1. Finished reading Olds, L. E. (1992). Metaphors of interrelatedness : toward a systems theory of psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press. See mindmap below. Didn't like the writing, but some of the concepts were good.
2. Listened to: Thinking with Paulo Freire, 4-CD set on education, social change, authority, violence, motivation and liberation (spoken in English). It was extremely good and I particularly enjoyed Disk 2 and 3 (on education). I plan to listen to them again.
Paulo Freire (1921-1997), a Brazilian educator in exile, was a staff consultant with the Office of Education, World Council of Churches, Geneva, at the time of these recordings. Recorded during Paulo Friere's visit to Australia, 1974, for the ACC Commission on Christian Education.
Track Listing:
Disc 1. Christian faith and Marxism - Naive and shrewd Christians - Theology and liberation [75 minutes]
Disc 2. Education for liberation - Words and themes which 'open up' reality - Dehumanisation - generative theme? - Education motivation: role of
leadership - Praxis (action/reflection [76 minutes]
Disc 3. Education :authority and authoritarianism - Dialogue versus 'banking' education - Concientisation (critical awareness) - Violence - Class struggle
and illusions of neutrality [74 minutes]
Disc 4. The Church and the liberation of the oppressed - An adult literacy process [72 minutes]
3. Listened to Hawking, S. W. (1990). A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (Bantam trade paper ed.). New York: Bantam Books. It was about 6 hours and difficult material. The really good news is that my husband was with me and listening also (while we were driving to Death Valley) so he could explain - he has a PhD in EE and had to take physics.
4. Watched BLUE EYED by Jane Elliott, the original version and the debriefing. It was about 2 hours of video. Also read the training notes (word) that comes with the disk. Here's the description of the video per the website:
In BLUE-EYED, we join a group of 40 teachers, police, school administrators and social workers in Kansas City - blacks, Hispanics, whites, women and men. The blue-eyed members are subjected to pseudo-scientific explanations of their inferiority, culturally biased IQ tests and blatant discrimination. In just a few hours under Elliott's withering regime, we watch grown professionals become despondent and distracted, stumbling over the simplest commands.
5. Started reading Jantsch, E. (1980). The self-organizing universe : scientific and human implications of the emerging paradigm of evolution. Oxford ; New York: Pergamon Press. Very well written but really difficult material for me (the mathematics). Again, with my husband's help I was understanding the math somewhat, but I fear I need an entire class in college (probably in operations research/math) to really understand this book. I decided to wait on this one since it was taking about 1/2 hour per page.
6. Started reading Capra, F. (1983). The turning point : science, society, and the rising culture. Toronto New York: Bantam Books. Hope to finish this book this weekend.
7. This week, I finished the last changes to my final indepth paper on the Digital Divide for the KA on SID based on the feedback from Yolanda. I'm done. Yeah!
