<p>As a whole, how interested are the students in ACTUALLY learning instead of just studying and memorizing?</p>
<p>Are well read individuals respected? Do students take an interest in discussing what they're thinking, reading, and watching?</p>
<p>Maybe the most revealing question to answer about campus atmosphere: Are there frequent intellectual or philosophical conversations outside of class? Is the social environment outside of the classroom often an extension of discussions and learning experiences from inside the classroom? </p>
<p>Anyone who goes to Grinnell just expecting to memorize and learn by rote is going to have a tough time! The classes are small, discussion-based and the school’s mission is to promote critical thinking. The students are engaged in their studies in this manner.</p>
<p>My son, a first-year, feels totally at home at Grinnell. If it didn’t have the kind of environment that you’re looking for, I doubt he’d be so happy. He is well-read, loves to learn about anything and everything, and is happiest when he is discussing and debating with others!</p>
<p>On top of a community that supports and thrives on active learning and discussion of ideas both in and out of the classroom, the students seem to have a great sense of humor and delight in quirky interests and ideas. They love to speak out on issues – both large and small!</p>
<p>The system of self-governance promotes not just a sense of community, but a way of being involved in promoting ideas, resolving issues and becoming engaged in decision-making. Students have representation on a wide variety of committees with faculty and administration.</p>
<p>The other part of the mission, using education to make the world a better place, is also important to Grinnell and is gaining even greater attention under the new president. This is not just a slogan that encourages students to do social service, but inspires them to find ways within the classroom and within the community to use knowledge for the greater good.</p>
<p>I am probably doing something wrong, but I find the intellectual atmosphere at Grinnell slightly exaggerated. While it is true, that it’s definitely more pronounced here than at most other Colleges, and it is definitely true that a lot of students here love to debate. </p>
<p>I found however, that most of classes were not as discussion based as they could be. Especially with my Intro to Philosophy class I was severely disappointed. It probably depends, but just because the overall label is intellectual don’t kid yourself into thinking that every student is intellectual, nor that every class is discussion-centered.</p>
<p>_Silence, I don’t think talking about your own experience is “doing something wrong” at all! I think posters here want to get a balanced picture. My son is a senior majoring in history. He has had mostly great experiences with classes and profs, but certainly not all great. I think that would be impossible because often it’s the mix of the prof and individual student that can make a difference.</p>
<p>I will say that my son and his friends seem to spend a lot of their free time happily talking about ideas. Maybe even more than in classes, though they do it there too. My son felt it was the most intellectually-oriented, and yet non-pretentious bunch of students he met anywhere.</p>
<p>Like _silence, I feel almost like I’m doing something wrong by posting here but I am so outraged over the absence of any discussion about Churchill and the implication by SDonCC that Grinnell students don’t know who he is that I am posting anyway.</p>
<p>I’m sorry I inflamed you with my “implication,” but to repeat what I said in the other thread: just reading the description in the calendar, I would have had no idea who Ward Churchill was, so I assumed that many students would not have been familiar with this name off the top of their heads, either. Obviously, some students at Grinnell knew who he is, because they invited him to speak! I did say that it was disingenuous of the organizers to have promoted him in the way they did. Perhaps the S&B might have run an article beforehand, so that more students could have known who he was and made a more informed decision about how to respond.</p>
<p>My reaction on reading the S&B article is that this interview confirms to me that the guy is a nut. Reading his comments verbatim like this is like reading an unedited interview with Sarah Palin. Incoherent and incomprehensible, the both of them. Certainly, there is a stretch in the article where the editors really don’t ask any particular questions, and perhaps it’s because it was too difficult to make any sense of what he was saying! </p>
<p>I’m sorry this happened right before finals, because I think that it is not the best time to gauge campus response. I know there are students who would like to respond, but just don’t have the time or energy to give a cogent, focused argument. I certainly hope that there will be reaction, because otherwise these Grinnell students really aren’t applying their critical thinking skills very effectively.</p>
<p>I also want to say that I didn’t interpret silence’s saying “maybe I’m doing something wrong” as being afraid to post a negative comment on CC, but as his saying that he was doing something wrong in his approach to finding “intellectuals” on campus.</p>
<p>back on Ward Churchill: I was also speaking as a parent of a student there who, as I said is a news junkie (and reads a wide array of publications to obtain different viewpoints) who knew nothing about this appearance until I pointed it out to him after reading pasta lover’s post, and did not recognize the name either (remember: Churchill’s essay appeared about five years ago and Hamilton College had him come around that same time, hence the protests).</p>
<p>To the S&B article lets just say that this year the S&B is not necessarily enjoying a good reputation among us students. </p>
<p>Going back to intellectual atmosphere: I feel one of the reasons why there really is not a lot of open discourse about a lot of topics is that people are too scared (for ridiculous reasons) to be anything other than a pseudo-liberal hipster. Just my opinion but that how it is, because a lot of people seem to complain about after having voiced their opinion, if it differs from the “norm”, of being shredded to pieces (not true). I know that I appreciate it a lot to have discussions with people with very different views from mine, but those are really hard to find, even though that even in Grinnell I am definitely socially and politically progressive. Even though I know a couple of students with different opinions none of them seem too keen on having a discussion about it. One of the reasons for me seems to be that I feel like a lot of students have not learned how to separate person from opinion and start to dislike a person on the basis of conservative political views which in my eyes is ridiculous. Some of my very good friends have very different political and social viewpoints from me yet I appreciate and respect this people more than many who may share my viewpoints. </p>
<p>Another thing I have noticed that bugs me a lot is that it seems that a lot of professor across different disciplines rather assign busy work than assignments that actually challenge you to think. Because of the quantity I feel like a lot of students just stop thinking and keep doing the busy work. I don’t know if it gets better in upper level course work but so far as my 100 and 200 level classes go I am mostly disappointed. I didn’t go to a liberal arts college to spend 5 hours a day doing extremely mindless busy-work, I came here to learn critical thinking and writing. </p>
<p>About Ward Churchill: I didn’t even know that he was coming until I read the posts on this board. And I feel like I am not the only one.</p>
<p>_Silence–I’m really surprised to hear what you are saying about your experience at Grinnell because my son and his friends all love their time at Grinnell and have felt intellectually challenged in their classes and in their free time hanging out together and my son is really, really smart, if I do say so myself. But it’s good to hear other perspectives.</p>
<p>Re: Ward Churchill, I’d never heard of him until I read about him here and then on Wikipedia… There are so many speakers and activities on campus and, with finals coming up, I doubt that my son is aware of everything happening on campus.</p>
<p>On the intellectual atmosphere: the classes are extremely engaging, and students clearly demonstrate a huge amount of knowledge. The classes I’ve had so far have been full of absolutely brilliant people, and the professors are really good at leading discussions. That said, outside of the classroom I’ve had very few intellectual discussions, mostly because most Grinnellians seem to be genuinely liberal, so most discussion turns into a round of people agreeing with each other.</p>
<p>About Ward Churchill:
1)His speech was one of several events that took place at 8pm near the end of what is here known as “hell week,” the week before exams when the vast majority of students are staying up studying until 4 am because ALL final presentations and most final papers are due that week. No one pays attention to campus events that week.</p>
<p>2)For some reason, with the exception of convocation at 11 am on Thursdays, the vast majority of speakers are Grinnell are largely ignored. I was actually at the speech, and there were probably 25 people there, all of us sleep-deprived. In addition, there were no advertisements for the speech: I found out about it through a professor in class about the history of the 60s.</p>
<p>3)Ward Churchill, though his is a very engaging speaker, seeks out controversy to make headlines, and made his deeply stupid comment in the midst of a lecture about mass deaths throughout history. Taken out of context it sounds absolutely nuts, but I’ve talked to several students who were there and none of us remember when he said this, presumably because he was in the midst of beating us over the head with accounts of genocide and therefore the comment got lost in accounts of the Holocaust and Columbus, and because we were all operating on very little sleep and he must have been talking for an hour by then. Most people left the room early.</p>
<p>If Ward Churchill spoke this week, there would probably be an outcry over something as stupid as the suggestion that the 9/11 victims are not civilians. But when 25 people operating on 4 hours of sleep with 3 presentations the next day are the only ones present, everyone trying to pass exams, people like Ward Churchill can get away with murder.</p>
<p>People come to Grinnell to learn and experiment. You are going to see it the first day. People here know things, and you’ll learn from them…its hard not to.</p>
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