- Remembering that your Alternative Schooling Moment (ASM)must happen outside of a traditional schooling environment (college or secondary campus, tutoring centers, or community class spaces), please write two paragraphs describing your group’s ASM.
Our alternative schooling moment will take place in the heart of New York City – Times Square. Our city is unique due to the fact that it is always filled with people from all around the world. When people come to New York, it is predictable for a New Yorker to know where they will be and what locations they “try” to squeeze into their itineraries. Times Square at any given day will be full of people from around the world and around the country.
This ASM will be in the open plaza of 7th Avenue and West 47th Street. It will be full of tourists. It will be a fast-paced setting meaning that we will have to work quickly to get a message out. We plan on doing this by handing out papers or pamphlets with facts about countries and civilizations from all around the world. The facts will serve to give people a much more global perspective than the one they have and enlighten them to things they may not have known before.
2) Who will be the audience/students of your ASM? Why?
The great thing about our method is that no one is too young or too old! Our audience is anyone on the streets of West 47th willing to listen. We know that everyone can benefit from our holistic approach to education. Knowledge of different countries not only help gain a better perspective of the world around us, but it also helps us better understand people from different cultures. It’s best to start from young adults; however, and seniors can just as well put this information to good use. In a city like New York with so much cultural diversity, being understanding and accepting of people from different cultural backgrounds is essential.
3) Remembering that learning objectives are active, please list the three main objectives of your ASM?
- a) To give people more well rounded knowledge (globally)
- b) To enlighten people about facts concerning different countries
- c) To determine if our alternative schooling moment yields positive results
4) How do those three main objectives reflect your group’s philosophy of education and school?
Those three main objectives reflect our group’s philosophy of education and school as it interconnects one another through the knowledge of countries other than our own, making us more holistic overall. It is without a doubt that Americans find themselves superior than anyone other than their own. As great as it is to show pride in one’s country, one is restricted when bound within the grounds of their own homeland. Knowledge is only powerful when it is wandering and free. By providing vast numbers of people at Times Square with interesting facts and information on other countries, we are guiding everyone’s knowledge, as well as our own, around the globe and viewing this world with a global perspective.
5) Which two of the readings does your group’s philosophy on schooling and education respond to (either by supporting or challenging)?
Descartes made a strong point regarding how one of the benefits of a formal education was its usefulness in preparing him for the world. Nowadays, American schooling does not provide the well rounded education that is necessary to the development of useful members of society. He says that “to hold converse with those of other ages and to travel, are almost the same thing” (Part 1), drawing a comparison between an education of world history and actually going out and experiencing the world for yourself. Rousseau on the other hand, argues against the need for a broad education, especially early in life, claiming that students will be much more inclined to learn things not forced upon them, and things that they need in that immediate moment.
I like how action oriented your ASM is; I think it will be very interesting.
Some things for you to consider:
1) If the point is to give typically ignorant Americans a broader global perspective, why do you articulate Times Square as the best place because there are people all over the world who will be there? That seems like a contradiction. Shouldn’t you be looking for a place where it’s going to be all of a certain kind of American tourist?
2) Your ASM relies heavily on the “students” being willingly passive receptors of intangible information. You will hand out flyers, which they must consent to read, and think about. How will you know that your audience will actually do so? How do you know that if they do they will be enlightened?
3) At heart your ASM presumes your audience ignorance because it based around the idea of filling the emptiness of ignorance with facts. What if your audience is not ignorant?
4) If you don’t mean to assume your audience is ignorant and if you don’t want a passive education, you might consider if there way to rethink of your ASM in methodology that is more dynamic between you and “student” and that presumes neither ignorance nor knowledge? If you do want to presume that your audience is ignorant and should be passively filled with facts, then your philosophy of education needs to reflect that position.