The idea is to take a random object that is utterly familiar but considered unimportant and use it as an object of learning, finding the connections between that object and ourselves. (Reminds me of Marx's question in Volume One of Capital about how two objects can be made commensurable.)
Step one is just to take the bag and answer the question: What do you see? This step requires time and care, it should be detailed and very specific, a close description, a close reading.
cool as a motive for learning is about emulation
emulation is about equality: to equal or excel, and it presumes equality as the starting point -- the diff btw learner and object of emulation is application, not inequality... learning is the application of equality...
NEEDS WORK!!!!! LOST TEXT
Adapted from "Broken Squares": Preparing Students for Group Work, from Practicing Collaborative Learning, Maryann Feola Castelucci and Peter Miller, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Dept of English, Speech and World Literature, Winter 1986
[write up activity in context: how to develop group building skills when collaboration, participation, equality are your priorities, this is deep work, but can be very useful]
Summary:
By Matt Noyes; the cuento vivo technique on which this is based comes from Alforja, Tomo I.
Summary:
Just like the parliamentary procedure that most unions use, in one form or another, an alternative democratic procedure for making decisions needs to be learned and practiced before it becomes efficient. Using a "Cuento Vivo" (live story) technique, this activity has people act out a scene from a union meeting using consensus instead of voting. The scripted parts help people practice the technique and shows how the procedure is designed to work.
Materials:
This is not an activity -- it is more of a comment.
One of the biggest obstacles to popular education as it is typically practiced in the US labor movement, and one of the biggest distortions of the method, is the limitation of popular education one-off workshops or conferences, with no continuity. The most famous models of popular education -- from the Sea Islands of South Carolina to the base community organizations in Brazil -- would be inconceivable on such a foundation. Those projects lasted years, not hours.
For this activity, rather than an example of using the activity, I want to provide "talking points" and questions I might use to orient myself before facilitating this activity. These are not notes for a lecture I would give. They are not the right answers that I am looking for, they are just to help me clarify my own thoughts. They may help you do the same. But you will need to clarify your own ideas.
On the three points of the triangle:
intro - explain pbl format
Round One
In an English as a Second Language class for immigrant workers, Ramona is sitting in the back of the classroom, talking excitedly in Spanish with the person next to her. Standing at the front of the class, Matt is frustrated and curious.
[In which some knowledgeable, highly respected labor educator sings the praises of this handbook and notes its unique contribution.
Elaine Bernard, Nadia Marin, Jerome Scott?]
