Hmmmm.....Demosthenes, you've lost much the past 2,200+ years. The old Demosthenes would have known better than to confuse the statement of a conclusion for an analysis. Perhaps Keating is "a self-centered, irresponsible moron", it is possible that is a valid conclusion. But there was no analysis whatsoever to justify that conclusion. As for "to fire him was the happy end of the movie" tells us nothing more than that the author is happy with that ending; which is much "analysis" as my adding an emoticon to the end of this sentence. As for your second paragraph, I realize that the tempation to offer a masked tautology, which when unmasked reads as "The theme was obvious and so it was not not obvious", is ever a temptation. After all, a tautology can never ever rend your statement invalid. But that is the point. It is NOT obvious that Keating represents "education as entertainment". Perhaps he does. Or perhaps he represents "education as a passion of the mind", or "education as vocation", or "education as not mere training for a useful role but for an exploration of the fundamental questions of life", or "education as the awakening of the soul the sunlit world outside the Cave", or ....[yes, there are even more possibilities ]. One who sees "Dead Poet's Society" may have reasons for concluding what you suggest should be concluded, but then there may reasons, perhaps very strong reasons, for one to conclude otherwise. This, muchacho, is why analysis, an argument for the stated conclusion, is needed. Red, Red, Red, Red,.....Blue ,... is not justified by merely asserting that "Blue is Red, Obviously".
Oh, I get it. You didn't realize that this forum is an internet message board, not a classroom. Easy mistake to make, especially nowadays. So, no. This conversation is not in fact part of an online college course. Do not expect every post to be a thoroughly developed argument. Glad we cleared that up. Now, I'm sorry that you can't see the possible connection between the film Dead Poet's Society and the concept of education as entertainment. As I said, I think Perre's point was obvious and did not require elucidation, whether you agree with his interpretation of the film or not. Clearly you don't see the connection. Or perhaps you're being deliberately obtuse about it, maybe as some roundabout way of challenging Pierre's conclusions. I don't know. Maybe Pierre will decide to provide his analysis to help spell it out for you.
I thank you demosthenes. I didn't mean to write an scholarly article. I'd probably be unable to do that, anyway, since english is not my native langage. I used Prof. Keating as the archetype of modern education, education centered on the student rather than on the culture or the materials. This modern education, in my opinion, is pure and simple demagogy. Education should not start from student's conception of the world, it should not rely on it, it should not try to flatter it. It should not repeat to him, ad nauseam : everything is centered on you, your world is great, everything you say is creative. That's what Keating does: flattering his student's ego. Shout a few words of (bad) poetry, and you're a genius. You're a hero. You're free (*). Incidently, Keating talks about freedom, but he also destroys books. Worse than that : he forces his students to destroy books. What kind of freedom is that ? An obligatory freedom ? "Fahrenheit 451", everybody ? In short : a student-centered education is also a self-centered education. Take an ordinary 21st century student. This student already knows the internet, he already knows TV, I-pod, global medias and so on. Why would you teach him things he already knows ? To him, I-pod isn't exotic, new or formative. Such education plunges the student back into his own mental universe, over and over again. A classical lecture, on the other hand, would be new, exotic and formative. It would be something completely different from the things this student knows in his ordinary life. Such a lecture would send the student to another time-space. A time-space where the attention span is longer than 30 seconds ; where one talks and the others listen(**) ; where you take the time to appreciate an idea as it slowly unravels itself ; where the words matter more than the images ; where the thoughts are not replaced by slogans.... a time-space for the humans, and not for the machines. Anyway, be reassured: I know I am a dinosaur. I know my words sound insanely cretinous to 99% of the teachers worldwide. I know the slightest doubt about "student-centered education" will pull out the big red flag, and that no HE institution (not a single one) will hire me if I say what I really think. ---------------------------------------- (*) if climbing on tables is enough to be "free", then we should send tables to Burma or Pakistan. Democrats there would climb on them and be liberated at once. (**) while, in the ordinary world, everybody talks and nobody listens.
This is an Internet Forum. "Internet" is just a means for you to convey your thought. "Forum" sets discussion as oriented to debate and the crafting of argument, to discover, to learn, to persuade, to understand; in short a place for formal argument. "Messageboard", however, is simply a bulletin board; a hawking of wares or stances with no intent in entering into a genuine dialog. Your namesake, Demosthenes, would have been astonished at your blindness to this distinction, as he would have been disgusted by your bizarre attempt to limit to the schoolclass all enquiry, argument, and the digging down into the root of things. As for your "Dead Poet's Society is all about education as Entertainment because I say so, and don't need no justification, hey, obvious dude, I can't be bothered, but, hey, maybe Pierre can cover my ass for me, because Pierre likes to cover my ass, hey, dude, it's just so, what, you obtuse or sumpin, guy? Hey, Pierre, c'mon cover me ass here" riff, what is the problem? Did that same education which crafted that astonishing mind's eye of yours, the one insightful enough to grasp that Keating is an obvious shill for Big Entertainment, leave you utterly bereft of the powers of analysis, synthesis, analogy, or any other mode of Reason? C'mon, Pierre, cover your friend's ass here
Well, well said. Yes. Part of what we're seeing is the result of over-indulgent parents who do not stress to their offspring that they have no opinions that they can arrive at on their own that the adult world has any responsibility to respect or even consider, and that their period of relevance will come only when they finish college (or, at least, leave home) and enter the workplace.
I don't want to derail the discussion, which has been about pedagogy at the university level, but I have to point out how much this debate applies at the elementary and high school levels. I believe that the current emphasis on honoring the students' experiences and their voices does an inexcusable disservice to those students (especially to students of color who are my main concern), in a misguided attempt to engage them and show them respect. Case in point: progressive, process-oriented writing instruction. My school uses the Columbia Teacher's College Reader's and Writer's project curriculum. The first two units of the year focus entirely on personal nonfiction narratives, basically memoir vignettes. The way the Project is organized, students follow essentially the same progression of units no matter their grade level, from first through eighth grade. Now, the idea here is that students will be more engaged in their writing if they write about their own experiences. They will be more personally connected, more invested and more eager. The irony of this approach is that students of that age generally don't really have interesting stories to tell, and they know it. Or conversely (as is often the case with my students), their real lives are pretty horrible and they hardly want to revisit that pain daily in their school assignments. But that's almost beside the point. The point is that from first through eighth grade, students spend at least 16 months of their lives writing about what they already know, which is very little. They are not expanding their horizons or learning content knowledge in any subject area. They are just retelling their first trip to Coney Island over, and over, and over again. And it's not just those first two units. Later in the year, students write nonfiction reports or essays -- but they're not allowed to do any research! They're supposed to write about a topic on which they're already "experts." Every year and at every grade level I've taught, I've had children ask me if they can do research. They want to write about sharks or snakes, or football, or volcanoes, or even politics. They know they need more information on those topics, and I'm supposed to tell them "Don't write about that. Write about something you already know all about." Who really wants to write a whole report all about double-dutch, or how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? What am I really teaching a child, when he produces an essay about his favorite video games? It's pure nonsense.
I never said that. Do you always misrepresent assertions that you disagree with in order to make them sound objectionable? Or is that done just for moi? It was Pierre's initial assertion, so I left it for him to defend. I already said that I perceive the connection as obvious, and I see no need to explicate the obvious.