April 22, 1980
# 3
Today involved the making of the SP Mystery Play, starring, the Spring '80 Community Classroom. The idea behind this play is that by witnessing the play, we as a community, can learn collectively about mystery. Mystery is the bridge which connects the spiritual and physical worlds. When a person is born, he is born into the physical world (intimidation forces, interior dialog, etc.). When he dies, he leaves the physical and enters the spiritual; he is reborn. This rebirth could be in our world (reincarnation), or in another world (future, past).
Whatever it may be, this awareness of the difference between the physical and spiritual is maximum at a very early age in life (8-9 yrs. old). Could this be a reason why young children are found to be psychically more perceptive than adults? This an interesting topic which lured me into reading a book written by a psychic named Uri Geller. In this book, the "man who can bend spoons with his mind", told of the acute perceptiveness of children.
We learn about mystery through collective learning. It must be. For one to learn about life and it's functions, he must have others from which he can learn. This is why the class, as a whole, is taking part in this project. We must witness and learn.
As professor James stated, it is the setting that induces speech. So, if we just let ourselves go, our words should come automatically, assuming that we have made a setting. He also said "spontaneity equals maximum control". I guess he means that if a situation is spontaneous, people involved should have maximum control over themselves. However it is, I feel that this statement is an ambiguous one. If a person says things spontaneously, many times he may not have control over what he is saying and ends up in trouble.
April 24, 1980
#3
Community management techniques are essential in order to improve community building. Professor James discussed with the class, the three stages of Community Building. The first stage is the Initial stage where a person is primitive in regards to the Community Building concept. Competition is found in every aspect of life, in this stage. The effect of competition on people is anxiety, envy, hostility, anger, etc.; things
that may inhibit community building. The second stage is the Advanced stage . An example of this would be our community classroom where we learn collectively and not competitively. Learning with others and from others without the "barrier" of' competition seems obviously more conducive to learning than being by yourself with the opposing forces of competition. This advanced idea requires several people at a time and, therefore, is considered to be community building. The third stage is the Professionalized stage where one goes beyond the is advanced stage, and the collective -reward system, to the stage of peer objectivity and idealization. Things you learn and write should be annotated or criticized by your peers or classmates. This, no matter how good or bad the remarks, should be looked at objectively and taken as a stepping stone to perfection, or somewhere near it. An example of this stage is the process of giving consensus to your quartile member' s work file. Each member of your quartile group should professionally (objectively) criticize your work file. Then you, as a professional student, should make corrections or additions to your file .
In the panel discussion with professor James, Charles White, a class member, said that their group was professional in some projects but not in others. I feel that either on- is professional or one is not. If a person is professional, he will ultimately undertake the professionalization process, improving his work and helping others to do the same through objectivity and actualization I feel that the panel discussion served it's purpose which was to give the professor feedback, from the class, about the three steps to Community Building and, of courses to make sure that everyone understands the concepts involved.
APR 29, 1980
Eryle 0kamura #3
This Lecture was about being immersed in a culture. Professor James gave us an analogy for the relation between an SW, social behaviors, and culture: "Sponges (social behaviors) are immersed in water colors (culture) and the SW is the reporter who is watching this. This is true in any culture where the SW is aware of social behaviors in which the culture is the basis of all of this. It is your culture which determines your social behavior The culture also makes possible the Community Daily Round. According to Dr. James, the Community Daily Round furnishes the means for collective evolution which has a spiritual goal. The SW provides society with a cognitive map for the Daily Round. The SW is therefore, the essential component of community awakening", This is what was in the classrooms are trying to do when we do Money Thoughts projects and Intimidation projects. Because these projects show what goes on in our daily round and because these are documented, the community can easily realize, from observing these documents that is going on in their daily round. Social psychology trains people to be aware of social forces, and therefore, trains people to be good SW's.
The SW buttons were also passed out on this lecture. It was a good surprise for everyone, but more important it serves two constructive purposes. First, it helps you to understand what you've learned , more. This is so because it takes practice to tell people what you've learned. Second, it might excite some other student into signing up for Psychology 222.
Lastly, we got into our quartile groups to discuss our work files. Our group discussed the discharge report and the completion of the files. We planned out how we should go about getting everyone's consensus by Thursday. One student in our group ,Bart Asato, already had his file ready. I read his file and learned from it. For example, there are some idiosyncrasies about the work file list, like, the class card and the Special Report B. Both of these are not needed in the file. Also, for next semester, there should be due dates and dates when quizzes were taken. I'm sure that I wasn't tile only one that had a "heck" of' a time getting those due dates straight. Also, it's hard to tell what quiz you have and don't have.
May 1, 1980
#3
Well, the semester is finally coming to a close, and since this will be one of my last DFF's, I would like to make a few concluding remarks about this semester's community classroom. First of all, Dr. James summarized the discharge reports reporting that the students said that they learned new terms, were more aware and therefore, had more control over social forces. I believe (from listening to students and reading their reports) that they try to write something which is positive and will please
the professor. However, although they wrote a bit "over-their-heads", I agree with Dr. James when he says that the improvement of the DFF's is some evidence that, indeed, some learning is done Even though a person did not want to do the work, if he did it, he automatically learns something from what he wrote, either consciously or unconsciously.
Dr. James presented to us, a map of collective evolution and the mining of community resources. As we look at the first jump from the animal world, man has taken on external communication which is a community resource for external dialog. Then through intentionality, which suggests a way that man intends something to be, man took on praying to gods and so forth, which was an abundant resource for interior dialog. Law became the next resource for written discourse. As these resources were passed on to people with the knowledge of all of this, or generationality, objective interior dialog came to be, with science as it's resource. This is objective reasoning. Then ,we come to present day SW data and biography in which daily life tracking is involved. The final end of organicity is a difficult matter to perceive because I feel that I am entrenched in a competitive environment where too much individuality and selfishness cannot lead to full participation and thinking without words. I feel that this competition
inside of us is what we cannot expel. There is competition in everything we do in our daily round. That is why the class does not understand that there is no such thing as laziness when doing the work files. Too much of the "grades" part of the files is in the minds of the students so that they cannot pick out what is educationally relevant.
May 6, 1980
#3
May 1st has passed signaling the "two minute warning" before the end of the semester. For me, this semester was a very constructive one in that I learned a lot about myself and my relationships with others. I haven't accomplished everything I said I was in the progress report. Although my intentions to do those things were with me at the time of the writhing, I wasn't disciplined enough to carry them out. At least I know that there is something I have to work on. To slowly rap-up the semester, Dr. James designed an interview involving, other than himself, three students each answering three different questions concerning community classroom.
The first student was Alma Knauff, and she attempted to answer, "Is it worth it? and Is it a lot of work?". She said that the class was worth taking because she was able to use the skills and knowledge gained in the class. She is now able to govern her environment better, write better, and able to see social interactions. She said, however, that students had too much writing to do. According to her, and comments from other students, there is difficulty annotating other students work at the same time doing their own work, Interestingly, Dr. James responded quickly with some statistics on the number of hours used per 3 credit course. Comparing statistics of a regular class, community classroom, and the official records, community classroom took the least number of hours, by far. I feel it's the amount of time spent outside of class combined with the amount of work required of the class that makes the work seem like a lot.
#3
The class period today was a very active one, full of emotions and forces. I'm sure that a lot of students will write, on their DFF's, about the panel discussion, and the forces which emerged from this one situation. The topic of conversation was the results of the consensus of students files. Ranger and R.J. led most of the panel side of the discussion while Dr. James and the students led the other side.
What must be understood, first of all, is that there was, in facts miscommunication between students and teachers/advisors. Secondly, any student attending this university should have certain scholastic abilities. Therefore, I feel that Dr. James should not be blamed and exploited because of his failure to communicate from his side. Rather, I strongly feel that the students should take half of the responsibility for the outcomes because they did not come from their side to communicate their problem. I means the students should naturally inquire about anything not clear to them. If they were any kind of a students they would have asked until they were satisfied, rather than asking once and dropping the issue even though they still don't know what to do. One student even asked what the requirements for an "A" was; this should already been known to everyone. Therefore, I feel that the extension should never have been given.
The professor was very upset and hurt by this flogging of faults by his students. My theory is, that the students did not know the affect, of what they were saying, on other people, like the professor. They did not realize that their . Opinions of the mess-up was not constructive at all. It only became obvious to them after the professor said "I'm hurt".
Overall, I was surprised that only 2 teams met the deadline. My team
failed to make it because two members on the team failed to bring the files up to an
acceptable percentage. Actually, the group can do only so much to help an individual, the
individual must also help himself. This is what I thought about while sitting on the
panel. I felt intimidated at first but was later able to control this by concentrating on
the discussion and aiming my thought processes toward the subject matter. These must be
very trying times for the professors but also, this is part of community classroom
data.