Lecture Reflection #1

Michael Sandel spoke earlier this year at Luther College.  His lecture was titled "The Lost Art of Democratic Argument: Can We Reason together about Values Without Rancor and Incivility?"  Sandel is a professor at Harvard, but is known world wide for his lectures and his engaging dialogue with the audience as he attempts to rationalize "What's the Right Thing To Do?"  While his lecture was very interesting, and informative; what I took from his lecture most of all was his ability to engage the audience. I have attended many lectures this semester, and to be honest many times I find it hard to stay focused, due to the fact that speakers sometimes disengage from the audience while they are speaking.  However Sandel's lecture required the audience to formulate their own opinion and ideas.  Throughout the lecture he proposed a variety of "what would you do" questions that required the audience to really reflect on their own decision making process.  An example of this is when he asked the audience if they would push a man in front of a train to save a larger group of people, and whatever you chose to do how would you rationalize your decision.  While this is a pretty extreme scenario his questions required deeper level thinking.  

A lot of times in the educational classroom students are disengaged from the content that they are being taught.  They are required to listen and take in as much information as they possibly can.  This causes the art of analyzing and thinking of individual ideas and beliefs to be lost.  While I am not saying that classrooms should every day teach the way that Sandel spoke, I do believe that from his lecture I can learn and better understand the importance of engaging my future students with the material that I am teaching them.  We need to teach students to form their own thoughts and conclusions, and this will only come from discussion and interaction with others, and not just sitting and listening in a desk day after day.

I encourage everyone to check out his web page:

http://justiceharvard.org/

Click on the link to increase your own understanding.  BE INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATED!