Experimental Courses
I am a creative
person by nature, and I feel fortunate to be working in education
at time when technological development has brought us to the beginning
of a period of unprecedented change. Important ideas are being
re-examined:
- What does it mean to be a human being?
- What are human beings for?
- What is the purpose of education?
- How should people be educated?
- How do we define knowledge?
- What do we need to know?
- What sorts of relationships should we have
with each other, with knowledge, and with machines?
- How should we relate to, and think about,
our planet and its life forms?
Create a planet from stellar dust to sentient
civilization. This course gives a broad, integrative overview
of the natural and social sciences while engaging the students
in creative thinking.
Inventing Reality:
Technology and the Construction of Meaning:
A course examining how the way that people
view themselves and the world is influenced by the technology
that they use. The course focuses particularly on technologies
that handle information.:
Just as we need to have a general understanding
of the world outside ourselves, so, too, we need to experience
ourselves in a coherent way. Contemporary life focuses on our
images, our exterior interfaces with each other. Living in response
to the bombardment of modern life is bewildering and disempowering.
We can become actors, rather than reactors, if we can figure out
who we are and what we need. A course that addressed this learning
area is:
Exploring Myself:
Metaphor and Creativity
Students use hands-on work with materials
to create concrete metaphors that help them to visualize relationships
in their lives.
The outcome of education should be an educated
person. But educated in what way? What sort of person should
be made manifest? This short course looks at ideas of what an
educated person might be like, and examines concepts of personhood
and their expression in a technological world.
Courses In Process:
The greatest persons in history have been
teachers. Less well known teachers are also remembered, and we
see examples of heroism in teachers around us every day. This
class examines the role of the teacher as an exemplary and inspiring
role model.
Immersion Classes
We have heard of foreign language immersion
programs: why not immersion weekends in poetry or science? These
will be posted as they are developed further.
