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Come for the argument, stay for the Monty Python clip...

"But imagine for a moment that you didn't have to rely on maps to navigate the unknown-that your memory, instincts, and knowledge of the environment sufficed. This is the art of Polynesian wayfinding." The metaphor breaks down but I think it's close to navigation vs maps . . . skills & understanding vs step by step. One is a path to freedom- the other a kind of shackle masquerading . . .

"How do I balance my desire to integrate student-centered learning practices with my almost pathological need to have every last bit of the course planned out and thought through? Most of my pedagogy research has suggested that we as faculty should be looking for ways to give students a real sense of ownership in the classroom. One of our goals should be to create an atmosphere that leaves space for students take an active role in their own learning. How, then, do we design a course before even meeting our students? Isn't there a danger in showing up to the first day of class with a syllabus that shows the whole course planned out? By doing so, aren't we clearly communicating to the students that the instructor is in charge, that if you know what's good for you, you'll follow these rules?"

"The most significant responsibility at the school is that "you are responsible for what you make of your life," McCaig says. To graduate, students write and defend a thesis that they have "prepared themselves to become effective adults in the larger community." "

"I'm blaming the people who've decided that the lack of a single online system is a problem that somehow needs to be fixed - as if having a hundred professors teaching the same subject a hundred different ways was a problem that they ever would have thought of fixing during the pre-Internet age. Well, I want to break free, and I think that it's best for education if as many other faculty members as possible break free with me. "

Maybe something to work into the Spaces site . . .

"Intellectual skills, in contrast, have to do with a person's ways of reasoning, hypothesizing, exploring, understanding, and, in general, making sense of the world.  Every child is, by nature, an intellectual being--a curious, sense-making person, who is continuously seeking to understand his or her physical and social environments.  Each child is born with such skills and develops them further, in his or her own ways, through observing, exploring, playing, and questioning.  Attempts to teach intellectual skills directly inevitably fail, because each child must develop them in his or her own way, through his or her own self-initiated activities.  But adults can influence that development through the environments they provide.  "