I’m in the middle of brainstorming with my teaching partner and we’ve been circling around this idea of cycles and how things seem to repeat themselves throughout history, regardless (ironically) of knowing the history in the first place. It all started with trying to build learning project that tied english composition (research) to African American literature. We came up with several ideas, most of which were rote thoughts we’d already done in one form or another. The idea of an integrative assignment is to take to seemingly disparate classes and show transfer of skills by unifying the two courses through a single assignment. It seems like a pretty good idea to take the next 10 minutes to sort some of it out…
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The quote was born out of the wild musings of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr and roughly translates into, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our thoughts swirled around the idea that you can match specific points in history with modern times and/or other specific points in history and see parallels. You can see parallels between the Women’s rights movement and the Gay Right’s movement. You can see parallel’s between the Harlem renaissance, and the emergence of the latin-american voice in the southwest. So, we are looking at the idea of doing this on a limited scale. We want students to be able to identify these parallels and draw connections between certain movements and situations throughout time to movements and situations in their own time. Plus ça change.
Some Thoughts:
- After watching Jon Oliver’s show last night, I feel a need to share (#mutuallyassuredhumiliation): I have occasion to look like a total idiot and be reminded of that. For example, when openly dissing Boston, as New Yorker’s are wont to do, I brought up that damned broken bell as part of my rant. I know the bell is in Philadelphia. It just fit the rant in some way–thus making me look the fool. Sometimes I step into such exposures fully on purpose like now when I find myself thinking and thus typing: What is up with Paul Frank and his crazy obsession with monkeys?
- While we are on the subject of such creatures, I saw an ape walk upright. He did it for a considerable amount of steps, leading me to believe that Bigfoot is probably an ape that was walking upright at the time–probably as a show of dominance as they are wont to do (sorta like New Yorker’s talking shit about Boston, but without the credibility shattering Liberty Bell references).