Lynn University Freire’s Concepts of Education Paper

A paper must be submitted to Canvas as a Microsoft Word document

The Writing Process:

1. Define the assignment
2. Research—read and ask questions (find answers)
3. Brainstorm—articulate concepts and ideas
4. Outline—organize ideas
5. Write the essay
6. Review, critique, and edit

Instructions:

Using APA style (Owl Purdue (Links to an external site.) and Lynn’s Library Website (Links to an external site.)) write roughly 4 pages (1100 to 1300 words) on your chosen topic. I am open to writing new essay prompts according to student interests. If you have an idea for a prompt, share it with me. Otherwise, choose from the below prompts:

Essay Topics

• Evaluate Paulo Freire’s concept of education from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed with regards to the lecture about philosophical orientations. What philosophical orientations influence Freire’s thinking about education? Evaluate Freire’s ideas, making references to the philosophical orientations lecture as well as your own experiences in education. In other words, what aspects of Freire’s thoughts do you agree with or disagree with, and what rationale (from what you have learned or experienced in school) justifies your agreements or disagreements?
• Evaluate Jane Martin’s concept of education from The Educated Person with regards to the lecture about philosophical orientations. What philosophical orientations influence Martin’s thinking about education? Evaluate Martin’s ideas, making references to the philosophical orientations lecture as well as your own experiences in education. In other words, what aspects of Martin’s thoughts do you agree with or disagree with, and what rationale (from what you have learned or experienced in school) justifies your agreements or disagreements?
• Review the lectures on the Liberal Arts and Philosophical Orientations. Describe your own philosophical preferences with regards to these lectures. What philosophical orientations do you prescribe to and why? What influences your decision, whether it be intellectual, cultural (such as religious beliefs), emotive, or experience?
• Analyze an experience you had in school (middle school, high school, or a college class) with regards to the Liberal Arts lecture and the Philosophical Orientations lecture. What philosophical orientations did the school (or teacher) have, and how did that influence you as a student/person? Were there any idiosyncrasies or tensions between its stated beliefs and practices?
• Create a lesson plan (Teach us something, you choose the content) according to one of the philosophical orientations described in the lecture. Describe the philosophical orientation, and how the curriculum (what is taught), pedagogy (how it is taught), and assessment method of your lesson aligns with that philosophical orientation.
• Drawing upon Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Jane Martin’s The Educated Person, write about oppressive forces you have experienced in education. Have you experienced, directly or indirectly, the problems in education that Freire and Martin address? How do the authors’ ideas relate to your own experiences in education? Do your experiences orient you to agree or disagree with the readings? In your opinion (informed by the readings), what could be done to resolve the problem you experienced in education?
• Create a school that prescribes to one of the philosophical orientations described in the lecture. What would you change about the school experiences you have had and what would remain the same? What would your school look like, what types of things would students learn, how would they learn them, how much freedom and choice would students have in your school, and what type of assessments would you use to measure learning and growth? Make sure to ground your school in a philosophical/theoretical orientation.
• Create a play (develop characters and write a script) by taking license of the ideas found in the readings or class discussions to make a point about an educational or historical topic. The script you create ought to contain roughly 1500 words and be academic in nature, meaning you should make references to the readings, lectures, and/or class videos/discussions. You can make these references in footnotes to the script. Your script also must contain a works cited.
• Utilizing the history readings completed for the course, evaluate the history you have been taught up until this point. How were you taught history and what content did you learn? Was the teaching of the history optimal, and if not, how would you change it? Were there things in the content of history that you did not learn, such as different viewpoints ideologically, philosophically, or culturally? From your assessment, what is the point of studying history and what is it useful for?
• Using living memory (i.e. people: conduct 1 interview) and research as sources, write a history of an event of national or international importance. Your sources could be family members, your friends’ parents/grandparents/etc., or people that work at Lynn (do not use peers as sources, they must be older people…the older the better!). Essentially, they can be anybody that you are able to interview to create a history of an event that took place in the past. Some topics you could (as suggestions) investigate are the Vietnam War, civil rights movements, immigration, 2010 Haitian earthquake, War on Terrorism (Afghanistan/Iraq), etc. (Note that you are NOT to pick the events of 9/11 as a topic). Your paper should be divided into two sections. For international students: feel free to choose a topic that involves your home nation. First, the paper ought to, as accurately as possible, capture the event from the eyes of the person you are interviewing. I want to know what they saw, heard, smelt, felt, and thought in the moment that they experienced the historical event. The first section should be descriptive writing and should be vivid. Second, the paper should explain how the person’s historical experiences define his or her current thinking about things. Show how the events connect/relate to the present. Did what they experience define who they are, how they vote, how they live, or what they believe today? (Click here (Links to an external site.) for citing interviews in APA format)
• Since you have chosen to reside in South Florida for a time, get to know its history. Write a history report on a topic of Florida’s history. You have a lot of freedom to choose, from natural history, Japanese colonization, Seminole Indians, and more (such as Flagler). Gather resources and visit one historical site regarding your topic (communicate with me about what sites are available, below are some suggestions with links). Write your history of your topic and walk us through your educational experience visiting your chosen historical site. In order to accomplish the visitation requirement, you must arrange your own transportation. Although I do want you to soak up the historical knowledge embedded in your chosen visitation destination, feel free to explore Florida’s history via walking, hiking, biking, mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing, jogging, picnicking, or however else you prefer. Enjoy, and try not to be buried in your phone the whole time!
  1. https://www.bocahistory.org/ (Links to an external site.)
  2. https://www.flaglermuseum.us/ (Links to an external site.)
  3. http://vizcaya.org/ (Links to an external site.)
  4. https://morikami.org/ (Links to an external site.)
  5. https://www.ahtahthiki.com/ (Links to an external site.)
  6. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/arm_loxahatchee/ (Links to an external site.)
  7. http://discover.pbcgov.org/parks/Locations/Riverbend.aspx (Links to an external site.)
  8. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/jonathan-dickinson-state-park (Links to an external site.)
  9. http://markhampark.com/ (Links to an external site.)
  10. https://www.floridastateparks.org/mizell (Links to an external site.)
  11. https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/svdirections.htm (Links to an external site.)
• Create a work of art (music, comic book, comic, video, drawing, short-story, painting, poem, etc.) that captures the theme of education, history, or philosophy from the class and expresses your thoughts and feelings about it. In addition to the work of art itself, you must produce a three-page summary of your work. The summery should include a description of your artwork, a detailed explanation about how the artwork addresses the topic of education or history, and how the artwork expresses themes we have covered in class. The summary should also contain a citation page that adheres to APA formatting. Embed a picture of your artwork into your Word document that contains your summary so that I can reference it. For your presentation, you will display and explain your artwork. Your work (the 3 pages and the artwork) must be submitted to Canvas (Again, embed a photo of your artwork in the 3-page summary document and upload the single file to Canvas). This assignment comes with aesthetic expectations. Do not do stick figures!