Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 558.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell) (46)
Subject: Re: 14.0555 corporate universities, industrial vs
face-to-face
[2] From: Michael Fraser <mike.fraser@computing- (8)
services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: John Henry Newman
[3] From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@uvm.edu> (22)
Subject: Re: 14.0555 corporate universities, industrial vs
face-to-face
[4] From: "Price, Dan" <dprice@tui.edu> (41)
Subject: Internet Teaching and Newman
[5] From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) (83)
Subject: sympathies and conveyance
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:24:16 +0000
From: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (James J. O'Donnell)
Subject: Re: 14.0555 corporate universities, industrial vs
face-to-face
In Eric Johnson's transposition (quoted below) of Newman's dogmatism
(curious when failed University presidents write books telling people how
to run Universities) to contemporary concerns, Johnson seems to know what
"[Internet teaching]" intrinsically is and how it is ineluctably destined
to insufficiency. I would be curious to know whence that certainty
arises. The continuing emergence of technologies that simulate presence
and dialogue is a marker that many of the defects that now mark such
teaching will soon vanish. Given that it is far from clear that
"[Internet teaching]" is now in practice insufficient (if one considers
empirical evidence), and given that those defects are in process of
remediation, perhaps here, as elsewhere, dogmatism needs be moderated by
faith, hope, and charity.
Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
Eric Johnson <johnsone@jupiter.dsu.edu> wrote:
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 18:58:57 +0000
> From: Eric Johnson <johnsone@jupiter.dsu.edu>
> >
.....
>
> As I said in an online conference paper, Newman's thoughts are also
> relevant to teaching via Internet. In 1854, John Henry Newman argued
> that a university education must be gained in classrooms, and that books
> were not an adequate substitute for face-to-face contact with a teacher.
> What he said of books is true of Internet teaching: "No [Internet
> teaching] can get through the number of minute questions which it is
> possible to ask on any extended subject, or can hit upon the very
> difficulties which are severally felt by each [student] in succession. Or
> again, that no [Internet teaching] can convey the special spirit and
> delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty
> which attend on the sympathy of the mind with mind, through the eyes, the
> look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the
> moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation . . . . The
> general principles of any study you may learn by [Internet teaching] at
> home; but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life which makes
> it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives
> already." ("The Rise and Progress of Universities")
>
> --Eric Johnson
> johnsone@jupiter.dsu.edu
> http://www.dsu.edu/~johnsone/
>
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:24:54 +0000
From: Michael Fraser <mike.fraser@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: John Henry Newman
The edition of John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University published by
Yale University Press (1996) includes a series of essays 'rethinking _The
Idea of a University_' with one by George P. Landow entitled, 'Newman and
the idea of an electronic university'.
Michael
-------
University of Oxford
mike.fraser@oucs.ox.ac.uk
http://www.humbul.ac.uk/
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:26:09 +0000
From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@uvm.edu>
Subject: Re: 14.0555 corporate universities, industrial vs
face-to-face
To edit Eric Johnson's edited quote: "No [200 person lecture class] can get
through the number of minute questions which it is possible to ask on any
extended subject, or can hit upon the very difficulties which are severally
felt by each [student] in succession."
Although a personable, dynamic lecturer with good stage presence, or even a
reasonably competent actor with a good scriptwriter could probably "convey
the special spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that
rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of the mind with mind,
through the eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual
expressions thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar
conversation."
In any case, my real question for this thread is: When did BA in liberal
arts=120 possibly random credits=$60,000+="critical thinking" become the
equation for "you need this to get a decent job?" Sounds like some wildly
improbable marketing scheme.
There are actually quite a few questions tangled in there. I'd be happy to
expound at length on any one of them but would rather provide any potential
responders with freedom of choice in how to interpret and respond to them.
(Calling on those critical thinking skills no doubt, or was it emotions, or
was that the other thread. . .)
- Hope
----------
hope.greenberg@uvm.edu, U of Vermont
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:26:45 +0000
From: "Price, Dan" <dprice@tui.edu>
Subject: Internet Teaching and Newman
In a recent posting, we have the following quotation from Newman with the
insertion of the author's application to "Internet teaching."
"No [Internet teaching] can get through the number of minute questions
which it is possible to ask on any extended subject, or can hit upon the
very difficulties which are severally felt by each [student] in succession.
Or again, that no [Internet teaching] can convey the special spirit and
delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty
which attend on the sympathy of the mind with mind, through the eyes, the
look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the
moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation . . . . The
general principles of any study you may learn by [Internet teaching] at
home; but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life which makes it
live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already."
("The Rise and Progress of Universities")
I don't get it.
I don't see any contradiction between what Newman is saying and the
possibility of same being delivered by Internet conversation and
interaction. Seems Newman was arguing about the absence of the guiding and
discussing of one's reading. So, the same can take place in the Internet
conversation. Such has been my experience and that of my students when
teaching via the Internet.
And going back to my own experience for four degrees. Some teachers
expressed Newman's ideals; many did not. With some in all honesty it
simply did not make any difference whether I was in class or not. Often I
spent my time in a more valuable fashion by skipping large lecture halls
and doing more reading and talking with graduate students. Often, the
material did not seem to be "living" in those presenting it-to use Newman's
phrase.
In this general discussion what I really fear is that we idealize one form
of learning over that of others. In the end, it is after all, what works
best for the individual Learner-whether private study, Internet teaching,
or traditional classroom instruction.
--dan
Sincerely,
Dan Price, Ph.D.
Professor, Center for Distance Learning
***********************************************************
The Union Institute (800) 486 3116 ext.1222
440 E McMillan St. (513) 861 6400 ext.1222
Cincinnati OH 45206 FAX 513 861 9026
<http://www.tui.edu/Faculty/FacultyUndergrad/PriceDan.html>http://www.tui.edu/Faculty/FacultyUndergrad/PriceDan.html
***********************************************************
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:27:38 +0000
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: sympathies and conveyance
Willard,
Eric Johnson's posting drawing a parallel between Cardinal Newman's
remarks on books and "teaching via Internet" came upon me at time when
I was beginning to suspect that women proportionally to their ranks in
the teaching corps are more involved in the online
delivery of courses and in the research relating to best practices in
online delivery. Of course I would twig at someone who had taught via the
Internet quoting a Catholic theologian as to the virtues of face to face
pedagogy. I just had to check a version of the base text from which the
book/internet parrallel was drawn: I found an electronic version:
If the actions of men may be taken as any test of their
convictions, then we have reason for saying this, viz.: - that the
province and the inestimable benefit of the litera scripta is that
of being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal, and an
instrument of teaching in the hands of a teacher; but that, if we
wish to become exact and fully furnished in any branch of knowledge
which is diversified and complicated, we must consult the living
man and listen to his living voice. I am not bound to investigate
the cause of this, and anything I may say will, I am conscious, be
short of its full analysis; - perhaps we may suggest, that no books
can get through the number of minute questions which it is possible
to ask on any extended subject, or can hit upon the very
difficulties which are severally felt by each reader in succession.
Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit and delicate
peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which
attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the eyes, the
look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off
at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation.
But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental
portion of my main subject.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newman/newman-university.html
I recite Eric Johnson, Erasmian exercise:
No [Internet teaching] can get through the number of minute questions
which it is possible to ask on any extended subject, or can hit upon the
very difficulties which are severally felt by each [student] in
succession. Or again, that no [Internet teaching] can convey the special
spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and
certainty which attend on the sympathy of the mind with mind, through the
eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown
off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation . . .
.. The general principles of any study you may learn by [Internet teaching]
at home; but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life which
makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives
already."
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v14/0474.html
What I notice of course due to the aid of the square brackets in Johnson's
text is the substitution of "student" for "reader". What the square
brackets do not show is the phrase "sympathy of mind with mind" has been
reworked into "sympathy of the mind with mind". My base text may be
corrupt and some verification necessary but I daresay considering that
Newman goes on to conclude the paragraph with allusions to the Grand Tour
(language learning and art appreciation) that the Newman does not have in
mind one-to-many communication. In other words, the slippage in the
Cardinal's prose from "books" to "book", from the plural to the singular
It is worth disentangling two separate claims. The plural is connected to
the traversal of an expanse of knowledge (no books can ... get through
minute questions). The singular is tied to speed (no book can ... convey
learning rapidily). Slow down the pedagogical situation. Remove the need
for complete mastery. Sympathy of mind with mind can arise by reading and
writing about books, subscribing to periodicals, contributing to
periodicals, using the post to exchange letters, watercolours, scores. And
the unstudied turns emerge in the exchange. Distance education is
possible, be it electronic or otherwise. And it is adequate. It is not a
substitute. The student using the Internet is not merely a reader. The
student is productive.
The student is also productive in a face to face learning situation. The
relations with other students as well as those with the teacher
contribution to the getting of wisdom. A good learning situation whether
it be online or not creates the space and time for individual
contemplation and for group exchange. Anyone who has fondly read the
marginalia left in a library copy can attest to the "unstudied turns" that
books can offer. Anyone marking such a book may be as resistant as the
student who refuses to imitate the teacher or go at the teacher's speed.
It is perhaps worth remembering that Newman closes the paragraph with a
metaphor of book as vehicle and an allusion to the Grand Tour and the
claim that the fullness of wisdom is found in the place not in the
vehicle. Surely the fullness of wisdom is found in a moment intersecting
with another moment -- a sympathy of mind with mind. Newman trusts places.
I trust means of conveyance.
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
Member of the Evelyn Letters Project
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dchamber/evelyn/evtoc.htm
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