Hey David, DMB said: I thought the classroom scenes and the questioning of the whole university grading system would be something that undergrads could relate to on a personal level.
Matt: My impression of undergraduate teaching is that this is very sound reasoning, and those chapters might be the best to pick out by themselves to start philosophical reflection. My Phil 101 teacher, many years ago, used the entirety of ZMM. Given its structure, I still think this is a great idea for teaching an introduction to philosophy. DMB said: Can you imagine how a student new to philosophy will react to these chapters without reading the rest of the book? What's a reasonable expectation in terms of their comprehension level? What sorts of questions will they ask? Matt: In my limited experience, apropos "sorts of questions," it's not comprehension level that will be your biggest enemy, but interest level. Every class has a different dynamic that it sets for itself in relationship to each other and to the instructor, and I don't have enough experience to even have a handbag of techniques to get students to reliably respond to _me_, let alone the idiosyncratic qualities that every instructor has. But this you will know ahead of time: you are an alien to their classroom. Your presence is a disruption of the normal flow. It's not your fault, and some classes respond joyously to everything. But odds are, because they don't know you (given this is actually the case), they won't respond to you at all. It's the first day of class all over again. So if you assume that know one will respond to you, you can prepare yourself with Plan Bs. If you've ever seen a comedian's evolution, you'll know what I mean: early in their careers, they aren't getting laughs they'll get later after people know them. (For example, compare these two videos of the same Flight of the Conchords song: early (http://www.youtube.com/user/FOTC0123?blend=10&ob=5) and later (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbxA8a_M_s). Watch the later one first and you can see how Flight had a Plan B for the end of the song when their act typically has "audience participation.") But just on comprehension, I think Pirsig does nearly all the work for you in making it accessible, so I wouldn't worry too much there. And what I do for leading discussions is have a series of passages ready to point directly to and leap off of for class. The technique would have three stages: 1) read the passage (have a student do it: even just having a student read something out loud can be enough to break the frozen ice of student-silence); 2) lead them to figure out what _Pirsig_ intends to convey; 3) open up for assessment of what Pirsig is saying. (3) then gets you from ZMM to philosophical issues. For example, one I would pick is this: "Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything--from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it." (193) You might use the passage to ask why the university system seems to behave this way, why does originality get you, not Fs, but a continuum. The way Pirsig states things here is excellent for helping bridge from bad, simplistic explanations ("teachers don't want originality") to more sophisticated lines of reasoning ("because originality doesn't by itself equal excellence"), which is what pedagogical discussion is for. Also, in my experience, if you try and start discussion, and you get a sophisticated answer _first_, go backward to pick up bad simple answers in order to compare them to the sophisticated one. Undergrads will sometimes recognize that a sophisticated answer is better than a simple one, but they often won't know why. Instructors have to build the dialectic for them because that's the know-how you're trying to breed: getting from worse to better. DMB said: On the other hand, the writing lesson is a kind of metaphor for life in general. It's about NOT being a slave to the rules. It's about NOT imitating or parroting. It's about the dull conformist with the thick-lensed glasses who learns to see for herself. It's about being soulful and sensitive and caring. It's about NOT being a square. Matt: Is it? You and I might disagree on Pirsig's intentions, or what life is about generally, _but_ as for pedagogy, these are nice ways to state the interpretation, and then ask, "Isn't it?" Because then you're asking them to flex their refutation skills. You aren't requiring them to agree with you on the philosophical point (as opposed to the textual point), which goes along anyways with the tenor of "down with bad teachers" of ZMM. You can even supply them with the first easy questions to ask: "what if you _want_ to be a slave to the rules?" Make them explicate the reasons for not wanting this or that. "What if you _are_ dull? Is Pirsig saying we all have a hidden capacity for being interesting if we just tried hard enough? What if you just can't, what if you're the girl staring at the brick, and just can't say anything? What if you can only imitate? How do we judge you now?" I would have a series of questions like this in mind, ones that lend themselves to different lines of reasoning, even if you don't like all the paths, just to get a hook in someone to start a conversation. Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
