Can Conversation Save the World?

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“The Seminar Show”

“The Seminar Show”

Poem:  Jason slacks off and suggests you go and read several of these Conversation Poems from ST Coleridge. 

Coleridge’s Conversation Poems – mentioned in Season 1, Episode 13, this page links you to the poems.  It’s all Jason’s fault.

Statement of the Whole: If conversation can save at least the classroom, if not the world, then how practically is it to be done?  Is there a form that can used to guide students and keep them on track?  Steve and Jason get practical in this episode showing how easy it can be to conduct mind blowing seminars in the average classroom.

  1. How are Seminar and Conversation related?
    1. Seminar brings form to the general action of conversation
    2. Seminar involves several minds, a text, and form of moving through the thoughts of that text
      1. The two acts
        1. Reading a text
        2. Discussing it with others
      2. The four questions
        1. What does it mean?
        2. How much of it is true?
        3. What does it say?
        4. So what?
  2. What is required of a conversant?
    1. In short – able to read, write, listen, and speak: if you can do these four things, and I might throw in what must be behind all of them (thinking) you really have all you need to change the world, or at least your part of the world.
    2. Longer answer in a coming series of podcasts on these four skills
  3. But we come back to a theme you hear often when talking with us:  this is an art, and thus is learned by doing (with coaching, apprenticeship); it is not a science so books/instruction only go so far.
  4. How can YOU do Seminar?
    1. The three acts of the Seminar
      1. Reading, marking, thinking privately
      2. Bringing each other to deeper understanding
        1. Questions
        2. Group inquiry
      3. Applying the work to the lives involved
    2. Improvise and adapt (Note: this is not just for kids)
      1. In the classroom is ideal
      2. At the coffee shop
      3. In the home
      4. Among friends
  5. Summary: Conversation can save community, which is civilization, which is the world