3.  Children should move as far and as fast in basic skills as possible.

Comments:

My real-life example is of a child who literally moves "fast".  Mary, who read endlessly and climbed trees at age 5, pursued an advanced degree in history and became a competitive cyclist by age 25.  She raced at 35 miles an hour six inches from the next bike and had the reputation of being "the fastest woman on campus."  Besides being allowed to pursue her basic physical skills at a challenging rate, she was also encouraged to read even when others her age were learning different skills.   For passion to flourish it must be fed.

In this course you have several areas where your choice and your level of engagement are self-selected and you may go ---as far and as fast as possible.  Your choice of reading reflects to some extent the level of your skill in the course objectives and your movement through Banks' levels of curriculum reform. If you choose Loewen's Lies my Teacher Told Me,you will be working at the level of Bank's contributive level of curriculum reform and will also begin to transform your thinking about multicultural issues.  If you choose Lisa Delpit's Other People's Children, you may find yourself clearly in the transformative level of Bank's model.  Experience with any of these books or the others listed may bring you to a point of social action, the highest level of Bank's model.  The speed at which you understand and move through these levels is dependent on what you bring to this course and your self-selected level of competency for the end of the course.  Link to detail on Banks' model.

Later you will choose other material that you believe will help you in your understanding of multicultural issues in education and complete reviews for inclusion in the course annotated bibliography.  The review should begin with a reference in APA format, include a one sentence description of the item and the reason you choose the piece.  At the end list five questions you have for either the author or the producer or the audience.  When this is completed, copy your review into an email and send it to the course instructor.  It will be checked for correct grammar, spelling and APA format and posted on the web in the course Annotated Bibliography.  This course Annotated Bibliography has correct samples of the APA format for citations, as well. Link to Librarian Paula McMillan's page created for this assignment for more information.