Tales from a Rhodent: Academic Freedom? Comment on an Opinion Piece
This is one of those subjects you think about whilst writing that Politics essay due on Friday. “We’re teaching you to be creative, open-minded intellectual and critical thinking students of the 21st Century” is what they (the lecturers) tell you. Those who’ve dared to try it have either failed dismally or become an inspiration to us all. I can tell that you’ve obviously had experiences whereby you find out that writing your own opinion really would be detrimental to your mark.
There are however some lecturers who mean what they say and are teaching you to be critical thinkers and develop your own arguments on the other hand, there are those who would no doubt give you 48.5%. I know of a guy who in my opinion is a living legend. He was given the topic “What is courage?” the essay was out of 100 marks, after an hour of he handed his essay in. The page was blank except for one line at the top of the page which read “This is courage”. He walked away with 100%.
We attend lectures, and talks which tell us about and promote academic freedom but does this concept really exist? Is it not just something unique to freedom fighters to get us (the students) where we are today. Although it is also worth mentioning that the academic freedom we speak of and that which they fought for long ago is fairly different in that whereas they fought for rights to be accepted into academic institutions we want to secure our place and be able to express our true opinions. Really thought provoking piece!
Lotsa Love
Posted in
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Your take on academic freedom is an interesting one. The fact that you identify a different academic kind of academic freedom today when compared to that of yester-year is one that I share with you. I myself discussed the true meaning of freedom in general (http://gerbilthefunkyrhodent.blogspot.com/2008/10/university-place-to-be-free.htmlin) University which was based on one realization: How can we be expected to think for ourselves when we are forced to reference every thought we write about n our essays? I suppose like you I too understand that lecturers are not trying to teach us the thoughts of other, they are showing them to us so that we may form our own opinions.
It certainly is a confusing topic to dwell on but one in which it is necessary to do so.
Post a Comment