Page 225 - WhyAsInY

toWarD a unifieD fielD tHeory
My response, which, as I learned, was better than most but still far from the mark, was to talk in Kantian terms about preserving the other person’s right to be wrong. The best response? “I completely disagree with you, and I don’t want to talk about it any more.” How do you get to that? By thinking about how words are actually used. Gradually, the assignments built upon one another, and the intention, as I saw it, was to inculcate in the student ideas concerning language, voice, point of view, etc. But the entire course was treated as a mystery. Virtually all interaction in the classroom was Socratic. The professor asked ques- tions of the students, challenged them, pursued their bad responses almost mercilessly to their, by then, obviously flawed conclusions, and sometimes even embarrassed them. Questions would be answered with questions. The professor would never say what he actually meant or articulate the purpose of the assignment, much less what the course was actually about.
When we were focused on the meaning of the word drama, an assignment quoted a portion of a story about a wolf, a story that in high school one might have said was unresolved. The question? “How do you know that this is not the end of the story?” I recall submitting a three- page reply (showing no guts). But I also submitted a one-pager that represented my first impulse. It merely said, “This is not the end of the story because”—which probably could have been submitted as my only response. Professor Craig then put those nine words on the blackboard (as apparently was done in all of the sections) and spent the entire hour addressing the question “What is the next word? Is it I? Is it he? Why?” And so on.
Some people hated English 1–2 and never really got the point of the course. Others would recall the day that their internal light bulb went on. For me, the course changed forever the way in which I viewed literature and, hopefully, the way in which I write. Its focus, it seemed to me, was on thinking, meaning, knowledge, and language and how they interacted. It was the quintessential introduction to intellectual inquiry. It was college as I had dreamed it.
• 207 •