Margins
  Donovan A. Landers

THE SPECTACLE OF TUNE

The droning drone pipes
Of this clean-kilted, gray-haired band
In a loud ellipse cry--
A melancholic passing?
A Scottish war-shout?--
As drums boom-little
And boom-big
And ratatatatata                full text >>>

Experiential Education and its Potential as a Vehicle for Social Change
  Mary Breunig

At the most recent annual conference of the Association for Experiential Education (AEE), a significant number of conference workshops and conversations addressed the topic of experiential education and its potential as a vehicle for social change. As a result, I felt impelled to revisit the philosophical roots of experiential education to remind myself of why it is that experiential education has identified social change as one of the intended aims of its practice. My discussion of both the philosophy of experiential education and its modern day principles and practices will reveal that experiential education is rooted in the educational ideal of social change. One of the limitations of this paper, however, is that it will provide only an overview of some of these principles and practices. The purpose of this overview is, in essence, for the reader to review and then independently examine how well experiential educators are doing at fulfilling the intended aim of social change.     full text >>>

The Benefits of Comedy: Teaching Ethics with Shared Laughter
  Christine A. James

For three years I have been teaching an unusual class providing an academic background in ethical and social and political theory using the medium of comedy. I have taught the class at two schools, a private liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania and a public regional state university in southern Georgia. While the schools vary widely in a number of ways, there are characteristics that the students share: the school in Pennsylvania had a large population of students raised in a middle class industrial context, and the school in Georgia had a majority of students from middle-to-lower class agricultural backgrounds. Because of recent economy isues in each area, both groups of students were in similarly dire economic and working conditions. All faced the distinct possibility that they would not do as well in life as their parents. Most of the students grew up with television and film and had a love of comedy when they arrived at college.

I elaborate on the value of comedy as a teaching tool and provide a number of examples, showing how comedy can provide fertile examples of ethical theory at work, and I will show how comedy can be used to clarify cultural norms and values. Finally, I will discuss the political activism and student empowerment involved in teaching Philosophy, Comedy and Film in southern Georgia.     full text >>>