Minding Education's Business in an Evergreen Program: Reflections on Money's Value, Soul's Worth
Initial Publication Date: October 11, 2012
Sarah Williams and Jules Unsel, The Evergreen State College
Description
This essay describes a year-long, interdisciplinary, and team-taught cultural studies of business program at The Evergreen State College that had an explicit agenda. In addition to providing literary, quantitative, historical, neuroscientific, and case study perspectives and activities, we wanted to teach students and learn with them in ways that put money's value into conversation with soul's worth. Our working definition of soul took the form of a Gregory Bateson-like question: "What if the soul is an awareness of the subjective experience of interconnectivity?" This essay, which includes student voices and faculty reflection, was partially funded by TESC's Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.