Hi On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Louis_Schmier wrote: > I have merged these two seemingly unrelated topic because I see a > common thread. The question is whether we exchange with an exclamation > point or a question mark? I may be wrong, but it seems to me, on at least > these two seminal issues, so many of us are committed more to the answer > than to the question. It is like that professor in the Zen story whose > cup of tea is so full that it cannot make room for more. Whatever the ... > > When, however, we clutch the answer firmly to our chest, so often > that embrace shuts off any further exploration of the question and we > incarcerate ourselves in our own answer.
If all that academics can do after their considerable education and (in many of our cases here) years of experience teaching is "ask questions," then they are being irresponsible. Academic disciplines are (should be) about asking questions and demonstrating effective ways at arriving at answers (e.g., reason, empirical science). One asks questions in order to arrive at answers, not to engage in some kind of mental gymnastics without point. Of course, many people, students and faculty alike, assume that because people have arrived at answers (e.g., the earth is not 5-7,000 years old, well designed tests can assess student learning) then they have never considered the many questions raised by the answers. That is an invalid assumption in many cases, and I suspect virtually all of the time on this list. A great quandry arises, however, when people who have thought about the issues and come to the (reasonable, I would argue) answer on the questions are then challenged by people who seem to have arrived at a different answer, perhaps thinking likewise that they have examined the issue deeply as well. Ultimately it comes down to the epistemological perspectives of the different groups, which itself is not easily resolved given the multitude of "ways of knowing" to which people (and increasingly, faculty) subscribe. Part of our job as educators is to explain why the traditional academic perspective based on reason and science should generally be preferred over the alternatives. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
