Prospect Center

Our study will begin with recollections about unexpected capacities in ourselves, students, or colleagues. We'll place these stories and inquiries into our own practice alongside readings from Mike Rose's, The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker and Todd DeStigter's, Reflections of a Citizen Teacher: Literacy, Democracy, and the Forgotten Students of Addison High.

Our questions remain those that have shaped this inquiry for six years: How can education be democratic? How do we allow difference to be a vital part of the making and shaping of community? How do we trust, value, and build from what children and families bring? How do we preserve difference and imagination in the face of standardization? We'll also consider three questions posed by Rose: What set of ideas about intelligence should we develop and promote in a democratic society? What do our ideas about intelligence enable or restrict in education, in the economy, in social and political life? How do our ideas about human capacity map onto our foundational beliefs about the person?

As always, we will use the Prospect Descriptive Processes to support our work, to look with care at the works of children, teachers, and schools.

For information contact Elaine Avidon (eavidon @aol.com) or Andy Doan (andy.doan@calhoun.org)