MAT 603 - Foundations of Education
LKamm
Office Hours: W & Th, 1:30 - 3:00, after class, or by appointment
Email: lkamm
Phone: x8336
Goals
Readings
Requirements, Responsibilities, & Grades
Syllabus
Essays
Related Topics of Potential Interest
Helpful Resources on the WEB
To Lew Kamm's Welcome page
Goals: This course seeks to examine the foundations of
education by focusing on the
interrelationships between education and democracy. Particular attention will
be paid
to issues involving cultural literacy, language - words - and power, morality and education, and the
role and function of the individual as related to self and to society.
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Readings: - George
Orwell, "Politics
and the English Language"
- Haig Bosmajian, "The Language of Oppression"
- Lewis Kamm, "Literary Battles on the Edge of Identity"
- The
Declaration of Independence
- The
Bill of Rights
- Supreme Court decisions
- Justice Harlan's
Dissent from Plessy v. Ferguson
- Brown v. Board of Education
- Mississippi
University for Women v. Hogan
- M. Carey Thomas, "Should Higher Education
for Women Differ?"
- Adrienne Rich, "What Does a Woman Need to Know?"
- James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers"
- Michele Wallace, "Invisibility
Blues"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance,"
- Horace Mann, "The Case
for Public Schools"
- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism Without Illusions
- W.
E. B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth" and "Advice to a Black Schoolgirl"
- Booker T. Washington,
"The Atlanta Exposition Address"
- John Hope, "Reply to Booker T. Washington"
- Douglas Blackmon, "The Resegregation of a Southern School"
- Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory
- E. D. Hirsch,
Cultural Literacy
- E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need And Why We Don't Have Them
- Allan Bloom, The Closing of
the American Mind
- Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal
Education
- Nation at Risk
- Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint
- C. David Lisman,
Toward A Civil Society
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Responsibilities:
- Attendance -
because of the seminar format of the course, no more than one absence is allowed.
- Weekly essays - The sharing of weekly essays, written in response to the
assigned readings, will promote enhancement of your written and oral skills,
independent thinking, and group discussion. These essays must be submitted
electronically to the entire class no later than noon on the day preceding our
actual class meeting.
- Final Paper - Your response (6-8 pages) to
Hirsch's The Schools We Need & Why We Don't Have Them.
Presented in a coherent fashion and in your own individual
voice, the paper
should be develped from the essays and class discussions throughout the
semester.
Note: I
do not expect this to be a major research project. However, I do expect
it to show good "scholarly" reference to selected primary
readings of the course as well as to some
secondary sources.
Papers will be graded on intent, content, reasoning, language, neatness, effort,
accuracy.
Grades: based
on class participation, short papers, and final paper
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Syllabus
Week 1 -- Introduction, explanation of writing component, expectations and
responsibilities, tutorial in the use of the World Wide Web and software
designed
for this class.
Week 2 -- Before reading the following assignment, write a 1-2 page essay on
your philosophy of education, including the foundations on which it is based.
After reading the assignment, write followup comments, explaining
how your thoughts have been reinforced or changed.
Five
Educational Philosophies.
Week 3 -- Orwell's Politics
and the English Language; Bosmajian; Declaration of
Independence;
Bill of Rights
Week 4 -- Hirsch, Kamm's
Essay on Literary Battles
Week 5 -- Baldwin, Wallace, Emerson, Mann
Week 6 -- Bloom, pp. 11-81, 336-47
Week 7 -- Thomas, Rich, Mississippi University for
Women v. Hogan
Week 8 -- Fox-Genovese, Introduction & Chapters 2 & 7
Week 9 -- Du Bois, Washington, Hope, Blackmon
Week 10 -- Rodriguez;
D'Souza, Introduction & Chapter 8
Week 11 -- Plessy v. Ferguson;
Brown v. Board of
Education;
A Nation at
Risk;
A
Nation at Risk (II)
Week 12 -- Hughes
Week 13 -- Lisman, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 7, 10
Week 14 -- Summaries & Conclusions; Submission & Discussion of Papers
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Weekly Essays
This course requires each of you to submit a 2-3 page essay for each week's
assignment and to read everyone else's essays for the week prior to coming to
class. The three-fold purpose of this sharing is to
- promote a professional environment of constructive criticism
- encourage responsible, serious and professional commentary
- make it
possible for students to follow up one another's comments and engage in further
discussion privately or collectively
The selection process below allows you to submit your own essays and to read
those submitted by classmates. Simply click the appropriate choice.
Note:
this process functions only for students who are registered for this course and
have been assigned a course password.
Usually, my evaluative comments about these essays will be addressed on an
individual basis, thus safeguarding privacy and student sensitivity while also
allowing the individual to forward those comments to classmates as (s)he sees
fit. However, when I believe that my comments to an individual will be helpful
to all students, I will post them under Prof.'s
Comments, which you should check periodically.
To Lew Kamm's Welcome page
UMass Dartmouth homepage
Related Topics of Potential Interest
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Helpful Resources
Department of Education
http://www.ed.gov/
Check out the Teacher's Guide to the Department of Education and the
Researcher's Guide to the Department of Education.
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
http://aera.net/
Check out the Net Resources section for information on the AERA listservs.
Ethical Standards of the American Educational
Research Assocition
http://aera.net/resource/ethics.html
A set of voluntary standards that describe the ethical conuct of researchers
in education and education-relatd fields.
ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation
http://ericae2.educ.cua.edu/
Tons of resources on any topic related to assessment, measurement or
evaluation. The ERIC Test Locator Service is here as well as ERIC Digests
on assessment topics.
Code of Fair Testing Practices
http://ericae2.educ.cua.edu/code.txt
On the ERIC/AE website, this set of standrds addresses test development.
administration, usage, and interpretation of scores. The Code was developed
by AERA, APA, NCME, ASHA, and the AACD.
Buros Institute of Mental Measurements
http://www.unl.edu:80/buros/
How to Use the Mental Measurements Yearbook and Tests in Print. Check
out the JPEG images of the new User'sGuides. Also links to the ERIC Test
Locator and the Test Review Locator.
AskERIC
http://ericir.syr.edu
Go here for the Q & A Service -- you send them a question via e-mail
or Web form, and they send you a personal response within 48 hours, complete
with reference lists and ERIC resources! Also check out the Virtual Library
-- an abundance of electronic resources including lesson plans, instructional
materials for TV shows like those on the Discovery Channel, ERIC Digests,
InfoGuides, and listserv archives.
Search ERIC
ERIC - Educational Resources Information Center
American Association of School Administrators
Center for Education Reform
Dissertation Abstracts - searching
Education Week
Grants & Funding Web Sites
Library of Congress
National Clearinghouse of Bilingual Education
Educational Policy Analysis Archives
History of American Education Web Project
Writing Resources
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If your browser does not support "mailto" the following link will not work.
EMail comments to: LKamm@umassd.edu
Comments? Select this!
Lew Kamm
Chancellor Professor of French Literature & Computer
Science
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Rd.
N.
Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300
LKamm@umassd.edu
This HTML document created by: Lew Kamm
On: February 10, 1997
Last
Revised: 8/10/02