How to Teach with a Hammer (Or, Anatoliy Bondarchuk on Education)
with T Scott Ferguson
Kibbitznest Liberal Arts Discussions are a collaboration with
The University of Chicago Graham School
to host presentations and discussions of original research.
Due to limited space, RSVPs will receive priority seating.
RSVP below!
About the Discussion:
What can we learn about pedagogy from the art of throwing a metal ball attached to a wire? Maybe more than you might think.
Theory of education in the progressive tradition (John Dewey, Maria Montessori...) has always had interest in individualizing learning to the particulars of the students, and for good reason: not everyone is the same, not everyone will respond the same to the same educational program, and we likely get better results if we can somehow allow the students themselves to actively drive and design their own education. On the other side, more traditional modern course design now itself makes a principle out of “student-centered learning,” where any good class plan is to be adjusted based on assessment and diagnosis of where the students are at. But both traditions, starting from different directions, run into essentially the same problem. For the progressive tradition, that problem has been how to build up more focused, extended, and specialized learning structures for more advanced students (without simply putting them in predesigned classes); for modern course design, how to create courses that actually have enough built-in flexibility to usefully deploy any feedback we get in our assessments and conversations (rather than letting us simply carry on with a prewritten schedule). The problem, for both, ends up being how one concretely carries out the ideal of individualization as a first principle.
For this talk I'm going to suggest that a very new direction for dealing with this problem might be found from an unexpected source: the Olympic hammer throw, and specifically gold medalist and former Soviet throwing coach Anatoliy Bondarchuk. Bondarchuk, arguably the most successful coach in the history of any sport, earned his victories largely due to a remarkable training method which, I suggest, could be translated very readily into education – either directly or in the form of inspiration. I’ll deliver an introduction to that training method, then lead a discussion about whether and how this could be done.
About T. SCOTT FERGUSON:
T. SCOTT FERGUSON is a doctoral student in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Chicago and a Junior Fellow at the Martin Marty Center. He writes on the history of modern thought (especially Kant), the history of rational theology, 20th century phenomenology, theories of religion, and philosophical method.
FREE & OPEN to the public
Sponsor: Kibbitznest Books, Brews & Blarney
kibbitznest is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization and wifi-free zone dedicated to the preservation of quality face-to-face human communication.