What Do You Think?
Since we began investigating the Iridescent Battaglia of the Dom Perignon in 1998, the one clear thing that has stood out, has stood the test, and has been understood is that it requires the utmost valour of the self to be expressed incisively and with felicity of more thought.
In other words, it rewards those who think well and express exactly what they think. It does not reward the lazy or the slothful, the dishonest or mendacious. These receive their just reward because such attitudes lead to behaviours which form products of dubious value. It is as She said.
What I think about education in this respect is twofold:
1) The thinking mechanism must be engaged. What does the material say? What can you rationally infer from it, within the rules of its discipline? Have you discussed this with other thinking people? Does the combination of your reasoning and your dialogue lead to a rigorous construct that withstands counterargument, is precise in its terms and accurate in its objectives?
2) The product must be worked on. There's no such thing as an essay or presentation which cannot be improved – it's only the degree to which it can be improved over the initial conception, proposal or draft. If you think that the final product springs full-blown to glory as if it is Athena from the head of Zeus, you are sadly mistaken. Draft and polish, re-draft and re-polish, to the limit of your time.
There is a third that walks besides these. It is always a bonus for the student to have accumulated a storehouse of diverse sources, wonders and fragments. It is necessary for breadth (although not for acuity) to read as much as possible while asking and answering two main questions about what is read: "How does this text affect the world and how I view it?" and "How does this affect me and my relationship with the world?" The two questions are similar but the second one speaks more of engagement.
By reading, I do not mean the dilettante's approach to texts, which is skimming and googling. That would be akin to calling a boardsurfer a naval diver. Because narratives are predominantly linear in design (think 'stream', 'flow', 'plot' etc) as an artifact of the inescapable constraint that we live in (apparently) linear time, it is actually more effective to read a text from beginning to end than to hop around like a kangaroo on amphetamines. Those texts which cannot be handled this way (unfortunately, perhaps?) contribute much less (in practice, rather than in theory) to the world of ideas.
(That is not to say we cannot gain from lateral readings or tangential readings or texts which are not structured sequentially. I love many of these, and they serve to enrich the corpus and add bells and whistles to the canon. But it can't all be spices, bells and whistles. I would prefer to take bell, book and candle to those who think so.)
A student once described a teacher who, when questioned, replied almost invariably, "What do you think?" That student was of the opinion that this teacher wasn't really teaching – or was hedging, squirrelling, or weaselling from a position of ignorance. My personal opinion is that it was good enough for Socrates, and it is a valuable approach to education. In my experience, students know a lot more than they care to admit to; some know more than they think they know; and all can contribute a lot more when they are actually forced to think, painful step by painful step.
In other words, it rewards those who think well and express exactly what they think. It does not reward the lazy or the slothful, the dishonest or mendacious. These receive their just reward because such attitudes lead to behaviours which form products of dubious value. It is as She said.
What I think about education in this respect is twofold:
1) The thinking mechanism must be engaged. What does the material say? What can you rationally infer from it, within the rules of its discipline? Have you discussed this with other thinking people? Does the combination of your reasoning and your dialogue lead to a rigorous construct that withstands counterargument, is precise in its terms and accurate in its objectives?
2) The product must be worked on. There's no such thing as an essay or presentation which cannot be improved – it's only the degree to which it can be improved over the initial conception, proposal or draft. If you think that the final product springs full-blown to glory as if it is Athena from the head of Zeus, you are sadly mistaken. Draft and polish, re-draft and re-polish, to the limit of your time.
There is a third that walks besides these. It is always a bonus for the student to have accumulated a storehouse of diverse sources, wonders and fragments. It is necessary for breadth (although not for acuity) to read as much as possible while asking and answering two main questions about what is read: "How does this text affect the world and how I view it?" and "How does this affect me and my relationship with the world?" The two questions are similar but the second one speaks more of engagement.
By reading, I do not mean the dilettante's approach to texts, which is skimming and googling. That would be akin to calling a boardsurfer a naval diver. Because narratives are predominantly linear in design (think 'stream', 'flow', 'plot' etc) as an artifact of the inescapable constraint that we live in (apparently) linear time, it is actually more effective to read a text from beginning to end than to hop around like a kangaroo on amphetamines. Those texts which cannot be handled this way (unfortunately, perhaps?) contribute much less (in practice, rather than in theory) to the world of ideas.
(That is not to say we cannot gain from lateral readings or tangential readings or texts which are not structured sequentially. I love many of these, and they serve to enrich the corpus and add bells and whistles to the canon. But it can't all be spices, bells and whistles. I would prefer to take bell, book and candle to those who think so.)
A student once described a teacher who, when questioned, replied almost invariably, "What do you think?" That student was of the opinion that this teacher wasn't really teaching – or was hedging, squirrelling, or weaselling from a position of ignorance. My personal opinion is that it was good enough for Socrates, and it is a valuable approach to education. In my experience, students know a lot more than they care to admit to; some know more than they think they know; and all can contribute a lot more when they are actually forced to think, painful step by painful step.
etched with acid at 10:27:00 pm
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