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From the Rock Issue (Sept 2000):
Leave the Catchy Acronyms for SAFER Former Teacher's College students tell us about the good life Erin Thompson You may have come to realize that college is not the all-encompassing intellectual experience that you had hoped for although it may be at times enjoyable, challenging, or even inspirational. Nor are the boring classes you hate exactly what the application brochure promised. In fact, the application brochure promised quite a few things that you have not received. "Maybe it's my fault," you think. "Maybe I just shouldn't be so idealistic." You do not habitually think "breach of contract" and file a suit, but that's just what a group of former Teacher's College (TC) students have done. And they are quite serious about their idealism. The students left the Philosophy of Education program of TC this spring and formed a learning community of their own called 2W64 (after the address of one of the founders). Last week I talked with 2W64 members Frank Sousa, Bryce Bedford, and Michael Barth about why they left Teacher's College, their views that education should be taught as a Socratic seminar and based on serious inquiry, and their project to build a school that practices this method. All three say they left TC both because of lack of community there and differing viewpoints of what an education should be like. TC promises practical experience, but ultimately encourages theory over practice, they feel. Even TC's theory, they said, was merely academic exercise, providing no forum for deep inquiries or innovations. 2W64's method, in comparison, is based entirely on deep inquiry and the Socratic seminar. Their seminars, which are free and open to anyone - get descriptions and meeting times at www.2W64.com - are based on equality between the "teacher" and his "students" and a wish to improve oneself through looking deeply at a single work. For example, they think a week to read the Odyssey is ridiculously short, and would have us study it for a lifetime. The best thing that Columbia gives its students, they said, is a good reading list. They view it as your responsibility to study it beyond your short time here. Their method focuses on discussion. Because a text cannot talk with you, you need to discuss it with others. They encourage students to form groups, even if just with another friend, to do close readings. Authority is not possible. Although a teacher may have greater familiarity with a text, they believe he has no special basis for knowing another's thoughts (i.e., the thoughts of the author). The teacher should be nothing more than the best learner in the group, and show how an active intellect engages with new and difficult material and how to learn at a higher level. In other words, don't believe those who would tell you that they know what Shakespeare was "really trying to do". You have only Shakespeare's works, in which he might tell you what he thinks he's trying to do if you read them carefully enough. And if not, you are left with what he has actually done, and must, according to 2W64, figure out how to educate yourself and how to make yourself a better person with it. The education that 2W64 would like for you to have and the education that is traditionally given are radically different, for they have widely differing aims: wisdom and knowledge. I interpret 2W64's method - that of slowly reading texts and of doing so for a lifetime - as a method of being, as Socrates himself said, "a lover of wisdom". Traditional education seeks to equip you with knowledge - with facts. Socrates may not change you life, but at least you'll know his dates. You'll emerge with a major - a set of related facts - which you may or may not actually understand or think important (think of math and compare your knowledge of and enthusiasm for with that of, say, Descartes, who understood its importance). Columbia, in short, promises students that it will make them better people and then teaches them unconnected facts. 2W64 promises to help one make oneself a better, wiser person, and then shows one the texts to do it with and the way to use them. Which do you believe?
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