OS in University Settings

[Alan Stewart]

Hi All

Here are several extracts from an article by Timothy Radcliffe entitled 'Talking to strangers' which may add another dimension to the thread initiated and reported on so professionally by Lisa Heft. 

This was given to me by a friend in the course of our exchanging perspectives on the meaning and implications of 'shooting the breeze.' 

A second, separate extract (below) had similar origins, being a piece to reflect during perambulations of two ex-academics beyond the high rise of Asia's World City. 

I pass them on for those also enchanted with such matters ...

Go well

Alan
Hong Kong 

Extracts 1



>From an Address Given to Yale University: Talking To Strangers



http://www.opwest.org/Archive/1998/1998_yale.html 

 

How can we learn to talk to strangers? What conversation can we initiate with those who are different? And what role can the university play in preparing us for this dialogue?

 

One of the functions of the church, and of a religious Order, is to try to be present in those places of deafness and incomprehension, to offer a space where conversations may begin.

 

But how in these hard places can we learn to talk to strangers? I wish to suggest the university should be one of the places in which we learn to talk to those who are different.

 

But if universities are to train us in the delicate art of talking to strangers, then it is not enough that we struggle with texts and try to understand the dead. Ultimately a university will contribute to the building of human community and to the art of dialogue if we are able to talk with each other. Newman once wrote that if he had to choose between a university with highly trained professors, rigorous examinations and which taught the pupils lots of facts, or one in which a lot of young people merely met and debated with each other, then he would without hesitation choose the latter. Because the primary function of a university is to teach us to be social beings, able to talk, to listen and learn from those who are different.




Extract 2 



John B. Bennett, Liberal Learning as Conversation, Liberal Education
Spring 2001
Volume 87, Number 2, http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp01/le-sp01bennett.cfm   
 
"A university is not a machine for achieving a particular purpose or producing a particular result; it is a manner of human activity," Oakeshott tells us. It is both a conversation and a place where one learns how to access the voices and to join in the conversation. In colleges and universities of integrity more than one voice must be clearly heard, and the manner (not the mannerisms) of the voices is deliberately taught. The proper conversation of the college or university involves a rich variety of intellectual, imaginative, moral, and emotional voices -- each field of special study "a particular manner of thinking" or a distinctive voice, having "some insight into its own presuppositions," and each being "easily recognized as belonging to the single world of learning" (1989, 96, 126, 134, 126).
Oakeshott, Michael (1989) The Voice of Liberal Learning 




























 

 

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