Search results | Digital Grinnell

Title: Campus Culture Wars -- Then and Now, Tutorial, Fall 1997
Description: In recent years there has been much debate about what constitutes an appropriate undergraduate education. Discussions of multiculturalism, race and gender equality, political correctness, and much else have helped fuel sometimes stormy debates about what college students ought to learn and how. But these debates are not new, especially in American education. In this tutorial we shall examine both recent controversies and their predecessors in an effort to establish our own criteria for the proper definition of liberal education in late twentieth-century America. These discussions will conclude with each student creating his or her own four-year course of study, together with an essay justifying it on the principles of liberal education.
Date Created: 1997
PID: grinnell:3431

Title: Darwin's Legacy in the 20th Century and Beyond, Tutorial, Fall 2000
Description: The goals of this course are: 1) to develop your skills in the areas of critical thinking, writing, and oral communication. 2) to integrate you fully into the college environment by providing you with advice regarding your course of study and other necessary assistance. Although the subject matter is expansive and interesting in its own right, we should remember that the readings are not an end to themselves, but are intended to be a springboard to facilitate the development of your skills. We will consider the impact of Darwin's thought in four areas: 1) the relationship between science and religion, 2) the question of design in nature, 3) current scientific understanding of the origin of life on earth (and related questions regarding extra-terrestrial life), and 4) application of Darwin's ideas to questions regarding human nature.
Date Created: 2000
PID: grinnell:3434

Title: Decline and Renewal in the Heartland, Fall 2003 Syllabus, Tutorial, Fall 2003, Decline and Renewal in the Heartland
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. The arrival of European Americans in the Upper Midwest in the middle of the nineteenth century led to dramatic changes in the region's ecology. In what was perhaps the most rapid and extensive degradation of a natural ecosystem in human history, in the space of 50 years settlers plowed under millions of acres of the native tallgrass prairie and replaced it with a diversified agricultural ecosystem on what proved to be some of the best farmland in the world. As agriculture expanded, the prairie diminished.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:316

Title: Dis/Connected, Tutorial, Fall 2003
Description: It has been said that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Some have likened human life to a continual struggle for the survival of the fittest individuals, mirroring certain evolutionary processes observed in non-human life. Still others cherish a view in which we are all brothers or sisters in one human family, a view that urges awareness of how human relationships bring inspiration and meaning to our lives. This tutorial will examine the ways in which we are isolated from each other and in which we are connected to each other as human beings.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:3438

Title: Freedom, First year tutorial : Freedom
Description: Is freedom the "natural" condition of humankind, as some theorists maintain, or are humans subject to forces over which they can exercise little control? Indeed, do humans covet freedom at all, or do they, as Dostoevsky has the Grand Inquisitor say, prefer to abandon their freedom in favor of happiness? From numerous perspectives, both classical and modern, this tutorial will examine freedom and itslimitations. We will consider how dystopian fiction, religious discipline, slave narratives, Nazi culture, neuroscience, and molecular biology, among others, contribute to our understandings of freedom and its boundaries, and what these understandings mean for a liberally educated person.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:3443

Title: Living an authentic life, Tutorial, Living an authentic life, autumn 2003
Description: Socrates taught that the unexamined life is not worth living. This tutorial will put this bit of classical wisdom to the test. Focusing on Existentialist thinkers Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin Buber, we shall seek to identify the qualities that make a human life authentic. Although these writers are alike in their Existentialist approaches, they differ widely in their ethical, metaphysical, and spiritual conclusions.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:3449

Title: Myth of the Middle Class, Tutorial: The Myth of the Middle Class
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. The United States is frequently described as a middle-class society and we hear the description so often that we assume we know what it means. This course will explore the myth of the middle class.
Date Created: 2001
PID: grinnell:3454

Title: Places I've Been: Outsiders, Exiles, Tourists, First Year Tutorial, Fall 2001, Tutorial, Fall 2001
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. Explores the role and significance of place in conceptualizations of self and others.
Date Created: 2001
PID: grinnell:3452

Title: Primitive Skills in the Modern World, Tutorial, Fall 2003, Whittaker
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. Modern popular culture is seeing a revival of interest in primitive skills. Practical experience; reading and writing will be applied to the the exploration of primitive.
Date Created: 2003
PID: grinnell:225

Title: Renaissance
Description: The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. Considers the rebirth of arts, politics and culture in Florence known as the renaissance.
Date Created: 1999
PID: grinnell:3458