This week I had an enlightening conversation with Prof. Abraham, the professor for Greatness in Music. He told me he believes his class is not about “learning a specific theory or history or even a single topic, it’s about using music as a vehicle to learn about critical judgment and aesthetic theory.” Does this ring a bell? Well, if you read the comments from last week’s post, something should light up; “An American from Cairo” argued that for him, general education classes are “the initiators of a method of thinking that should continue throughout one’s life.”, and I agree that this too is part of what a general education encompasses.
Through the Greatness in Music course, students are able to develop independent thought. They are stripped away from preformed opinions caused by experience, tastes and influence from others, until they can form their own judgment of what is “good” and “bad”. After taking this class, students will not only know about music itself, but will think about values in a different way and will posses critical thinking capabilities.
In order to reach this goal, Prof. Abraham has his students read an article every week, whether about aesthetic theory, cognitive education theory or ethnomusicology, and generate a reader’s response that will be discussed during class. In this discussion, students learn to recognize the effect of society on their opinions, and are able to get rid of them to create their own judgment. They are also able to reach these conclusions by studying the language of criticism. By looking at reviews students identify how language is used to express a judgment value. They later apply this to their own critique reviews, which they have to create based on a performance they saw, where they can fully comprehend how a critique affects people’s opinions on what is determined as “good” or “bad”.
Because of the approach to the class, there is no assigned text for it, and most of the classes are characterized by discussion and dialogue amongst the students. This allows students to be independent thinkers while also considering other’s points of view.
Therefore, I believe general education is both to create “a method of thinking” as “An American in Cairo” said, and to make us “informed citizens of the world”, as Prof. Nadell said.
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2 comments:
Good Day,
Good post. I obviously enjoy the nod to my comment, however, I also believe you hit on what Dr. Jackson believes is the real purpose of general education. General education should not be focused on simply learning facts and dates--Dr. Abraham makes this quite clear--rather, it should be about developing the critical thinking skills necessary to contribute in a significant way to ones specified dicipline later in life.
I'd like now to pose a question. Considering the number of learning styles among the general AU student population, how should a professor intelligently structure his/her class to ensure the students are able to take away lifelong "critical thinking" skills?
Good question -- one that we're going to be holding some faculty workshops (in cooperation with the Center for Teaching Excellence) on in the coming months. But in general terms, I'd say that two things that can be done are to have a clear evaluation rubric that emphasizes critical thinking rather than the recall of bits of factual data, and structuring class sessions so that students get to practice that kind of critical thinking before they're expected to do it on a paper or an exam. A lot of this about using the classroom as a staging-area rather than a place to open brains and fill them with facts, IMHO.
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