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The popular model of collaborative learning views classrooms as contexts where nonmembers of "valued" communities become members by mastering accepted knowledge, discourse forms, and methods. Although attractive to educators, this model allows only for changes in individual students, not in "valued" communities. Further, its emphasis on "normal discourse" maintains established knowledge, promotes static definitions of communities, and suppresses the creation of new meaning and the dynamic process of communal redefinition. If educators seek to prepare students for the kinds of communities and organizations they will enter, then current collaborative methods are effective and appropriate. However, if their role is to promote critical thinking and to nurture students' existing power to define their communities and to act within them, then methods that are dialogic and that focus on problem-posing must be explored. As a first step, educators should refuse to confine collaborative methods to classroom "peer groups." They should promote the "abnormal discourse" that occurs when disciplines, departments, and classrooms come together. Redefinition of learning, thinking, and writing must be university-wide and must involve students in the process of critiquing the current educational system. (Author/RS)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert