A Little Background for Lee Academy's Group Project

We are an argument composition class consisting of students who are currently juniors in a private school, Lee Academy, in Marianna, Arkansas.

The class is involved in creating a recycling program at their school in order to raise money for student organizations, which are currently non-existent due to financial constraints placed on a school that is supported through private donations and the help of parents.  In working through their project, students follow the premise set forth by Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus that Westerners are at their best when they are involved in making history or historical disclosing. 

These authors outline several ontological skills, which this class finds useful in uncovering disharmonies and developing a virtuous citizenry through the cultivation of solidarity.  The first of these skills includes articulation.  This form of disclosure happens in two variations.  First, retrieval articulation happens when we retrieve something we have lost in order to regain its true meaning or purpose.  For example, when the Hudson River was declared a waste dump by the U.S. government, Pete Seeger decided to clean it up declaring that we need to appreciate the Hudson as we did a hundred years before pollution ruined the river for recreational purposes including boating, sailing, swimming, etc.  Seeger was retrieving what was lost—the river as a body that needs to be enjoyed and appreciated not destroyed by pollution.  Likewise, gathering from dispersion, the second form of articulation, happens when we take the most important practices of our lives and streamline them, so to speak, in order to centralize these practices.  One example of this type of articulation occurs when a family, who has multiple extra-curricular activities for their kids, decides to streamline their practices through centralizing what they feel are the most meaningful practices.  For instance, they may decide to continue karate classes over home economics classes because they may feel that safety is more important.  They have a dispersed set of activities which occupies too much of their time, so in order to streamline their lives and make them more meaningful, they gather the most valued practices and focus on these in order to develop their familial style. 

The students in the Lee Academy composition class have gathered from dispersion and they are retrieving what has been lost.  Currently, as I’ve already stated, there are no extra-curricular student clubs at Lee Academy.  Aside from a few sports teams, there are no organizations to develop a sense of the arts, debate, music, farming, etc.  In this case, the clubs that Lee Academy students have gathered include an art club, a debate club, math club, science club, and Future Farmers of America FFA).  In order to streamline their focus, however, these students have decided to focus on developing three clubs through administering a poll at the high school.  The three most popular clubs were an art club, a debate club, and a paintball club.  Through the skill of gathering from dispersion, the Lee Academy students have developed a specific, streamlined style on which they can focus.  Without getting into specifics as to why Lee Academy was founded in 1969, through retrieval articulation, these students have found what was lost at Lee Academy—that rounded education, especially at the private schools, incorporates many extra-curricular activities aside from sporting events that will create a participatory academic institution.

Uncovering this disharmony has led to the next skill of cross-appropriation, which happens when one context borrows from another implementing the ideas, strategies, or concepts that made the original successful.  For the composition students at Lee Academy, they have cross-appropriated from Gandhi and his theory of Satyagraha (Soul Force or Love Force) and peaceful rebellion with respect to their approach in changing social ideals that exist in the current culture of Lee Academy.  Also, when they articulated their history making statement, “We will start student organizations, and we will fund them through a recycling program,” they have cross-appropriated entrepreneurial practices as well as ecological and green practices.  Not only are they raising money through an available source (soda cans emptied at lunch), they are also saving landfill space and raising an awareness of recycling incorporating their fellow high school students in the program. Likewise, they are speaking to the younger students in the elementary sector of Lee Academy to teach them how they can be better environmental stewards through recycling practices.

Finally, through sheer coincidence, as the Lee Academy students have worked with the Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus’ ontological skills noted thus far, they have also become an ad-hoc student council becoming ones who have subversively adapted to their situation.  Subversive adaptation occurs when a group has effectively cross-appropriated to change and redesign standard practices.  This might also be where anarchist ideology—a rejection of coercive bodies, governments, etc.—has been cross-appropriated as well, yet while the Lee Academy students are not necessarily rejecting a coercive government, they are rejecting standard practices which have resulted in disharmonious practices being disregarded as standard, working practices.

Through the development of this program at Lee Academy, the Composition students are hoping to reconfigure the social ideals at Lee Academy.  Currently, there is a focus on sports and cheerleading; however, through the work of the junior class, a retrieval of ecological stewardship is being refocused, the myriad of dispersed clubs that could be incorporated into the school are being specified and narrowed to create a style individual to Lee Academy, and this will ultimately change the face of the school to produce a higher quality good—the student and the culture of the surrounding area.

For their first Ning Forum discussion, students were required to respond to the following question:

Think about your role within the group or the project itself.  Discuss how Gandhi’s Satyagraha (Soul Force, Love Force, Truth Force) can be used in your everyday or local public sphere?  What would it mean to use it to “revolutionize social ideals?”  Can you describe how “Civil Disobedience” as “a state of peaceful rebellion” might apply to your project?  What is your vision as to how this process might unfold?  What about King’s view of time?  How are you using your time constructively rather than destructively?   What other opinions might exist?  Also apply Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus’ ontological skills to your project.  From what contexts will you cross-appropriate?   What reconfiguration will take place?  Does your project reflect gathering from dispersion or retrieval articulation?  How so? 
You may need to provide a little background with your response i.e. who are you, where are you from, what is your project, why is it important to you, etc.

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