The Authority To Teach (Department Of Dilettante Research)

[koganbot]

Returning to the subject of the Department Of Dilettante Research - summarizing it in one sentence:

Everybody takes each other's course.
(1) I don't mean this literally, since I'm hoping for scores of participants, while "everybody takes each other's course" is only feasible for a dept. of five or six max. But "everybody takes each other's course" conveys the SPIRIT of the enterprise.

(2) For this to work, people will have to create the authority within themselves to teach and must simply not let up on their urge to understand. A reason that departments of dilettante research didn't spontaneously emerge within Why Music Sucks, ilX, Poptimists, etc. was people's ultimate refusal to teach.

(3) So we'll make demands on each other. Would it help to institutionalize such demands? They may be up to the teacher. Pressure, force, rewards, structure, deadlines? Partially applied onerous requirements (PAOR): "State ideas rather than alluding to them." "You don't get to leave the room until I'm convinced I understand you and that you understand me."

(4) One goal here is to reach across space - social space, cultural space. So not just interdisciplinary but "intergalactic." This means we often start from misunderstandings.

(5) So I want this to take place in an open space. Is the department merely in an open space or is the department an open space? But the space would include outsiders and kibitzers and naysayers and those who don't "get" the requirements. I'm looking for people who are willing to fly with me, but my instinct here is that I also need to be in sight of those who won't fly and those who fly elsewhere.

(6) I don't know if this is relevant, but the think tank my brother is in (cbpp) was one of the "high-impact nonprofits" discussed in the book Forces For Good: the book's summary includes this sentence: "high-impact nonprofits work with and through organizations and individuals outside themselves to create more impact than they ever could have achieved alone." I'm seeking colleagues, not necessarily world changers, but an eye and a hand to fellow spirits may be wise. Are there any fellow spirits?

Links:

The original post for Department Of Dilettante Research

Other koganbot threads on the Department Of Dilettante Research, in reverse order

Poptimists threads on the Department Of Dilettante Research, in reverse order

Several hours after I made the first Department Of Dilettante Research post I got my column at the Las Vegas Weekly, which is one reason I didn't keep posting regularly about the department. Now I no longer have the job, so perhaps I'll make time for more of these posts.

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I see how giving or taking 'the authority to teach' might address the frustration you've felt with conversations running out of steam, and I can see that 'everyone takes each other's course' moderates the hierarchy required by the notion of authority by placing it on a basis of equality. So I can see here an effective basis for something like a set of discussion protocols to which participants might commit themselves. I can relate it to my experience of good discussion among academics (relatively few and far between - most of the time comments in response to papers are either about status or are rote responses based on long-standing disagreements which for the sake of existing as a community everyone chooses to see as secondary to membership of the community). The situations in which i've experienced 'good' discussion tend to be in a workshop format - extended over a few days, a core set of participants each of whom tables a paper relating to the stated topic, one or more people respond, then general discussion follows, other people may drop in and out. This works well when each participant accepts the authority of the others in relation to specific aspects of what is being discussed, but everyone has in effect consented to explore common ground and therefore to work together (even if that means clarifying differences). Now this happens very rarely, since it involves finding the money to get people into the same place, all of whom have had to carve out time from their usual work to prepare the paper, read through the others, and prepare comments in response. It also helps to go out in the evening for dinner etc. as stuff gets reworked in a different key. (Have you read Feyerabend's autobiography? (I guess you have) This is what I imagine the summer schools he went to early in his career (in Switzerland?, my memory is hazy) would have been like.)

But I don't think it's coincidence that these are exceptional events - academics are being paid for teaching, most of the time, in contexts where the 'authority' is not bestowed by consent among the participants, but by the institution, and the incentive for 'understanding' is passing the course. I also think that things need to be time-delimited, i.e. anything with 'mutual understanding' as the goal rather than 'seek to understand each other for X hours', will rapidly feel oppressive if conversation hits a block. I don't think this affects the core of what you're saying, which seems to me to be that to make something productive out of online discussion might require contravention of the social protocols which govern most online discussion - i.e. if there's a reason why Ilx and poptimists aren't delivering, change the ground rules. And practically: I think the workshop model has a significant difference from the seminar course - because it takes participants out of 'everyday' life and allows them to focus on the topic, concentration can be maintained (for a short while). I don't see how that energy can be kept up on an ongoing basis. I know discussion forums or message boards are used extensively in distance teaching now - but usually led by assessment, i.e. participation is stimulated by the formal requirement to post something substantive X times a week. A reading group might be a better model for what you're interested in since participation is kind of combined with assessment in the sense that we could take as implicit the agreement to 'understand' a chapter a week, or 'understand' each others responses to that chapter.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Two minor follow-ups - introducing the notion of 'teaching' to the department of dilettante *research* is striking to me because the mantra of the UK university system regulation is the aspiration to 'research-led teaching', but in my experience these rarely coincide, and teaching can in some cases be more effective if not (directly) led by research. It can be (need not be) the case that the expert finds it hard to judge the distance between his own knowledge and that of the novice, and therefore is less able to help the other over the gap. The other point is that there are practical reasons why academic disciplines exist for the most part as conversations which don't either go back to first principles all the time (emphasis is on moving 'forward' although going 'back to basics' is a permissible intellectual move) or interact with other disciplines directly. If they define themselves by the production of useful results, i.e. as forms of technological knowledge, rather than of 'truth', these conversations have to police the level of introspection and reflection, and the inability to bridge disciplines, or to talk directly to a general audience, might be seen as necessary failures, subordinate to their chosen end. The danger is obviously that the conversation goes up a blind alley and no-one can bring it back; and it would also be dangerous to think that what might suit engineering or pure maths would suit the more humanistic disciplines (this is the argument over what model applies for economics I guess).

[koganbot]

What if you didn't have to think yet about what would work practically - e.g., let's say you can shanghai the thinkers you want for several years, and benefactors are shoveling wads of money at you to be as organizationally creative as you can. So you can play around with ideas of, perhaps, trying to keep a workshop going on a particular topic, or creating on and off workshops on related topics while other activities go on about them. Or you can force people to take your class - that is, force them to give you feedback on your ideas and in return you take their classes, so you're giving them feedback on their topics. So you've got an idea and here are people you'd expect would be able to contribute to it - that's why you've chosen them. But also, for your own sake and theirs, you're willing to enter the world of their ideas.

Or another path might be to assemble a set of interesting people with no unifying topic, though of course we each start teaching on the basis of our own preoccupations - but people aren't chosen specifically because I have an idea in advance of what sort of thing they'd be likely to contribute.

[koganbot]

There is an implied time limit which would be the length of the "course." There can be follow-up courses, but obviously not everyone will want to or be able to follow up on everything. (My frustration is the inability to follow-up on anything. I'd say I have this problem less than most other people do, but I still have it. If I don't get some sort of immediate gratification/immediate response, or some sort of structure forcing me to produce and continually elaborate on ideas of my own, my own thinking drifts.)