We & They Course: 2nd year

  I am very excited about what we have developed at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math & Science. For the second year, we have offered an elective to our seniors in the "Age of Budget Costs".  This year the course: “We and They: Globalization & the Human Condition Via Critical Dialogue and Service Learning” has been expanded into two sections of 31 students each.  My students and I are  critically thinking about the problems that people face abroad and at home and to break down the myths created by the “fictitious lines” (borders) that have shaped an economic globalized world where its peoples remain separated and divided.  Moreover, this division leads to the concept of “we” vs. “them” and isolation, indifference, conflict and war.  The students are also looking at how this division happens within our own borders and create regionalism, racism and a “we” vs. “them” attitude within our own country, state (Massachusetts) and city (Boston).  The following are some of the topics and materials that we discuss in this course that will guide the students into a global “conflict resolution” conversation:

·       De facto vs. de jure segregation: Mike Brown, Eric Garner & Jim Crow (Past & Present): Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

·      Genocide: Blinded Activism vs. Efficient Diplomacy: Rwanda, Darfur and how to prevent future genocides: Don Cheadle's Not on Our Watch & Hotel Rwanda.

·      Globalized Values & Morals: Tradition vs. Progress: Changing Roles of Women & the “Emergence” of Gay Marriage & the American & Russian Responses: Haifaa Al Mansour's Wadja (Documentary) and Historian Klaus Muller's Paragraph 175 (Documentary).

·      I-Toys & Globalization: Pros & Cons of Globalization & Multinational Factories: What dictates morals: supply or demand?

·      Power & the Psychology of Oppression: Oppressed and Oppressors: Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

·       Race, Social Class & Ethnicity: Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Brazil) & Black in Latin America Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided (Documentary, PBS; Dr. Henry Lewis Gates Jr.).

·      Terrorism & Counter Terrorism: The Ethics and the Economy of War & Zinn’s Cycle of Stupidity: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 9-11, War on Terror & Drones: Howard Zinn’s The Bomb, Unmanned: America's Drone War (Documentary, Brave New Films) & Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States (Documentary, Showtime).

·      Welfare Reform & the War on Poverty: Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America & Robert Reich's Inequality for All (Documentary). 

Every year the course will conclude (April Vacation or June) with a service learning trip, so students can put into practice a new form of activism that uses education to re-imagine and reshape our world.  The trip will involve working with the local community and where possible to build or renovate homes or a community center with the local Habitat for Humanity. The course also calls for local (within Boston) service learning, before and after the international or national service learning trip.  

The course also focus on teaching students how to fundraise, so all students regardless of socio-economic status can attend (students going to Santo Domingo will only pay $100 to $500 as off pocket expenses).

April 2015 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic