Courses R Us

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind

 of thinking we used when we created them."

COURSE
 

     syllabus (contract) 
* lecture-to-discussion ratios 
* attendance policy 
* reading and writing assignments 
  (texts, term & semester papers) 
* quizzes and examination policy 
* deadline policy (late penalties) 
* presentation/poster policies 
* assessment and evaluation policy 
* diagnosed learning disability policy  

What're you majoring in?
 
COURSE.
 
Course?
 
Yes: COURSE, of course: I've  been
majoring in COURSE all my life. I'm
good at it.
 
What's COURSE?
 
The shape of anything you take.
COURSE is the structure, the media
of hire education: its delivery system, form
& formulator, package packaging, box-boxing,
parts-parceler: one sizing fits all the deep grammar
of institutionalized learning.
 
Token topics may differ, sure: we celebrate
diversity; but  assembly-line structure remains
the same: 
 
syllabi-determinating textual harrassmental,
quizzes and exams to  encourage if not force
the issue; paper-writing  of  course research to
compare, contrast, generalize, specify, maybe

abduct if you're  agile & can get away with it;

in-class contact time to profess & educe & put

into play the nature  and  constraints of its
content matter could be art history, maybe
women's  studies, chemistry, statistics,

Buddhism, Age of  Enlightenment,  Global
Economics, Environmental Policy, Intro to

Clawhammer  Banjo: Transcendentalists &
Romantics… whatever.
 
This is how-it's-done delivered, processed.
Always has been. Don't let your soon-forgotten
bottom line, subject-object matter & all the
seeming variety of educational experience occlude
the deep ecological significance of The Structure
Which Mediates:   box boxing possibilities and
sustain-abilities and determining the tolerances
which permit your margins of error
& rooms for play.
 
Course is what we walk away with—the invisible
work program that flies in the night right thru grad
school if we  pursue higher hire degrees just like
college which is just like high school—more SAME
than Different. But that's what we sustain and are
sustained by: sustaining & sustainable courses
our sustainabilities. Courses-R-Us.