Lofton / Re: Unfavorable feelings towards ideologies

[James Maule]

It simply comes down to a matter of who gets to decide what is true.
Ultimately people determine for themselves what is true, and for
students to do that for themselves they must be free of constraints that
shove them into one corner that is characterized as "true" (thus earning
an A) and that penalizes them for taking a different position.

Of course there are some procedural truths. If an educational
institution has as its mission teaching a person to think, then a person
who rejects that mission would not be happy as a student (or teacher) at
that institution. Teaching a person to think, by the way, does not
necessarily mean that the person is being shown one "true" way of
thinking. There are many ways of thinking, and a good teacher of
thinking again gives the student the opportunity to explore and
determine which method works best for that student (some, for example,
do well with visualizations and others prefer to work solely with
words).

>>> jlof at aol.com 8/14/2007 2:15:17 PM >>>

Questions like the one below (by James Maule) are useless, too
abstract. Thus my answer: It depends. To what "views" and "opinions" are
you alluding, specifically, since some are true and some are false? Me?
I love to "swallow and regurgitate" views and opinions that are true.
Oh, and when you "teach students how to think and analyze," you are
teaching them what "to swallow and regurgitate"*re: thinking and
analyzing.

"5. Isn't the goal of education, in any field (and not just law), to

teach students how to think and analyze rather than to swallow and

regurgitate views and opinions?"

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican

"Accursed is that peace of which revolt from God is the bond, and
blessed are those contentions by which it is necessary to maintain the
kingdom of Christ." -- John Calvin.









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