Christian's corner: On learning

I am tempted to ignore the pink elephant in the room. The problem is, however, that if I don't say something about the recommendations from the prioritization committee, I will appear to be a complete fop.

The story is told of Thales of Miletus that he fell into a well while watching the stars -- obviously a typical philosopher. (Although in his defense it should be mentioned that he made a lot of money on olives, so he was no fool either). I would not want to be accused of the sin of Thales even if understanding the workings of the cosmos is inherently more interesting to me than penetrating the inner logic of the exhausting list of recommendations.

Certainly there are questions to be asked. For example, it is not exactly clear to me what it means for EMU to become a learning institution. (I thought that we already were, but that is another matter). Here I am a Wittgensteinian: the meaning of a word or a phrase is its use. What work will that commitment do? Does this mean that one may say anything -- anything at all -- in a Weather Vane article? That would be a useful bit of information.

I know what I mean when I say at the beginning of a semester that in this course we will be learning together. I mean that I have not yet read any of the books and that while I have a general sense of what the course is about, I actually have no clue what is around the corner. There is, of course, a method to the madness. One reason is that I continue to be intrigued by my own ignorance of vast territories of knowledge. I may have surveyed the territory in the past, but I haven't looked closely. And sometimes the view on the ground is quite different than the one from up high. Learning is, simply put, fun.

But the more important reason is that I tend to think that students learn better from someone who is still finding his or her way, who sometimes needs to backtrack, and who gets lost every once in a while and has to stop to say "I don't know my way around here, does anyone have a sense of how to go on?" The classroom becomes a sort of intellectual wilderness experience -- a lot like life, really.

It may relieve readers to know that one bright student has caught on. Last year, the comment was made on an evaluation that the teacher "did not always seem well prepared." I'll say! And it doesn't always work out either. I'll never forget having to plod through Peter Brown's, albeit authoritative, 520-page biography of St. Augustine of Hippo. "Tome" just isn't the right word for it; "millstone" comes to mind. But that is what I would mean by being a learner: going on a intellectual trip together, one in which mistakes will almost certainly be made and therefore we will all need each other if we are going to reach our destination.

And what is our destination, exactly? Well, I always thought it was "to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God," but maybe I was wrong about that too...