Re: [Marxism] Another classroom exercise

["Stuart Lawrence" <stuartlawrence@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's too bad that it's necessary to go to such extremes in order to
break students of the habits they learn from teachers who punish
critical and independent thinking. I can't say that law school grading
(based wholly on 3-hour final exams consisting mainly of hypothetical
fact situations and possible legal claims arising from them) promotes
anything resembling critical thinking about the actual purpose served by
the legal system whose doctrines we diligently swallow.

Stuart

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>

Tomorrow, when I go back to the classroom, as I have done on other
occasions, each of my classes will be told that during the course of the
term, there will be four key lectures whose content will most definitely
be covered on exams. These lectures will be total bullshit: phony
sources, phony data bases, logical fallacies, math errors, etc and these
lectures will be delivered straight without any indication that the
content is total bullshit. If the students uncritically copy down the
stuff during lecture without checking it out or waiting until the night
before an exam, they will find the "right answer" from their notes; only
the "right answer" will be from one of the bullshit lectures that will
not be correct if they have failed to cross-check what they are being
handed in class. I note that these lectures willl be delivered with all
"sincerity" and note Groucho Marx's axiom: "The two keys to success are
honesty and sincerity; and if you can fake those, the sky is the limit."

Jim C.



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