As I expected, my offer to come and speak to the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue at Simon Fraser University was declined. I posted earlier about the philosophy of collaborative learning and dialoguing that underpins this "educational program". I did a bit of research on the web and found that there is a lot of literature on this subject. This appears to be one of the many pedagogical fads that pretends to be education and is propagated at our universities. I am attaching five relevant links.
collaborative listening Harvard, cognitive strategies, purdue, dialogue skills, dialogue skills 2 I question the usefulness of these "dialoguing strategies" just as I do the teaching of "reading strategies". Let people speak and defend their view and just encourage people to read, without bugging them. These are just more examples of "educators" complicating learning and the normal exchange of ideas between people. It is false, manipulative and based on the premise that a few elite thinkers can improve the great unwashed multitude. In fact the description of this program at SFU refers to "improving Canadian society" as one of the main challenges of University education. The universities should focus on improving the poor reading and speaking skills of their students, and not worry about improving Canadian society. In fact these cognitive strategies, collaborative listening skills and dialoguing skills are used mostly to stifle genuine debate and the free expression of ideas. That much is obvious from the lack of intellectual freedom at our universities.
Some years ago a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton wrote a paper about how English-Canadian, in other words "English speaking Canadian", was becoming an ethnic identity, much like the Quebecois identity. I found this departure from the multicultural orthodoxy so refreshing that I contacted this professor for further information. She told me that she had decided to abandon this area of research since she had received so much adverse comment and criticism from her peers. Probably she could not get any funding to pursue this politically incorrect line of thinking. She was "dialoguing" in a direction that was not approved by the collective thought police of academia. There is an important premise behind "collaborative listening" and "dialoguing" as a means to achieve improvement. There is a reason why debating and defending arguments can be dismissed as a bad idea. The premise is that your views are within established norms, and thus there is no need to debate or even to defend your views. We all agree! If your views are outside this norm, you can be simply dismissed, without any need to listen, collaboratively or otherwise, nor to debate. A racist, fascist or nazi will, of course, not be listened to. Anyone whose opinion is not orthodox can also be labeled a fascist or racist, and then that person need not be listened to, and can be dismissed without debate.
I discovered this at the one day seminar on citizenship that I attended. Our session began with a lecture on how to dialogue by a student who subsequently called me a xenophobe after about two minutes of "dialogue". We had group discussions around tables. At one table, four out of six people said they were not in favour of encouraging immigrants to hold onto their culture, but that we should all try to be Canadian. Our student moderator summarized our little group's discussion by attempting to write down that we all "cherish multiculturalism". I guess "collaborative listening" can be taken to mean selectively listening. We were encouraged to doodle, draw and write down "whatever came into our heads" onto large paper sheets on our tables, just like in kindergarten.These were to be collected and would somehow represent our collective ideas and lead to improvement. Doodling is collaborative, I guess. Our student moderators were trying to get us into the mood for collaborative doodling by leading serous discussion on citizenship with questions like "What is you favourite Canadian movie? ", "What is your favourite pastime?" "Should five year olds have the right to vote?". I prefer free discussion without manipulation. I agree where I agree, and disagree where I disagree. I do not collaboratively listen. I listen to understand. A conversation is by definition a dialogue. The goal is not to effect improvement, but to exchange views and ideas and bring facts forward. It is an opportunity to try to defend one's own opinions, to discover holes in one's own position, and to explore the positions of others. This is best done with no special rules or assumptions about collaborating to improve things. In any case, differences of ideology or interest soon expose all this collaborative theology as bogus.
I understand that it costs $45,000 for one year at Harvard University. I do not know what the costs are at other universities. Very often the costs are paid for by tax-payers, corporate donations etc. Many of the professors are more interested in "research" than in teaching. The quality of the lecturers is all over the map. "Feel good" programs such as this "Semester in dialogue" abound. Much of what is taught in the Humanities, that smaller portion which is generally of interest, can be acquired by an interested learner through reading and self-study. As an example, in North America, language students often never get beyond reading the works of literature of that language in translation... after three or four years studying the language, they cannot read the literature in the target language!! Meanwhile the professors in these modern language departments are doing obscure research on subjects like "Gender relationships in the writings of 17th century regional folk literature in Poland" or something. I think that LingQ, and similar programs, can be a viable alternative to the university, although this will take time. I am going to start putting out Webcasts on the subjects that interest me, History, Language Learning and Education. I will try to offer reading lists. I will set up discussion times at LingQ where interested people can join me to discuss these ideas in English, and possibly in other languages. In this way we can link language study with the learning of other subjects. I will also assign essays so that people can write on subjects of interest. These can then be corrected at LingQ and will accumulate in the learners portfolio. In time I hope we can attract a variety of interesting people to lead study programs, people with more knowledge and insight. I will not choose these study leaders. Those that are popular will attract a following, and those that are not will disappear.
In this regard, I should point out that a very interesting podcast on history, Historias de la Historia in Spanish, is now collaborating with LingQ. The podcasts and transcripts are available at the Spanish LingQ store. We will be looking for more content of this nature. Eventually we hope that some of these podcasters, or other experts, will also hold online discussion sessions for people learning their language and interested in their subjects, in a growing learning community at LingQ. We will not instruct people on how to listen nor how to express their views, nor who to listen to. We will let people be guided by their curiosity and their interests.
