do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Saturday, 26 March 2011

check out "community"

leave it to hollywood to express it far better than words or a blog ever could.

now let it be known i have not watched TV for 23 years.

but somehow here in sweden some friends torrented the show "community" off internet and i was suddenly watching the funniest nonsense of all time, outside of real life LACC.

now, true, the TV show is ultra crude, so do not blame me if it offends you.

but remember, i am the one that doesnt like being cursed at in real life.

the show is so funny bc it captures this impoverished idiocracy vibe.

the anthropology teacher is deluxe rude and crude too.

some of it was filmed at LACC, and at large, it is about the demise of the american economy and the plight of the ongoing education of older students in a fast food educational environment with socially gauche pompous educators and deranged fellow students.  sound familiar?????

the recurring chicken jokes affirm the fast food styrofoam vibe.  they could go vegan.
it was great, sort of, the wafting smell of melting beefgrease on styrofoam.  nothing makes your brain work better than thick coatings of transfats, saturated meatgreese, aspartame, and pesticide residue.  and tons of pot.  the more marijuana, the more LACC makes sense. the food should at least be as toxic as the tap water, and the grafitti in the bathroom should be as pornographic and expletive laced as possible, bc hey its LA BABY.

get out your razor blades and start writing messges on the toilet seat.  yeah.

and thanks for all the actual information, teachers, in addition to the sexist crude language, TMI.

overall,  my sense of disgust needed to get pushed to an extreme, at which point i get really radical, move away and enjoy the glories of equality-land sweden, where the men are as sweet as maple syrup, and never curse.

what is it about respectfulness that is soooooo attractive?  i will never know how i endured such stupidity at LACC, but it was all infotainment.

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