A Perspective on Class Creation
Years ago a conversation I had with a friend plunged into the question of what makes a college course memorable.
Our discussions were based on the following assumptions:
A course was good if we didn’t feel compelled to go to it but wanted to attend it and even looked forward to going to it.
The course was still something we thought about even now, years and years after undergraduate was completed.
We felt the course had meaning – that is, we were not “in school” but doing something much more meaningful in that space and time, something that might literally seem to apply to a broad range of systems of thought.
After determining this, we thought for a bit and tried to come up with commonalities. The thing we determined that was the only common denominator in all these rare cases was that the course was built around four books or less, no textbooks, with a few other readings here and there along side it. The course asked us to come up with our own opinions about the books and with the books for the others in the course using the direct instruction or class discussion as well.
I’ve tried to hold onto this with some restriction. I’ve added the idea that perhaps books for a course should be seen as resources or reference material (Sort of like assigning the AP Stylebook in a journalism course, or the MLA Handbook in a writing course). But the fundamentals of this are still solid in my mind: The course should be about making something out of resources and other texts rather than responding to, or trying to compose oneself out of what the readings offer.
One of the best natural resources that we do not take advantage of is what students bring with them to the classroom in terms of life experience, perspective, feeling, and ambition. These can be used as resources to add to the class – to help make sense of the material in ways that will help it make even more sense for others who are listening to and responding to what their peers are creating.