Instructors have long talked about how classrooms should be havens for teaching and learning, not a forum preaching politics or "saving the world." In teaching a touchy and charged topic like the war in Iraq, Joseph J. Gonzalez reveals how it's the transformations for students that instructors aid in maturing, which is interesting and a sign of good teaching. In a recent editorial, How Good Scholarship Makes Good Citizens, to The Chronicle of Higher Education Gonzalez describes how he enjoys seeing his students become good citizens, who are "people ready to inquire, to think, and to engage with the world as they find it." These good citizens, according to Gonzalez, are created by an instructor doing a job well done and good scholarship on the instructor's part.
The piece is worth reading and does beg the discussion over what are some of the signs of a quality higher education or what makes a good instructor. We'd love to hear what anyone might add to the article.
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1 comment:
I would be the last to suggest forcing my values on students, but I think giving students an opportunities to discuss their values is incredibly important. Questioning what those values are, how they came to them, why they hold them, and how they can apply them can not only lead to good citizenship but gives them an opportunity to think critically.
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