Splash Biography

Is studying in two languages harder than one? Or does the benefit of speaking two languages outweigh the difficulty of learning both? In this class, we'll discuss the psychology research underlying these questions. We'll also look at how answers to this question translate into policy. Should immigrant kids in the USA receive public school education only in English, or should they receive bilingual schooling? To discuss these questions, we'll mainly focus on various bilingual and transitional programs for Spanish-English bilingual students in Chicago.

Every day, children are thrown into mass graves...or are found wandering without their parents or wasting away in refugee camps...or are brutalized into being killers themselves. If children are loved and valued, why are they still being used as cannon-fodder? If international law upholds the rights of children, why are they subject to these atrocities? What can we do to stop this? And how can we help children who have been the victims of war? This course will focus mainly on the psychological and emotional trauma of conflict and life as a refugee, although we will touch on topics of international politics and law.

In this course, we'll work toward determining the literary features that make a story a fairy tale (and discuss why many fairy tales don't feature fairies at all!). We'll then analyze how fairy tales have influenced literature, popular culture, and our perceptions and understandings of human interactions.

Do you ever wonder about what is really going on in our heads when we pay attention or daydream, sense ...