Paper #3—“Education and the Outer Ring”

Paper #3—“Education and the Outer Ring”—McFarland—Chabot—Fall 2013

Be sure to read all of this post, so you have a full idea of what is going on. ALSO, at the bottom of the post are the different due dates and draft dates for your particular class. Be sure you check this.

Thanks for offering your ideas for the paper #3 both in class and in your HW and emails. I have tried to integrate your ideas into this assignment. You will see for this assignment you have 3 choices. You will pick one. If for some reason you don’t really feel interested in any of these choices, I will consider you coming up with your own assignment, but you will need to email me very soon so I can hear what you have in mind.

For this paper, you will be asked to build an argument/discussion in which you consider the concept of Education in light of what I am calling the “Outer Ring”. By Outer Ring I mean the world of nature/ecology/natural systems. (You can of course fold in discussion of the other rings: country, community, college, class---but the outer ring is the main focus of the essay.)

1.     Here is a claim: every aspect of planet Earth—its ecosystems, its species, its resources—is so badly damaged, so under duress, and it is so likely that things will only get worse--that the only moral and practical response from the point of view of education is that every discipline in every college should redesign their curriculum and teaching to address this global problem. Like how every one in the USA was focused on supporting the war effort in WWll, every one in education should have our planet’s fate at the front of their minds.

For this essay you will: Argue for or against this claim that content in every discipline in college should be significantly changed in order to begin to address this global problem. Your task is to generate reasons to support or to argue against this claim. If you plan to argue in favor of this claim, you will need to take into account that change is difficult in any system, including education, so you will want to discuss HOW these changes in education might occur. If you plan to argue against this claim, you should plan to argue how this planet can get fixed if education doesn’t play a significant role.

2. How concepts from the natural world can inform our educational system. This assignment asks you to research a concept or system or process in nature. You could start by looking into some core concepts/processes/systems in Ecology. Once you choose one that interests you, you will explain in some detail what it is. Then, you will discuss in detail how this concept or process or system can be used to offer a new or different way for educators to do their work in the classroom and/or larger college. You are building an analogy or a metaphor that offers educators a new and different way to think about their work. Explore and explain the metaphor/analogy deeply. If you are for example, talking about how trees work, perhaps consider picking a specific KIND of tree. A palm tree is very different than an oak or pine for example. Look deeply into the processes involved with trees (or whatever you pick) so that you can offer specific advice for educators. Don’t just say, for example, that trees need water. Try to talk about HOW it uses water; the idea is that the more specific your analogy is, the more specific the advice can be for the educators. Remember, for this assignment you discussing the concept or process or system not for its own sake, but so that it can be analogized from, in order to influence educational choices in the classroom and larger college.

3. Write about some problem in nature that you think needs to be more fully considered and addressed in college and why. This could be toxins in food, or the melting ice caps, or any problem in nature. For this assignment you will first lay out what the problem is. Then you will argue why this problem should be addressed in college—you need to say which disciplines in college need to address the problem. Try to think outside the box a little and  argue for disciplines in addition to the sciences.  Then—and this is the most important part of doing this assignment—you will create a few  real lesson plans for teachers that they can use to educate their students about the issue that you have picked. You must devise lesson plans if you choose this assignment.

Whichever one of these 3 you pick, you will see that you will want to do some research so that you can bring depth and detail and specificity to your paper. Be sure to cite your sources in your paper.

You must average a minimum of 1-2 short quotes per paragraph. You should include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible. Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines. Remember that the video prompts you have watched are a great source of quote support.

The essay’s page requirement is 5-7 pages. You don’t need to do a really lonnnng paper, BUT if you end up doing so, that is fine too.

Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the questions/prompts that you have been exploring.

Keep RULE OF 3 in mind here. It will help you.

For the M/W classes, and for the Wed night 1A class, please bring 2 copies of your paper to the next class which will be next Wednesday Nov 13. You should write as much as you can. Try to generate 4 pages at least.

For the Monday night class, Please email your draft to me by next Tuesday, Nov 12^th. You should write as much as you can. Try to generate 4 pages at least. I will look at it and send comments back. That will allow you to make revisions so that you can bring 2 copies of your paper on Nov 18^th, which is the next time we meet.

For the M/W classes and for the Monday night class, the final draft of paper #3 is due on Monday, November 25^th.

For the Wed night class, the paper will be due via email by Tuesday, November 26^th. (We wont see each other on the 27^th b/c of the holiday.)

Best of Luck!!