Moving upward

In the last post we “got down to basics,” moving from the beautiful flowering tree of my teaching (lol) to the sturdy trunk and then root system.  Now, however, we’re going to do a little genetic recombination (or grafting, perhaps) to show that the same sturdy root system can give rise to some very different trees…

Let’s go back to the basic statement: I want to push students to think deeply and then to present in a persuasive manner the results of their thinking. For all that some of you found it ambiguous or too general, it’s clear enough to me to serve as a basis for where I want to go next, which is examining the implications of the statement with less emphasis on its genesis.

So, if I started with that statement as a new teacher, or just a less-old teacher, what might come from it.  I’ll start with English since, if I don’t scare off the new department head, I’ll be teaching at least one section of that next year.  English courses at St. John’s are generally predicated upon reading, usually literature and mostly fiction.  Sidestepping for a moment the question of what to read and how in the classroom to stimulate the “deep thinking” mentioned in the philosophy statement, I want to focus on the “present in a persuasive manner” part.

Traditionally, especially at St. John’s, such presentations have focused on writing and usually on analytical writing of some sort.  There may be personal introductions, conclusions, or tie-ins; there may be “honors projects” (or other sorts of projects) that require modest oral competence to present the results of the thinking.  Occasionally, specific courses have demonstrations of thinking in other ways: a student may direct a one-act play; there may be a video of an “updating” or “acting a scene from” a classic play such as Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet.  There may be dramatic readings (or presentations) of monologs from Hamlet or Macbeth, for instance.  There have sometimes been debates. With a handful of exceptions that come mostly in senior seminars, however, the major way in which one demonstrates the results of “deep thinking” are in written analysis.

If you read carefully the philosophy statement, however, there is nothing in it that would require that writing be the only way, or even the dominant way, to demonstrate the desired results.  That observation leads in two different directions.  Taking one path suggests that the statement should be amended to include reference to analytical writing, particularly since facility with that mode of expression is one that has consistently been praised by literally decades of graduates in annual surveys.  A second path, however, suggests that one could find other ways to demonstrate the results of “deep thinking” in “a persuasive manner.”

What are reasonable (or, if you want to widen the field, “possible”) ways by which one persuades another of a point at issue?

If anyone has been stimulated to think by these postings, then clearly blogging is one such way.  I myself have never been persuaded to an alternative point of view by a tweet and find them most useful for propagating opinions and information.  But they are common for these purposes among a certain set and so perhaps should not be dismissed out of hand.  Social networking sites such as Facebook also seem to me to most useful for the broadcast dissemination of information or opinions, though their messaging features can lead to more substantive conversations/presentations on infrequent occasions.  In chat exchanges with individual students, as in email exchanges, I have on occasion garnered new insights or been moved to modify old opinions/judgments.  Are these simply distance-versions of face-to-face conversations?  And if not, why/how not?