I dropped into a classroom at my local junior college at noon today to listen to a debate on the Vietnam War. A regular event for the past ten years, it featured three Vietnam war veterans as judges examining the performances of the pro and con teams on their final class day in a ten-week semester.
While awarding the victory to the pro side of the argument, the judges acknowledged that it seemed that neither side engaged more than one-third of the class of 30 in their presentation, and that answers seemed spontaneous and not well-researched.
I think they were being awfully polite. I would have failed the students, teacher, and the college. It was far from a debate, and appeared that most of the speakers had become badly-informed. The teacher explained that she let the students do their own research, and that she had not provided them with much materials, nor direction. She said that she had limited their research to materials produced between 1954 and 1968, and it appeared their understanding of key events had not gained from the many excellent analysis of the past 50 years. If she hadn't intervened halfway though the debate, it would not have risen much beyond two very-opinionated speakers hardly listening to each other. It failed to demonstrate debate techniques, deep knowledge, or enhanced curiosity.
If I have some extra time in January, I'm going to do some more research into the effectiveness of this approach, and what improvement ideas I might be able to suggest for the next semester's class.
1 comment:
Thank you for your insight and comments on this short interaction you had with this class. I would also like to dig deeper into the matters also about how to do better research and share it with those younger than I. All the best to you on this endeavor.
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