Hutton Honors College

The students in the class are as varied as their viewpoints: some aren't white, some aren't Christian, some come from far away, and some don't live in dorms. Each student, however, contributes to each class. Caswell operates on the principle that there is no "correct" answer when one is dealing with texts. Each opinion is valid as long as it can be backed up with facts. The name of the class could easily be changed to "Learning to Reason."

Anyone who enjoys sitting around with friends and philosophizing about the real world will find this class to be the ideal of education: three credits for doing something that he/she would do anyway. This is not to say that there is no guidance in the discussion. Caswell inserts questions into the discussion with surgical precision, never exactly leading students to an answer, but pushing them in the right direction. He enjoys it when students tell him that he is completely and utterly wrong about some thing. "We intentionally focus on everyone's version of the truth, not just the teacher's," he says. "The content comes out of the people in the class. Almost everyone rises to the occasion."

When I examined the book lists for each of my classes, H211: Ideas & Experience-Ancient clocked in at a whopping eight books, by intimidating authors like Plato and Virgil. It was the class I dreaded the most. I was ready for French, I was ready for literary interpretation, and I was even almost ready to think about math, but there was no way that I was going to be able to read eight books from such heavy-hitters in one semester. (Or so I thought.) I am currently in the middle of the third, Virgil's Aeneid, and am enjoying it immensely. Class interaction has made that happen. When I am forced to puzzle out abstract theories by myself, I don't always have a broad enough perspective on life to understand them. When the class gets together, we are able to combine over twenty different viewpoints into a cohesive thesis.

There is a theory that holds the following to be true: The more a student is interested and challenged by a course and its material, the more he/she is prone to learn. Caswell's H211 course is challenging, but the grades are subtractive rather than add itive. A student starts at an A rather than at zero. That makes a real difference. "I think people need to realize that grades are artificial constructs that have no redeeming value," Caswell says. "Once they are shown that, they realize that the only peo ple they work for are themselves." The students in Caswell's class do just that.

Students, teacher, and teaching intern all sit on the floor in a circle and no one person leads the discussion for longer than five minutes. "This gives us an opportunity to be close together, but more than that, it makes us more vulnerable," Caswell e xplains. "We can't stare at anything on our desks; it strips us of our defenses." Readings are of moderate length, papers are assigned frequently, and each person is challenged to present his/her individual ideas in the context of the day's reading.

Rather than deal with the minute details of each text, as most literary interpretation classes do, Caswell emphasizes the broader issues presented by each text. While not necessarily more or less important than detail-oriented analysis, such a focus prov ides a practical purpose for each of the readings. "I've found that people in this class are perfectly happy dealing with substantial issues rather than the small stuff;" Caswell says. "Maybe this spurs them to take an interest in what we're reading."

Our class has done everything from constructing a new core university curriculum to debating the philosophical ramifications of predestination. We have read and analyzed the original Hebrew translation of the Creation Story, and we have discussed the m erits and flaws of journalistic versus stylistic writing.

Oh, and I know everyone in the class by name. Jarrod, Tia, Jason, Nicole, Paras, Aimée, Chuck, Tara....

Story by Jon Agley

Posted September 30, 2001.

Other News Stories...