GCC Sociology: Selections on Reading Charitably

How would reading texts critically go against reading charitably?

With a critical approach, we try to find the flaws of a text, causing the text’s arguments to fail. If we read charitably, we allow for mistakes in order to read the texts how the writers would want us to read them.

Why is it useless to approach a text with solely critical hermeneutics?

1. if the argument has not been constructed as wholly as it could be, its deconstruction cannot be very meaningful

2. most students are not intelligent enough to come up with a completely novel critique of the text that hasn’t been addressed before

Steps to reading Charitably

1. ask why the author takes the stance on an argument that they write about

2. assume argument is good to determine author’s underlying convictions

3. understand the author is probably assuming some things in the world to be true

3 benefits to charitable reading

1. challenges us to read critically

2. strengthens our critiques (by understanding what the author is actually trying to say, we can critique the paper’s argument, not just surface level critiques like grammar and style)

3. facilitates discussion

What is one reason students cheat, using ChatGPT and other resources?

students believe their grade is more valuable than the material they are learning, which is driven by administrations who focus not on the intellectual growth of their students, but their own credentials

1. Which school requires its students to read everything critically?

2. Which school created a ChatGPT sympathy letter?

3. At which school did the author of “Cheating with ChatGPT” teach? What did she teach?

1. Princeton University

2. Vanderbilt University

3. King’s College; stats

What is one of the main issues with how students read today?

teachers teach students that quick, broad, fly-by reading is sufficient enough to make large, bold claims about the text that was barely grazed over for a grade

1. What book was taught to the students in “Interventions in the Classroom”? What did the teacher do to ensure the students approached the book with a charitable hermeneutic?

2. What was assigned every week for the students to read?

1. “Wanderer”; turned the lights off, put a slideshow of death camps on the board, had the kids sit on the floor and enter the room quietly, and left the room

2. a reading of a poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

define pedagogy

the method and practices of teaching especially an academic subject or theoretical concept