This course has been designed to enable adult students to reflect upon their life experiences within the context of new educational perspectives and goals. Selected readings in the philosophy of education are geared to issues of personal development in the educational experience, past and present. Through shared reflection and class discussion the students learn how to establish continuity between their past educational histories, formal and informal, and the program of studies they have selected. Class procedures are designed toward the development of collaborative modes of learning. This course is the first core requirement for Integrative Majors.
Students work closely with faculty to develop their degree plans.
The quest for meaning and value takes shape as, and is thereafter energized by and sustained by, a story. Put simply, we must see ourselves as actors in a significant drama-having come from some place and doing something to get some place. This course will select and organize readings and other relevant materials in literature, psychology, anthropology and the arts to enable students to recognize, criticize and critically re-appropriate this dimension of story in their own personal quests for meaning and value within the contemporary context. This course will select and organize readings and other relevant materials in sociology, political science and economics to enable students to analyze some contemporary institutional forms and to appreciate the dynamic interaction between such forms and the individual's psychic and moral life. The adult quest for meaning and value assumes mature form in a grasp of the possibilities of the historical moment.