[lit-ideas] Re: Suggestions for class I'm teaching????
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 06:29:09 -0500
Mike Geary wrote:
. . . .What is wanted here is observation without judgment -- an
observational, disinterested thingie. A thingie I call: 'how-odd'. I
can sit out on my verandah any day of the week and observe behaviors
that I react to as how-odd. That would be a legitimate observation
considering the source, I believe. Bit I don't stop there. I also
make moral judgments and that is my downfall. I know that such
judgments are the judgments of a white, working-class, Catholic boy
raised in the South in an overwhelmingly Baptist environment in the
latter half of the 20th Century by aberrantly liberal parents, the
third among 6 children, educated by mediocre teachers with a strong
bent towards authoritarian control over exuberance for learning.
That's who I am.
So what do I do when a student says to me "I'm sorry, but I just can't
get into this "how-odd" approach; it's just not the way I was raised.
The way I was raised, as a good "X," is to see everybody from all other
"Y's" as evil." If all judgments are equal, his is as good as yours,
and there's no point to education; no point in seeing anybody from
culture "Y." If we can acknowledge the possibility of "blinders" we
must also be able to see beyond them, at least sometimes.
--
-------------------------------------------------
"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
-------------------------------------------------
John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
