english writing course

Assignment 15: Submitting Essay on Chapter 11

Purpose

1. Reflect on the intellectual experiences you had in this course by describing how the material in chapter 11 reflects your experiences

2. Practice citation mechanics 3. Practice revising for PRE and Contract observance. 4. Experience intellectual growth during revision stage of the writing project.

Objectives

1. Write an essay that reflects on your experiences of this course and whose citation mechanics are correct and whose writing is clear and sometimes elegant.

2. Use some metaphors consciously and deliberately in describing your intellectual experiences.

3. Produce sentences that are the product of conscious and deliberate revision using PRE.

4. Have a title that shows imaginative engagement with words

Reading Assignments

• Chapter 11: ‘Our Historical Consciousness and Our Historic Context in the Light of Imaginative Literacy’

Click on the “Intro to Assgt 15” link in the Assignment 15 folder for a video on this last writing assignment. CAUTION: my lips go out of synch with the words you hear in the last 30 seconds of the video. I have no idea why. WRITING ASSIGNMENT Write a 600 – 800 word essay on Chapter 11, noting how the chapter’s explanation of the nature of liberal education reflects your experiences in this course, or in other courses that you took this semester. Quote 3 to 5 sentences that I wrote (don’t quote the people I quoted), with at least 3 from chapter 11 and the other quotes can come from other sections of the book if you would like. Be sure to vary your tagline (or signal phrase) locations. Also meet the objectives listed above in #s 2 – 4.

This chapter is not assigned until now because it gives an overview of what I think college is about, and our historical moment, and I think that this chapter will make more sense to you at the end of this writing course than at the beginning. See my other Comments below after the grade scale.

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WHAT TO SUBMIT

• Final draft of Chapter 1 essay GRADING: 100 points possible 100 – 93 points A 92 – 85 points B 84 – 77 points C 76 – 69 points D 68 and below F INSTRUCTOR COMMENT

Chapter 11 explains what I think college is about, what I think our historical moment amounts to, what I propose the self-image of the student should consist of after he and she submits to the disciplines of the liberal arts core. I think that you wouldn’t have understood these things very well had you read this chapter at the start of the course. Now that you have 14 assignments from this course under your belt, consider this course in a larger context, which I try to explain in this chapter. Here are a few areas in the chapter that I think could be topics you discuss in your essay:

Speaking of ‘self-image,’ the diagram on p. 239 of “ones’ self-image” is new to the 2nd edition. The terms “mob” and “community” come from Northrop Frye and his book The Critical Path. The diagram can be read in conjunction with the “wedge” on p. 243. The adult with a community and selfless self-image will not be in a realism that is imaginary but it is imaginative. In addition, the fight in the student between these aspects of their self-image is also illustrated on p. 249 in the crisscross sections of those diagrams of college. Adult Level Understanding (ALU) really is composed of community and selfless self-understanding. Anything else makes the adult have Inadequate Adult Understanding (IAU).

Another topic could be on p. 242 where, I mention that students in first year

college should spend time examining the images triggered in the mind by words that they learned in childhood. I consider this to be an activity that can improve their critical thinking activities, since it adds an “imaginative” aspect to rational thinking. Did you analyze images triggered in your mind by key words from your life? Did you realize that the images the words conjured up in your mind were too simplistic, having come from childhood experiences and which you have now begun to make more complex? Did the research project affect the images triggered in

your mind by words that were key in the research project and which you still come across after that project? If not, explain why you think it is not an important activity to do for critical thinking.

I also hope you reflect on what I say in the last paragraph on p. 243, and

perhaps offer your reflections in the essay. In the paragraph, I explain how Mark Van Doren’s division of education into K to 12 and college has helped me make a further division in college between adult verbalizations and academic verbalizations. The PRE also deal with these two kinds of verbal expression. Indeed, it was his distinction that led me to come up with the “three part chart” which you see several times in the chapter. The educational three part chart at the top of p. 247 is the basis of the other three part charts. Where the 3rd part in the other charts is not named (hence the question mark), since we do have a 3rd education part named (the school of ‘hard knocks’?), I think that we will see a 3rd element the other charts. Perhaps most provocative of all, at the start of the chapter 11 describe humanity as biology’s self-conscious element and that it is biology’s 2nd level or kind of consciousness, and then I pose the question – could not we speculate about the emergence of a 3rd level of consciousness and our role in its appearance? Can you describe any of your intellectual experiences in this class as possible evidence of a 3rd level of consciousness arising within our times? You might want to also consult the large Wedge diagram on the inside cover of the textbook, where I try to also suggest how we could see that we are in the midst of watching a new foundation being constructed – and we who watch are also doing the constructing. Chapter 11 mentions a few movie characters and suggests that we see them as reflecting parts of our intellectual pursuits. I have a special affection for the Neo character in the movie The Matrix. I mention in #13 on p. 3 that he can see the structure of the matrix, and I would like you to entertain the idea that he is a symbol of the college student who faces the challenges of college-level understanding head on. Neo is seeing the structure of language that Frye refers to. Click on “The Matrix—Birth of Chosen One” link in the Assignment 15 folder to view. (If this link doesn’t work, search online. It is titled “The Matrix - Birth of Chosen One”) Another scene from The Matrix depicts another condition of the student in college. I’ve said that the student comes in submerged in an ocean of words, which means he and she don’t see verbal activity going on in their minds which they should become aware of. Click on “The Matrix: Neo in an Ocean of Words” link the Assignment 15 folder to view. This is like Neo in that goo, what I call the adult bassinet. That red pill that Neo took meant he had to face reality. For students, coming to college is taking that red pill and now you are having to see the reality of your engagement with words and thought and consciousness. The image of him waking up in a bit tub of goo is a metaphor for the intellectual sensation that the college student can have as they begin to engage with the first three claims that I make in

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this class – that we are born into an ocean of words and when we come into college it is like we are submerged in that ocean, being unaware of some basic things going on when we use words. But then we see that the following are true:

1. Words trigger images in the adult mind and these images might affect their thinking more than they realize.

2. The student has been using metaphors to explain things and hasn’t realized that he has been using metaphors.

3. The student has expectations as a reading with regards to sentence structure, expectations I call PRE and once the student sees this he and she can figure out why a college level text is hard or easy to understand.

So it seems to me that the student is like Neo when he wakes up to find himself

in that tub of goo, what I call an adult bassinet. The Student, like Neo, is physically grown up but it turns out that intellectually he is still an infant. And he’s been a cog in the social machinery without even knowing it. But now college will turn that infant or childhood structure of understanding into an adult one, and then the student will be like Neo at the end of The Matrix, able to fly around. But that image refers to the intellectual flexibility that the student will have to reach the heights of intellectual insight, no matter what discipline that he and she are in.

I also mention the movie Ever After in #9 on p. 3. I’ve provided a link to the Youtube in the Assignment 15 folder where you can see the scene I refer to, and it starts at 2:13. He is told this twice in the movie, the second time by his love interest, but that scene cannot be accessed on Youtube. 