Letter to Social Foundations of Education Professor

Professor Johnson -

I would like to meet with you tomorrow before class to discuss the peculiar educational challenges I am running into with your course and perhaps come to a mutually-ameliorable agreement about how to tackle them. Your regular office hours should be fine, especially if you would be wiling to allot the entire hour to the proceedings if it becomes clear that it will be necessary; I hope however, to take far less of your time than that. I offer below a brief description of the problem, that you may begin to consider it; if it seems to you our meeting will run long, please feel free to phone me into the office earlier at the number to follow.

In brief, I come to this class from the intellectual heritage of New College of Florida. As such, I find it terribly difficult to do even the smallest reading or writing assignment in a cursory fashion. Where this turns into a difficulty is that NCF raised the minimum bar so high for me that I have no concept of how to get the quantity of writing assignments expected of me done. I am flabbergasted as to how, for example, to skim the material, get a grasp on the ideas, and post a quick one-paragraph summary. I am unable to dedicate less than my full attention to the text, and as such I can treat it as a student might only through the lens of a scholar learning from and responding to a text. Examine any of my posts for evidence of this; I'm not showing off, I simply cannot do less without feeling disingenuous to my own education.

To make matters worse for this particular course, one of the consistent strains in my studies at New College was educational theory, so I'm familiar with conservative, progressive, and radical educational theories from the ancients through the oughts. We are being asked to read, analyze, and respond to between 50 and 150 pages of text per week on top of whatever other classes I'm taking. I was reading this much at New College, but the expectations for output were less often and more focused. You can, I'm sure, see my dilemma.

Thank you for your consideration, and if I do not hear from you sooner I will see you at 1230h in COQ 236D.


Unaluminally,


Joe McCue