Memo from Mary Ellen Hillaire to the faculty team about the Symbolization: The Emerging Individual course, 1979

Item

Title

Memo from Mary Ellen Hillaire to the faculty team about the Symbolization: The Emerging Individual course, 1979

Date

1979

extracted text

SYNI ·OLIZATION: The '~merging Individual
NATIVE AMERICAJ< STUDIES 1978-79
Aprii 24: 19;79~
To:

The Faculty Team

From:

Mary Ellen Hillaire

SUBJECT:

Cultural Integrity
Teacher Modeling

(position)
(role)

Given the fact that NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES is an alternative education model the
the direction and determ.ination of what isworth knowing and what is worthy of knowing
require different and differing content, learning strategies,timing and reflection
defined in process learning designed in episodes of self discovery developed in
in responsible composition of important human rela~ionships. through invitation and in
open hospitality.
OBJECTIVES: Participants will learn to LISTEN, PERFORM, QUESTION and SYMBOLIZE.
1.
Design learning opportunities developed in a working and workable education
partnership between the Student, his/her community and the college to provide the
means for self discovery focused toward a symthesis of self actualization and
individualized contribution to community."
2.
Expand self .understanding (independence) to promote human commitment to an
identifiable SELF (who -knows who he/she is, is inalienable,sheltered and fed by the
words and work of a people until the whole is expressed again) who can take the risk
of fo~ing abiding and unquestioning ties with community where the individual can
through his chosen life situation be free . to question.

3.
Develop important human relationship designed to deal with the emergence of a
\_/ world community in a process citizenship where the future (the promised land) is now
and we must promote the understanding that you will receive or enjoy only that which
you are able to provide for others. If a good life for you demands freedom, or order,
or justice you must provide these life forces for others so in return you might enjoy
them.

4. To develop the skill of self reflection· as a process evaluative system designed
into the learning Situation (accountability) addressing these questions: 1. What am I
going to do? 2. How am I going to do it? 3. What will I learn? and 4. What difference will it make? Some one said and I do not know who, however, I feel the reason for
the statement and I want to end these education objectives with it "We have learned
the answers, all the answers; It is the question that we do not know." ·
Programs in NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES weaves in and out of the content of many disciplines
(making it inter-disciplinary) a positive means of stimulating the learners to think the
same idea through from the viewpoints of different authorities and from the viewpoint
of different areas of development. Faculty and students may use the idea, thoughts,
concepts and experiences developed in NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES intermittently through
out their personal development and professional practice (open exit open entry) a
learning process that requires the understanding of change as an open challenge to
real stability •
. The key learning is conversational dynamics (talk) in selected human relationships
that provide the broadest range of possibilities (alternative learning situations)
from which one can finalize an education outcome to promote further inquiry relative to
the quality of understanding. This type of human exchange (diagnostic teaching) is used
to assist learners to express what they know and understand toward such time as they
would have reason to communicate their views, opinions and judgmen~s to others.
The major OUT-COME to provide a method especially valuable to people who are moving
OVER

V

through important human relationships in a time of uncertain transition. To provide
opportunity for learners to set ultimate goals where stoppages have required us to
readjust or make difficult decisions with multi directed and determined change. The
programs of NATIVE AHERICAN STUDIES play an active role in reconstructing ones life, but
it does so without imposing any external categories or interpretations or theories on
th!! particular objectives individual students select to develop. To be of best advantage
to individual student each program must remain OPEN-ENDED so as to maintain the cultural
integrity (individualized ways of thinking and acting) of each person's development
while drawing each into community along the boundries of unique life styles.
To bring this into the correct relationship let; me use words from two poems by
Mr. & Mrs. Nelson Bentley:
First from a poem titled LEWIS HILLAIRE In Hemoriam Autum 1963
What does it mean?
Does he see behind
as well as before?
We only do
what our fathers did.
We only know what our fathers knew
Now from a poem titled THE LUMMI RESERVATION
In primitive rapture the intellect takes shape
Blake saw poetic genius in the Holy Ghost.
And Roethke's cry, Whitman's barbaric yawp,
Whtkins with Taliesin on the Welsh coast,
Cununings in mountains of eternal now,
are astonished as Job: "Now my ~ye sees Thee",
Those Animals came from the WHIRLlHND, HILLAIRE
Fresh with the vision that sees everywhere.

Media

1973-86_NAS_8D38_02_20