And here are the students’ questions the next day. I have printed a handout of these and will use them as a self-referential teaching tool since a number of the questions have to do with asking and evaluating questions.
| What question(s) do you have left over from yesterday’s discussion? | |
| 1 | What is the merit to philosophical reading as compared to the “average” reading? What types of people read philosophically and why? |
| 2 | Sort of based on our discussion yesterday: given that education gives us the means to understand what questions to ask, why does that matter at all? If the axiom “Ignorance is bliss” is true, what’s the point of learning at all, especially if what we learn about is frightening, humbling, or shame-inducing? |
| 3 | I am still curious as to why we feel that Calvino chooses to alienate his readers by forcing the reader to take a male pose in reading. Why does he want this? |
| 4 | How do I know if I am deconstructing a question correctly? When Dr. Raulston asked what question we should ask when deconstructing question X, we came up with multiple answers, but one was better than the others. How do we know which one to ask? |
| 5 | Explain more about Socratic questioning and how Calvino wants the reader to question his writing style. |
| 6 | I am still a little confused with the Socratic method. I understand it but I want to see it applied more as an example. |
| 7 | How do you know you’re asking the right questions? I think that that is a personal, case-by-case thing. However, I’m not sure if part of philosophy is that everyone should ask several “correct” questions |
| 8 | I was wondering that with these new understandings of ideas such as engagement, what we need to do with them while reading. We can certainly be conscious of when we are engaged, but with that should we trying to understand why. In the Calvino novel, is that what Calvino is pushing for by abruptly cutting off engaging narratives? Would that make us less engaged? Is the experienced reader just subconsciously able to not such things, and it does not affect him or her at all? because for me i feel it would take away from my reading experience and as to why I enjoy reading. |
| 9 | I still feel that I’m missing something very important about Calvino’s work. Surely there must be meaning below the things he beats us over the head with. |
| 10 | I think what we discussed in class yesterday was something we had already covered last semester in Words Words Words. |
| 11 | Is there a way (other than everyday experience) to build on this kind of intuitive wisdom? Do some fields allow the mind to adopt new patterns of thinking more readily than other fields, or does the growth of wisdom depend on learning in multiple fields and connecting the knowledge? |
| 12 | does the “you”-character present only when Calvino is actively making assumptions about the reader? How does it present otherwise (if it does)? |
| 13 | Is it possible for one to learn to ask the right questions (using web-search) without truly knowing a subject well? |
| 14 | At what point does the analysis get to be too much? Is there a point (or does it depend/not matter?) |
| 15 | How do I as a reader know how and what to question? The idea of questioning sounds nice, but it doesn’t actually move me any closer to understanding how to do it, and how to discover that knowledge myself. I struggle with that. |
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17 |
Why do you give virtue/moral lessons? Have you seen your students grow more humble over the semester that they’ve had you? This is not supposed to be accusatory; I’m honestly just curious.
What audiences are Calvino reaching and engaging? Dr. Bellows mentioned that she gets sucked into the stories, but I was silently thinking… hm no I get distracted and overwhelmed. Is Calvino addressing audiences as narrow as people who have doctorates in English and also happen to be unnaturally wise/knowledgable/smart? |