Things to Say

I don’t usually share other’s work and ideas on this blog, which probably creates an inaccurate representation of how my thought processes work (98% perspiration of reading someone else’s stuff, and 2% inspiration from yours truly).  But this piece is too good not to share: https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/defense-students-who-never-say-anything.  Please go read it and come back!

My first thought, on reading that, was Yes.  And my second was Not quite.  And my third was …

I went to two very different Catholic schools for undergrad and graduate school.  Aside from their shared Catholicity, they could hardly have been more different—in large part because my undergraduate education was so distinctive.  It actually meshed reasonably well with my graduate school.  But the undergraduates that I taught in grad school were as different from myself and my fellow undergraduates at the previous school as fish from fowl.  And, while freshmen were supposed to engage in class discussion at both places, the capacity of freshmen to talk—and even to talk sensibly—was simply much greater at my undergraduate institution than at the school were I taught.

Why?  Some of the difference, doubtless, was that my undergraduate institution recruits a specific type of student, one who will do well in class discussions.  Some of the differences may have been due to intelligence—though at both schools, the quiet students included some of the brightest ones.

More than anything else, though, I think it comes down to habit: to whether you have practiced thinking out loud or thinking through writing or thinking in your head.  And of course, you may believe yourself to be proficient in thinking in any or all of those modes, only to hear from a teacher that your “thinking” may not be terribly thoughtful at all.

The good thing about thinking through talk (or writing) though, is that—however banal the thoughts expressed may sometimes be—it is evident to the teacher that the student is practicing thinking.