[lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?

123hop at comcast.net 123hop at comcast.net
Thu Jan 27 14:41:36 PST 2011


The discussion however, was about the first two years in college.

I remember those two years. Students have to take a lot of survey classes then. I remember a survey of all English lit in one year. I remember taking a philosophy of history class in which we read one book a week. I remember at the same time doing a comp class, which was basically a five page paper every ten days. And on it went.

I was fairly well read at that time, but I didn't have much "rigor" because I still needed to steep in the stuff -- having it become second nature. The rigor started more with the upper division classes, once that broad foundation had been set.

Joanna

----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Rudy" <alan.rudy at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:51:03 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study?

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:24 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Isn't there something of a contradiction between developing ability to
> think rigorously (vigorously ?) and developing critical thinking
> skills ? Rigor requires strict adherence to complex thoughts of
> others, and it is difficult simultaneously be critical of what one
> develops the ability to strictly adhere to. The enthusiasm for ideas
> necessary to discipline oneself to handle them rigorously is
> undermined by thinking about the same ideas critically.
>
> It is difficult to read more than forty pages of something in a state
> of mind that is highly critical of what one is reading.
>
> Charles
>
>
Nope, no contradiction. Critical thinking - individual or collective, instructional or political - absolutely necessitates analytic rigor. So many students of read without rigor and, at best, generate utterly exogenous critiques... critiques inconceivable to anyone who read closely, rigorously and fairly. I am not saying that exogenous critiques are unfair or useless. I am saying that it takes rigorous thinking and fairness to generate good and fair endogenous critique. Good criticism is rooted in rigorous efforts to fairly understand a text, its context, its production, etc. You don't have to be civil, as Doug argued, but to be critical you do need to be rigorous. As a teacher, it IS a struggle to teach both close reading, analytic distance and critical engagement. But a good part of this difficulty lies in the fact that my students often do no reading, usually do cursory readings, sometimes do a single good reading and just about never do repeated readings. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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