dagblog - Comments for "American History Before America (The 1689 Rule)"

I think the real point is

Atheist — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:43:14 +0000

I think the real point is whether there is any relevance between the politics and the topic being covered. I can easily believe that in English lit and philosophy this can happen semi-frequently. In quantum mechanics, however, you would expect it to be fairly rare. (I'd even forgive using politics as punch lines to underline an important topic, like Heisenberg uncertainty or multiple universe discussions, but the professor I'm talking about didn't even pretend like there was a connection to whatever his political beef was at the time.)

When I used to teach

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:31:49 +0000

In reply to I hadn't broken the 1689

When I used to teach philosophy, I would make a point of using contemporary examples, not to expound my opinion but to engage listless 18-year-olds struggling to make sense of 2,500-year-old Greek treatises. If I could get the students into an argument, it was a good day. But I suppose that philosophy courses are a bit different from English lit and quantum mechanics.

I hadn't broken the 1689

Atheist — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:01:43 +0000

In reply to American History Before America (The 1689 Rule)

I hadn't broken the 1689 rule. 2006 had.

Eminently quotable. Love it. While I applaud your desire to not unneccessarily inject politics into your classroom, I question whether or not by deliberately trying to avoid it you might be doing more harm than good. Of course, it sounds like this same question is bothering you. (I deliberately use the word "question" as I'm not trying to state it as a fact.)

Just as an aside, I remember having a quantum mechanics professor who would somehow manage to bring politics into pretty much every lecture. Even though I agreed with his politics, I found this incredibly annoying and inappropriate (for quantum mechanics, that is).