Paul E. Turtola
As a drama class, students will study these plays:
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
Citizen Tom Paine
,
1776
, and
The Civil War
. Though only one play will be read, the others will be screened (films) or viewed as a live performance. There will be a writing component as well, as students create a collage play based on biographical content and famous speeches in American history. Finally, students will have an opportunity to perform what they have studied and created, in smaller classroom settings and in larger, full-scale productions at the end of the school year.
This curriculum unit is written to provide teachers with ideas that focus on American political thought. It acts as a useful guide to the many wonderful places on the World Wide Web, and explores a number of these sites so that teachers may feel comfortable using the internet as a supreme resource for finding exciting media to supplement their lesson plans.
Students will be excited and curious when given a chance to explore the great depths of information on the internet, and they will be amazed to find different approaches and styles on the computers they use. With any luck, students may learn more about topics than any classroom setting could possibly imagine to accomplish.
While a large part of this unit deals with political thought throughout this country’s history, it will be very important for students to develop a process of thinking so that they may also have thoughts and feelings towards the content they study. A student who lets information slip by without any opinion or feeling for it loses interest in learning and develops slower than those who digest information, savor it, and speak out about it one way or another.
It will be a major objective throughout the course to spark students’ perceptions on what they see and hear, prod them into asking questions about controversial topics, challenge their abilities to gather facts, and then allow them to criticize intellectually what they have perceived in well-prepared oral and written work.
____
Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking
While all students have feelings toward a subject, most of them rarely think critically enough. The combination of thoughts and feelings will need to be emphasized, and as stated in a recent study on critical thought and prejudice, the two go hand in hand:
“Although it is common to separate thought and feeling as though they were independent, opposing forces in the human mind, the truth is that virtually all human feelings are based on some level of thought and virtually all thought generative of some level of feeling”.1
This passage was taken from a teaching project by the Center and Foundation For Critical Thinking at Sonoma College in Santa Rosa California. Written by Richard Paul, PhD, and Linda Elder, PhD, the authors have composed some fascinating ideas on processes of critical thinking and explanations of egocentricity and prejudicial thinking.
All of these findings were taken from research that was found on the internet, and they have helped to shape a strategy towards teaching this drama course. The experts continue to write about critical thinking in their essay: “Critical thinkers realize that their feelings are their response (but not the only possible, or even necessarily the most reasonable response) to a situation. They know that their feelings would be different if they had a different understanding or interpretation of the situation. They recognize that thoughts and feelings, far from being different kinds of “things”, are two aspects of their responses”. 2 The ability then, to pair thoughts with feelings, is the crux of critical thinking, and as young people develop both of these “things”(as they call it), they may be able to work in a more productive manner, using their imaginations as well as their analytical minds to express themselves.
Shifting the focus to the non-critical thinker, these writers observe: “Uncritical thinkers see little or no relationship between their feelings and their thoughts, and so escape responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Their own feelings often seem unintelligible to them”. 3 This description of the non critical thinker sheds a great deal of light on the young student who, when asked about his response towards anything says “I don’t really care” or has difficulty putting feelings and thoughts together in expressing a well worded answer.
It will be this unit’s objective to develop students thoughts as well as feelings, and with the proper combination of the two, produce a qualitative statement or response toward a given presentation. The expressions of the combination of thoughts and feelings will result in the production of writings dramatic or poetic, musical compositions, art drawings or paintings, and/or oral interpretations. The student will be able to choose from an array of media to express aptly thoughts and ideas based on the data presented in class.
Critical Thought and Prejudice
Once development in the area of critical thought has been introduced, the main study of our course work may proceed, focusing on how people’s views have shaped our world. The Sonoma study provides for an introduction to this course on American political thought, for it addresses one’s ability to separate personal bias when attempting to be critical:
To think critically, we must be able to consider the strengths and weaknesses of opposing points of view; to imaginatively put ourselves in the place of others in order to genuinely understand them; to overcome our egocentric tendency to identify truth with our immediate perceptions or long-standing thought or belief. This trait is linked to the ability to accurately reconstruct the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than our own.4
An understanding of other points of view will be an important skill needed for a student’s ability to write objectively. In many young people, as witnessed in the classroom, we see a one-sided viewpoint while taking on a controversial or disturbing piece of literature. Such early prejudice and egocentricity hamper one’s ability to appreciate a work of art by viewing it at many levels of understanding other than our own preferred way of looking at it. Paul and Elder have interesting views on this subject, and all of this leads towards a preparedness for studying the plays of American political thought in the course work: “Egocentricity means confusing what we see and think with reality. When under the influence of egocentricity, we think that the way we see things is exactly the way things are. Egocentricity manifests itself as an inability or unwillingness to consider others’ points of view, a refusal to accept ideas or facts which would prevent us from getting what we want (or think we want)”. 5
In exercising the ability to see both sides of a story, the lessons on political thought, prejudice and race can be learned in a manner that steers away from injurious and malicious response, and instead lead towards more intellectual and constructive thought. Students need to learn how single egocentric beliefs can lead to a whole group’s feelings, and be able to separate this tendency towards socialization when it comes to their own work:
As people are socialized, egocentricity partly evolves into sociocentricity. Egocentric tendencies extend to their groups. The individual goes from ‘I am right!’ to ‘We are right!’ To put this another way, people find that they can often best satisfy their egocentric desires through a group.
‘Group think’ results when people egocentrically attach themselves to a group. Uncritical thinkers often confuse loyalty with always supporting and agreeing, even when the other person or the group is wrong. 6
Once a student is aware of the tendency to group one’s thoughts and feelings from a shared belief with others to think more independently, the process of critical thinking may take place. It will also be possible to cover the themes and plots of the selections of the course without prejudice and condemnation.
In a final passage taken from the Center’s report, a positive result emerges: “We can change egocentric tendencies when we see them for what they are: irrational and unjust. The development of children’s awareness of their egocentric and sociocentric patterns of thought is a crucial part of education in critical thinking. This development will be modest at first but can grow considerably over time”. 7
The development from social thinking to individual thinking mentioned in the study is a major objective of this unit. Once students feel comfortable with expressing how they feel without being influenced unduly by outside sources, critical thinking can flourish and students will learn much more than before.
The First Lesson in Critical Thought:
Confronting Prejudice, Hatred and Racial Tension with Self Reliance
By introducing the notion of prejudicial thought, students will get a chance to understand that the way people feel in general about certain things should not interfere with one’s objectivity when learning is concerned. While students will be trained to become self reliant in their thoughts and feelings, they will also be taught how groups of people have altered our country’s independence with bias, prejudice and bigotry.
Students will be able to discern traditional “group thinking” which established racial tension and hate in this country. They will learn to appreciate why the individual deeds of great American men and women were brave acts of courage, for if these bold people were not to act alone and speak out about what they truly believed in, America would be a much different country today.
Perhaps by facing these historically troubling problems, students will be able to answer their own queries as to why people hate. Once that is accomplished, maybe then they can begin to overcome their desire to follow popular thought and start carrying out the ideas that they have felt are truly their own, independent thoughts about things that are important to them.
Items that should be mentioned in this class should also involve:
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the creation of an unbiased thought.
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self-esteem and the premise of self-reliance in one’s thoughts.
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the idea to create something original that comes from internal thoughts and not external influences.
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the ability to justify and explain an originally composed opinion.