “Not I,” I am (will be) an ideal leader. Our first task will to transcend denial.

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5. Don’t Blame the Victim

Knowledge and information, unlike wisdom, may be used for malicious purposes. We know that we never can tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ truth is multifaceted; however, we have an obligation not to mususe our source materials so as to blame the victims of oppression and injustice. Notice, for example, how the following diagnostic information may be used to either denigrate Blacks or to point out social systems which are the very source of their dehumanization” “Nearly two-thirds of all black children—63.7 percent, to be exact—are born out of wedlock, compared to 14.9 percent of white babies. . .black women, comprising 13 percent of the women of childbearing age, account for 31 percent of all abortions. No fewer than 44.8 percent of black children live below the poverty line compared to 15.9 percent of white children. Typically, the unemployment rate for blacks has been more than twice that for whites.”

Richard Polenberg “The Continuing American Dilemma,” Washington Post, March 26, 1992

6. Taking Responsibility

We may not all be at fault for negative, self-defeating leadership roles we are aware of or have experienced, but it is our burden to break the chains of illusion and overcome our false consciousness or what Sartre called “bad faith.” What is our role? What is our responsibility? As Rabbi Heschel put it, “In a free society, some are guilty; all are responsible.” If the intellectual and emotional climate encourages you to take risks, the rest is up to you.

7 .Small Group Discussion

Agree on one person to keep the group focused, who will remind you to keep the discussion relevant and which the clock so that the material is covered within the designated time frame. Try to avoid any person or persons from dominating the discussion’ encourage the “shy person.” Everyone is expected to be an active participant. Agree on a recorder who will summarize what is most significant, moments of clarity, insight, and flashes of connections with other relevant points of reference. The recorder will be prepared to synthesize for the entire class the group’s findings in a coherent manner—tell a story. Avoid making a list to be checked off.

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Your Instructor’s hopes for you as we begin the Race, Class, and Gender class are:

1. that you become empowered both as a student and as a person; 2. that you develop a critical consciousness – the ability to think critically; 3. that you continue to explore transformation in your life – personal transformation –

participate in the “emancipation of the self, as leader;” that you assume authority and responsibility for your beliefs, values, and actions”

4. that you match your outward life’s journey with your own inward journey of self-actualization’

5. that you grow spiritually” education is a spiritual journey; do we really believe in the essential spirtual nature of mankind?

6. that you will seize the learning process for yourself; develop “crap detectors”

(Hemingway); 7. that you are better able to cope with ambiguity, multiple interpretations – value conflicts; 8. that you cultivate a sense of your own ethical integrity; 9. that you move beyond despair – and that you are better able to cope with living in an

“insane society; 10. that you bridge the gap between learning and living – praxis

you don’t know what you believe until you act - that you put yourself on the line Ask: “What is my responsibility?”

11. that you participate in a splendid resistance against injustice; 12. that you increase your moral capacity to respond; 13. that you continue to develop a sense of moral imagination’ 14. that in a time of great challenges and pathetic responses – don’t be neutral’ 15. don’t doubt and fear your own potential successes – “Jonah Complex”; 16. that you always opt for the growth experience; that you have a desire to grow; 17. that you develop “a reverence for life;”

18. that you: celebrate the goodness of creation/the sacredness of life/that life is a gift, that

life is a journey, a pilgrimage; - not delay life-the living of life; - live life as fully as possible’ see yourself as unfinished’ - follow your vision; be open to change; - see your challenges as opportunities to lead by empowering others; - that you become your own teacher and student;

19. we wish for you great joy – love is always vulnerable/develop meaningful relationships

which permit you to give and empower others in your capacity to grow

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Jose Clemente Orozco [Dartmouth College library basement] “The last panel on this wall shows a sprawling female skeleton in the after-agony of tarvail: a smear of dead flesh and a tangle of hair still cling to the white bones. Tenderly, reverently, a skeleton in academic gown presents the babe to its mother” it is ad ead embryo. Other dead embryos, properly pickled in bottles, are in the foreground’ while above the skeleton are lined the gods of the modern world in full academic regalia, with the greenish faces of rotted corpses, benignly giving countenance tot this miscarriage. Their backs are turned solidly to a world in flames.”

-Lewis Mumfor, “Orozco in New England,” The New Republic,, October 10, 1934

“We are in a period of ambiguity and uncertainty which temps the conclusions of both pessimists and optimists.” -Jonas Salk “All great truths begin as blasphemy.” -George Bernard Shaw

EAT YOUR OWN FRUIT

A disciple once complained, “You tell us stories, but you never

reveal their meaning to us.”

Said the master, “How would you like it if someone offered you fruit and masticated it

before giving it to you?” Anthony de Mello

The lesson of the parable is: •judge for yourself •no one can find your meaning for you but you •experience life yourself •it can be a fruitful experience

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THE GOLDEN EAGLE A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a backyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the backyard chickens did, thinking he was a backyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his winds and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens. So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s

what he thought he was. Anthony de Mello

You don’t have to be the smartest on the block. Some of the more brilliant people are not the world’s best leaders. They don’t have the patience or tolerance it takes to be a leader. True leaders bring people along, not matter what their qualities are, and raise them to a higher standard. A very important part of leadership is lifting people up and making them realize they can be better than they are.

J. Richard Munro

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A PARABLE

Once upon a time there was a class And the students expressed disapproval of their teacher.

Why should they be concerned with Global interdependency, global problems

And what others of the world were thinking, feeling and doing? And the teacher said she had a dream in which she

Saw one of her students fifty years from today. The student was angry and said,

“Why did I learn so much detail about the past and the administration of my country

and so little about the world?” He was angry because no one told him

That as an adult he would be faced Almost daily with problems of a

Global interdependent nature, be they problems of peace, security, quality of life, food, inflation, or so scarcity

of nature resources [or race, class, or gender]. The angry student found he was the

victim as well as the beneficiary. “Why was I not warned? Why was

I no better educated? Why Did my teachers not tell me about

The problems and help me understand I was a member of an interdependent human race?”

With even greater anger the student shouted, “You helped me extend my hands with incredible machines,

my eyes with telescopes and microscopes, my ears with telephones, radios, and sonar,

my brain with computers, but you did not help me extend

my heart, love, concern to the entire human family.

You, teacher, gave me half a loaf.” (from Robert Muller, NEW GENESIS)

(1984 by Jon Rye Kinghorn)

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CONCEPTUALIZING, RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER: FOCUSING THE PARADIGM

1.0 Students will examine the connecting links of oppression and the dynamic interrelationships of

Race, Class, and Gender, which form what may be called a trilemma, the nexus of inequality and injustice.

1.2 Students will explore the historical and theoretical understanding of the hierarchies of

domination and oppression.

1.3 Students will be encouraged to confront the nature of their own attitudes and prejudices and gain concrete understanding of oppression, its forms, varieties, and causes: the ultimate hope is for liberation from oppression.

1.4 Students will gain an understanding that privilege on the one hand and equity and justice on the

door do not sit lightly together.

1.5 Students will be encouraged to join in the quest for the capacity to enter into the lives of the “others,” the oppressed of society and to ask what steps would be required to redress past injustices.

1.6 Students will gain an awareness of our participation in collective complicity and guilt.

1.7 Students will become aware that while the triple nemeses of race, class, and gender may be

experienced separately, they also may be mutually reinforcing and compounding when experienced simultaneously which precludes their study in isolation.

1.8 Students will develop an understanding of the institutional basis of discrimination and injustice.

1.9 Students will become aware of their attitudes about race and the distinctions between racism and

prejudice.

1.10 The psychological and sociological impact of marginalization, exclusion, and alienation will be explored.

1.11 Students will become aware that repression of anger and drief result in conflict and depression. Therapy requires unlocking repression. 1.12 Students will explore the awareness of the psychic process of working through internalized oppression of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and related forms of victimization. 1.13 Students will be encouraged to celebrate diversity.

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2.0 Students will better understand how race, class, and gender shape individual identity and collective experience.

2.1 How our historic record and collective consciousness have been shaped by the exclusion of

women, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, gays, and lesbians.

2.2 What it feels like to be a “missing person.”

2.3 The significance of productive and reproductive gender relationships.

2.4 The role of women in the struggle with poverty, racism, and sexism.

2.5 Violence and the Criminal Justice System.

2.6 How the related issues of anti-semitism, age, religion, sexual orientation, physical disability, region, and ethnicity also shape systems of privilege and inequality.

3.0 Students will gain awareness of the role of Power, Ideology and Belief Systems (a Trichotomy) and

the need for alternative paradigms.

3.2 The institutional basis of race, class, and gender relations.

3.3 Negative stereotyping and its role in shaping status.

3.4 That racism, sexism, and a class society make up a system of social control and oppression which systematically exclude large social groups from the axis of power. 3.5 Understanding the relevance of social structure and its impact on inferiority and superiority.

3.6 That while race, class, and gender are embedded in social structures, they are experienced at the individual level: the social structure defines individual behavior as appropriate or inappropriate.

3.7 Who the myth of the classless society shapes our thinking and how our belief in “meritocracy” undermines a just society.

3.8 The need for transformation of our minds, institutional structures, and relationships.

3.9 How unearned entitlement, advantage, and conferred dominance result from economic and social class, race, religion, sex, ethnic identity, or their combination.

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4.0 Students will develop an understanding and the need for Structural Transformation of Systems of Inequality.

4.1 Social Change and the Politics of Empowerment.

4.2 Envisioning change.

4.3 Ask: “What are the issues behind the issues?”

4.4 That every crasis of awareness results in a corresponding intellectual, social, and spiritual crisis.

4.5 Understanding the role of social reconstruction requires trans formations of our ideas and

values and a reconstructing of knowledge. What are the implications for thinking, teaching and learning in need of transformation and reconstructing knowledge?

4.6 An awareness of how oppression generates a corresponding resistance.

4.7 That gaining this knowledge is not just an intellectual exercise: it is a matter of survival and

establishing “right relationships.”

4.8 An awareness that changing one’s mind is more than just assessing data, fctual, and rational thought: it involves an emotional response.

4.9 That while individual change is required, only collective change will transform social

structures. RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER: OBSTACLES AND COMPLEXITIES 1.0 Any attempt to study the issues of Race, Class, and Gender face immediate OBSTABLES AND

COMPLEXITIES: 1.1 Because no experts exist with scope adequate to understanding all the implications, the

course needs to be interdisciplinary; there is no one answer or solution to any significant question or issue;

1.2 These issues are interconnected directly and indirectly to many related factors; everything is

connected to everything else;

1.3 Complexity—the issues have multiple and complex interrelationships; 1.4 Information overload requires a model to focus great amounts of fragmented information.

20 1.5 Appropriate values clarification is needed to seek out the ethical implications of making

moral decisions;

1.6 A methodology of systems approach is desirable; we need to move from piecemeal to holistic thinking;

1.7 Knowledge of the psychological processes of mental distortion or denial of issues facilitates clarification;

1.8 Knowledge of the sequential stages of ethical awareness is helpful (Kohlberg et al.); 1.9 The ethical dimensions of justice require a knowledge of alternative ethical perspectives; 1.10 Long-term causes and effects must be included with short-term goals; 1.11 We should avoid concentrating on the challenges at the expense of the alternatives and

opportunities; 1.12 In the end it is all very simple: all we have to do is change our minds and our lives and then

change the world – go for it? METHODOLOGICAL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES: 1.0 Students will learn to stress their own independent critical thinking and to have the opportunity to

improve their communication skills.

1.1 Students will learn to stress their own independent critical thinking and to have the opportunity to improve their communication skills.

1.2 Students will examine the “crisis of awareness” or “crisis of consciousness.”

1.3 Focus on complexity will demonstrate that issues have multiple causation and complex interrelationships; bye bye academic minimalism; hello macro-social analysis.

1.4 Students will examine the possible sources of contemporary alienation. 2.0 Students in the Race, Class, and Gender class will become aware of the need for and practice of

VALUES CLARIFICATION. 2.1 Students will create their own working definition of values, clarify their values, prioritize

them, draw implications from them, write scenarios of what it would be like to live their values, and examine what obstacles would need to be overcome if their value system were to be implemented.

2.2 Students will develop a criterion of significance and the ability to set priorities based on freely chosen ethical imperatives.

2.3 Students will develop the ability to recognize contradictions, antagonisms, and the gap

between existing and possible alternatives.

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2.4 Students will develop an awareness that values compete with each other in endless

configurations of clashing variables which require choices.

2.5 Students will participate in creating alternative ethical scenarios as well as learn to advocate ideas which elicit personal responses.

2.6 Students will examine cross-cultural awareness, empathy, compassion, and alternative ethical perspectives.

2.7 Students will explore the sequential dimension of learning and personal transformation which include the steps from awareness to analysis, diagnosis and judgment; to prescription, action, and praxis; to reflection, value commitment, and reality testing; to growth renewal and on-going synthesis and dialectical progression of the entire process.

2.8 Students will explore the various levels of awareness and the distinction between information, knowledge, and wisdom.

2.9 Students will examine positive examples of the ‘flowerings of the human spirit, extraordinary

courage, compassion, and sacrifice, and remarkable psychological growth, philosophical reflection, and spiritual inspiration.”

3.0 This Race, Class, and Gender course will stress the role of the humanities and social sciences in

creating a HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE. 3.1 Students will become aware that the highest use of the humanistic imagination is its power to

generate values. Faculty and students will consciously confront the ethical dimensions of teaching and learning.”

3.2 Students will perceive this humanistic imagination to be the “sciences” of the mind and human spirit.

3.3 Students will become aware that the humanities and social sciences may increase the

dimensions of our moral capacity to respond; they generate commitments and sustain visions of the possible.

3.4 Students should recognize that the humanities and social sciences play a role in guiding us

toward more humane lives.

3.5 Students will become aware that a humanistic perspective recognizes that our value systems are crucial for making personal and collective trade-offs.

3.8 Students will learn to assume responsibility for their own intellectual and ethical integrity.

Each student will teach and each teacher will learn. These are sacred acts. 23

4.0 Students will explore the sequential dimensions of SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION which include such steps as becoming aware of social conditions; asking what is unacceptable and requires creative negation and resistance; discovering alternative futures, hopes, visions, dreams; getting in touch with aspirations; identifying the locus and uses of power and appropriate strategies to overcome systemic/structural obstacles. 4.1 Students will examine the significance of Alfred North Whitehead’s stages of significant

learning. Students will explore Carl Rogers’ “Qualities of the Person of Tomorrow,” and Maslow’s “characteristics of the Self-Actualized Person.”

4.0 This course will explore the PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER by:

5.1 examining the defense mechanisms of repression, denial, projection, intellectualizing, and

rationalization.

5.2 exploring the symptoms of psychological immaturity: fear, ignorance, unwillingness to delay gratification, and defensiveness, all of which may result in inauthenticity and pathologies.

5.3 examining the pitfalls of “scapegoating.”

5.4 Examining the humanistic, existential, and transpersonal concepts of unauthentic thinking,

living, and failed actualization.

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SPECIFIC METHODOLOGICAL COMPETENCIES 1.0 Students will develop methodological learning competencies in order to:

1.1 identify and comprehend the central and subordinate ideas found in reading assignments.

1.2 exercise their ability to develop critical thinking skills and participate in dialog.

1.3 interpret the point of view and meaning inferentially as well as literally.

1.4 practice writing concise thesis statements and interpret meaning without necessarily agreeing with the source.

1.5 distinguish between one’s personal opinions, the assumptions of the writers, and other students,

(including unstated assumptions).

1.6 seek out the meaning of unfamiliar terminology.

1.7 examine the role of the media as a distracting and trivializing “cultural barbiturate.” 2.0 Students will develop methodological thinking competencies in order to:

2.1 recognize fallacies in reasoning, question inconsistencies in logic, and distinguish fact from

opinion.

2.2 develop curiosity and a healthy skepticism.

2.3 perceive analogies and think metaphorically.

2.4 Become aware of examples of cluttered and distracting detail – argumentum argumentum.

2.5 Students will become better aware of the technique of attacking the presenter rather than his or her point of view.

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OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHOICES

Nothing is so deceptive, the French novelist Georges Bernanos once observed, as problems wrongly stated. This report is a picture of one nation, divided…From it rises not merely a cry of outrage, it is also an expression of shocked intelligence and violated faith..it makes plan that white, moderate, responsible America is where the trouble lies…White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it…This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal---it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same reaction. Report of the National Advisory

Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968

Justice is never conferred from heaven. The powerful, the privileged, and those of influence, no matter who they are or where—whether inherited by acquisition, by color of skin, or by sex---they have never and nowhere spontaneously shared their privileges. Each freedom, each right has to be fought for piece by piece. In many countries the women must first realize their dependence. And without doubt this is the most difficult state.

From The Word To Black Women By Awa Thiam

If we do nothing, hate will come sneaking perniciously and slyly into their mouths and into their eyes, adulterating the mutual relations between people, nations, societies, and races. If we do nothing, we will be passing into the coming century, that message of hate known to us as racism, fanaticism, xenophobia, and anti-semitism.

The Oslo Declaration, 1990

Race has become a catch-all for every form of personal conflict, at home, in the work-place, in the street. All ordinary, individual human feelings become attributable to the race of the culprit in societies where people are defined by color.

Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature

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Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.

Donald J. Moore, S.J.

What other country has the potential to house so many ethnic identities and produce a new blend? We are talking about the weave of a new kind of tapestry. The bland monochrome that is a part of official American ideology, which we can no longer afford, no longer (fits) with the facts of the world.

Christopher Lasch The Culture of Narcissim

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. Thoreau

In a free society, some are guilty; all are responsible. Rabbi Heschel

I am on the side of the people who are being burned, cut to pieces, tortured, held as hostages, gassed, ruined, destroyed. They are the victims of both sides. To take sides with massive power is to take sides against the innocent.

Thomas Merton Faith and Violence

How then will the cry of the poor find an echo in your lives?

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The Male Attitude. . . is the archetype of the oppressor in all oppressive relationships. Men cannot envision women’s freedom, because of their personal stake in domination. Similarly, advantaged white men have a deep investment in racism and class privilege. Women not only will refuse to be relegated to the present work roles assigned to women—clerical, domestic worker, nurse, librarian, and so forth—but they also will end the domination of these fields by men’s holding all the top positions. They will end all together those jobs that are by their very nature demeaning. White, advantaged men (a world minority of less than five percent) should begin to prepare themselves for a future in which people like themselves will have lost their race, sex, and class privileges.

Mary Lee Bundy

But what, it might be asked, is the significance of one individual’s thinking, evaluating, interpreting? Is not the study of academic subjects a mere escape from reality? Is not the individual dwarfed by great forces beyond his or her ability to control? In the last chapter of To Seek a Newer World, which he wrote shortly before he was murdered, Robert Kennedy responded to these challenges like this? Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation…It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man (or woman) stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he (or she) sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance……..

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METHODOLOGY FOR LEARNING

Learning and education are two different things! . . .Educational institutions are not organized for learning. To the extent that learning does occur, it is often the wrong kind for most people. As an example, total teamwork is required for co-operative problem solving in business, while teamwork in American educational institution is most often viewed as cheating.

Mary Ann Roe and Lewis J. Perelman AACC Journal Apr/May 1994

We need a paradigm shift from: “Teaching is telling, knowledge is facts, and learning is recall . . .[to] Teaching is enabling, knowledge is understanding, and learning is the active construction of subject matter…

C. Christensen, et. al.

“The best education takes place in nursery school and kindergarten. . . It tends to get progressively worse . . . reaching its nadir in college.”

Malcolm Knowles The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species

Teaching. . . is essentially a transformational activity, which aims to get students to take charge of their learning and to make deeply informed judgments about the world. I believe that the teacher’s challenge in evaluating students is less to separate the gifted from the ordinary than to find the gifts of the ordinary.

C. R. Christensen

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exisis today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Report of the National Commission on Excellence, 1983

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Psychologists have identified 10-12 distinct and measurable kinds of intelligence and yet our schools only concern themselves with one of those. As a result, institutions turn out a lot of wounded people who believe they’re stupid because they don’t have the kind of intelligence that the schools are measuring. Meanwhile, this person may have other kinds of intelligence, for example, visual, problem solving, relational, or whatever.

Parker J. Palmer

If medicine were like education, some doctors would still be bleeding people with leeches.

Diane Ravitch Professor of history and education and education at

Teacher’s College of Columbia University

America’s young face a set of new national and international circumstances about which they have only the faintest of notions. They are, globally speaking, blind, deaf and dumb; and thus handicapped, they will soon determine the future directions of this nation.

Change Magazine, 1978

College professors don’t know what their students know, and they don’t know what their students want to know. Bright high school children today ask “Is there any single thing in the present educational system worth keeping?” I reply, “What about some of the buildings?”

Margaret Mead

Education is an intricate apparatus of historical accident, neglect, and professional greed, loosely bound together by haywire and red tape.

Joseph Featherstone

…We try to make do with a Newtonian politics in an Einsteinian world. Jonathan Schel

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Our task is to discover meaning. Our role as interpreters of meaning is all important. Without interpretation there is no meaning. Your perception involves and comes from you. Human consciousness is the center of the universe. Without our consciousness, there would be no meaning, which makes all meaning very personal, unique and individualized. Lewis Mumford has written that: It is only through the light of consciousness that the universe becomes visible, and should that light disappear, only nothingness would remain. Except on the lighted state of human consciousness, the mighty cosmos is but a mindless nonentity…it is man’s ability to think backwards and forwards that creates and counts and reckons with those years. Without man’s time-keeping activities, the universe is yearless, as without his spatial conceptions, without his discovery of forms patters, rhythms, it is a formless, meaningless void. Man crowns existence with meaning. Without man’s cumulative capacity to give symbolic form to experience, to reflect upon it and refashion it and project it, the physical universe would be as empty of meaning as a handless clock: its ticking would tell nothing. The mindfulness of man makes the difference.

The American university as an intellectural institution is largely dormant, passive and irrelelevant. The new thoughts and now syntheses that have guided the past generation or so, the cutting-edge ideas in social, political and economic affairs, have for the most part not come from—and indeed, are not in any significant way welcome in—the halls of higher learning.

Kirkpatrick Sale

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THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS

Not dealing with the dynamics of class is like writing a natural history of malaria and failing to mention mosquitoes.

Michael Kearney

A dominant class tends to form the social institutions, mentalities, myths, customs, and traditions to suit its own needs and advancement. The affluent class generally controls the means of influencing opinion—namely, education, mass media, institutions for maintaining law and order, and the like. State power within a country is generally controlled by the powerful—a class. Political democracy is ineffective without a large mueasure of economic democracy.

Tissa Balasuriya

The essence…of functionalism…[in] human societies and their respective cultures exist as organic wholes composed of interdependent parts. The parts cannot be fully understood apart from the whole and the whole must be understood in terms of its parts, their relationships to one another, and to the sociocultural system as a whole.

Leslie A. White

I have been describing the circular processes of our social systems in which there is no unidirectional cause and effect but instead a ring of actions and consequences that close back on themselves.

Jay W. Forrester

(There are)…six challenges to the content, processes, and goals of traditional education: make the content problem-oriented; broaden the concept of education to include more than learning how to store and retrieve verbal information; dispense with the concept of education to include more than leanring how to store and retrieve verbal information; dispense with the concept of disciplines; recognize that education may be the displacement rather than merely the acquisition of knowledge’ provide an ecological conscience; and present a new concept of man along with the tools and facts that are taught.

Dennis Meadows and Lewis Perelman

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GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION

If the human race is to survive, it will have to change more in its ways of thinking in the next twenty-five years than it has done in the last twenty-five thousand.

Kenneth E. Boulding

The United States is in the midst of one of the great transformations of Western civilization. What is happening is that the old ideas and assumptions which once made our great institutions legitimate, authoritative and confident are fast eroding. They are slipping away in the face of a changing reality and are being replaced by different ideas and different assumptions which are as yet ill-formed, contradictory and shocking. This transition is neither good nor bad. There is the possibility of plenty of both. The point is simply that it is taking place.

Prof. George Cabot Lodge Harvard School of Business

Western civilized man is a Stone Age organism trying to exercise 21st century power in a world of 18th century institutions which are based on medieval humanistic principles.

John S. Lambert

I don’t think anyone who really sees the planetization of mankind, really understands what new global world order is emerging through all this period of strain and pain and contradiction. So more than ever we need to have internal sense of navigation, we have to have an inner, meditative sense of who we are, where we are, what our values are; and we can’t look to the external world to define them because the external world is really changing. So that the interesting thing about mysticism is it’s a way of humanizing technology. Because what I found at MIT was that if you don’t have that kind of inner, contemplative sense in order to humanize the machine, then the machine technologizes you. And then you get the shift where orange juice is turned into Tang and people are turned into androids, and the behavioral scientists arise and say, we’ve had enough of the common citizen, we have to let the experts rule, we have to design a behavioral state. And you get apologists for tyranny of the kind [such as] Brzezinski or B.F. Skinner or E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology…

William Irwin Thompson

At the edge of history The Future is blowing wildly in our faces, sometimes brightening the air and sometimes blinding us.

W. I. Thompson

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The fact that many people die each day of hunger and disease while there simultaneously flourishes a “consumer civilization” bent on the production and consumption of luxury goods indicates the inhumanity of the existing socioeconomic structures…If global problems relating to food, health…and the environment cannot be remedied by present mechanisms, then there clearly is a need for institutions and mechanisms capable of the job.

James Gudaitis

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give to our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D. deN. A Socio-Theology of Letting Go

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men [and women] are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of Communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries.

Martine Luther King, Jr.

A wild patience is required in order to untangle the bones, to learn the meaning of Lady Death, to have the tenacity to stay with her. It would be a mistake to think that it takes a muscle-bound hero to accomplish this. It does not. It takes a heart that is willing to die and be born and die and be born again and again.

Adrienne Rich

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RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER - Fairmont State University

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