Dana Linnell

This book, with the subtitle “Voices From the Conversation” is a collection of essays from a variety of people, not just those in education, on the subject of why we educate. This book was really helpful in narrowing my focus of my Senior Honors Project because at the beginning it asks: Why should we be educating? Why should we go about it in particular ways? What should we be doing instead and for what reasons and purposes? To which the book said: Make it a conversation, a discourse, a “they say, I say”. They claimed to have had a hard time coming up with worthwhile essays to include, stating that so many works on education were just “declarative statements of individual principle and opinion,” that repeated and reinforced “other voices expressing the same opinion rather than [serving] to advance a conversation.” So that’s my goal: to advance the conversation on what education children deserve.

The first essay really spoke to me. It was titled “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin. He said:

“The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.”

I hope to help in that change. I want to be the change that I want to see in the world. There are so many other great essays in the book, though, that I can’t help but implore that you, too, get the book. If you attend CSU Fullerton, you can check it out in our library.

This article appeared in The Teaching Professor after Professor Leblanc won a Seymous Schulich Award for Teaching Excellence including a $10,000 cash award. This original article was found here, reprinted on it with permission of Professor Leblanc, October 8, 1998.

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I wrote the following for submission to EdWeek. Fingers crossed for publication!

As a music education student in college, I often look back to my K-12 years of school and think about what teachers did or did not do that helped me love to learn and thrive in school. There were a few teachers that I had the pleasure of being taught by who made me enjoy going to school, enjoy the topic that before had seemed so boring, and enjoy the hard work that came with the class. I look at the classes I take now and see the complete difference between what makes me struggle with a three-page paper and write a twenty-page paper in a breeze: passion.

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This video is from TED2010. Adora is a brilliant young girl who has big ideas for the world.

The following are some highlight and some further thoughts regarding the Documentary Report on the Ann Arbor Symposium on the applications of Psychology to the Teaching and Learning of Music: Session III Motivation and Creativity by MENC. It was done, I believe, in 1982 so, while seemingly outdated, I feel a lot of the ideas are indeed still applicable.

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The following is a review/summary of the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

I had high hopes reading this book. Reading Blink again, I was reminded of the powerful message that just a glimpse can give. He had a positive message and had done a decent job showing both sides of the coin (having only a blink of information versus having too much). This book was completely different.

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The following is a summary of The Element that is part of my research towards my Senior Honors Project. It is written by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica.

Have you ever done something you’re good at that you absolutely enjoy doing? For me, it’s music. I am fairly good at it and it is so much fun to do. That, for me, is my Element. It is the meeting point between aptitude, the ability to do something, and passion, the love of doing something. Add on attitude, your personal perspective on yourself and circumstances, and opportunity, the chance opportunities you have or create and how and when you take them, and you can find yourself in a place where you feel at one with yourself, mind and body.

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