My Teachers
It was also during these years that I learned how unyielding the loggerheads between disciplines can be. As I studied may way through six different majors (including child psychology, sociology, political science, history of science, anthropology of education, and through it all, philosophy) taking in all the best theory in each of these ways of knowing, the artificial distinctions between them seemed to block out all the light. This starts reasonably enough with different nomenclature, which can be useful, but goes too far when strict disciplinary rules are enforced (in student writing, at least) about not crossing these artificial boundaries by bringing thinkers from different disciplines into dialogue. God forbid Einstein’s voice should come up in a paper on philosophy!
Fortunately for me, Alexander Meiklejohn’s legacy lived on at the University of Wisconsin. He had come here in the 1920s, and was given a charter to start what became the legendary Experimental College. By my lights, what is now called Integrated Liberal Studies turned out to be the best possible learning experience for someone with my purposes, closer to true philosophy than my home department that had usurped the name of Philosophy. Dedicated to the great books of antiquity and applying ancient wisdom to the challenges of our age, ILS was much more than the liberal hotbed it was reputed to be (though it was also that). It drew award winning teachers from many different departments to teach courses that incorporated multiple disciplines and looked for the interconnections between different ways of knowing. And for the first time in my education, I felt that someone had turned the lights on. I could suddenly see the whole span of time and hear the voices of a whole network of great thinkers who had carried on an eternal dialogue throughout the cycles of change over the millennia.
How could it be that there is nothing of this anywhere else in our education, I wondered, how could I help remedy this deficit in academia? Since it had taken its name from Plato’s Academy, the least it could do would be to observe the key dialogic principles of Plato’s work.
I also have to credit one teacher in particular for this transformative learning experience - my mentor and good friend, Charlie Anderson (whose lectures I was recently thrilled to find on Itunes Podcasts). We spent many years working together as I ultimately became his teaching assistant in a year-long course (called Political, Economic, and Social thought in Western Culture), which spanned preliterate to postmodern thought. Charlie was not only the best teaching role model anyone could hope for, but also a energetic champion of my work. He read every word I ever wrote, and credited me in each of his books as a seminal influence on his own writing. He was constantly trying to get me to publish, and even set me up with his own editor and publisher at UW Press, but ultimately understood that I had not yet reached my own goal as a writer. But he taught me the power of a good teacher by being a student in his own right, and by treating me like his own teacher. And there has not been a day in my own teaching career that I have not been grateful for his support and try to pass on all he taught me.
There have been other great teachers, but I’ve written about them elsewhere. And I wanted to single out Charlie because the truth is, all it takes is one great teacher to make all the difference!
It was also during these years that I learned how unyielding the loggerheads between disciplines can be. As I studied may way through six different majors (including child psychology, sociology, political science, history of science, anthropology of education, and through it all, philosophy) taking in all the best theory in each of these ways of knowing, the artificial distinctions between them seemed to block out all the light. This starts reasonably enough with different nomenclature, which can be useful, but goes too far when strict disciplinary rules are enforced (in student writing, at least) about not crossing these artificial boundaries by bringing thinkers from different disciplines into dialogue. God forbid Einstein’s voice should come up in a paper on philosophy!
Fortunately for me, Alexander Meiklejohn’s legacy lived on at the University of Wisconsin. He had come here in the 1920s, and was given a charter to start what became the legendary Experimental College. By my lights, what is now called Integrated Liberal Studies turned out to be the best possible learning experience for someone with my purposes, closer to true philosophy than my home department that had usurped the name of Philosophy. Dedicated to the great books of antiquity and applying ancient wisdom to the challenges of our age, ILS was much more than the liberal hotbed it was reputed to be (though it was also that). It drew award winning teachers from many different departments to teach courses that incorporated multiple disciplines and looked for the interconnections between different ways of knowing. And for the first time in my education, I felt that someone had turned the lights on. I could suddenly see the whole span of time and hear the voices of a whole network of great thinkers who had carried on an eternal dialogue throughout the cycles of change over the millennia.
How could it be that there is nothing of this anywhere else in our education, I wondered, how could I help remedy this deficit in academia? Since it had taken its name from Plato’s Academy, the least it could do would be to observe the key dialogic principles of Plato’s work.
I also have to credit one teacher in particular for this transformative learning experience - my mentor and good friend, Charlie Anderson (whose lectures I was recently thrilled to find on Itunes Podcasts). We spent many years working together as I ultimately became his teaching assistant in a year-long course (called Political, Economic, and Social thought in Western Culture), which spanned preliterate to postmodern thought. Charlie was not only the best teaching role model anyone could hope for, but also a energetic champion of my work. He read every word I ever wrote, and credited me in each of his books as a seminal influence on his own writing. He was constantly trying to get me to publish, and even set me up with his own editor and publisher at UW Press, but ultimately understood that I had not yet reached my own goal as a writer. But he taught me the power of a good teacher by being a student in his own right, and by treating me like his own teacher. And there has not been a day in my own teaching career that I have not been grateful for his support and try to pass on all he taught me.
There have been other great teachers, but I’ve written about them elsewhere. And I wanted to single out Charlie because the truth is, all it takes is one great teacher to make all the difference!