How would you feel if you were told control is useless? Many younger generations believe that control is a means to a better future. A lack of self-directed control has negative connotations—to lose control is to lose a sense of predictability, reassurance, and stability. In Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation, however, several characters try to take advantage of their environments, and each instance ends on a sour note. A consistent standard appears in the book, implying that controlling one’s environment ends badly, and rather is better taken care of by working in harmony of the environment.

Ezekial Emmanuel  is a polemecist from a famous Jewish family of siblings  (his brother was Obama’s  White House Chief of Staff and  is now the mayor of Chicago) who was previously who were raised to debate.  These guys cut their political teeth on each other when they were still in diapers.   They know how to pick an edge of a controversial topic and exploit it. 

Donna Caires shared this link to a free course on "end of life conversations".  I think it's very helpful. 

 http://app.ihi.org/lms/home.aspx?CatalogGUID=debbdb58-726f-4a20-ac4a-7796b7d94d37

What stood out to me the most about the course notes was the part about trying to consider what Cole would say about the text. I think that he would say that the Seeds were too radical in trying to tear apart a field of genetically modified potatoes. However, I think that the actions of the Seeds overall would be deemed as acceptable to Cole. Instead of just talking about how horrific genetically modified foods are, they took action in informing people. Education is powerful in trying to bring about change, and I think that Cole also believes that we need to teach ourselves about international crises before trying to get involved with something. Additionally, the Seeds organized the festival at the Fullers that was dedicated to educating people.

The dicussion we had in class really made me question who is considered a feminist. Many said that it is woman who has agency in her daily life. It made me wonder, can someone be a feminist even if her personal life may be filled with patriarchial opression? Is feminism a way of life or simply a belief or an action? I hope this makes sense

Hello Education Friends!

This American Life on NPR had a very interesting podcast last week that relates perfectly (almost too well) with what we talk about in class. They mention the school to prison pipeline and look at all of the problems with our education system - especially racism. Here is the link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ the name of the episode is "Is this Working?" from October 17, 2014.

Today in our small group, Sasha brought up an article called Decolonial Study for Abolishing the Prison University Complex, by Abraham Bolish, to put in conversation with the Ghiso/Campano piece. We read the piece last week for another class and it seemed to have relevant themes/overlaps/contradictions that might inform our thinking. Putting it up here becuase others in our group had expressed interest in reading as well and hoping it might be of use to the rest of the class!