Classroom: Teaching Utopias, Dystopias, and the American Dream

This article published in Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice in 2011 examines the advantages and pitfalls of democracy in the classroom. The author, Rebeccah Bechtold, tells of her attempt to create a utopian classroom by enabling students to design and implement their own syllabus. The class was designed so students were included in deciding "a majority of the classroom policies, grading procedures, and assignments" (2).

Bechtold states, "My hope was to create a space where teaching and text crossed, to create a learning space where our class would think about the core issues that the texts had in common and actually experience similar concerns and questions" (3). Initially the author had to address issues of trust between the students and herself. In essence she was asking her students "how would you teach the class?" (5). This question contains...
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