November 23, 2008

This website is the final collaborative project from our Fall 2008 time together in Philosophy, Ethics and Education.  During the term that extended from September 6 through October 25 we hiked on six Saturdays.   After each hike we posted detailed, ethnographic descriptions aimed at capturing our observations and reflections about those experiences.  As the term developed we increasingly integrated thoughts from the course readings into these descriptions.  

On the fifth hike (Doublehead Mt. Ledge, shortly before the picture above was taken) we decided to collaborate on a project that would serve as a final project for everyone involved.   We teamed up in pairs and each pair become responsible for assembling pictures and selected text from our descriptions for a specific hike we had made.   The  dated links above lead you to these collages.  These now serve as an endeavor to share our educational experiences with you.

On the final day of the term we shared what we had assembled and began the process of consolidating everything into the website you now see.   The last page in the site, called Credits, provides documentation about what we read and where we went.  

The Credits page also expresses gratitude to everyone for working together to create a model of associated living and conjoint communicated experience (Dewey, Democracy and Education).   That’s very much the theory that the course is designed to live and enact.   The qualitative, ethical nature of the relationships and shared experience of the group constitute what is called “education”.    This theory is one advanced by the American philosopher John Dewey who wrote in Democracy and Education that “Education is the laboratory in which philosophic distinctions become concrete and are tested.”

The idea of ED 5010 in the sense described above does not suggest that all educational efforts can be conducted outdoors on mountain ledges or in living rooms with a fireplace or on the shore of a remote pond  replete with home-made apple dumplings.  But the course does offer an alternative  to the status quo definition of “education”.  It suggests greater critical, wide-awakeness to the qualitative dimensions of experiences that sometimes are too easily called “educational.” 

There’s still some proofing work going on in this site.   The textual references will be made uniform in a way that utilizes the bibliography on the Credits page.   In the meantime,

Please enjoy,

Allan DiBiase

Course Facilitator