blog.shimer

It's Like Magic!

So my first year here at Shimer was a rough one. I arrived knowing that participating in classroom discussions was going to be hard. I didn't talk as much as I should have. I didn't contribute much. I struggled to form thoughts on the text and form those thoughts into coherent sentences. It was really, really hard.

But then I took a break. Three months of break called summer! And I found I missed Shimer terribly. 

And now I'm back! Classes have started again! And, like magic...

I'm not having trouble talking! It's coming  easily now! I'm not dominating the classroom or anything, but I'm no longer preoccupied with trying to participate. I just am. 

So, to my point. Teachers and peers will pressure you to talk more if you're too quiet for their liking in class, it is true. It is also true that this does not always help. The fact of the matter is simply that it is a process. Sometimes, students coming in for their first year aren't very good at classroom discussion. Sometimes, it's just plain hard, and often terrifying. 

But it still remains a process. I've gotten through that first step of getting used to the classroom environment and getting my thoughts in order. Now I'm articulating them, though not with ease. That comes later in this process, I'm sure. 

So it's okay to find participating in class difficult at first. It's absolutely okay. Because not everyone arrives already well-versed in the art of discussing a text. Some of us are just starting out, and learning will happen. It might not be apparent at first, but it definitely does happen. 

A three month break from school certainly showed me the progress I had made. This is exciting, because this time last year, I was wondering if I was really cut out for this kind of education. And, as it turns out, I am. I just had to start learning how. 

This is Sara, signing out, and looking forward to resting her already-fried brain!

Can you really teach science in discussion classes?

The father looked at me skeptically. 

As we sat together in Infinity with his wife and the daughter who wanted to come to Shimer College, he was not ready to accept the idea that a Shimer education was the right one.  He had received his education in the physical sciences.  He made his business in software.  He served as CEO of his own company.  Even from his way of asking questions, I knew he was an intelligent, pragmatic, left-brained thinker.  So he asked,

“How can you teach math and science in discussion classes?  If the students just trade ideas with each other, how will they learn the facts, the truth?”

It was clear that he was not trying to trap me.  This was an open-minded and authentic question.  He was prepared to hear the answer even if he suspected that I could not give one.  My response was equally authentic.

“A good Shimer dialog is not a ‘rap session’, not just students pooling their ignorance.”  I said.  “It’s a dialog with the author as much as with each other, and we work together to understand what the author is saying.  If it’s Newton explaining Physics in the Principia, then we help each other achieve a correct understanding of what he’s teaching.”  The father’s mien softened.  “After all,” I added, “you probably know the old saying about the best way to learn something.”  I paused and he nodded, saying “To teach it.”  “Right,” I responded, “so if I can get the students to teach each other instead of my teaching them, they learn more and retain more.”  The father leaned forward, engaged.

I went on.  “Let me share with you my own model of teaching.  We Shimer teachers are often called facilitators, and so we are.  But I’m not just facilitating the process by making sure everyone gets a chance to talk.  I facilitate the learning process.  My model, my internal image of what I’m doing, is the sheepdog.  If the students are going in the right direction, I let them go, teaching and correcting each other.  When they wander off in the wrong direction or into a blind alley, I round them up and bring them back to the content of the reading and the message of the author.  After all, a good Shimer dialog is not just sharing opinions.  It’s understanding the material and being able to back up any statement you make with evidence and logic.

“I guess that the clearest example is when I teach calculus.  It’s not a matter of opinion what the derivative of X squared is: it’s 2X, period.”  The father nodded.  Apparently he remembered his calc lessons.  “My job is to make sure that they know that fact—from the book, not from me—and why it’s true.  Here’s how discussion works into it.  The students have a reading and they have problems to do (you don’t really know math if you can’t do the problems) and we start class with a discussion of the text.  Students share their questions or confusions and try to explain it to each other.  I participate in this as just one more person at the table.  When everyone else is stumped, I continue the discussion by explaining and sharing my knowledge until everyone gets it.  Then we turn to the problems and do the same thing.”

The father responded to this.  “Fine,” he said, “but does it really work?”  I could see here both his pragmatic nature and why he was successful at business.  I replied.  “I used to worry about this.  After all, most science faculty at other schools think a Great Books approach is fine for the Liberal Arts but ridiculous for Science.   The scientist in me wasn’t satisfied till I started to get data.”  What data?  “I’ll share two examples.  The first is my own experience.  I always thought that my Calculus students were learning the material, but wasn’t sure because I had nothing to compare them to.  Until Shimer moved to IIT.  Our first year here, one student who had taken Calc from me went on in math and took Differential Equations at IIT.”  The father winced.  Apparently he remembered his Diff Eq class.  “Half way through the semester, the student came back to me with the news: he had gotten his grade back from the mid-term exam.  His was the highest score in the class.  I finally had my comparative data showing the superiority of a Shimer classroom.  The other piece of data came from the National Academy of Sciences—the crème de la crème of American Science.  They studied themselves and found that their members disproportionately received their bachelor’s degrees from small liberal arts colleges, not from major research universities.”  The father looked amazed.  Why??  “I can’t say personally,”  I answered, “But they themselves said that it’s because they were educated more broadly and taught to think outside the box while at the large universities students focus on just doing pre-defined problem sets.  At Shimer, we do both of those in spades.”  Now he smiled, broadly.

We talked more and I shared some more examples and anecdotes.  In the end, I was rewarded with what every evangelist wants: a convert.  The father said “I would really like it if Sarah went to Shimer.”  This time, the daughter smiled.

Let's get some more geeks in here

I'm Jim Donovan PhD, aka JD.  As you can see from my bio at 

    http://www.shimer.edu/aboutshimercollege/JimDonovan.cfm,

I'm a science geek.  I came to Shimer to complete my education.  I'll probably chime in from time-to-time with something about science or how science relates to other fields.

JD

Notes from the Gadfly and the Every-Third-Weekend Program Director, Harold Stone

From time to time, we hope to post the thoughts of some of Shimer's great faculty members on this blog.  Some may even join the ranks of our regular contributors.  For now, Harold Stone, who you can read all about here, has shared these notes originally composed for the Gadfly, Shimer's newsletter for Weekend College, a program which allows adults to complete their undergraduate education in the Great Books here at Shimer.

Notes from the Director

Welcome to the Fall Semester of the 2009-2010 academic year.  The Weekend College is approaching its thirtieth year.  At one time, the rule of thumb was not to trust anyone over 30. I don’t know if the same skepticism was or should be applied to institutions.  As we approach the end of the Weekend College’s third decade, I can tell you the Program is strong, our continuing students have made remarkable achievements in one of the most challenging programs of undergraduate instruction.  Congratulations to those who have completed their Area Comprehensive examinations and to those who passed the Basic Studies Examination.  Welcome to our new students. I think you will agree as you get to know them that they are interesting individuals full of promise. If reaching and passing the thirty year mark is a passage perilous, I advise you to be confident because of the quality of the company engaged in this venture and the nobility of its purpose. 

This year is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150^th of the publication of his best known work, On the Origin of Species.  As we continue our contribution to the life of the mind and the development of our own intellectual and spiritual resources, it is right to think back on what binds us to and separates us from this past.  To enter the world of 1809 requires a far greater imaginative leap than that of 1859, or so it seems to me.  There is something seductive about “The Masterpiece Theatre” presentation of the novels of Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Dickens that makes each of them so approachable even palpable.  This immediacy of the past can be deceptive.   To understand most things we need to withdraw from our immediate context and radically slow down the pace of what we experience.  This isn’t primarily because ‘back then’ life was slower, though that may be true. The primary reason to slow down is to allow us to stop, to pick up objects, and to explore them in their complexity.  You should use the same standard when it comes to your class preparation and your writing.  Set aside more time then you think reasonable to get your reading done and your papers written.  Call it time to think, time to day dream, your understanding of your readings will only improve the longer you allow yourself to wander and wonder with them.  Great authors and great books often have the unsettling effect of making you think they are speaking directly to you, and often that is true.  When you think you are succumbing to the power of an argument, beware that you are  loosing your critical judgment!  Slow down.

On other matters, remember that after the next Weekend College meeting on Sunday we will have the first meeting of the Assembly, the governing body of the College.  All staff and students are members of the Assembly.  Be sure to attend, consider serving on one of the committees that govern the College.   If you have any difficulties with your ID or have any other problems be sure to contact me.

Harold Stone

Director of the Weekend Program 
 

Fact Checking: The Perspective of the Great Books

Among the polymaths we study is the seventeenth French writer Blaise Pascal.  We read Pascal’s scientific treatises on air pressure and the vacuum in Natural Sciences One; his Pensées are a required text in Humanities Three.  In 1656 Pascal began a project which perhaps really began as a series of actual letters to an unnamed friend.  In any event, in their published form they are presented as a series of loosely connected letters which describe the state of theological debate in Paris to someone remote from the capital city.  In their published form we know them as The Provincial Letters.  In this compact volume of 18 or 19 letters one reads a withering analysis of the state of the moral philosophy and of the theological speculation practiced at France’s leading center of religious thought, the Sorbonne.   Not only does his work deal with fundamental questions of integrity and moral purpose; his irony is sublime, his wit is never merely corrosive or abusive, and some of his passages will make you roar with laughter.

The recent debate concerning what actually is being proposed in the healthcare legislation being considered by Congress reminded me of the initial issue that begins The Provincial Letters.  What got Pascal started was what might seem an obscure and insignificant matter.  A couple of decades before a theologian named Jansen had written a Latin treatise seeking to make a coherent explanation of the various remarks of St. Augustine concerning grace, and especially the saving grace God might give to individuals.  This was an important matter of contention between Protestants and Catholics at this time as those of you who have already taken the class know from your reading of Max Weber in Social Sciences One.  It was also an internal dispute between the different religious orders of the Catholic Church.  In the rush to discredit Jansen and his followers (whom we might regard as conservatives), a group led by the Jesuits (whose position might be called liberal) asserted that Jansen’s book contained four heinous propositions.  The Pope, on seeing the propositions, agreed;  he condemned the propositions and the book as heretical.  Pascal and his friend Arnauld had the further effrontery to point out that not only were these statements not contained in Jansen’s text, the text clearly said the  opposite.  To be sure, they agreed, if they had been in the text they would have been heretical.  The response of some of the Jesuits was to argue that Arnauld and Pascal should be condemned for pointing out that the passages couldn’t be found!

And, as you might suspect, this argument, while it looked like it concerned theology was in fact a political quarrel involving the prestige of the French King Louis XIV and the Papacy who were allied to the flawed scholarship of the Jesuits.  While these connections are interesting, what Pascal goes on to show is the moral bankruptcy behind the sloppy and unethical behavior of those who deliberately misrepresent what they read, or worse what they claimed to have read.  He goes on to show that those who sponsored and affirmed these fabricated propositions were part of an institution that promoted a rotten moral code.  Pascal did not hesitate to ridicule his adversaries and succeeded in making them not only look silly but he also showed they were merely petty men who were attempting to be bullies. 

Harold Stone

Portable Libraries

I’m incredibly fond of reductions. But usually when I say that, I mean say taking an idea down to the bare bones, or cooking the water out of a pan sauce to improve flavor and texture. One thing I am not fond of is cutting down my library--especially to a sort of size that can be moved anywhere, like from my house on the east coast, to Chicago, and back again.

I'm no stranger to complicated libraries. Here is a photo of my current bookshelf as proof. Climbing up the side you can the beginnings of a fake shelf. That is what I do when I run out of room (currently the shelves are all two or three rows deep, depending on book size). When everywhere is full  I start stacking vertically, usually on top of thicker, sturdy hardcovers like the complete Shakespeare or my copy of 20,000 Years of Fashion. These sort of precarious towers fall down less often then you'd think.

So, with a years worth of practice in reducing, packing, and transporting personal libraries,  I decided to share a few of my tips for taking your library to Shimer with you. This is mostly directed at freshman who will be heading to Shimer in a few days, but returning students can probably benefit from it too.

1.  Think about space. Some Shimerians (like Sam and Meg, who have both posted here) are lucky. They live off campus with all of their books and all they have to worry about is finding enough bookshelves. Those of us who live in the dorms are not so lucky. If you live in the dorms you’ll have one bookshelf at your disposal unless you bring your own.  So you probably want to consider your choices carefully. Also remember that as the year goes on you’ll get books from Shimer. This means that I brought about one box of books with me, and brought back 3--though, in my case, buying a seven-volume novel halfway through the year certainly added to the bulk. If you’re likely to buy non-school books during the year (and there are some great used book stores in Chicago that offer some pretty tempting stuff), you’ll want to take that into account, too.

2. There is nothing wrong with picking a book because it is a conversation piece. In my experience, when someone comes to visit you in your room at Shimer, sooner or later they’re going to look at (and possibly analyze) your books. So keep in mind which books you think will get people talking and also reflect your interests. For example I brought Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales with me because I’ve had interesting conversations with people about it in the past.

 3. Don’t just bring books that are serious and intellectual. At some point you are going to want to read something a little lighter. What that means is going to vary from person to person. For me it was Milne and Wodehouse with a dash of Wharton. 

4. Whatever you bring, you’re probably not going to read it that often. Basically what I’m saying here is that no matter how devoted a reader you are it is extremely likely that your recreational reading will be destroyed, or at least decimated, by your course work. It isn’t that Shimer students never read for fun, it’s just that we do it less when we’re at Shimer than we’re used to. Because of that I also don’t recommend bringing too many unread books that you’re planning to read in your spare time, which will be spotty and eccentric with its frequency.

5. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring books. Books actually exist for more than reading; they provide opportunities for conversation, roommate bonding, comfort, getting to know more about all sorts of people through lending them out, and are sometimes just really pretty to look at. So I urge you all to bring books if possible.

6. Consider your methods of transportation. If you’re like me and being driven to school my an indulgent parent, consider the size of their car. Consider also that books are heavy and awkward, because of their shape, to pack. If you're traveling by plane, I recommend shipping the books (and your other stuff) rather than paying for suitcases that are too heavy. 

 7. What I’m about to say may seem like it was implied by number 3. However, I feel like it is very important to say this clearly: if you have a book version of a security blanket (I feel most people who enjoy books at all do), then bring it. Things will happen. Even if you have a really amazing year  things will still happen. They may not be terrible but they will leave you wanting your safe-beloved-comfortable book right about then. It would be a pity if you left it behind. 

8. If you do bring DVDs or CDs (and you’ll probably use these more than books) bring them in one of those zip shut soft multipage CD cases. I think they’re called CD books. I know this doesn’t really apply to books but it is something my first roommate, who had experience living out of her suitcase, did, and I thought it was really cool and a great space saver.

9. If there is a book you want to bring, but you’re unsure because you think people may see it and think you’re not serious enough (or if you weren’t worried about that before but now you are because I mentioned it), bring it. Seriously, in my experience with roommates (and I had four of them), I never thought less of them because they had a fantasy novel or something like that on their shelf. Proof that when we were twelve we had read the same, or similar things, made me feel a little more comfortable. And I don’t think that any of my roommates respected me less for bringing two volumes of Winnie-the-Pooh along.

 10. Don’t be afraid to bring books home during breaks. By the end of second semester I think it is likely your bookshelf will have gotten a little full from the mixture of books you brought, Shimer Books, and books you bought or were given throughout the year. If you happen to go home during the breaks, take a few books with you, and it will make things a little easier when you have to pack up in May.