There is a very simple answer to this. Do you want your students to learn
something, or do you want to give the impression that they learn something.
If you answered the second question with yes, your colleague's approach is
the most suitable. If, however, you want your students learn and remember
something longer than six weeks, you'll have to go with your first approach,
even if your goal would be that of your colleagues. (!)
 
While not quite the second law of thermodynamics, your pops is probably
right in some sense. From reading newspaper and scientific articles, I have
a pretty good picture of how the human brian works - reason, emotion,
memory, primitive systems, neurotransmittors, outer layers, etc. - which
really helps in understanding every aspect of the human condition, including
art. Psychology and biology should therefore be a fundamental aspect of
scholarly training in the humanities (or, better, before, starting in
primary and secondary education).
 
Anyway, to get to the point: the brain remembers things best thematically.
You can learn a string of events by heart for a test, but six weeks later
most of it is gone. On the other hand, if you learn one central theme and
then learn how to relate several events to it, you'll remember the central
theme and most of the events. Then the events will slowly go, but the
central theme is still there and can reactivate the events.
 
This is a very simple way of explaining it, of course, but basically the way
it works. Even if I had your colleague's goals, I would use a thematic
approach to teach the events to my students. I would follow several central
themes through the ages, so that each time they encounter a new event, they
will be able to connect it to one or more of the central themes in their
head.
 
But given the time, it is better to focus only on a few of the central
themes, or a few examples of all the central themes throughout history.
 
Arwin
 
Drop these careful lines; words are such a drag
Expose the naked idea and let my mind bathe
In its bright image
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 3:29 PM
Subject: Pedagogical Question
 
 
Here at VCSU, a colleague and I are at odds over how to teach a 200 level
Humanities course. He thinks that the course ought to be based on a book
that provides an overview of events, so that it can quickly pass through
literary and philosophical events from the Mesopotamians to present day. I
say that it is impossible to teach everything, and that such an approach
leaves students with very little access to the past. For my part, I further
suggest that they are better off reading key bits of primary-if-translated
texts that are conceptually rather than chronologically dependent. My
feeling is that if you take these primary texts and treat them according to
overarching themes--ones that are vital in all cultures in time and
space--themes such as the gods, love, leadership, and philosophy--then the
students get both a sense of the past that delivers not only the Humanities,
but does so in a way that gives them individual access to ancient and
classical Greece, imperial Rome, the anglo-saxon and then the norman
influenced middle ages, and then the renaissance.  My colleague argues that
I omit too much important cultural information, and I argue that his
approach does not admit enough students to the Humanities--that it just
gives them a sense of what somebody else says about a lot of events. Under
my thematic approach, we read bits from the following, and ask what it says
about the four themes:
Homeric Hymns, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Sappho, Pindar, The Pre-Socratics, The
Republic, Parmenides, Thucydide's Melian Dialogue, and all of Antigone, to
get a sense of the Greeks. I also lecture on Greek architecture and
politics. For the Romans, we read from the Aeneid, the Roman
Elegists--Catullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, Caesar's Gallic Wars, and Tacitus'
Germania. For the anglo-saxons, we read Widsith, Deor, Seafarer, Battle of
Maldon, the Dream of the Cross, and all of Beowulf. We read and translate a
dozen Middle English lyrics, and read Chaucer's Prologue, and his Miller's
Tale in Middle English. We read a Shakespeare play, and we read bits from
Machiavelli.
   My colleague uses a book by a man named Bishop, which has lots of
illustrations and gives very small snippets from many great works--but
mostly, it is a telling of the tale of Western Civilization (the bent of the
course) by one expert to the uninitiated. The other expert--my collegue,
fills in the gaps. Between the two of them, they cover a lot of territory,
and bring students up to the present. Yet for all of that, as my step-father
says--neither my colleague's course or my own introduce the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics--essential, in his opinion.
   I might also mention that there is a required second Humanities course
that emphasizes music and art. These courses are taught by faculty who kind
of begin their approach to music and art in the 17 and 18th centuries--and
one of them veers off into North American Indian culture--the sort of
veering that a thematic approach, I think, would allow.
    This is a 200 level course, has 40 students in a section, and very few
of them English or History majors. If you had to choose between my approach
and my colleagues, which would you choose and why? Further, what is your own
general sense about how such a course ought to be taught, to such a
population?