https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uPp1hdq0gLUIcOKavUF8CGnDUAWy9B8FaiNRqFbVzqk/edit?usp=sharing
Adam Griffin
Topic Proposal
Learning outside the classroom. Although it’s a cliche to say that what goes on outside the classroom is as important as what goes on inside each class, do the math. Each 3-credit class you take involves 37.5 hours of class-time across 15 weeks, or about 2.5 hours a week. For a full load of 5 classes, that’s only 12.5-14 hours of class time a week, far short of what should be expected in a work situation (40 hours) or what you did last year in high school (30 hours). How should students at WCU, and the institution itself, leverage that time for transformative learning? Identify the problem and then use the work of Percy (and Freire if desired) to assert (at least) four ways in which learning beyond the classroom supports, or could support, something at the core of the student experience at WCU. Your ideas must be supported by four critical ideas from the work of Percy.
Team: Just me
Topic: 2 “Learning outside the classroom”
Thesis: The transition from high school to college affects many students, one main thing that affects students the most is the amount of outside of classwork needs to do. In highschool students spend on average 30 hours in school. In that period students would talk to peers about assignments and socialize in school as well as keeping up with their education. Compared to college where students only spend 12.5 – 14 hours of class time in a week, they need to spend more time outside of the classroom. At West Chester University students can learn outside the classroom by discussion groups, tutoring, and internships/studying abroad.
Discussion Groups: Discussion groups help students learn outside the classroom by socializing and bouncing ideas off of each other. Students can work together to open the package of education that they have been banked from the professor.
Tutoring: Seeking a tutor can help students in many ways. Students can ask questions that they did not present to the teacher during class time. Tutoring can also help clear up confusion of notes because the tutor can present it to you in a different way that the student might understand better.
Quote 1: “Does this mean that we should get rid of museums? No, but it means that the sightseer should be prepared to enter into a struggle to recover a sight from a museum” (Percy 6).
Quote 2: “In this process, arguments based on “authority” are no longer valid; in order to function, the authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the teacher.”(Freire 4)
Quote 3: “It is only the rarest student who knows that the sonnet must be salvaged from the package”(Percy 4)
