The Collegian (Hurst, Tex.), Vol. 6, No. 11, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 17, 1993 Page: 20 of 20
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20
News
Collegian Wednesday, November 17,1993
'Schools need to understand the context and connect students with that/ Reed says
Professor feels the drama
Byi
A professor of philosophy used a story
from one of his books to demonstrate the
relationship between the loss in a family and
the loss he feels has taken place in post
modem thinking before a South Campus
audience last week.
Dr. Ronald F. Reed, professor of phi-
losophy and education at Texas Wesleyan
University, tried to help his audience “feel
the drama” of a man and a woman trying to
reinvent their lives after the death of their
Leigh Miles
South Campus News Editor
twin daughters in his presentation Critical
Thinking and the Community of Inquiry in a
Post-Modern Age.
“They begin to search the foundations of
their very beings for answers in order to cope
with their great loss,” Reed said.
The speaker’s story is a form of drama,
which he feels is lacking from the educa-
tional experience today.
“Education is an attempt to make sense
of things. That involves something more
than taking facts from an instructor. A criti-
cal thinker is someone who is the best at
wresting meaning from an experience,” he
said.
The speaker does not believe learning
and teaching today are much different from
100 years ago, except for the electronic gad-
getry.
Education is the same in the sense that
instructors have the facts and students are
attempting to get the facts.
“Schools need to understand the context
and connect students with that,” Reed said.
“Educators need to find a way to encourage
them to create a community in the classroom
where they can unpack their own experi-
ences.”
subject matter on their own and derive mean-
ing from what he had to say.
To derive meaning from a concept or
theory, Reed said one needs to become a
critical thinker. Critical, as used in this
concept, means thinking deeply abouta topic,
not holding something up for ridicule, he
said.
The basis of modem critical thinking,
Reed said, dates from an article written by
Robert Innes in the Harvard Educational
Review where a critical thinker is defined as
one who self corrects, examines his own
—Ronald Reed
"Education is the attempt to make sense of things. That
involves something more than taking facts from an
instructor. _
Reed said there are three ways of teach-
ing—lecturing, which he felt a large group
would find boring; using dialogue, which
would not lend itself to a large group; telling
a story to create a sense of drama in the
classroom, so students would approach the
behavior, always respects the standards of
the discipline and is sensitive to context.
“Students in a community of inquiry are
encouraged to ask questions and to be active
participants in learning, not simply passive
recipients or spectators,” according to Stud-
ies in Philosophy for Children, edited by
Reed and authored by Martin Benjamin and
Eugenio Echeverria.
Reed said the philosopher Descartes,
considered the father of modem philosophy,
attempted to prove that civilizing mankind
would bring people out of barbarism and into
a more enlightened way of behaving.
The speaker commented that events of
the 20th century have upset that notion and
caused philosophers today to rethink their
educational models.
Some of the questions being asked now
are whether there is a foundation for tradi-
tional academic disciplines in today’s institu-
tions of higher education or if all disciples are
relative to gender, class, race or culture as
many are saying.
Reed contends instructors cannot teach
people to think well when students are
given only the straight facts about the disci-
pline.
“Each discipline is a function of the
times in which it exists and the people that are
making it up,” he said.
For more information on Reed and the
CreativeandCriticalTeachingCenteratTexas
Wesleyan University contact Linda Nowell
at 531-4960.
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The Collegian (Hurst, Tex.), Vol. 6, No. 11, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 17, 1993, newspaper, November 17, 1993; Hurst, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1183412/m1/20/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Tarrant County College NE, Heritage Room.