Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 758.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 06:26:28 +0000
From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 14.0751 digitisation project? method?
Willlard's note on learning methods versus content/substance/etc/ really
struck a sympathetic chord. For years now, our University has told its
outside Boards (not only Trustees, but State Board of Higher Education
and even more important State Board of Higher Ed *staff*) all the old
clich's about what good an education is -- Liberal Arts teach judgment
and assessment, critical thinking, etc. I have long felt that while
there is some truth to this, it's mostly baloney. I never wanted to
teach my Chaucer students "critical thinking" -- I wanted to teach them
_Chaucer_. (and before we get entangled in postmodern theory, I wanted
to teach them Chaucer as I saw him, while giving fair hearing to other
notions of Chaucer that I thought had something to recommend them). I
didn't want to make beginning medievalists out of them -- unless they
were graduate students -- but I wanted them to appreciate the Canterbury
Tales and hopefully look back on them with pleasure -- and maybe even
pick one up and read it some time.
Is this bad ? I cannot imagine that spending the time teaching methods
of critically judging Chaucer would have been a good substitute.
Should anyone care, I didn't go to college to get a job and make money,
I went to college to learn stuff.
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