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koganbotReturning 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.
(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.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-13 08:20 am (UTC)(1) last year, wanting to get some more practice teaching, wanting to step up and actually put something behind my belief that higher education ought not be confined to the academy, and maybe wanting a little bit of a chance to teach things i would normally feel discouraged from teaching, i considered offering a course at the twin cities experimental college, (http://excotc.org/) a free-form open university sort of thing. but once i sat down to plan out courses i was utterly confounded by the fact that the course i taught would lack the institutional context i was used to, in particular, the unexamined assumption that i had the authority to make all the decisions and tell people what to do. in a 'real' course you can set a large amount of work because there is a framework in which students will tolerate and can at least be gotten to do the work without undue coercion. it seems hard to exact that level of dedication from students with much less material or institutional commitment to a course - and without it, how can you read any philosophy if you're only going to read a little bit? moreover, even though i thought it that in principle it would was good and right to assign material that was in some way not typical of an institutional course, i felt most comfortable assigning certain canonical texts - but then it seemed my main justification for assigning them in an exco course was just 'people think these are important', even if i didn't especially think so. (i know there's a lot wrong with this - it's just an anecdote.)
(2) a big problem occurs to me, which seems to directly confict with your perfectionist goals for the kind of conversations that you want to happen in the d.d.r. it seems to apply especially to humane study, but who knows, maybe to sciences and the applied arts. the way most people seem to improve their understanding of cultural objects - art, philosophy, history - is incrementally, doing enough reading or listening or looking or watching to work up enough to say about it that they feel it expresses what they got from it; and then they put their take on the work up against those of others, and react accordingly. it seems like it's because of this that a large part of what anyone says about what they've experienced is severely limited, and readily dissolves under scrutiny. more experienced readers easily draw the conclusion from this that if they could just get others to go slowly, pour over every word, in sequence, from the beginning, they could get to the ideal reading without having to pass through the intermediate stages. but this seems like it might give short shrift to the large part that sheer mimicry plays in the process of coming to understand something. people like it - and when you take it away from them, they're not sure what to say anymore. along those lines, if you try to take someone through a reading slowly, forcing them to always explain their ideas about what they've read, they find it deadly boring, tedious. to keep them involved, you have to let them get a little ahead of themselves for a while.
-j