Teaching and Learning from Mitt Romney’s Act of Courage Over Party

Cathy Davidson

I hope all over America people today are publicly admiring Mitt Romney for speaking out even as the right wing is vilifying him. What does it mean that telling the truth and refusing to be governed by lies makes you hated? What courage does it take to speak up against corruption and collusion when everyone else you know is publicly swearing–after taking an oath of office–that these things do not exist? How many of us ever do, ever can, in situations where we know in advance how much it will cost us among those we care for most?

Doing this publicly as an insider, not a disempowered outsider, comes with particularly complex and egregious forms of alienation from one’s peers, one’s supporters, one’s friends, family, associates. Especially when you know in advance (you’ve seen it from inside) that you will be so professionally, carefully, repeatedly, and consistently vilified that, when the day is over, you will be made to seem like a traitor, a jealous and spiteful little person, a nothing as evil and small as the person you condemn. I must admit, I never thought Mitt had it in him.

I’m glad I’m teaching today. There’s a lot to learn.

TODAY’S SYLLABUS IN “INTRODUCTION TO ENGAGED TEACHING AND TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING IN THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES,” team-taught with Prof Eduardo Vianna

Feb 6: 

Overview of progressive pedagogy as social justice;  culturally-relevant pedagogies

Texts:

  • Vianna, E., Hougaard, N. & Stetsenko, A. (2014). “The Dialectics of Collective and Individual Transformation: Transformative Activist Research in a Collaborative Learning Community Project.” In A. Blunden Ed.), Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study. Boston, MA: Brill Academic Publishers.

  • Cathy N. Davidson, Introduction, The New Education (1-15)

  • bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress,  Introduction” and “Engaged Pedagogy” (pp. 1-11)

  • Selections from Sarah Ahmed, “Conclusion: A Killjoy Survival Kit” and “A Killjoy Manifesto” from Living a Feminist Life

 

Active Learning/Radical Pedagogy Activity Method: Entry Ticket/Resource Crowdsourcing

  • Entry Tickets: Collaborative Resource Building. 

    • “What are the three most meaningful, relevant texts in your life?” (i.e., Imagine: the “house of learning is burning . . . what three texts would you grab as you fled the house? what would you fight to preserve, to keep, to sustain you, to pass on?”)    

 

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