Foxy-
A student will become confused if she is exposed to lectures by an interventionist and a free marketeer. Assuming they are both good at the job. Her only way out of the confusion, and a student cannot be relied upon to have good defences against a persuasive teacher, and visiting lecturers are chosen because they are persuasive, is to assume that none of them know what they are talking about and thus arrive at what fm called a "jaded" view of things which is, basically, that life is far too complex for these tiny minds to grasp. There is a political agenda in choosing who is doing the visiting. One wouldn't expect your university to expose you to Simon Raven or Kingsley Amis. Unless they had agreed to dumb it down in return for the cash.
You might notice that all the examples you gave were "high status" ones. Arty. Reflecting light on all who mention them in casual conversation.
One might talk about measuring the height of a structure in geometry, or turning lime-water milky in chemistry. Or rolling balls down incline plains. (The story of my life.) No confusion with such unglamourous topics. It seems to me that there is some sort of search for excellence with which students can name-drop for the rest of their lives without necessarily knowing why there is excellence.
Let's face it--there a bit more to Shakespeare, say, than a visiting lecturer can get across in an hour. Or even a few hundred hours. And then some. The visiting lecturer comes for the money and the faculty hire him because, he's available, and they can get his autograph and have a teeny frott with him and maybe a photo for the bookcase with the gold-leaf hand-tooled unread classics in it. If the lecturer has a good agent he will get his client a 20% cut on the photographer and approval rights.
Ted Hughes sent the Shakespeare scholars into a yellow funk with his great book Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Or- An expert's guide to what faces a young man on his journey through life.
That's the sort of thing which renders-
Quote:'Exposed' means to receive enough familiarity with a work or subject to know something about what it is all about.
a mite oversimplified.
Quote:It is for that reason, that exposure to Darwin, even for those who don't accept Darwin as sufficiently accurate to merit 'belief', is not harmful to students in any way
So you think that the 150 years of ranting and raving has had no point and your sweet reason, had they all had the foresight to adopt it, renders it all unnecessary. Talk about the hand that rocks the cradle. They should appoint you ambassador to the Taliban.
You must remember that there are students with IQs in the 130+ range. And they pass out things. Especially the Fonzie types. Kids learn very fast if there's some snickering.
Quote: They need to know what a large body of scientific thought includes and, at some time, they might come to accept what truth there is in it.
You need to provide some evidence for such an assertion. I never heard of evolution at school and look how I turned out.
Quote: In fact it could be most beneficial to realize that two people do not have to agree in order to be friends or allies.
That depends on the things being disagreed about.
Quote: I think the whole world might benefit from that kind of exposure and realization.
As long as the population was thinned out a great deal but then there wouldn't be enough people to provide all the luxuries we are used to.
There is education, propaganda and indocrtination. The role of the first is very limited. Propaganda is when the teacher believes what he is teaching and indoctrination is when he doesn't.
I think you have a problem with the word "indoctrination" and don't like to think you have been involved in any.
It's spendi you're discussing this with.
