On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Michelle Kendrick wrote:
[snip]
Wow. I wish I could have been in that class. I miss the "ivory tower"
where there were so many people right there willing to explore such
topics. (sigh)
> The small group dynamic was to drop the whole subject for risk of
> offending the one person who stated his "personal" belief. But I think
> it's a bigger issue in terms of how to respect the personal but not let
> that be a stopping point in discussions.
This is a topic that I feel inspired to comment on. I can't help but
smile at the idea of sparing someone's feelings based on thier "personal"
beliefs, especially in a college classroom. I remember with great clarity
my own college experience. In our "freshman preceptorial" we had a wide
range of belief systems from a fundamentalist christian missionary to
well, my own anti-religious non-theistic Quaker self. No one's feelings
were spared in that class, believe you me.
I'm sorry, but if you can't handle having your beliefs scrutinized,
challenged, and seemingly trashed by your friends and teachers,
a) change them
b) don't take a liberal arts college class
c) don't expect to have a friendly and meaningful relationship with people
who have beliefs that differ from yours (like me).
There is a difference between true tolerance, and the dishonesty of
keeping your mouth shut. You might be surprised to find that that Mormon
was the most truely tolerant person in that group. (I wouldn't know but
it IS a possibility, at least he wasn't dishonest.) If not, screw him, I
wouldn't care too much about his feelings. A good discussion could have
been had in spite (perhaps because of) his intolerance. Those students
owed it to themselves and to each other (possibly to him) to engage in a
rip-roaring discussion no matter that one of them was mormon.
I think I might belive that it is our moral duty as thinkers to question,
test, and stress not only our own beliefs and ideas (our world-view) but
to help others to do the same. Of course Socrates got killed for that,
but hey, we have better laws now :)
-- Joel VanLaven
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