Institution: Hartwick College
Discipline: Sociology / First Year Seminar
Title: Children's Lives
Instructor: Katherine O'Donnell
Sociology 150
First Year Seminar: Children's Lives
Katherine O'Donnell
Arnold 31
431-4894
Email: O_DonnellK
"A nation's politics becomes a child's everyday psychology."
-Robert Coles
"Democracy is not a spectator sport."
-Marion Wright Edelman
Overview
This course is about something that we have all experienced childhood. Although for many of us childhood was a time of fun and frogs, it is also a time of learning about constraints, rules, suffering, and loss. Children know and understand more than they can verbally express. I am often humbled by my child's wisdom and clarity of vision.
I have chosen to focus on children for several different reasons:
1) Looking at our childhoods is one way to understand the roots of the values we use implicitly or explicitly to guide and evaluate our actions. This course is
designed to identify, analyze, and evaluate the choices we make based on our value systems. This examination occurs on personal, national, and global
levels.
2) It is also a goal of this course to raise our consciousness about the state of the world's children. By doing so, we bring Hartwick into the world and create a
factual basis for action.
3) This course also raises many ethical questions, a principal one being, "Is it humane to treat children unfairly?"
4) Through readings, films, speakers, workshops, and community work, this course will allow us to identify problems relating to children and suggest possible
solutions.
5) Finally, I trust that this seminar will empower us to work effectively and co operatively with one another to transform our communities and how they treat
children.
In addition to being a rigorously analytic course, this seminar is also an emotional one. The topic of children in and of itself pulls at our heartstrings. Sharing our experiences (and I recognize that this is a risk that some of us are not ready to take particularly in a classroom context) makes us vulnerable. Commitment to beliefs and actions also puts us in the position of aligning with or against various people. This can be threatening. Cooperative work in groups entails openness, sharing, recognizing and resolving conflicts, commitment to group actions, responsibility, willingness to listen, equitable division of labor. Because of those aspects of our classroom, we will have to work hard to build an atmosphere in which it is O.K. to try new things, to take stances, and to share ideas. I am one of you in this process; it is not my role to be mother or police officer. I see myself as a guide, mentor, and midwife. We will be creating together and confronting ambiguity, tension, failure, and success.
Because First Year Seminars are designed to emphasize student responsibility, you will make choices on grading, group project actions, topics, research, and readings.
Texts
Scheper Hughes. Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood. Children's Defense Fund
Eder. State of America's Children Yearbook (CDF). Canada Human Rights Watch
School Talk. Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun
Fingers to the Bone: U.S. Failure to Protect Child Farmworkers.
Other readings will be given to you as handouts. You will consult the UNICEF (1998) The State of the World's Children, on the web.
Evaluation
Community Action
You will be graded on a group basis for your community work. Work will consist of library research, written and oral reports, and community action work. Community service should add up to 21 hours (1 1/2 hrs. per week) for the term, and includes your group meetings, any training you receive, and hours on site. Both you and the site supervisor need to keep records.
You may choose to work on any of the following topics or suggest an alternative. I will try and match your topical interest with a local or campus organization. You may also reach out to national or international organizations and create your own community action groups.
Health and Hunger
Homelessness
Class Inequality/Poverty
Ending Violence Against Kids
Media & Kids
Ecology
War and Kids
Moral Development
Race and Ethnicity
Global South/overexploitation
Spirituality
Gender
One or more groups may choose to work on the Madre, "Helping Hands Campaign," to collect material necessities for children in Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. In addition, groups may do fundraising for shipping costs, campus awareness activities, film showings with admission/contribution~1641 medical supplies, and eyeglasses acquisition. The best group size is 4 5 students. This component of your grade should be weighted the most as it entails the most work. You are graded on your analysis of and reflection on issues in your service site as they relate to the readings and analysis presented in class and through readings (30% group grade).
Papers
During the term you will do graded and ungraded papers ranging from letters to analysis papers. You will work up drafts in and out of class. For graded papers, references must be noted, and authors' quotes documented. Paraphrased texts must also have formal citations. Failure to do this constitutes plagiarism. Formal papers each 20 %. Individual grade
Attendance
We will discuss these issues in class the first week. I will give you individual participation grades. Should you choose to miss a significant number of classes, I will ask you to drop the class. Excessive absences that are unexplained result in a failing grade. Attendance is also required for your praxis group meetings and other activities/service developed or arranged by your group. Maximum 2 excused, missed classes.
Participation
Our class time is devoted to making connections between readings, our community work, world politics, and our lives. Here, we share and contest views, ask questions, seek answers, laugh, and sometimes cry. Some people are more comfortable talking in class; others prefer writing, journals, or emailing. All of these are fine. I normally grade participation in all its different forms. 10% individual grade.
Course Schedule
I. Sept. 4-11
What are we doing here? Our responsibilities Goal setting and critical thinking.
Readings: Wright Edelman "If the Child is Safe"
Hooks "Pedagogy and Political Commitment"
Baez "Message to the Next Generation"
Coles" I Listen to my Parents and I Wonder What They Believe" (handout)
Coles Chap. I in Political Life of Children
Scheper Hughes, Introduction
1) assignments write statement of personal goals, course goals
2) write letter to next generation
3) in class discuss full value contract ground rules for class discussion
4) create community action groups
5) discuss grading policy and weighting of projects
6) video: Interview with Robert Coles
II. Sept. 11 – Oct. 9
Mary Krekorian, Trustee Center, Community Work Discussion; commit to community action groups
How kids see their worlds perceiving, knowing, believing and valuing.
Violence in Kids' Lives identifying prejudice; comparative reasoning, problem solving.
Readings: Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun (will distribute discussion questions)
CDF Chapter 6
1996 UNICEF "Children in War" I choose between this one and the next 2
Coles Political Life "Northern Ireland"
Olujic "War and Its Aftermath in Croatia" in Scheper Hughes
Video: "If the Mango Tree Could Speak"
Discuss the impact of violence on children's' lives. What social structural dimensions of your childhood experience paralleled the violence experienced or exempted you from these forms of violence? Use Canada, video, and CDF, and Coles, UNICEF, or Olujic. 5 pages typed. Due OCT 16
III. Oct. 11 – Oct. 18
Equal Opportunity? Poverty, Racism and Children identifying prejudice, solving problems, evaluating alternatives, language as a tool and weapon.
Readings: State of America's Children Yearbook 1998(CDF)
Sklar "Mothers 'n The Hood"
Videos: "Hard Scrabble Childhood"
"Babar"
"Hoop Dreams"
IV. Oct. 25 – Nov. 13
Global Realities and the Impact on Children Identifying objective conditions, looking at problems and solutions.
Readings: (on web) UNICEF Report State of the World's Children
Goldstein "Nothing Bad Intended: Survival in a Shantytown in Rio, Brazil"
Scheper Hughes "Brazilian Apartheid"
Guttman "Marnitis and the Trauma of Development in a Colonia Popular of Mexico City" in Scheper Hughes Whiteford"
Children's Health as Accumulated Capital: Structural Adjustment in the Dominican Republic and Cuba" in Scheper Hughes
HRW "Fingers to the Bone"
Video: Lost Futures The Problem of Child Labor"
Guest Speaker Professor Lori Collins Hall Sociology Dept. "Impact of Family Violence on Kids"
Compare and contrast the U.S., Thailand, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, and Sweden: infant mortality rate, life expectancy, percent of children suffering
from malnutrition, percent of population with access to health services, adult literacy rate, percent of population below absolute poverty level, female life expectancy, female adult literacy as percent of males'.
V. Dec. 6
How does poverty affect kids? How do race and ethnicity intersect with class? (Child labor)Discuss poverty in the US and 3rd World.
What do Edelman, Small Wars authors, and UNICEF suggest we do?
Discuss relevant observations from your community work. 5 pages. Due NOV 20
Readings: Eder, School Talk (will distribute orientation questions)
Sargent, "Bad Boys and Good Girls Gender Ideology in Jamaica" in Scheper-Hughes
How does gender affect kids? How do class, race and ethnicity intersect with gender?
Discuss relevant observations from your community work site. 5 pages. Due DEC 10
Where do we go from Here? Justice, Equity, and Public Policy Constructing arguments; evaluation.
Articles/readings chosen by class.
Possibilities include: UNICEF Report "Agenda for a New Order" Sidel "Toward a More Caring Society" Prepare group oral presentations for Final Exam Period. (See handout for participation evaluation and oral presentation grading criteria)
Complete written Community Action Report. The report will use the problem solving model developed in class and apply it to the group's topic. The report will also contain a personal reflection component where each student locates him/herself relative to the issue, a self and group evaluation section, and a formal reference section. (See handout for grade criteria and organization). Due at final period. Minimally 15 pages.
