I.
Course Description:
III. Procedures
and Requirements: A) The means to our
goal of an increased
"understanding of faith" will
involve both reading and
reflection. B) Quizzes and
Exams: C)
III.
Please
note that your final grade will
be calculated according to the
following formula:
I assign letter grades at the
end of the semester based upon
the following standard scale: A
94-100 A-
90-93 B+
88-89 B
83-87 B-
80-82 C+
78-79 C
73-77 C-
70-72 D+
68-69 D
63-67 D-
60-62 F
Anything below 60 IV. My
Policy on Attendance:
I will take attendance
daily at the beginning of each
class. If you are late, it is
your responsibility to see me
after class to make sure you are
marked present (but late). If
you haven’t informed me of your
presence, then you didn’t
attend.
Please be forewarned that
more than three absences will
result in a decrease of
one‑third of a letter grade.
Further absences will result in
further proportionate decreases.
After six absences, you
will be excused from further
attendance in an official way.
Please also take note
that I make no distinction
between “excused” and
“un‑excused” absences.
You may excuse yourself
for whatever reason you deem
important enough to miss class.
I realize that there are
certainly times when attending
class is not the most important
thing in your life.
On the other hand, since
you are enrolled, attending
class is not unimportant if you
are to get the educational
benefit for which you are
paying.
Three absences,
therefore, seems about right. V.
Required There
are two books required for this
course. They are: Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI),
‘In the Beginning...': A
Catholic Understanding of
the Story of the Creation
and the Fall (Eerdmans). In
addition to assignments in these
two books, you will also be
assigned readings from a large
spiral-bound Reader full of
shorter articles.
This Reader must be
purchased at a local copy shop.
VI. Some
Important Comments Concerning
Your Participation in the
Class: A) On
Class Etiquette: It
should go without saying (but
let me say it anyway) that
respect for your fellow students
in the class demands the
following: B) On
Lecture and Discussion: Students
will take note, I hope, that
this is a rather large class –
something that makes discussion
more difficult, or at the very
least, much more unwieldy. While
it is this instructor's view
that learning should be an
active process on the part of
the students, he does not,
unfortunately, determine class
size. In short, we're screwed.
The result of all this is
that I will have to do a lot of
lecturing. Students should be
prepared, therefore, to take
part in this type of class for
the most part. On
the other hand, please believe
that I am always open to earnest
and serious questions. So
although I tend to plunge
through material rather madly,
please be assured that I do
welcome your questions and
comments. One
caveat, however: This is a big
class, and we do have to keep
things moving along, so I can't
necessarily call on everyone
every time. I have found in the
past with classes this size that
discussions often tend to veer
wildly off into other
interesting, though perhaps only
tangentially related, topics.
There is only one answer to this
problem: Please listen to your
classmates (this is an absolute
requirement!), and try to
respond to what's being said. Above
all, you should be self‑aware
enough to realize that it as
difficult for everyone else as
it is for you to make a point
clearly and concisely in front
of thirty or so classmates. So
please be patient with yourself
and with everyone else –
especially the people you
consider to be annoyingly
stupid.
(Here’s a hint:
They’re not.)
My experience from past classes
suggests that while students
often find class discussions
interesting, they also find them
a bit frustrating.
There is simply no way of
discussing important issues
thoroughly in the kind of time
we spend in class.
My conviction is that
education either goes on outside
of the classroom, or it does not
go on at all. What discussion in
the classroom can do (at its
best) is merely pique your
interest – “wet your appetite,”
as it were.
The real conversations
must take place after you leave
the classroom: with your friends
and family, late at night in
coffee shops or bars, over a
glass of red wine, good beer, or
strong, dark coffee.
Here the time is too
short and the surroundings are
too sterile for real philosophy
to take place.
But we can at least begin
the conversation. Please
be aware that I will often ask
questions at random during my
lectures about the reading
material. You should be able to
demonstrate some knowledge of
the text, or at least some
ability to think about the
questions involved. If it is
clear to everyone that you have
not done the reading at all,
then don't be surprised if this
fact ends up being reflected in
your final grade.
I won’t necessarily say,
out loud, in front of everybody:
“Well, I guess I can give you a
big F for class participation.”
But just keep in mind,
that’s what will be happening. C) On the
Amount of
There will be plenty of
reading, so please be prepared
to do it.
This is an upper-level
college course, therefore it is
entirely appropriate for me to
assign you upwards of 40 to 50
pages of reading between class
periods.
That is not a lot.
You simply have to pace
yourself.
If you can read 20 pages
per hour (with good
understanding and retention),
then you will need two hours or
so to do the reading.
If you read much more
slowly, then you need longer.
Budget your time accordingly.
Yes, I know you have
other classes.
They should be assigning
you plenty of reading as well. For
every class you take at this
University, you should expect to
put in between two to three
hours of work for every hour you
are in class.
That’s a standard college
work load at good colleges
across the country.
(Note that I said at
“good” colleges, so please don’t
tell me how your friends at
A&M spend half the time
studying you do and the rest of
the time drinking with their
frat buddies or sorority
sisters.)
D) On the
Modus Operandi of the
Instructor:
Please note that you are
responsible for all the reading
material, even though we will
not necessarily have time to
cover it all in class.
We will only cover
highlights and the more
difficult sections in class.
Class lecture and
discussion are merely parts of
the process by which you educate
yourself.
The goal of a liberal
arts education is to teach you
how to teach yourself.
You need to learn how to
learn.
There is no way we can
teach you everything you need to
know in four years.
There is no way we can
cover all the relevant points
about the kind of important
questions we will be covering in
fifty or sixty minutes. That is
the work of a lifetime.
These four years are
meant to prepare you for a
lifetime of education.
The end of the class
period is when the real learning
begins.
Note also that there are
a number of different ways of
running a class.
One way would be for the
professor to step back and
merely facilitate a discussion
between students.
This class is too big for
that.
Another way would be for
the professor to lecture in an
orderly, point-by-point fashion,
using PowerPoint slides or
overhead projections.
Some professors come into
a class with five points to
make, lay them out in order and
are done.
This method works with
material for which you don’t
need to have much context in
order to “get” the points the
speaker wants to make.
That makes this method
appropriate for communicating
discrete bits of information,
but not as good, in my view, for
areas that require thinking.
Ideas do not happen in
isolation; they arise in a
context, and their full truth
can only be appreciated by
understanding them within that
context.
The process of acquiring
this context may feel at times
as though we’re wandering the
circles around the center of the
labyrinth.
We eventually reach the
center, but the process might
make you wonder, “If our
destination was here, why did we
walk in all those circles?
Why didn’t we just walk
in a straight line and get to
the point?” Because with me, the
journey is often as important as
the destination.
I want students to see
the center from a number of
different angles, perspectives
and points-of-view.
I want them to begin to
see the connections between
the ideas.
And I want them to begin
to enter into a conversation:
a conversation not just with me
or with the other students in
the class, but with a number of
the greatest thinkers of the
past and present:
a conversation of
interconnected ideas
that is meant to extend beyond
the classroom and into their
everyday lives.
There is something else
as well.
Often in the process of
learning, it is good to become
comfortable with being
uncomfortable; with not knowing
exactly where you’re going for a
while; with struggling through
the twists and turns in order to
find your way, trusting that if
you take the coaching and do the
work, the whole picture will
eventually become clear, in fact
much clearer than if you had
just walked from Point A to
Point B and said to yourself,
“There, now that’s done.”
There are many truths
that require something more than
a five-point summary or that
can’t be captured in a
sound-bite.
Most things worth knowing
must be approached as you would
approach a great work of art.
You don’t just glance at
it the way you glance at a stop
sign. Great works of art require
time: time to walk around them,
to look at them from various
angles, to mull them over, and
sometimes just to sit and be
in their presence, so that their
truth and beauty can overflow
into you. So prepare yourselves
to listen, to take copious
detailed notes, to engage with
the reading material, and enjoy
the ride. VII.
Office Hours:
My office is in Room 206
of Hughes House, which is
located across VIII.
Contacting Me:
I try to check my email
several times a day, but there
are times when I get so
swamped with work, I
can't. So, if
you need to get in touch with
me, the best way is to make an
appointment before or after
class. But please, please, don’t
get personally offended if I
don’t respond immediately to
your e-mail message.
It may be a technical
glitch (my system has on
numerous occasions filtered out
student e-mails), or I may just
be way behind in checking
e-mail.
Either way, I cannot
guarantee that I will be able to
keep up with all the e-mail
traffic.
So, for example, at
different points in the
semester, I may have to declare
a moratorium on e-mail in order
to be able to finish grading
exams. IX.
Finally:
Finally, please be
assured I want you to do well in
this course, and I will do
whatever I can to see to it that
you get the grade to which you
aspire.
But for now, don’t forget
to: * *
Most of all, a very warm
welcome to you all!
Prof.
Office:
II. Some
It
These
assignments need to be submitted
online on Blackboard, but
another hard copy must be
brought to class and submitted
when it is due.
Why
both? I read the hard copy
version, but the on-line version
will be run through a series of
plagiarism and AI
detectors. It is, of
course, possible that you might
fool the detectors, but I
wouldn't bet on it. If one
of the detectors says that your
paper has more than just a very
small amount of text that is
"likely" from AI, then you will
get a zero. If the
detector detects a higher
percentage --- say, 35% --- you
get a zero on that assignment
AND the next one. If the
problem is chronic, you risk
being expelled. The
university takes a firm stand
against plagiarism. Using
AI to write your paper is a
violation of academic
honesty. I don't care how
widespread it is in other
classes, in other schools, or in
society at large. You
can't do it in this class. I
care about your education.
You need to learn to think and
write for yourself. You
might not think using AI to
write papers for you is cheating
yourself, but I know that it is,
so I won't let you do it.
Period.