I'm excited to meet the new students. The first day means I don't know my audience yet, so I have to think about the course in a new way, trying to anticipate the best way to introduce the subject. It's a little bit of a challenge (it's sometimes easier to have a conversation when you have a lot of subject matter in common), but it's also a great way to deepen and think through things in a new way.
It occurs to me for the first time today (a "duh" moment) that this is one of the very cool values of the academy, of higher education: you have teachers re-formatting and revising their understanding of the material every semester. In fact, we have a derogatory joke, a cliched image, of the teacher who lectures from his old, yellowed notes every semester. Nothing new, nothing surprising happens. No wonder colleges are the places we make knowledge: everyone there is a newcomer semester after semester, even the most seasoned professor (unless he actually lectures from old, yellowed notes).
Colleges are not just places where knowledge is trotted out, old die-hard facts and truisms. They can be that sometimes, but also places where what we know is challenged. I have a picture in my office that says "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it" (Jacob Bronowski). I think that is a very important way to look at rhetoric, too: it's a matter of questioning, opening inquiry, not codifying facts <yawn>. I'm excited.
Thoth
I have to say, I love blogs and I am excited to read this as the semester goes on. I have a blog myself, on tumblr, that always keeps me looking for something new and I am able to write what is on my mind at any given time. It makes me happy that I am seeing a blog put to great use. Often, I use questions in a lot of my writing because like everyone, we will forever be questioning the world around us and I want to know how I can understand it all. I'm very excited for this class because it is going to help all of us individually and as a class to create new ideas together and which creates new knowledge. Can't wait! :)
ReplyDelete- Katie Persichilli
Tumblr is a great platform. Glad to hear you write in a blog -- I find it just private enough for me to not worry about taking risks, but also public enough that I think people might take it seriously from time to time. It strikes a good balance for me. ¶ I think questions are the more interesting part of the stick (if there is one end that is questions and the other end that is answers). Answers make you feel full, puffed up, assertive. Questions keep the edge. For me, rhetoric is about the edge, the questions, not the answers. And yes, exactly, a class is about making new knowledge. It may not be new knowledge for all the people in the world (most won't know about it, care, or understand), but *if knowledge is made in communities,* then we can make new knowledge in OUR classroom and that's good enuf for me.
ReplyDeleteGlad you wrote! DF