We propose a first-year program organized around the question, “Is
anybody telling the truth?”
The program consists of two semesters or terms in sequence, organized as
follows.
First term
Every freshman in the program takes the “Truth Seminar,” faculty-led
classes limited to 12 students and organized around a syllabus of common
readings that explore different conceptions of truth and its related issues and
problems. Co-curricular
activities such as films, speakers, and debates provide “quilting
points” to support the emergence of a broad intellectual community around the
seminar. Assignments
will be writing-intensive and will engage students in questioning their own
assumptions and beliefs about truth, about who tells it, and about who has
access to it. The purpose of the first term is to familiarize students with
academic questioning and reflection in preparation for the second
term.
The existence of a common curriculum for this first term does
not imply a traditional or canonical set of readings, nor would the course
necessarily revolve entirely around texts. No discipline or division within the
university would be privileged, the course's defining question being understood
as one going to the heart of liberal education in the broadest sense. More
specifically, that question might be approached by looking at (1) figures or
models of those who have questioned truth, (2) ways of critically evaluating
rival claims to truth, and (3) different modalities of truth, including the
scientific, aesthetic, religious, emotional, literary, poetic, and so on. The
course, in summary, would not be
content-oriented, but would attempt to introduce students – at the
beginning of their college experience – to a rich intellectual journey that characterizes true
scholarship.
Second term
The second term is organized as a series of “mini-courses,”
disciplinary or interdisciplinary, of approximately two weeks each that focus
on particular topics or problems concerning truth. Each student selects four or five mini-courses, and,
through thoughtful integration and articulation, composes an account of an
original and meaningful intellectual journey as represented in a culminating
20-page thesis. The seminar is still organized into small sections of 12
students, but for this term meetings take place as tutorials in which students
meet reguarly with the professor as they begin to build on the experience of
the
mini-courses to elaborate their own theses. These tutorial meetings might be
organized according to any one of a number of formats; the essential idea is
that students be accountable to both the faculty leader and each other. Each
faculty member commits to doing both terms of the course. During the spring
term, a faculty member normally spends about 12 hours teaching a mini-course,
and 30 or so additional hours (perhaps two a week) in tutorials with members of
the 12-person seminar group. The co-curricular program continues in this term,
this time with special emphasis on events that bring various mini-courses into
dialog with each other and thereby help to demonstrate and foster integrative
thinking.
To ensure the success of such a jointly-taught course, it is
essential that faculty members' participation be encouraged, facilitated, and
rewarded. Specific ways in which this might be done include: (1) a
collaborative seminar for faculty running concurrently with the course,
designed to support and inspire teaching (also, grants might be available for
summer or other workshops on pedagogical models appropriate for small-group
seminars); (2) ensuring that the teaching of the course is valued as part of
the faculty evaluation process; and (3) an organization of the course that
permits a diminished time commitment by faculty during the spring term (as
described above). But the most important incentive for participation would be
the intellectual community that would grow up around the course, eventually
making its impact felt throughout campus life.
This program combines the benefits of both the common curriculum
and a topical approach to freshman seminars, with special emphasis on modeling
and developing the spirit of intellectual curiosity and serious reflection at
the outset of students’ college careers. We believe that such an experience will enable students to be
more thoughtful about their education and may well foster new levels of passion
and independence as students undertake their remaining three years of study at
Furman.
Posted by love at
November 1, 2004 09:43 AM
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