From lauanger@mail.coin.missouri.edu Sun Feb 28 18:44:20 1999 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.2+UW99.01) with ESMTP id SAA31898 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 18:44:19 -0800 Received: from coins0.coin.missouri.edu (lauanger@coins0.coin.missouri.edu [198.209.253.1]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id SAA02224 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 18:44:19 -0800 Received: (from lauanger@localhost) by coins0.coin.missouri.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id UAA23759; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 20:44:14 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 20:44:14 -0600 (CST) From: Lisa Auanger X-Sender: lauanger@coins0.coin.missouri.edu To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: "hot" Euripides In-Reply-To: <36D9FB2E.7371@loyno.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, rowland wrote: > Many, many years ago when I was a junior faculty member at a different > university than my current one, the student newspaper did a parody of a > senior English department faculty member's "Socratic method": "That book > you were supposed to read for today, who wrote it? What is its title? > What's its main theme?...." The whole point of the parody being that the > students believed (quite rightly I think) that the teacher hadn't the > foggiest idea about the day's assignment. Students of another senior > colleague would periodically during the semester ask the same question > and keep track of the different answers he would make up. For me, very > early in my career, these were salutary lessons: undergrads, while not > as learned as their mentors, aren't dumb either. Bob Rowland > This reminds me of what I consider to be one of the weakest spots in American education today, especially higher. The story that Bob Rowland relates includes what some of us regard as "inimidatory teaching." The student, by being the student, is forced to understand what the professor is saying, though a variety of interpretations are possible. In my years in the classoom (and it was my job to encourage discussion and to enable students to see that there are many ways to look at art, many things to know about it, and many matters to be able to see--literature is not that different), I was especially struck by the mutedness that I encountered in students who had been in military situations. Sometimes the university seems to encourage the same mindset. Sad, really. Lisa Auanger (who has lost track of her bicycling mileage. :-) ) .