On Aug 8, 2006, at 9:11 AM, Sarah wrote:
On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:40 PM, SPUI wrote:
Explain NPOV in a sentence.
"Teach the controversy."
Outstanding!
"Teach the controversy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want to associate with. :-)
The Discovery Institute was actually ripping off of Gerald Graff, however, and the phrase is tremendously respected within humanities instruction. (I hear it several times each time new TA orientation rolls around) And the article is kind of hopelessly borked in focusing on the Discovery Institute over Graff.
The problem is that Graff's phrase isn't exactly what we want. Graff's vision of teaching the conflict (Which is the actual phrase as it's most often heard) is in many ways much more radical than we want to be. At its heart, Graff is dealing with a more epistemological approach, and with interpretation of facts. We are dealing with basic presentation of facts. Graff's view would be better described as teaching multiple SPOVs.
Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.