W.R.M

[faustonomy]

What we’re up against

Paulo Friere, in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” prioritizes a consciousness that becomes aware of the social, political, and economic structures that one exists within. For Friere, this was geared towards liberating the oppressed from ruling classes, yet I think this type of consciousness of social structures is useful even for the student who does not immediately find themselves in positions of oppression. In our last class in Teaching in the Humanities, we used a hypothetical student, “Bob,” who refused to entertain the idea that anything outside of his subjective experience was important to Bob in any way. An example of this being a teacher explaining that two plus two most definitely equals four while Bob insists that, for him, two plus two most definitely equals five. Upon thinking about what is actually happening with Bob, it occurred to me that the problem with Bob is that he just is not concerned with anything but his own experience. It is interesting to think about what kind of life experience would lead someone like Bob to care so little about the experience of others; Bob has probably led a privileged life. But I think that people like Bob are what we (meaning those engaged in humanities-based scholarship) are up against- people who just have no concern about the life experience of others and the meaning behind these lives. If they maintain the Bob-path, their apathy can become dangerous. The Bob exercise, though, was to have us imagine Bob as a student who, presumably, has yet to cross that dangerous threshold. The idea being: how do you get a student to care? I’m still not sure.

[faustonomy]

On critical thought.

William Cronon, in his piece “Only Connect...” discusses what it means to be a liberally educated person. What one gathers after reading this piece is that being a liberally educated person means more than just attending a four year university program and holding a degree. I’d like to situate this within the context of the continuously diminishing humanities that we are witnessing, at the very, least here in America. Cronon lists some characteristics that someone who is thoroughly liberally educated might have: such as, nurturing and empowering the people around them, being able to listen effectively and actually hear what someone else has to say without only preparing a refutation or counter-argument, and respecting rigor as a way of seeking truth. Of this list, what stuck out to me the most was the characteristic of being able to talk with anyone. To me, this means more than just talking to someone you meet on the street or a friend of a friend. This means the ability to talk to someone who has an entirely different life and cultural experience than you, this means someone who has entirely different linguistic patterns or philosophical and theological views than you. I think that this is where critical thinking comes into play most commonly for those who use critical thinking. What I mean by critical thinking, in this case of being able to talk to anyone, is being able to identify points of difference and points of commonality and  furthermore being able to actively engage those points of commonality without treading disrespectfully upon those points of difference. This is no easy task. And in my case has involved engaging with religious theory that has a scholastic orientation outside of the Western philosophical enterprise - theory I would not have come across had it not been for my being able to take humanities focused classes. Specifically, engaging this theory from a religious studies point of view, in my opinion, was particularly effective in cultivating critical thinking skills insofar that religious studies exposes the student to traditions where notions of truth and reality are constructed in ways that can be diametrically opposed to the ways we construct them here in the Western world.

[faustonomy]

On the Utility or the Utopia of University.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, writing for the New York Times in September of 2015, discusses two trajectories of the university experience for a student : Utopia or Utility. A utilitarian trajectory would ensure that a student is given and taught the tools and skills to procure for themselves the means to ensure financial stability in their lives and be an asset in their field of work, The Utopian trajectory seeks to engage the student in fields of study that explore knowledge from a multi-cultural perspective so that the “soul” of the student as it were is developed so that they might better understand themselves in regards to the world they live in. It would seem that the world we live in values one of these trajectories over the other. We see this in the decline of the humanities and the privileging of STEM majors. I do not think that one is more important than the other; that each inform and influence the other in more ways that most would think. Science, as a distinct category of study, in the grand scheme of human history, is a relatively new category. It has become a dominant distinct category in the global marketplace as its applications are extremely profitable. Yet, without the humanities (and I am here imagining a world where the study of philosophy, history, art etc. is even less valued globally than they are now) it would be quite difficult to understand how science became itself, and even how to understand where science is going. There is a timeline of events that have charted where we now exist as humanity. How does one understand this timeline? How does one interpret where we are or where we are going? I think that one of the humanities fundamental goals is in learning how to interpret this timeline not only from a localized point of view, but simultaneously seeking to include any individual entity's peripheral perspectives.

[historybuffposts]

Are schools and teachers required for learning?

This is my first post on this blog and the question I would like to address is written above. The short answer to this question, in my personal opinion, is no. A person does not need to be in the environment of school to be able to learn things. We, as humans, are learning from the time that we are born until the time we die. A plethora of experiences help guide us in life and learning happens outside of the school every day. Do we need teachers to learn? Not necessarily. humans learn by making mistakes just as much as they learn by being told what to do. You can tell an excitable child a million times not to mess with a bee hive or hornet’s nest, but they do not always listen or learn from verbal warnings. For some people it takes making the mistake and seeing the consequences for a lesson to be learned. This is just my two-cents on the matter and I’m excited to see what others have to say!

[faustonomy]

I think that I agree with you here. It would seem that the experience (or any experience, that is) has the potential to be just as good of a teacher as any other human teacher. I for one can attest to this insofar that I have taught myself many things outside of any traditional classroom setting. So, I think this raises an important question - when learning from experience, is it the experience that teaches us or is it our internal experience of experiencing that external experience that teaches us?