KIN 884 - Take 2

  We are moving into the era of human potential, or as Adam Curtis puts it, the second half of the "century of the self." If you want to see what a (conventional) encounter group looked like, you can watch "Journey into the Self" - linked on MyCourses. The video of Moreno conducting psychodrama provides a view on what the precursor to T-groups looked like. (I will do a short lecture on the original human relations trainings.) Based on what you've read so far, please address the following: 1) Describe any similarities you see between human relations trainings ("laboratories," "encounter groups," etc.) and contemporary outdoor experiential education. This can relate to either the rationales given for the approach, the practices they contained, or both. Outdoor and experiential education share with human relations trainings a sense that insights gained through experience and underpinned by natural consequences and a felt sense of ownership are m...

  Reading responses 11/16 For this week, please share your final assessment on Kurt Hahn. What are some of the Hahnian elements you want to carry forward in your own thinking and practice, and what to you seems outdated or inappropriate for current times, conditions, and needs? Feel free to select specific elements/principles or speak to his ideology as a whole. (I accidentally closed out of the zoom meeting at the end of class Monday without saving the comments some of you had posted during the lecture. If you still have them in mind, I'd greatly enjoy it if you can elaborate on them in this week's response.) Please also share your impressions of the changes that OB experienced in the 1960s from Josh Miner's OB USA book and this week's readings. To aid in your interpretation, here is the logic of the pieces as I imagine it. Changes in the 60s Enrollment in ‘62: 100, Enrollment in ‘70: 3,800 (p.253) National social conscience awakening (p.115), mixing kids “from the ghe...

  This week we're jumping across the pond as we follow Outward Bound from the UK to the USA. Before we fully make the leap, I'd like to linger on Hahn for a moment longer. This week, please share your view on Hahn's philosophy. As Matteo asked, what is worth carrying forward into the present, and what should be left behind? Also, we'll have a brief visit from Paige Roberts, Archivist at Phillips Andover Academy (Links to an external site.) . Please list a couple questions you'd like to ask Paige about the context of OB's founding at Andover in the 1950s and 1960s. Also, please note any highlights from the reading about OB's early development in the USA. (We'll be returning to this topic next week as we visit with Dan Miner, Josh Miner's son, Durham resident, Hurricane Island OB (Links to an external site.) board member, board member of the National Center for Competency Based Learning (Links to an external site.) , and personal friend.) Matteo For ...

  On 11/2, Pete Allison will be joining us for 30-45 minutes. Pete is a close friend and a faculty member in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at Penn State University and the founder of the Kurt Hahn Consortium there - kind of a Kurt Hahn think tank. He formerly worked at the University of Edinburgh and has been involved with Hahn legacy organizations for many years. This week I'd like for your questions to drive the conversation. On your blogs, please try and capture your evolving thinking about Hahn, and identify 1-2 questions flowing from Veevers & Allison (2011) regarding Hahn's use of the outdoors. Our aim on Monday will be to try and get a clearer understanding of how Hahn saw outdoor adventure working to achieve his educational (and arguably political) purposes - i.e., in Kliebard's terms, how his educational doctrine supported his vision for social change. Kendra’s Notes: Chapters 1-3 Within this work, Veevers and Allison focus more on the sociohistorica...