Re: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers?


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Posted by delurked on September 07, 2002 at 23:17:34:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers? posted by Rick Denney on September 07, 2002 at 22:30:28:

I read the Morte in high school, but it was extra-curricular, the culmination of my interest in reading the great Arthurian works. Indeed, the best teachers I have had are those who encouraged the most extra-curricular activities -- in whatever form. Sadly, I learned critical thinking from books, and only after I had my head handed to me during the logic section in a discrete mathematics course. When the professor in charge of the research methods in economics course I was taking the next semester started with a one-week foray into basic logic, I decided to buckle down. I took a critical reasoning philosophy course and a semester of symbolic logic; I also read a great deal. When next I had that same economics professor for a section in international economics I was the one correcting him on some finer points.

I digress: the former is art because it makes palpable the outline sketched by the latter. In my mind, it is the difference between a two-dimensional portrait of a moonlit sky and the very real and visceral experience of seeing "...the Moon [shining] clear." That is, the former is more active. Is that the right word? Both seem sufficient for a variety of purposes.

I would have been incapable of answering that question in high school; college is good for something, but only if the student is motivated. It wasn't the fault of my high school teachers, but rather mine for having been somewhat anti-intellectual at the time.

/brian






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