Word: methodic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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FOUNDATION GARMENTS. "As is well known, the manufacturer's terminology frequently has overtones of sexual innuendo. The 'ectoplasm' technique by which the garment is shown alone in motion probably is the least offensive demonstration method. The employment of an arrow, a dotted line or a pointer to show specific features is far preferable to the human hand...
Professor Demos also approves of courses about religion, but he replies that students are not merely taught about democracy. "Don't we teach democracy and science in the sense of indoctrination? Certainly this is a valid point; American youth learn the democratic method through student government and the democratic hagiography in their history courses. Democracy, however, is an ideology almost universally approved in the United States, and its wide-spread acceptance leads many to overlook the fact that education about democracy has been replaced by indoctrination in democracy...
More than this, however, there exists a clear pervasive spirit of questioning, skepticism, tolerance--in sum, an apotheosis of relativism and tolerance. At Harvard the values of relativism are quickly transformed from means to ends, from mere method to metaphysics. They become the "practical postulates" of a University which wants to embrace spokesmen for opposing views in a harmonious institution. Even the religious person, moreover the believer in salvation through a particular church, must divorce his role of believer from his role of teacher. If he would teach he cannot by direct methods fish for souls...
...will find this conflict between surveying and specializing omnipresent throughout the University. The idea of general education, of grounding the student in certain fundamental problems of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences is basically a healthy one; and the seminar program should attempt to remedy the deficiences in method rather than change the basic objectives of the general education system. The goal of general education--to have an idea of the forest as well as the trees, to pursue a concentration and view it in the perspective of the fundamental areas of learning--is a valid...
...study. A seminar in history, for example, offers a wonderful opportunity to work by case study to the problems of moral judgment, freedom and determinism, while a seminar in sun spots, say, might be valuable not only for its intrinsic material but as an introduction to scientific method and philosophy. It is to be hoped that the scholars who conduct specialized seminars will remember that the fundamental task of freshmen seminars is not to breed future graduate students but to communicate the root intellectual questions of their discipline in a personal and stimulating...