We took a few minutes to relax back into school. We did the Harper's Index. We had brief discussion of "The Killing Fields".

Yesterday and today we viewed and finished the "Killing Fields". We had some brief discussion about it.

I gave a portion of Jarhead to several students who requested it. We watched the first portion of "The Killing Fields". We stopped at a couple of points to clarify historical context.

We discussed current events. I told the class what we'd be doing for the rest of the week and gave some background on Cambodia which is the setting of "The Killing Fields" which we'll watch this week. We watched another short segment of "Faces of the Enemy".

Assignment: write a one page essay integrating one of the following sets of topics. Be sure to include opinions and synthesis.
Zinn's article, "On Killing", "Faces of the Enemy", war in Iraq, other war related topics.
OR Mechanical mirror / Organic Lamp, schooling vs. learning, John Taylor Gatto, drugs, media, Matt's philosophy of education, your own philosophy of education.

We talked more about schooling and learning.

We had some discussion about drugs and drug usage.

We had a few current events. Then we had a semi-discussion about schooling and the continuum of life-orientations: from organic lamp to mechanical mirror. I read almost the whole first chapter from an book called Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. For more, see his website.

Some current events talk. We almost finished "Faces of the Enemy."

assignment: read Howard Zinn handout

A bit of current events discussion. A bit of discussion about war, killing and distance. We almost finished "Faces of the Enemy".

We discussed some current events: the 6000 people who die each day for lack of clean drinking water, the pope's admonition to Bush to not go to war, the career diplomat's resignation in protest of the Bush administration's drive toward war.

We watched more of "Faces of the Enemy" and discussed it briefly.

Assignment: talk with family and friends about enemymaking, war, wars, holocausts.

We had some learning and discussion of the impending war with Iraq. We watched the first part of "Faces of the Enemy", an excellent video by Sam Keen about the process of making enemies out of people before we ever do violence against them. Propaganda, etc.

Assignment: read the handout about Iraq.

We continued our discussion from "The Merchants of Cool". I was terribly disappointed with the level of discussion.