I guess it's worth reaffirming here that this is a personal blog. As ambitious as I can be about wanting to change global education culture at the levels of policy and philosophy, I must continually realize that my biggest qualification (and contribution) for discussions on education is my ten years of experience in the classroom, and a dozen or so invited lectures, conference presentations and the like.
It's interesting to reflect on these ten years, and to think back on what Kant said about the distinctives of the Dessau school: it's not that the teachers in the old Prussian system really knew what they were doing, so much as that they conferred, sought advice, continually experimented, and--though one certainly hopes it was not merely for novelty's sake--never contented themselves with thinking that they had education all figured out.
This, I think, might be a mistake I've made in recent years. I'm thankful to many cohorts of students for thinking that my libertarian and inquiry-based approaches were a good launching point. I'll probably keep those in many of my future pedagogical thoughts, and practice. But how to do them better--especially for students who are not quite as well prepared to launch into independent thinking, to express themselves in any form whatsoever (let alone formal academic essays), or even to schedule regular times of research and writing.
Even here, I can't really claim my methodology as a cure-all for the ills of contemporary liberal arts instruction, but I wonder: where others perhaps have different ideas for encouraging their students, yet as immature as mine or in some cases even more so, how can I be of service? "Faculty development" is clearly a key phrase, and an important if sometimes under-appreciated activity for teachers at the college level (and other levels of education).
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