Susan Ohanian has posted the text Bill Moyers’ speech to last month’s meeting of the Council of Great City Schools, and organization of the largest city school districts in the US. In “America 101”, the veteran journalist and president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy describes the lie that the “American Dream” has become and observes that teachers now are expected to staff the permanent emergency rooms of our country’s dysfunctional social order. They are expected to compensate for what families, communities, and culture fail to do.
Read the speech here.
(Thanks to PMM for the tip.)
Follow
It is, therefore, not only time to act, but time to create a new curriculum at the highest level of education. With this preface, i call for proposals for a contracted book:
From: Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs), and Dan Sewell
Re: Seeking contributors for the book, The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation, under contract with Routledge (London)
Date: February, 2007
Dear Interested Potential Contributors,
For those of you who have already indicated an interest in and for those just now learning about our book project, this missive attempts to clarify better what we are seeking. Since we intend for this book itself to represent an alternative approach, we preface our guidelines with the disclaimer that we are not yet sure what form this project will ultimately take. Also, please note that any decision on our part to ultimately not use your idea, no matter how wonderful your proposal may be, will have been one that served the needs and limitations of our final product.
At this point, we are asking for proposals from authors of a master’s thesis or a doctoral dissertation that meets any or all of the following:
• It employed research methodologies that contrast with traditional ones.
• It represented or presented the final produce in a way that contrasts with the usual formats used for thesis and dissertations.
AND as a result of these alternative ways of research, knowing and representation of knowledge,
• It has made or is making or has the potential to make a unique contribution to both the particular field of study and to the goals of social justice, peace, diversity and/or ecological sustainability.
We may also be interested in stories about how a dissertation that did not finally meet these criterion MIGHT have if the author would have been allowed to pursue considered options that were not allowed by the system or the committee, etc. In such cases the contributor would be called upon to describe both the process and the possibilities as relates to the above criteria.
FORMAT for finished chapters
In an effort to convey a bridge into the unknown possibilities for this book, we offer a basic structure for the final chapter form. However, we are open to and encourage presentations that are themselves as “out of the box” as a book chapter might be. This might refer to using poetry, art or some other reproducible and meaningful expression. (Our intent is also to include a web blog system that will allow a living and growing continuation of the chapter’s ideas to occur in the world as well.) The structure we anticipate using is for each contributor to describe:
1. The personal journey toward deciding upon the topic and the research approach (and how this related to being within a traditional system.)
2. The process of doing the work of the “research” itself.
3. The representation of new knowledge that fits the aforementioned criteria or, if convincing, merely produced new knowledge that reflect the positive potential of diverse perspectives.
4. How the journey affected your own life (as well as the larger world).