Richard Angelo131 Taylor
Policy Studies 257-3993
EPE 301
Education in American Culture
Summer, 2001
The truest view rested in becomes false.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals, 1835
A way of seeing is always a way of not seeing.
--Kenneth Burke
Permanence & Change, 1935
(To a poetic student and friend.) –I only seek to put
you in rapport. Your own brain, heart, evolution, must
not only understand the matter, but largely supply it.
--Walt Whitman
Specimen Days, 1882
There is more than one way to think about education in American culture. This course highlights three of them, and asks what we stand to learn from each.
We begin with a series of four films (or videos, to be precise): Dennis the Menace (Nick Castle, 1993), Dangerous Minds (John N. Smith,1995), Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), and Renaissance Man (Penny Marshal, 1994). I realize that most people have no inclination to take these films and others like them seriously. To my way of thinking, however, they are every bit as instructive as any book we might consider this term.
We turn next to the university—to the academic writing of historians in particular. James L. Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Societyin North Carolina, 1880-1920 (UNC Press, 1996) is just the sort of book you might expect to encounter in a class like this, a book which opens possibilities for understanding education in American culture which are quite unlike what the movies have on offer.
And finally, we’re going to sample a brand of cultural criticism, a style of writing which is historically-minded but more free-wheeling conceptually than the likes of Leloudis—Neil Postman’s The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (Vintage, 1996). As his title suggests, Postman asks if the big socio-political ideas which motivated the redefinition and expansion of schooling between 1880 and 1920—the subject of Leloudis’ book—are compelling enough to motivate and inspire us today.
You will write three short essays, one to cap each section of the course. There will be no final exam. Your grade will be based on the quality of your written work and the caliber of your participation in class. Yes, attendance counts.
Tentative Schedule:
May 8: First day of class. Introductions and such. Assignment: watch any one of the following: Big, Home Alone, or Fresh.
May 9: Begin Dennis the Menace in class.
May 10: Finish Dennis./Discussion
May 14: Dangerous Minds. In preparation, watch any one of the following films where teachers are schoolteachers: Blackboard Jungle, Up the DownStaircase, Teachers, Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, White Squall, Mr. Holland’s Opus, In & Out, 187, Music of the Heart, Election.
May 15: Discussion of Dangerous Minds, and the opening of Risky Business.
In preparation, consider any one of the following films where teaching and learning are cradled in the relationships which the young have with one another: FastTimes at Ridgemont High, Fame,The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, School Daze, Now and Then, Ruby in Paradise, Higher Learning.
May 16: Finish Risky Business. Begin Renaissance Man. In preparation, watch any of the following films where the burden of instruction is sustained by adult figures who are not schoolteachers or parents: Karate Kid, The Paper Chase,The Flamingo Kid, Man Without a Face, With Honors,Bronx Tale, Scent of aWomen, White Squall, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Good Will Hunting, Rushmore.
May 17: Finish Renaissance Man. Discussion.
May 21: First paper due.
Schooling the New South, through Tuesday, May 29. (Paper due after Memorial Day holiday.) The End of Education, through Tuesday, June 5. Final paper due exam day, June 5.