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An
Experimental Section of The School Curriculum:
Great Books From �Songs Inspired By Literature�
Presented
by
Dr. Steven Selden
Education Policy and Leadership
College of Education
University of Maryland
No
matter what level you teach, there is plenty to think about in this
specialist, university-level class. Read more about the department
and its courses at www.education.umd.edu.
The SIBL team summarized Dr Selden's course in this way:
Course
Description:
This
summer's experimental session is usng the SIBL CD, its songs, and
some of the books that inspired the songs to pose questions about
curriculum, such as:
- What
kind of a curriculum is this?
- Who
does it serve?
- What
are its messages, its themes, and its cultural import?
- Who
is present in these readings and who is absent?
- And
does it represent a worthwhile instructional program?
Students
are spending this summer seriously reading great books, broadening
their perspectives on curriculum, and making rigorous connections
to great literature.
The
course participants come from many countries so they will judge
the songs and books from different perspectives. Each participant
will make class presentations and write examinations.
Sessions:
The
class will read about and discuss why a curriculum is designed a
certain way. They will compare dominant texts - stories that give
the point of view and interests of the powerful in society - with
transformative texts. All learning and teaching, all choices about
what to read and pass on to others, reflect a conservative desire
to keep things as they are, or the opposite, an interest in bringing
about change, and in enabling voices that are not often heard.
These
questions and discussions are certainly of great interest to the
literacy movement!
After
the first, theoretical sessions, each topic in Dr Selden's course
focuses on one of the SIBLs on the CD and the work of literature
that inspired it. Dr Selden's topic headings invite us to think
about the songs and books in interesting ways:
Poetry
in a Post-Cataclysmic, Pre-Apocalyptic World.
Mark Levine: "Enola Gay"
On
the Road With a Great Mind - Or at Least a Great Brain - The
Ultimate Tupperware Party.
Michael Paterniti: Driving Mr Albert: A Trip Across America
with Einstein's Brain
The
Search for Meaning: Vladimir and Estragon Wait for Godot � Is
Godot a Person or a Thing?
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Adults
at the mercy of Life: Children at the Mercy of Adults.
Frank McCourt: Angela's Ashes
Starting
at the Bottom and Staying There: Outlaw History of New York's
Underbelly, 1840�1919.
Luc Sante: Low Life
Mysteries
of Life Made Clear: Surviving the Theft of Your Knees and Avoiding
the Quick-Digesting Gink.
Sheldon Silverstein: A Light in the Attic
Viewing
the World Through an Orphan's "Tourettic Impulses":
Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Crime.
Jonathon Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn
Viewing
America's Structures of Inequality: California and the Myth
of the Promised Land.
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
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