Instructor:

Jeanne Curran, Ph.D., Esq.
Office: SBS-B326
Telephone: 310-243-3831
Office Hours: Tuesday 4 - 5 pm; Wednesday 12 - 2 pm; By appointment.
Teaching and Research Associate: Patricia Acone

Course Description:

The Stanley Mosk Moot Court Competition has evolved over a fifteen year period. The Spring 2002 Moot Court Experience was the first in this long history to remove all semblance of competition and to present collaboratively developed arguments based on the principle of advocacy for civil society. The course is designed to afford participants the occasion for disciplined argument in a civil discourse setting with experts in advocacy and reasoned argument: local practicing attorneys and sitting judges of our court system. The purpose of the course is to afford the best possible undergraduate and graduate liberal arts experience for future participation in civil discourse.

Because we use the law school format of argumentation, and because we include local lawyers and justices, this provides students with a taste of the functioning of the legal system. We include both research on the issues, and actual public argumentation, so that students see both phases of the law. In addition, our collaborative work prespares students for the actual need they will encounter in the real world of social justice and law to work in coalitions, to respect those with whom they disagree, to de-escalate and decenter crises, and to hone their skills for team work.

This mix of goals brings the course into modern constitutive theoretical perspectives that recognize the importance of the interdependence of agency and structure in the development of any peaceful coexistence on this earth.

Text:

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, Pat Griffin, eds. (1997) Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice Routledge. New York. 1998. ISBN: 0-415-91057-9 (pbk.) Required.

Site Teaching Modules for Moot Court and Social Justice Required.

I've chosen an unusual text for this our second semester of shaping Moot Court into an undergraduate liberal arts course that seeks to give both familiarity and practice with the legal system and with the skills of public discourse requisite to civil governance. You will find that materials of philosophy, sociology, political science, political sociology, and law overlap in our recourse to theoretical foundations. I certainly realize that you are unlikely to have deep knowledge of all these fields. Teaching for Diversity offers both minimal review of theories of social justice and concepts relating to recognition of oppression. Teaching for Diversity assumes that there is somewhere an agreed-upon universal value that we shall not oppress or exploit others. That's a big, big assumption. But most of us do agree that exploiting others to the extent of starvation, of no employment, of phsycial harm, of genocide is a violation of our conscious values. The text and the course are designed to bring unconscious acts of oppression and social injustice to awareness, that we may fit our behavior more effectively to those values we do acknowledge.

Not only do we seek to heighten awareness of oppression and injustice, we seek also to transform the structural context in which we live so that it will not lead to unconsciously harming "others" through the rules we consider normative, as part of our bureaucratization. The text offers a diversity of approaches to sharing our awareness, as teachers, as friends, as community members. The text's approach is disppointing in that it speaks directly to those trapped in schools of education. Such training institutes are oriented almost exclusively to "how to," with myriad examples and very little dependence on the creative response of the future teacher. They also tend to consider "behavioral objectives" their mainstream methodology, and paper and pencil testing their mainstream measurement process. That shapes a "positivist," linguistic approach. I disagree with the process and the approach. But that doesn't mean that we can't critically analyze it and reflexively take from it what works best for developing public discourse skills.

In Moot court we apply legal reasoning and advocacy to current social issues, with attention to the effects our multicultural mix has had on duality, as argued in advocacy. We conmsdier issues like the resettlement of people who for a variety of reasons are driven from their homes. There are no "right" answers, no simple programs to resolve these issues. In that sense we differ from the legal court room. The law seeks to provide "an" answer; we seek to understand the issue, according respect and dignity to both sides of disagreements, which Maria Pia Lara refers to as "illocutionary force, the power to transform discourse by going more deeply into the theory and praxis on which the disagreements are founded". We acknowledge that the issues are complex, and that in order to make effective practical decisions in our lived experience, we need to examine these issues with the same discipline we would use in any court of law.

Course Objectives:

• To provide an experiential forum for civil discourse.
• To select social issues of import to us for discussion of validity claims.
• To review the priniciples of both legal advocacy and legal reasoning.
• To review the principles of ethics and legitimacy in the system of law.
• To produce collaboratively essays on the social issues chosen to serve as textual information for those to whom we present our discourse.
• To produce an actual forum in which to present our civil discourse as a model for other students and community leaders.
  • Forum presentation at the American Society of Criminology November 2003 for sharing the model with colleagues.
  • Forum presentation at the university for sharing the model with students.

Grading and Suggested Measures of Learning:

• Using Common Sense:

  Permission to enroll in this course is premised on upper division status, rendering you capable of performing competently. However, I recognize that crises occur and that you have many conflicting demands as students, family members, and workers. Please remember that A's are earned, not given for the status characteristic of "being a good student who could get an A if he/she made the effort." One way to deal with such crises effectively is to be sure that I know when they are happening. Because most of my lectures and your practice are on the site, it's easier to make up missed time over conflicts than you might think.

  Nota bene: If you have the flu, please don't come and give it to the rest of us. We'll help you catch up when you're well. I lost three weeks to flu this summer. The bugs are getting stronger and more resistant to medication. If I lose three weeks during classes, you'll be left with a substitute.

  If you haven't slept, and are falling asleep from exhaustion, please stay home and sleep. Sleep deprivation is a very real problem. We all drive freeways to get here, and go home often late at night. You can kill yourself and others that way. Please don't.

  I do not give specific deadlines, because I want you to use your common sense and your own discipline to study effectively. All work can be made up within university limits.

  Our Grading Standards:

  • Evidence of Learning Essay on our grading standards and what to do to "get an A." And, no, we don't give tests, at least not to determine grades.

Plausible Schedule for Reading Course Texts:

1. Week of August 26:
   • Teaching Diversity. Preface. pp. xv-xvii.
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 1. Theoretical Foundations for Social Justce Education. pp. 3-15.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 1, including study and practice materials. Online only.

2. Week of September 2
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 2. Conceptual Foundations for Social Justice Courses.. pp. 16-29.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 2, including study and practice materials. Online only.

3. Week of September 9
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 3. Pedagogical Frameworks for Social Justice Education. pp. 30-43.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 3, including study and practice materials. Online only.

4. Week of September 16
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 4. Designing Social Justice Education Courses. pp. 44-58.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 4, including study and practice materials. Online only.

5. Week of September 23
   • Tuesday, September 24: Students receive first accounting of learning evidence submitted for a grade.
     See Evidence of Learning.

   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 6. Racism Curriculum Design. pp. 82-104.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 5, including study and practice materials. Online only.

6. Week of September 30
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 7. Sexism Curriculum Design. pp. 110-129.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 6, including study and practice materials. Online only.

7. Week of October 7
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 8. Heterosexism Curriculum Design. pp. 141-161.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 7, including study and practice materials. Online only.

8. Week of October 14
   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 9.Antisemitism Curriculum Design. pp. 170-197.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 8, including study and practice materials. Online only.

9. Week of October 21
   • Tuesday, October 22: Students receive second accounting of learning evidence submitted for a grade.
     See Evidence of Learning

   • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 10. Ableism Curriculum Design. pp. 199-216.
   • Site Teaching Module for Week 9, including study and practice materials. Online only.

10. Week of October 28
    • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 11. Classism Curriculum Design. pp. 231-251.
    • Site Teaching Module for Week 10, including study and practice materials. Online only.

11. Week of November 4
    • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 12. Multiple Issues Course Overview. pp. 261-271.
    • Site Teaching Module for Week 11, including study and practice materials. Online only.

12. Week of November 11
    • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 13. Facilitating Social Justice Courses. pp. 280-298.
    • Site Learning Module for Week 12, including study and practice materials. Online only.

13. Week of November 18
    • Tuesday, November 19: Students receive third accounting of learning evidence submitted for a grade.
      See Evidence of Learning.

    • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 14. Knowing Ourselves as Instructors. pp. 299-310.
    • Site Learning Module for Week 13, including study and practice materials. Online only.

14. Week of November 25
    • Teaching Diversity. Chapter 15. Knowing Our Students. pp. 311-325.
    • Site Learning Module for Week 14, including study and practice materials. Online only.

15. Week of December 2
    Friday, December 6, is the last day of classes.
    • Review and Class Presentations.
    • Site Learning Module for Week 15, including study and practice materials. Online only.

16. Week of December 9
    
    • Exams: December 9-13. Because we consider exams structurally violent and inadequate measures of learning, there will be no exam in this class. The time will be available for face-to-face interaction amongst ourselves.
    • Students receive final accounting of learning evidence submitted for a grade.
      See Evidence of Learning.

17. Week of December 16
    • Grades due.

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Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, August 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Footnote1. Esq. means Esquire, and is sometimes used to indicate that you are a member of the Bar.
jeanne is a member of the California Bar.