PUBLIC EDUCATION

EXAMINATION

Fall, 1996

The purpose of this examination is to give you a chance to reflect on and consolidate what you have learned in "Public Education." You should work on this examination in two stages. Keep the difference between these stages clear in your mind.

The first stage is to discuss the questions and possible responses with your fellow students. We encourage your to work in study groups for this purpose.

The second stage is writing your own answers to the questions. All writing must be done on your own. You must use your own words to express your understanding.

You should keep these stages separate because in the midst of group discussions it is easy to kid yourself into thinking you know more than you do. When you write, all by yourself, you will find out what you know. You may be surprised.

How you partition these stages between now and the due date is up to you and your colleagues. We recommend a schedule where you alternate several times between writing alone and discussing in groups. It is probably inadvisable to leave all the writing until near the due date. Students have reported that they get more from study groups if they come to sessions having completed some draft writing on the questions under discussion. You will use your time together best if you come to study sessions prepared.

All examinations must be typed or printed in fonts no smaller than 11 points, double spaced (we may not read any responses that are single spaced or spaced at 1.5 lines), with 1" margins. In composing your responses, use your most effective writing. Put your name on the first page; number the other pages; staple the pages together.

THIS EXAM IS DUE AT NOON, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22. Late papers are not accepted. Early ones aren't either.

The first part of the examination is to fill in the following table. You won't put your answers in these boxes; the table should guide the preparation of your answers.


                   Student         Teacher       Pedagogy    Aim of           
                                                             Education        

         Plato                                                                

      Rousseau                                                                

        Rogers                                                                

         Dewey                                                                



That is, for each of the major philosophers studied this quarter, you are to say what, in each view, is a student, what is a teacher, what pedagogy is to be used, and what is the aim of education.

Student: What does the teacher see when he or she looks on the young person in his or her charge? How does the teacher conceive of this being? As Bill said one day, a behaviorist, for example, would view a student as, simply, a point that is the source of observable behaviors that can be influenced through the manipulation of schedules of rewards and punishments built into the student's surroundings.

Teacher: What is the teacher? How does each philosopher conceive of the teacher? What is his or her posture toward the student? How must he or she compose and comport himself or herself?

Pedagogy: What is the nature of the encounter between student and teacher? What is taught and how is it taught?

Aim of Education: If there is a final aim of the educational encounter, what is it?

* * *

For this portion of the examination, you will have sixteen separate answers. Each answer should consist of no more than three well crafted, distilled, acutely descriptive, clear, and definitive sentences. Each response should be accompanied by one or two extraordinarily apt quotations from the texts.

After reading your paper, your faculty member should have from you a clear sense of the differences and similarities among the authors we read this quarter.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

EXAMINATION

Fall, 1996

Part II

The instructions remain the same for this part of the examination. In particular, you should keep in mind the division between group work and private writing:

The first stage is to discuss the questions and possible responses with your fellow students. We encourage your to work in study groups for this purpose.

The second stage is writing your own answers to the questions. All writing must be done on your own. You must use your own words to express your understanding.

You should keep these stages separate because in the midst of group discussions it is easy to kid yourself into thinking you know more than you do. When you write, all by yourself, you will find out what you know. You may be surprised.

The first part of the examination was like a study guide to the first four writers. In that part you were asked to think about and report what you know about each philosophy of education after reading, re-reading, and studying the texts. In this part of the examination, we ask you to reflect on what you know with an eye to discovering what you don't know. So, the second part of the examination asks that you write an essay (maximum length: 2 pages, typed, double-spaced, 1" margins, font no smaller than 11 points) on the following topic:

What questions arise from and persist after my reading of these four philosophers?

We ask this in the spirit of Philip Morrison's physics examination. Eleanor Duckworth reports, "The students were given sets of materials, the same set of materials for each student, but they were given no specific problem. Their problem was to find a problem and then to work on it. For Morrison, the crucial thing is finding the question...." (The Having of Wonderful Ideas & Other Essays on Teaching & Learning, New York: Teachers College Press, 1987, p. 10). The successful essay will clearly derive from the author's responses to the first part of the examination, will be clear about the fact that the questions are the author's questions, and will leave the reader with the sense, "Now those are really important questions!"