Then,  mediocrity will - as usual - prevail...
 
stoneking
 
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: Pedagogical Question
 
 
> unfortunately, one of us must prevail, and a governing course description
will result. I am happy to teach and let teach, but my colleague is not.
>
> >>> William Stoneking <[log in to unmask]> 09/01 8:40 AM >>>
> TEACH WHATEVER YOU LIKE... LONG AS YOU "MAKE IT NEW"
>
> stoneking
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 9:29 AM
> 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?
> >
>