Lesson Plan Über Alles

Possible Book Lineup for Fall 2017

English 1A

One. Cooked and the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure" by Arthur C. Brooks. 

Two. I started reading Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle and I love Turkle but the material is too familiar to me. I can't do it. Perhaps make essays 2-5 from Acting Out Culture. 

Essays 3-5: Acting Out Culture

English 1C

Essay One. Pascal's theme of the imaginary life over substance in Bartleby compared to Winter Dreams and The Other Woman. 

Essay Two. This Boy's Life compared to The Overcoat. 

Option 1. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the quest for identity in Wolff’s memoir and Gogol’s "The Overcoat." Consider maladaptation and the chimera as traps resulting from the search for identity.

Option 2. A wise man once said, having a chimera will kill you, but not having a chimera will also kill you. Develop an argumentative thesis that shows how this saying applies to Wolff’s memoir and Gogol’s "The Overcoat." 

Essays 3-4: Various current events from online essays. 

Essay 5: Compare The Plot Against America with essay "The Case Against Democracy." 

 

Reparations Unit for Critical Thinking Class

The Case for Reparations

Are Reparations Due to African Americans?

Website Offers Reparation Payments

Paying "Around Nothing"

Mass Incarceration Has Become the New Welfare

The Caging of America

Critical Thinking Books for Spring 2017

Muscle by Samuel Wilson Fussell

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Strangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes Caitlin Doughty

From Critical Thinking to Argument

Rereading America Lessons

Part One: The Myth of Class, Education, and Race in America

One. What We Really Miss About the 1950s by Stephanie Coontz 25

Two. The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates 572

Three. The Essentials of a Good Education by Diane Ravitch 105

Four. Against School by John Gatto 114

Five. Learning to Read by Malcolm X 161

Six. Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League by William Deresiewicz 200

Essay Option One: Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Coontz and Coates’ essays show that nostalgia for an idealized past America is a morally bankrupt proposition based on the exploitation of one race feeding the democratic freedoms of another.

Essay Option Two: Support, refute, or complicate Coates’ argument that America is morally compelled to pay African Americans reparations for the evils of slavery and Jim Crow.

Essay Option Three. Develop a thesis that explains to what extent do Gatto and Ravitch agree on the limitations of the current education system and on the purposes of a genuine education?

Essay Option Four. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Malcolm X, as evidenced in his “Learning to Read” (161) would agree with Deresiewicz (200) that real education means self-imposed isolation, developing critical thinking skills, and “building a self.”

Essay Option Five. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Diane Ravitch (105) and Deresiewicz (200) have written complementary essays that excoriate degraded forms of commercialized education.

Part Two: The Myth of Progress on the Tech Frontier

One. Growing Up Tethered by Sherry Turkle 236

Two. Our Future Selves by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen 219

Three. Cybersexism by Laurie Penny 253

Four. The Loneliness of the Connected by Charles Seife 289

Essay Option One: Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Ravitch (205) would be skeptical about Schmidt and Cohen’s vision (219) of a coming education revolution.

Essay Option Two. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Deresiewicz (200) and Turkle (236) would agree that contemporary American culture poses a serious impediment to “building a self.”

Essay Option Three. To what extent do Penny’s early attitudes (253) toward the Internet confirm or challenge Sherry Turkle’s portrayal (236) of how teens experience life online?

Essay Option Four. How do the ideas in Seife’s essay (289) help to explain, along with Penny’s essay (253), the chronic malignancy of misogyny in online culture.

Essay Option Five. How does Seife’s exploration of online extremism (289) challenge the optimistic portrayal of technology’s influence on blobal relations offered by Schmidt and Cohen (219)?

Part Three: Predictive Policing and The Myth of Individual Opportunity

One. Precognitive Police by Henrick Karoliszyn 336

Two. Serving in Florida by Barbara Ehrenreich 363

Three. Sam Walton/Jay Z by George Packer 350

Four. Slavery in the Land of the Free by Bales and Sodalter (443)

Essay Option One. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that predictive policing, as stated in “Precognitive Police” (336) destroys more evils than it creates.

Essay Option Two: What, if anything, do you think Gail, Ellen, and George could do to substantially improve their material and economic well-being? What are the greatest barriers they face? What advice might Sam Walton or Jay Z (350) give them, and how do you think it would be received?

Essay Option Three: How do Jay Z and Walton’s stories (350) help us understand the myths and realities of the American Dream?

Essay Option Four: Write a comparison essay of the exploitation described in Ehrenreich’s essay (363) with the migrant fieldworks described in “Slavery in the Land of the Free” (443).

Writing Assignment for The Little Girl and the Cigarette

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that while the the novel's narrator is fond of blaming society's imbecilic cultural mores as the cause of his demise, the real cause of his downfall is his self-destructive petulance and and infantile narcissism. 

Reading and Essay Lists for English 1A and 1C for Fall 2016

English 1A

Essay 1: Does social media cause the pathologies described by Sherry Turkle? You can supplement her essay "Flight from Conversation" with a couple of essays from Chapter 6 in Acting Out Culture. 

Essay 2: Compare the adolescent fixation in Lasdun's It's Beginning to Hurt with Joseph Epstein's essay "The Perpetual Adolescent." 

Essay 3: Analyze Nikolai's demise in Chekhov's "Gooseberries" in the context of Man's Search for Meaning. 

Essay 4: Various "best of" essays from Acting Out Culture

Essay 5: Acting Out Culture's two chapters on work and eduction will provide your capstone essay on upward mobility in America. Is upward mobility largely a myth? 

English 1C

Essay 1: Write an analysis of impoverishment through substitution while addressing the three stories. Define "unhinged" in the context of "Bartleby," "Winter Dreams," and "The Overcoat."

In addition to the "Bartleby" assignment, you could have 1A students compare "The Overcoat" and "Winter Dreams."

Compare the way"Bartleby,"  "The Overcoat" and "Winter Dreams" illuminate the theme of that the chimera of fame and elevated status cause us to become unhinged in a psychological and existential manner. Define the term "unhinged" in psychological and existential terms and show how the stories reveal this unhinging and dislocation.

Essay 2: Analyze the causes and effects of the demon homunculus by comparing at least two selected stories from Updike's short story anthology. 

Essay 3: Use online debatable topics for argumentative essay or choose a book like The Professor in the Cage. 

Essay 4: Use online debatable topics for capstone argumentative essay. Is college worth it? What is the prison dilemma in light of Proposition 47? 

Here are 4 good topics:

One. Is college worth the cost? Two. Is the NFL morally bankrupt? Three. Is it immoral to be an anti-vaxxer? Four. Are the NRA's defenses of guns rooted in misinformation, logical fallacies, and other forms of demagoguery?

 

What Does It Mean to Become Unhinged?

What Does It Mean to Become Unhinged?

In English 1A, the students will define the term unhinged in the context of "The Overcoat" and "Winter Dreams."

When we study the psychological condition of being unhinged, we are addressing six distinguishing characteristics.

The first characteristic is our delusional self that creates false justifications for irrational behavior. “This thing is so cheap I can’t afford NOT to buy it.” “By buying the Seiko SBDX017 for two thousand dollars, I’ll stop buying six-hundred-dollar watches every four months or so, so that over a five-year period, the two-thousand-dollar Seiko will save me seven thousand dollars. I can’t afford NOT to buy the Seiko.”

The second characteristic is fear of facing our personal shortcomings, what amounts to having someone hand us our butt on a stick. The disparity between our self-image and our true self is too frightening for most of us to bear. We’d rather live with a flattering self-image. We’d rather believe we’re not wasting our lives on nonsense. We’re so desperate to avoid the truth of our personal shortcomings that we engage in diversionary behavior (avoiding the truth through various distractions and escapism) that makes us unhinged.

Related to the second, the third characteristic is the intoxication that overcomes us when we become an image of mythology, celebrity, fame, or power to others so that we see ourselves, not for who we really are, but through the lens of those who worship our mythical self.

The fourth characteristic of becoming unhinged is desire for some mirage or chimera that rips us apart from our powers of reason.

The fifth characteristic of becoming unhinged is obsessive-compulsive behavior that compromises our sense of self-possession and free will.

The sixth characteristic embodies all of the previous four, the state of disconnection, which causes intense anxiety and panic. We are desperate to not feel this disconnection, and we will resort to any extreme to not feel this anxiety. Our extreme behaviors exacerbate our condition, making us more anxious and feeling compelled to be even more extreme, thus creating a vicious cycle.

 

Possible List for Spring 2016

English 1A

Class

Acting Out Culture

Rules for Writers

Final Essay about American education being more about protecting business interests, class bias and control of the masses than it is about real empowerment and critical thinking.

English 1C  

From Critical Thinking to Writing

Best Short Stories of the Century

Man's Search for Meaning

Teach short stories first. 

The capstone essay is from Frankl. 

Bank of 1A Online Essays to Supplement the Text

One. "The Great White Way" by Debra J. Dickerson

Two. "Prudence Or Cruelty" by Nicholas Kristof

Three. "Unspeakable Conversations" by Harriet McBryde Johnson

Four. "People Like Us" by David Brooks

Five. "The Ethics of Eating Meat" by Paul Schwennesen; pair with Carnism Ted Talk video. 

Six. "The Obesity-Hunger Paradox" by Sam Dolnick

Seven. "How Obesity Became a Disease" by Harriet Brown

Eight. "Is Anorexia a Cultural Disease?" by Carrie Arnold; pair with "Why It Was Easier to be Skinny in the 1980s" by Olga Khazan

Nine. "The Repugnant Myth of the Poor's Unhealthy Eating Habits"

Ten. "From Degrading to De-Grading" by Alfie Kohn

Eleven. "Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong" by Kristina Rizga

Twelve. "Against School" by John Taylor Gatto

Thirteen. "Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class" by Bell Hooks

Fourteen. "Preparing Minds for Markets" by Jonathan Kozol

Fifteen. "The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland" by Tim Walker

Sixteen. "How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty" by Barbara Ehrenreich

Seventeen. "Why I Make Terrible Decisions" by Linda Tirado

Eighteen. "Paying for Labors of Love" by Judith Shulevitz (focus on surrogate motherhood)

Nineteen. "The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle (show Ted Talk)

Twenty. "The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships" by Curtis Silver

Twenty-One. "The Empathy Deficit" by Keith O'Brien

 

English 1A Research Paper for Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

English 1A Research Paper for Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

In a 4-page typed essay, support or refute the argument that your matriculation through college, and the major you have chosen (or not), is inextricably entwined with the class status anxieties analyzed in Paul Fussell’s Class. In other words, argue for or against the idea that fear of falling short of America’s status system—a code system that is much more complicated than income level alone—is a significant driving force in your college studies. What evidence is there, or not, that you are beholden to class status codes? What evidence is there, or not, that you have rejected America’s class status script and have carved your own path, so that you love learning for its own sake? Are you an aspiring bourgeois consumer? Are you an “X person”? Explain. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources. 

Make a handout for 7 phases of the writing process, which includes a preliminary thesis and revised thesis, prewriting, introduction, signal phrase and MLA integration, building effective paragraphs, building counterargument paragraphs, evaluating sources, drafting conclusions with pathos.