Teaching Skills, not Beliefs

Harking back to that "dirty liberal" reference from my second post.

When I was in undergrad, I went to a small liberal arts school in the middle of Iowa. It's pretty much what you expect in a small Iowa town. Very conservative and straight laced. I don't know if that's changed since the late 90s. Probably not too much.

To this day, I don't know why I chose that school. While I got a fantastic education, and there were some great programs, especially the study abroad program, that place was so wrong for me mentally and emotionally. I am fairly liberal, although I do have some conversative leanings (hey, like maybe a balanced budget would be nice?).

Anyway, the reason for the whole idea of "teaching skills, not beliefs" is Professor R. I signed up to take an American Politics course of his. I must have stayed in through the first paper and then I promptly dropped. I don't remember what my grade was, but it wasn't good. It wasn't the grade, it was how I was graded, and his teaching that aggravated me. You see, you could "write" an "essay" test with bullet points and get an "A". As in, completely no need for sentence structure, segues...nothing. What mattered was you had to spout back R's uber-conservative beliefs in toto. You could not disagree with the man and get a good grade.

So.Wrong.

Education, learning and the pursuit of knowledge is a dangerous business. To me, education is about questioning and challenging. If you never question anything you're told, you're a mental slave. Disagreement and debate are the building blocks of a civilized society. If students of mine accept everything I say, I'd seriously question if they learned anything. You don't have to agree with me. I may not like your opinion, but you're entitled to it. Provide evidence to support your claims; let's have a discussion. Let's both learn something.

Like I said, I may be liberal in my own views, but I'm not going to shove it down anyone's throat. There's been far too much of that for the past eight years of the Bush administration. Questioning your government is not unpatriotic. If you don't question, you lose your freedom and you get despots.

So here's a promise I need to make to any student I may have:

I will strive to never be a "Professor R". You are entitled to your beliefs. All I want is to give you the skills and tools to be critical thinkers: to be able to look at the information and messages society is bombarding you with and to decide for yourself their value and their accuracy. Be educated consumers of knowledge! There's an excellent article I read that relates to this. I'll have to dig it up and provide the link to it soon.

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. --Thomas Jefferson (Now, I admit that this quote is taken entirely out of context. I think TJ was referring to religion with this, but it does have its uses as far as developing critical thinkers is concerned. I don't mean to touch religion with a ten foot pole as far as education is concerned.)