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On Teaching

Volumes

To teach means to speak to one’s successors. …When we teach, we try to save a seed that had been planted thousands of years ago like the English language from obstruction by the living generation. ...At the heart of the school itself is today the superstition that in order to teach mathematics, you see, you can act mathematically. You cannot. You have to enthuse your children... No field is taught by its own method, but by the power of conviction that the teacher irradiates, and emanates ... that emanates from him and begets the younger generation.

Man Must Teach - 1959

To teach is something normal before one's -- dies. It's part of reaching the recognition of society, gentlemen, why? I'll tell you the secret of teaching. In teaching, we can make clear what we consider the exception in our own life and what's the rule. If I do not teach, you may mistake my way of life for the -- the absolute norm of my own life. But nobody can live as he wants to live. To teach means to explain to the rest of the world what is wrong and what is right in my own life. Can you see this? That is, I finally tell the truth about my appearances, you see, and of what I would like to have differently in my appearance, and what I think is very good in my appearance.

Circulation of Thought-1954 - 21, May 12, 1954

Christianity is based on the experience that in every generation there is so much calamity, so much end of the world, so much catastrophe, that those who are loved enough by their maker to survive the catastrophe, as the fruit of this catastrophe, will begin to speak a new language. That’s a people of the spirit. It cannot be anticipated. It cannot be planned. It cannot be pre-organized. It can be believed in. What we call the -"organized churches" are the receptacles of this -these experiences.

Liberal Arts College - 1960, March 3, 1960

..To agree on the future is the condition for having peace in the past. Now nobody in this country seems to agree on the future. And therefore, the future of the United States is shrouded in darkness and ambiguity. I’m now serious. I’m not joking. The world of the universities has detached itself from the human future. And in this detachment, or in this abandonment into its own purposes, and its own exams, and degrees, and emoluments, and foundations, and laboratories, it may have lost the right to call itself a "university."

The University - 1968, February 15, 1968

On Teaching consists of 39 hours of lectures in five titles.

In Potential Teachers - 1952 Rosenstock-Huessy raises the question: "What are the barriers to teaching?" Real learning, he asserts, arises from real life, which is specific, personal, and occurs at a particular time. Learning in a classroom, by contrast, is general and impersonal and comes either too early or too late (because the class must be arbitrarily scheduled). Because it is difficult to surmount these barriers, the norm is to forsake teaching for training or instruction. Real teaching blends these approaches in a natural rhythm from one phase to another; "learning dies by being taught with only one rhythm." This lecture helps one understand comments on teaching in other lectures. Two one-hour lectures.

Circulation of Thought - 1954 is included on this disk because 11 lectures (particularly lecture 2, but also lectures 3, 8, 9, 6, 4, 16, 20, 18, 24, and 17) contain many digressions or comments on teaching specifically. The series is also available on the disk Lectures on Method. The series itself generally is a description of the way thought moves over time. Another word Rosenstock-Huessy uses for the process of thought and inspiration moving between generations is "spirit." Speech among men is a form in which this "spirit" appears. Rosenstock-Huessy accepts the division of reality into logos (the word of God), physis (nature), and ethos (social relationships among people). The method used to study each discipline is a result of its relationship to truth. Established and successful methods exist for theology and the natural sciences. The research method of social sciences, however -- although they occupy their own relationship to truth -- to date has only mimicked the research methodology of the natural sciences. The social sciences need their own method, one that reflects that their truth shifts as a result of what people in the societies are doing. 26 one-hour lectures.

The thrust of Liberal Arts College - 1960 is that colleges and universities today do not prepare one for creating the new social forms necessary for a future different from the present day. Neatly avoiding the title of the lecture, Rosenstock-Huessy moves his focus from the U.S. Constitution to the people of God. By inference, one may assume he is indicating what the liberal arts college should teach. He describes different types of groups we belong to; what those groups mean to us in terms of past, present, and future, and how traditional colleges teach about the past and present only. Part of his argument centers around an unusual distinction he draws between a "people" and a "public". The lecture thus could serve as a useful foundation for curriculum development. One two-hour lecture.

In Man Must Teach - 1959 Rosenstock-Huessy makes the point that the child is taught, ultimately in the community and by the community. "Training" (memorization) and "instruction" (the passing-on of expert knowledge) he argues, are important, but not complete. The student must also have a zest for life and an understanding that he is being prepared to serve crucial roles in the community. Integrating these three goals makes for true "teaching." Thus, this larger context for teaching has both a space dimension (in the classroom and community) and a time relationship (from past into the future). This is an important link in the chain of superb discourses on teaching in his lectures. One one-hour lecture.

In The University - 1968 Rosenstock-Huessy summarizes his "dis-ease" with the modern university. He sees its present emphasis on "knowledge for its own sake" as having rendered the university impotent because it does not deal with each subject in the context of its contribution toward creating a future for the community. In some detail he lays out what it should be if it is to serve this crucial purpose. One half-hour lecture.

For Richard Feringer's more detailed notes on Potential Teachers click here, Circulation of Thought - 1954 click here, Man Must Teach click here, Liberal Arts College - 1960 click here, The University - 1968 click here.

The Rosenstock-Huessy lectures are available in two versions:
•     the original audio recording of Rosenstock-Huessy giving the lecture and
•     transcripts of the original audio.

Argo sells these versions in two different packages:
•     electronic and
•     paper

The electronic package of On Teaching is sold on a DVD which contains

•     the original recordings of On Teaching's 39 hours of college lectures in mp3 format,

•     as well as every transcript of all of the English-language lectures Rosenstock-Huessy recorded, in computer text format. These transcripts are an excellent basis for word searches, to compare what Rosenstock-Huessy had to say on a particular topic or on related topics, either in different contexts across nearly 20 years.

DVDs are produced to order, which can take up to 5 weeks. 

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