the Sam Jackson College Experience

Hey everyone! I promised this some time ago and am happy that it’s all now finally done: along with the other members of my class, I chose a subject to research using the Yale Manuscripts and Archives collections and then worked to help curate an online exhibit centered around a series of documents that I selected. This was done for my class The Intellectual in Politics, taught by Justin Zaremby.

Here is a link to the online exhibit, and here you can reach my particular section of the exhibit. It was a very short final writing assignment, but it was difficult to write so concisely and to try to capture all the themes and ideas that I wanted to express. I am happy to finally get to check it out with everything in place, and hope you enjoy it too.

Here is the blurb that Prof. Zaremby wrote for the exhibit, reproduced below:

According to the late Edward Shils, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, intellectuals are those members of society “with an unusual sensitivity to the sacred, an uncommon reflectiveness about the nature of the universe and the rules which govern their society.” In this position, intellectuals occupy a position apart from society, working as scholars, writers, philosophers, and social critics. Given their role studying and criticizing society, intellectuals need to balance the need to maintain a critical distance from politics with their desire to influence political life. Some intellectuals attempt to have an impact on society through their writings. Others work as educators in institutions of higher education. Others choose to enter public service. In addition to the value that intellectual engagement might offer to the political world, the decision to enter politics encourages intellectuals to consider their responsibility to society, scholarship, and the intellectual class itself.

The students who curated this exhibit chose topics that reveal the tensions that confront intellectuals in their engagement with society. Students used the holdings of the Department of Manuscripts and Archives at the Yale University Library to illustrate the forms of engagement that intellectuals have attempted, as well as the responses to such engagement from both the intellectual and political worlds. The richness of the collection allowed students to explore a wide array of topics relating to political expertise, higher education, and the role of science and philosophy in society.In each case, the students reveal what lies at the intersection of intellectual life and political action—conflict, risk, and the potential for creative flourishing.

This exhibit is the final project for “The Intellectual in Politics,” a political science and humanities seminar taught by Justin Zaremby. In the course, students discussed authors ranging from Plato and Martin Heidegger to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walter Lippmann in an attempt to understand the relationship between intellectual life and political life. Students attempted to define the needs and goals of the intellectual class, whether intellectuals serve as advisors, teachers, or social critics.

It was a fun class and I really enjoyed getting to work with the archival collections. There is just a huge, amazing treasure trove of papers, photographs, and much more available to students.I had a really hard time choosing a final subject, but I just enjoyed getting to explore the personal notes and letters of important and famous people. It’s a very special opportunity that I hope more Yale students take advantage of — I had gone to the Archives before out of curiosity to do some research into Yale’s history just for fun, and you don’t need to go for class. It’s just at the library, so there is no excuse not to go!

Hello everyone! This is my first time hosting a blog carnival, but it is the 160th Carnival of Education! I got a lot of submissions for this week and chose the best ones to share with you today. Welcome to the February 27, 2008 edition of the carnival of education, let’s get started! When you’re done with these links, be sure to check out all the higher education content you can find right here on my site : )

General Education

Alvaro with the Brain Fitness Center at SharpBrains gives us some helpful suggestions for how to keep our brains in tip top shape–he also hosted the 159th carnival!

Should parents pay for college (in whole or in part)? An interesting question… and one that I’m glad my parents answered basically in the affirmative.

Phil says that, paying for college or not, parents should do more to teach their kids patience. It took too long to read everything he wrote so I’m not quite sure, however, of what the entire post was about–I guess I’m just in such a rush all the time!

Noirlecroi is a big fan of blog carnivals, which is good, because it makes me want to link to their review of Mosaic of Thought, a book about teaching comprehension, that much more.

The Daily Grind provides a suggested Student Code of Ethics… what do you think about it?

Matthew K Tabor writes about the links between baseball and education, and they’re more compelling in the context of the UFT than you might have imagined.

Great for Educators and Teachers

When, and if, to use if instead of when: tips from So You Want to Teach? about just that–teaching.

For more tongue twisting fun, consider the post about questioning questions, or at least the way teacher-questioners question. Lead from the Start ponders this and more in the context of preschool.

In case these other posts were sounding too cheery, read about this nightmare situation from Scenes from the Battleground, a blog about teaching in tough situations.

On the note of troublesome students… Siobhan has a teaser about what he’s doing dealing with tough COLLEGE students.

But we shouldn’t always blame the students! What about when parents make it difficult for students to stay in class by constantly moving? Bluebird’s Classroom tells us about this unfortunate trend in certain seventh grade classrooms.

Any history teachers reading? History is Elementary has a post about hundreds-of-years-old fashion styles as it relates to teaching. Check it out.

Speaking of history–over at Scheiss Weekly we have a post asking whatever happened to the unsung heroes?

Does school kill poetry? Read Jennifer Ward’s take on it.

Social Commentary about Education

The relationship between New York education policy, great apes, and why the teachers wants Joel Klein to understand more about teaching. All this and more at Under Assault, now!

They’re not the only ones with complains about New York City schools: check out what Education Notes has to say on the subject.

SwitchedOnMom says that there should be more field trips. I totally agree.

EduWonkette wants to ask you what you think of different approaches to mitigating the achievement gap… and also to remind you to try to avoid being food poisoned.

Which brings us to Dave’s commentary on some problems with metrics for measuring high school drop out data in California. What lessons can be learned from different measurement techniques?

General Educational Resources

SarahSpy has a great listing of free / pay-whatever days at a long list of NYC museums. Definitely worth checking out, sending along.

Life. Money. Development, writes about the seven habits of highly effective students… and how to acquire them. By clicking that link, presumably.

 

Web Tools for Students, Educators, and More

OEDb has some excellent (50!) tools for students and educators alike for use on the web, for research and learning. Check out their top 50 tools for researchers and students.

Bill Ferriter, 6th grade, teacher, is encouraging teachers to use RSS, in Pageflakes for Teachers, a good informative post.

CollegeDegree.com mentions 25 excellent tools for librarians. While most of these are fairly commonsensical, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of some avenues that might be missed; worth looking at for others in a similar situation.

Some fun math games, courtesy Let’s Play Math.

Successful Teaching writes about blogging in the classroom– always a great subject.

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And that’s it for this edition of the carnival… Submit your blog article to the next edition of the carnival of education using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. The next edition is currently set for March 12. Thanks for reading, and be sure to have a look around my site before you go!

[Brief note on my selection methodology, since concerns have arisen in the comments: some people thought I was overly selective with this carnival, but I put in almost every post that was about education... if you or someone you know was left out, it was most likely not intentional. I volunteered to host this carnival after another, for March, was already ticketed; this means that if you submitted a post BEFORE my carnival for this date was open, it may have been directed there instead and so you might not have been left out at all, you might just have to wait two weeks.]

Should you worry about the collaboration between DNA test marketers and anxious students and parents eager to get their way into top schools? David over at EphBlog certainly thinks so (EphBlog is an unofficial Williams community blog which I mention here frequently as an excellent example of an unofficial school blog that adds lots of value and is a great resource even for prospective students).

There are many “chances” posts on College Confidential, requests from potential applicants for comments on their chances of getting into Williams and advice on how to do so. See here, here and here for recent examples. I am often tempted to reply: “Take a genetic genealogy test and, if it comes back black, join the appropriate clubs in your high school and check the right box on the Common Application.”

Good advice?

I don’t necessarily want to spark an affirmative action debate here as happened last year on the blog with my writings on Jian Li. What I do find interesting are the questions posed by these new technologies. As a biracial student I am particularly interested in points 4 and 5 about Williams.

4) Besides studying the trends in the number of applicants from different groups, the Record could have a lot of fun just by looking at the pictures of Williams students. There are, allegedly, 49 or so African-Americans in the class of 2011. Want to bet? I have no doubt that the admissions office is being honest — 49 students did indeed check that box. But, could an outsider look at pictures of all the members of the class of 2011 and pick out those 49 individuals? I doubt it. The Record ought to give it a try. Background information here.

5) Don’t forget that there are some administrators at the College who would actually welcome this development. The College loves to be able to claim that 10% of Williams is African-American, whatever the underlying “truth” might be. In this dimension, the College certainly practices a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell philosophy. Even better would be having a 10% African-American class with average SAT scores above 1400. Not hard to do if a lot of applicants start checking that box.

I know that I would frequently be surprised to hear that “such and such is [insert minority here], actually” in the context of high school college admissions gossip. Sometimes this was something which would definitely have affected that person’s life experience and background and was very relevant to who they were and their family; other times, it was surprising as well as implausible just because the link could be so tenuous.

When there are DNA test marketers who are happy to give results which will tell people they are “black” and college admissions folks happy to accept those students (see point 5) statistics take on an especially distorted relation with reality… just wanted to poll you readers and see what you all thought of this.

Also, merry Christmas and happy new year!

Two weekends ago I was in New York because I was part of a panel about “Admissions in the Internet Age.” My part was a very compressed summary of my general admissions-internet-teenagers philosophy with some examples of blogs and other online tools which appeal to students and are also great for schools. I said I would try to talk about “bridging the gap” between students and admissions offices / counselors where the internet is concerned. There were a lot of great questions afterwards and the panel as a whole did a really good job; I could praise my co-panelists for ages but instead I’ll just move on and talk about my reactions… to the audience reactions?

I’m very much happier with how a lot of the higher education landscape looks now for uptake of blogs and new media (as well as integration with other tools familiar with my generation) compared with what it was even just a year ago. I’m not saying things are great, or even good, but there’s a very definite measured improvement in attitudes institutionally from what I could smell in the wind. People were very interested in what I had to say, and not just in the way the monacle and tophat crowd are interested when they go to a zoo or circus.

For ease of digestion, I’ve made a list of some of my feelings (nine of them, to be exact) for your consumption:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the first day of classes at Yale, and I decided it was time to finally start getting back into the blogging spirit. What better way to start than a proclamation of my love for this new place?

I don’t know that I can sufficiently articulate my supreme delight and excitement for the next four years here at Yale. Based on the last 10 days this place and these people are proving to be amazing and awesome in every respect possible. Aside from the fact that I have the smallest suite at Yale, sharing my small room with someone 6′ 9″ (that is not hyperbole) , everything is better than I ever imagined.

The upside of the ultra-cramped room is of course that I am forced out of the room to get out and do things, socialize, study in other places, etc. Excepting those times, like right now, when I’m blogging from my room…

The list of reasons why Yale is so excellent would be obscenely long, as everywhere I look I find new reasons to be in love with this place. The classes today? Superb. I liked most of my professors that I was shopping today and was even impressed with the ones that I wasn’t so fond of (personality differences?). All the courses looked interesting, though the French that I was shopping turned out to be too easy, but my very cool professor there recommended me some other very neat courses to take which I will shop post haste.

I have some more fantastic courses to look at tomorrow, too. The only problem where classes are concerned seems to be a lack of time to take all the ones that I want.

I will try to make more posts in the coming days about specific interesting / super fun things that are happening / have happened; there are almost too many to keep track. I wish Yale had a Wesleying equivalent; maybe I will have to think up a clever name and start one. In the meantime, my adventures continue!