Development & Syllabus

The first of the two articles I read for this week, "Erikson's Development Stages," is a brief based upon a longer worker found in Patient Teaching. Several developmental "needs" are identified as they correspond with various stages, including the following: "Infant," "Toddler," "Preschooler," "School-Age Child," "Adolescent," "Young Adult," "Middle-Age Adult," and "Older Adult." The author argues that if the particular need isn't met, then the person will carry a certain degree of baggage through life. As this relates to the average programming at Merry Lea, the "School-Age Child" is working out "a sense of self-worth by refining skills." How excellent that the Farmcraft program allows these students to refine certain skills in a hands-on way. It's something to keep in mind for other programs and for our teachings: how can we allow these children to refine skills and develop self worth?

The other article I read was called, "Death to the Syllabus!". The author compares a syllabus to a legal contract, and even goes as far as saying that a syllabus is "something that might be handed to a prisoner on the first day of incarceration." He suggests that syllabi have a systematic role and detract from actual teaching. Overall, while I think that syllabi can be made more friendly, I also think that they are supposed to be systematic: as a student I highly value knowing exactly what I'm going to do in each class period, and know exactly when an assignment is due and how much each of those assignments are worth. And while I can understand tenured faculty having an ability to teach constructivist classrooms, I don't think adjunct faculty should be able to toss aside syllabi. Without a syllabus, how can a University be sure that the students in one PHI 100 class are meeting similar learning objectives to students in another PHI 100 class?