Intensive Learning @ MFS
The World At Your Fingertips
This Intensive Learning taught me a lot about the Camden community. Moving forward with my volunteer time going back to Camden is a good possibility. I really enjoyed volunteering at the soup kitchen and seeing all the grateful people and how happy someone can be, despite being in the position they are. I would...
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Today we woke up early to practice an energizing vinyasa flow. As part of the last practice we were encouraged for one song to let go of everything and to be free as we danced around the room. Afterwards we headed to breakfast to enjoy our last meal together, homemade yogurt and grains and...
Continue readingWe have finished a wonderful week of intellectual explorations. Thank you to everyone!...
Continue readingMortality: a paradox constantly stressed but often neglected. We know our time is of the essence, yet we sometimes forget to act upon it, and end up sometimes breathing instead of living. On average, our species lives seventy-nine years before our parting breath. Us humans go through life constantly waiting on the next step,...
Continue readingWe spent the morning in the library reading an article by Donna Haraway called “Teddy Bear Patriarchy.” This is a sophisticated piece of cultural analysis that looks closely at the messages embedded in the American Museum of Natural History, where we will visit tomorrow. Our conversation as we read took us a number of...
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A history of Nicaragua — notes from a lecture by Aynn Setright Nicaragua is divided into three regions, the Miskito coast in the Caribbean named for indigenous people who live there, the central region and the Pacific coast. 1503 — Christopher Columbus came to Nicaragua and the Conquistadores came down from Mexico in search...
Continue readingToday we traveled to Wildwood to attend a dog show. We saw lots of different types of dogs! The takeaway for our week of studying canine social intelligence is summed up in the following question, to which we asked students to respond: Canines are unique among non-human animals in establishing strong social ties with...
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Our first day of GYLI was great. We had a lot of fun playing games and doing activities. Today we talked about the 5Cs: character, context, culture, color, and class. We also took a test to find out what type of personality we would be. You could be a guardian, artisan, rational, and idealist....
Continue readingA discussion of aggression, a personality inventory, a list of possible college courses for prison populations, and chocolate chip pancakes were followed by an assessment of learning over the course of the week. Bon appetit!...
Continue readingToday Professor Michele Tarter spoke to us about her work with her “wisewomen,” inmates in a women’s maximum security prison in Clinton, NJ. Dr. Tarter brought a sample of the women’s memoirs, called The Pen and the Penitentiary; the writing was memorable and heart-wrenching. The art work was evocative as was the presentation, which...
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In spite of the cold the tour of Fort Mifflin revealed much about the life in a Civil War military prison. Some prison issues such as overcrowding and resources remain; a military prison presents unique problems in its treatment of traitors and prisoners of war. Back at school we prepared questions for our guest...
Continue readingPrisons designed to depersonalize inmates trigger antisocial behavior. Students learned about the three keystones of the social psychology of prison life – the Stanford Prison experiment on social roles, the Yale Milgram studies of obedience, and the Swarthmore Asch work on conformity – as a prelude to understanding the social pressures on behavior. Today...
Continue readingToday we traveled to the Eastern State Penitentiary to learn about the “Quaker experiment” in criminal reformation. We studied the architecture of the building and its several expansions. Originally, reformation of the prisoners was to be accomplished by social isolation – no talking, no social interaction, no seeing other humans for the entire time...
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Day One Today, the first day of IL was very informative and discussion-driven. We opened with an ice-breaker, which consisted of naming an interesting place we have traveled to and identifying differences in culture. Within the ice-breaker activity we also shared what we wanted to learn from the cultural awareness trip this Intensive...
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Day One The assumptions we make about how to help prisoners drive the design of prisons. Historically the four models of helping prisoners – the moral model, the compensatory model, the medical model, and the enlightenment model – have informed the treatment of prisoners. Spaces in minimum security prisons, e.g., cafeterias, individual living spaces,...
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