Adler and Van Doren's minimal bar of a college education is that it produce competent syntopical readers.

https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/

Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?

https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/curriculum

I can't help but wonder at the direct link here to Amazon with an affiliate link. I won't fault them completely for it, but for a site that is so critical of the ills of educational technology, and care for their students and community, the exposure to surveillance capitalism expressed here seems to go beyond their own pale. I would have expected more care here.

Surely there are other platforms that this volume is available from?

https://hybridpedagogy.org/ethical-online-learning/

An interesting perspective on ethical and supportive online learning. More questions and explorations than answers, but then framing is a majority of the battle.

I'm generally in agreement with much of the discussion here.

This was a fabulous piece for "thinking against". Thanks Sean Michael Morris, and Lora Taub.

I definitely got far more out of it by reading and annotating than I ever would in its original keynote presentation version.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/schools-face-parents-who-want-ban-critical-race-theory-don-ncna1284185

Too many people on the far right as well as some on the conservative religious spectrum feel it's their right to dictate what is taught in schools and are attempting to legislate against it. Sadly that isn't how this all works....

Critical Pedagogy (CP):

• Sees society as divided into a hierarchy based on power relations.
• Education is used as a tool by the dominant to uphold the hierarchy.
• Education can also be used by the oppressed to rid themselves of false consciousness.
• CP does not think any education is neutral. All education is shaped by power, politics, history, and culture.
• CP can empower the powerless to change the power structures.

The Attack on "Critical Race Theory": What's Going on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P35YrabkpGk

Lately, a lot of people have been very upset about “critical race theory.” Back in September 2020, the former president directed federal agencies to cut funding for training programs that refer to “white privilege” or “critical race theory, declaring such programs “un-American propaganda” and “a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue.” In the last few months, at least eight states have passed legislation banning the teaching of CRT in schools and some 20 more have similar bills in the pipeline or plans to introduce them. What’s going on?

Join us for a conversation that situates the current battle about “critical race theory” in the context of a much longer war over the relationship between our racial present and racial past, and the role of culture, institutions, laws, policies and “systems” in shaping both. As members of families and communities, as adults in the lives of the children who will have to live with the consequences of these struggles, how do we understand what's at stake and how we can usefully weigh in?

Hosts: Melissa Giraud & Andrew Grant-Thomas

Guests: Shee Covarrubias, Kerry-Ann Escayg,

Some core ideas of critical race theory:

• racial realism
  • racism is normal
• interest convergence
  • racial equity only occurs when white self interest is being considered (Brown v. Board of Education as an example to portray US in a better light with respect to the Cold War)
• Whiteness as property
  • Cheryl Harris' work
  • White people have privilege in the law
  • myth of meritocracy
• Intersectionality

People would rather be spoon fed rather than do the work themselves. Sadly this is being encouraged in the media.

Short summary of CRT: How laws have been written to institutionalize racism.

Culturally Responsive Teaching (also has the initials CRT).

KAE tries to use an anti-racist critical pedagogy in her teaching.

SC: Story about a book Something Happened in Our Town (book).

• Law enforcement got upset and the school district
• Response video of threat, intimidation, emotional blackmail by local sheriff's department.
• Intent versus impact - the superintendent may not have had a bad intent when providing an apology, but the impact was painful

It's not really a battle about or against CRT, it's an attempt to further whitewash American history. (synopsis of SC)

What are you afraid of?

to read

Critical Pedagogy Wikipedia

Good jumping off point for various topics and avenues of research.

I agree with this. Creating divisions on how pedagogy relates to one age group over another takes away from the key developments around education and pedagogy, and creates a slightly more disconnected, disjointed field for education. Good education and educational practices are just that - the subject or age specificity can distract from otherwise good practices and theories that can and often do transcend the disciplines.

Velez, G., & Power, S. A. (2020). Teaching students how to think, not what to think: Pedagogy & political psychology [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yedap

What does Giroux's "be considerate of others" look and feel like in practice? How is it related to the problematic calls for civility?

One the foundational book of critical pedagogy.

Rating: 7/10

Pell, John, and William Duffy. “Freire in the Agora: Critical Pedagogy and Civil Discourse.” Literacy in Composition Studies 3, no. 1 (March 16, 2015): 95–107.

Essential reading.

Love the emphasis on student agency.

Education is no longer viewed as a public good but a private right, just as critical thinking is devalued as a fundamental necessity for creating an engaged and socially responsible populace.

Being stirred, being called - these require being open, permeable and thus, vulnerable. This is where we lay aside our armor of credibility and create space for the unknown, unanticipated to enter. This is emotional work and for many of us, scary work. There are many reasons for academia to cloak itself in layer upon layer of credibility, rigor and firm hierarchies. To suggest that love inspires you to be in fact more critical in your practice, defies the logic of the academy. This is part of what I find so compelling here: turning established assumptions on their heads. I have more to say about callings but will save for another space & occasion. (But Gregg Levoy, Callings. 1999.)