This is such a good article. I see this as being part of the broader crisis of confidence in the humanities. People need to think that what they are teaching matters intrinsically and will benefit people--that it's not just a mindless hoop for kids to jump through. And I thibj a lot of professors are afraid that what they're teaching isn't really worthwhile, so they're afraid to let go of the stick. But if discipline in college requires the stick, maybe there is something that is really wrong
Wow, everyone should be looking at this discussion, not only about the gbt “crisis” but more so about what is involved in learning within this span of life. Showing how much more there is to see and try to understand and to participate in beyond the yea and nay. Thanks Tim.
This is an eloquent description of many of the motivations behind the debate on ChatGPT, but I think it misses one really important one. I want to prevent my students from cheating _because_ I am confident that if they don't learn the material, it will come back to bite them. I have enough disciplinary arrogance to think that it's important that students learn the material I'm teaching, even if they didn't really want to work that hard or are not in the right place life-wise, and thus if I turn myself a little bit into Javert for the result of more student learning, it's worth it.
I completely understand this. For example, we'd all agree there is something depraved about letting a child burn themselves to learn the lesson that you don't touch an open flame. On the other hand, I think almost everybody agrees that some life lessons just have to be learned by fucking around and finding out. The pedagogical problem is that it's not always clear what the content of college class is on that spectrum. Finding out in year 1 of medical school that you shouldn't have cheated your way through a biology major--and thus shouldn't have been allowed to do that--is closer to letting someone burn themselves. Letting someone find out two or five or ten years later that they're known for being a bullshit artist is maybe closer to a life lesson that there's space to learn and still come back from.
That's kind of what I meant about disciplinary arrogance. I genuinely think that learning what I'm teaching in my introductory programming course is both intellectually fundamental for everyone, and instrumentally valuable for the life-plans of almost all my students. When I'm teaching a grad seminar, if people don't want to do the work, that's on them. And other classes and other disciplines are going to be somewhere in between; as you say it's often hard to know.
This is such a good article. I see this as being part of the broader crisis of confidence in the humanities. People need to think that what they are teaching matters intrinsically and will benefit people--that it's not just a mindless hoop for kids to jump through. And I thibj a lot of professors are afraid that what they're teaching isn't really worthwhile, so they're afraid to let go of the stick. But if discipline in college requires the stick, maybe there is something that is really wrong
Wow, everyone should be looking at this discussion, not only about the gbt “crisis” but more so about what is involved in learning within this span of life. Showing how much more there is to see and try to understand and to participate in beyond the yea and nay. Thanks Tim.
This is an eloquent description of many of the motivations behind the debate on ChatGPT, but I think it misses one really important one. I want to prevent my students from cheating _because_ I am confident that if they don't learn the material, it will come back to bite them. I have enough disciplinary arrogance to think that it's important that students learn the material I'm teaching, even if they didn't really want to work that hard or are not in the right place life-wise, and thus if I turn myself a little bit into Javert for the result of more student learning, it's worth it.
I completely understand this. For example, we'd all agree there is something depraved about letting a child burn themselves to learn the lesson that you don't touch an open flame. On the other hand, I think almost everybody agrees that some life lessons just have to be learned by fucking around and finding out. The pedagogical problem is that it's not always clear what the content of college class is on that spectrum. Finding out in year 1 of medical school that you shouldn't have cheated your way through a biology major--and thus shouldn't have been allowed to do that--is closer to letting someone burn themselves. Letting someone find out two or five or ten years later that they're known for being a bullshit artist is maybe closer to a life lesson that there's space to learn and still come back from.
That's kind of what I meant about disciplinary arrogance. I genuinely think that learning what I'm teaching in my introductory programming course is both intellectually fundamental for everyone, and instrumentally valuable for the life-plans of almost all my students. When I'm teaching a grad seminar, if people don't want to do the work, that's on them. And other classes and other disciplines are going to be somewhere in between; as you say it's often hard to know.