ARW 4/19 Response

ARW 4/19 Response

In ARW class on April 19th, we spent most of our class period discussing about Jack W. Meiland's "College Thinking: How To Get the Best Out of College". We formed groups of 5-7 and Rab, our ARW professor, told us to do group discussion on certain topics or questions.  We mainly talked about four topics listed below:

1. Are ideas in this book applicable to education at Japanese universities today?
2. Meiland was a Christian; doesn't this fact cause a contradiction?
3. Authors are all American; doesn't that make this book biased?
4. Is ICU subversive?

I would like to explain some of these topics I was especially interested in.

First, my group agreed that the content of this book is applicable to Japanese education today. This article is revised in 2009 so is relatively up-to-date; in fact, some examples used were replaced to new ones, according to Michaell J. Kleindl. We discussed that there is a difference between high school and college even in Japanese universities because most high schools in Japan teach how to get into top universities. As a result, high school teachers mostly teach what to memorize and how to memorize a considerable amount of information in order to pass the entrance test. As the book says, college is very different. College professors teach us to question every knowledge we gained at high school or in the process of studying for college. It has been almost three weeks since the spring term at ICU started, and I am experiencing this difference. In my physics class taught by Professor Yuri Ishimaru, I was surprised when she told us that we do not have to memorize any formulas or theorems because it is more important to know the background of them.

The second topic was interesting to think about; religious belief and academics seem to be two separate fields, but Meiland states "Do not accept anything in this book unless you have thought it through for yourself." (1-3) It is contradictory how he believes in Christianity, a belief without a proof that it is completely true. However, I personally thought that every academic is also like a religious belief in terms of its uncertainty. Many scientists believe that a global warming is going on but some claim it is rather a global cooling. For 2000 years, no one could explain why an arrow keeps moving forward even few seconds after applying force to it. Many scientific facts that people know as common sense might not be true. So how is "fact" made? As Meiland states, when we are exposed to a belief, we first need to examine reasons why that belief is considered true before taking it in. Fact is not something that is already there but rather something we build up. On that view, I thought religions and academics are similar.

Discussions we had on 19th were certainly profound and enjoyable. I would like to do this activity for every type of academic reading we will read in order to share ideas and deepen our understanding of the topic.