As we all come back to Helena High, I’m reminded of the syllabus written by David Foster Wallace, one of the best non-fiction writers of the past twenty years. In his course syllabus for an English composition course, he described a model for education you can expect from my classes:
“This does not mean we have to sit around smiling sweetly at one another for three hours a week. … In class you are invited (more like urged) to disagree with one another and with me—and I get to disagree with you—provided we are all respectful of each other and not snide, savage or abusive. … In other words, English 102 is not just a Find-Out-What-The-Teacher-Thinks-And-Regurgitate-It-Back-at-Him course. It’s not like math or physics—there are no right or wrong answers (though there are interesting versus dull, fertile versus barren, plausible versus whacko answers).”
Welcome back!
