CRES010

Description

Section information text: "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful," writes Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai in her book I Am Malala. The power of the university classroom exists in its embrace of multiple perspectives, allowing the voiceless to speak and, more importantly, be heard. This interdisciplinary course explores what it means to be a higher-education learner in the United States. After closely examining the concepts of "higher" and "education" to begin with, we will begin a semester-long process of personal narrative building and sharing, framed by strategies from reading (and accessing) scholarly writing to navigating social life and perspectives that may challenge our worldviews along the way. Drawing further on creative approaches to the self, we will work together to: 1) unpack our individual and collective identities, recognizing that sameness can be found through difference and vice versa; 2) scrutinize the structure and history of North American education and its competing political agendas; and 3) provide an opportunity to explore the histories between our home countries (wherever we perceive those to be) and the United States. Multimedia engagement and constructive dialogue will be the focal points of our learning process, all while building a critical toolkit to define personal philosophies and values. In this model, knowledge is not something to be handed down from above but rather nurtured from within.