From your comments and from what I know about the American university
system I understand that it is there as it is probably everywhere: there
are always such and such professors and this is probably best because there
are also such and such students. Maybe the German system is still at some
points a bit more patriarchal than the American. On the other hand: you
don't have to pay for it which gives you much more freedom for a longer,
slower way of studying by which you can really find your own way of
thinking if you want to. But here also are not only a few of the sort of
students who are rather being told what to think, it's just so much less of
an effort for the student as well as for the professor. And there'll always
be students who are just studying for a degree as well as there'll be
professors who just do their job.
But if we talk about ideology there is actually one thing about American
Universities/society that I don't understand at all (even at the risk of
stirring up a hornet's nest): political correctness and that all these
presumably liberal intellectuals don't see that this is merely ideology at
it's best.
 
Antje Pfannkuchen
 
PS: To return to the original question of what kind of course to teach:
best would be both and I'm sure there could be an audience for both of them.
 
 
Tim Romano wrote:
 
>I studied early medieval germanic philology and literature in graduate
>school (Altenglisch, Altnordisch, usw.) -- subjects that were pioneered
>mostly by German scholars. These scholars were extremely _thorough_ ,
>producing encyclopedic reference works which were a joy to use. The German
>system was, as you know, quite partriarchal (cf. Doktorvater) and put great
>pressure on students to learn a scholar's work, the work of his
>"grandfather", the work of his "father", and the work of his older "sons"
>who had left home and gone out on their own. One had to master the output of
>the whole clan! The new Ph.D. would often do "grunt work" for his
>dissertation-dad; innovation and individualism were discouraged; they did
>not lead to success. You can see how under those circumstances an entire
>profession might over time lose sight of the primary works. Pound's ship was
>driven against the rocks of this ethos at the University of Pennsylvania.
>Tim Romano
>
>P.S. I must add that one of the best teachers I ever knew, the late great
>Otto Springer, a German, never expected his students to do his grunt work
>and never lost sight of the primary works.
 
 
Dan Pearlman wrote:
 
>HOW TO READ is not being particularly taught much at American universities--
>maybe not anywhere anymore, I fear.  What is being taught in graduate
>English studies at American universities is, first, an ideological
>point of view to act as a filter in order to prejudge what you are
>reading (even to the point of having an opinion BEFORE you read a text),
>a filter which then enables you to find in any text whatsoever exactly
>what you are expecting to praise or condemn, and which enables you to
>ignore everything else--that is, everything of value in the text.  This
>procedure guarantees that the student will save much time otherwise
>needlessly wasted in unsponsored, undirected thinking--a process that,
>in any case, might dangerously eventuate in the student's arriving at an
>opinion that differs from that of his or her professor.  In addition,
>we have imported all our filters from France (okay, a few from
>Germany, maybe), so I can't figure out why the French are trashing
>McDonalds and blaming *us* for cultural colonialism.
 
 
Aldon Nielsen wrote:
 
>Odd to find complaints about the teaching of an ideological point of view
>turning up on the Pound list -- This is a grossly distoted description of
>graduate education in America, a point I only repeat because this
>description was addressed to someone who might not be in a position to know
>that --