Monday, May 19, 2014

Square Pegs, Solutions, Part 4


“…it is the integrity and ‘gathering power’ of the pine tree that draws together language, science, mathematics, social studies, art, history, mythology, and on and on…This pine tree possesses…question[s]…It draws our attention…It evokes…It stands before us as a sign…From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree. But, also from the pine tree, learn of ourselves...this pine tree comes forward as the nesting point of a vast interconnecting network of relationships and it is the integrity of such a network which bestows integrity on the integrated curriculum.” (David W. Jardine, “On the Integrity of Things: Ecopedagogical Reflections on the Integrated Curriculum”, in “Current Concepts of Core Curriculum” from the National Association for Core Curriculum, p. 34) As the pine tree stands as a nesting point so also do things like tidal pools, cities, or spider webs and concepts like luminescence, alienation, or metaphor. These “themes” framing the curriculum stand as the immediate causes for secondary education inquiry: students would select from a community generated list one theme at any one time from which to develop a research question to concentrate inquiry. Early college students would also use a thematic curriculum but unlike the individuality of secondary education project study, early college study would be collective in seminars within a course structure equivalent to the rest of higher education and meant to satisfy common core university requirements.



The themes subject to seminar study are to be called “Great Questions”. An example of a Great Question might be, “What is the Eleventh Dimension?” This Great Question would examine the concepts of space from Euclidean to the mutliverse of String Theory. A second could be, “What is Nature?” This traces the changes in understanding from Aristotle to Einstein to present Gaian ecology. Taken together, Great Questions, emerging as a direct expression of the propriety, interest and necessity of the early college community itself, would launch explorations into the history, science, literature, sociology, political economies and philosophies of periods from Classical to Modern. Not to worry! Our older adolescent Square Pegs can do well with such heavy intellectual lifting. Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, argues in Jefferson’s Children that youngsters between the ages of sixteen and eighteen have reached a maturity where they need this kind of stimulation and challenge. Indeed, one witnesses such successful adolescent academic engagement in Simons Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and in Bard High School Early College here in New York.



Feedback: 1) I’ve said to some that Fort Tilden could host these programs. I’ve since learned Gateway will only agree to a public school open to all NYC children. It becomes clear a venture meant to be a private not-for-profit, non-BPC affiliated endeavor, serving the children of the three communities of the Breezy Point Cooperative with the possibility of enrolling additional children from Neponsit and Belle Harbor cannot be at Fort Tilden. 2) There is a powerful resistance in the Coop to having any school here, I’ve learned. To those folks I plead: the youngsters in need in our three communities ought not to be denied their lives because there are no alternatives for them. And the plain, simple fact is that there are no suitable, alternative schools on the Peninsula, or in the rest of NYC for that matter! We pride ourselves as a community caring for its children, as most families are here to raise their children within the safety provided here. Then I say, let us demonstrate that commitment to their safety by dissolving the resistance in favor of the proactive support our children need.

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