Course Description

The first course of a two-semester sequence on philosophy and methodology of education. The discussion-intensive format requires that student-teachers relate the material to their own classroom experience. The course surveys educational thought from Plato's Meno and Sophocles' Philoctetes to the Dewey-Hutchins debate. Among the topics covered are the Socratic method, discipline, the origins of liberal education, and Progressive education. Readings include: Augustine, On the Teacher; Montagine, "On the Education of Children"; Rousseau from Emile; Jefferson, University of Virginia Report; Montessori, The Montessori Method.

Course Description

Biologists have categorized and described over four million species.  Why are there so many species?  How are they organized?  How do they interact with each other?  This course begins with the ancient Greek view of organization, which connects living things in a great chain of being.   Species, and then organisms, seem to become independent as the course continues through genetics and evolution to modern theories of molecular biology and the origin of life.  Finally, in the science of ecology, the interactions of species reemerge, not as a chain, but as an interdependent web or network. Original source readings include works by Darwin, Lamarck, Mendel, Margulis, and Schrodinger.