| | From the program's Web site about its curriculum:
AREA I [Chosen Discipline]
Area I classes in the academics and the arts emphasize contemporary texts, compositions, artistic expressions, issues, ideas and the theories that flow from them. Study in each Area I discipline emphasizes theory over the memorization of fact, particularly contemporary theories that stimulate innovative thought in a rapidly changing culture. Courses are designed to stimulate student creativity, move students to explore basic assumptions, explore unanswered questions, and develop an acceptance of the process of change. [...]
AREA II [Epistemology]
Each student attends another class comprised of students from each of the Area I disciplines. Here students and teachers explore connections between and among these disciplines. As integrative concepts emerge, the class attempts to construct an understanding of contemporary ways of thinking and of the culture that arises from them. [...]
AREA III [Psychology and Sociology]
This third class is also comprised of students from each of the Area I disciplines. Here students attempt to ground what they are learning in their Area I and II classes in their own personal experience. Finally, they apply that understanding to their social worlds; that is, they try to discover links between ideas and actions, theory and practice.
This sounds dandy to the untrained reader. However, hints at postmodernism come from phrases like "the class attempts to construct an understanding," etc., i.e. reality as a social construct. So I want to develop a way for a "gifted" student to get the benefits of the program without the detriments.
Dual enrollment has grown in popularity in that state so I have made contact with people there to learn if students can do that during the summer. If so, my video will suggest that students register for an 11 week summer school program at their local community colleges with a course in each of those three areas. Concurrently, a reading of the book I seek would help them to ground all the learned knowledge to reality. Perhaps most tangibly, they would have earned nine credit hours of community college credit readily transferable to any state university and many private colleges. Intangibly, they can stay at home with their parents and keep themselves more grounded to reality than they ever could at Governor's School!
I am in a tiny minority of graduates of the Governor's School program who speak negatively of it. Most of my cohorts loved it and recommended it to others. But they loved it more for its social atmosphere than its academic benefit. I am not that sociable but would have tolerated the lack of privacy and spoken well of the program had I considered the academic side meritorious. I did not and do not.
I may consider referring to ITOE after all given the lack of comparable books. On a positive note, I see on the Area II page of the site that they now include excerpts from Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand. But that pearl seems awash and buried in a tidal wave of pig excrement.
My main beefs come from the program's evasion of the contextual and hierarchical nature of knowledge, its scattershot left-leaning curriculum, and its appeal to emotions as tools of cognition. Please review the site to corroborate or refute my accusations so we can discuss further. I especially look forward to the assessment from Mindy Newton.
I will most likely include a blurb in the video instructing those of faith who choose to attend the program to read the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas to hone their scholastics before their Area II professor hammers them!
I frankly considered those sorts of ambushes the most unfair aspect of the program. I will not defend faith but will defend the right of others to practice theirs. Taxpayers should question having their tax dollars spent on these sorts of instruction methods.
(Edited by Luke Setzer on 1/11, 3:01pm)
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