University of Virginia Library

Deposition Of King Calendar

(30) What kind of activity is this that we are talking about?
If we use a year as a normal unit, for both faculty and
students, we are then not bound to any of the arbitrary
divisions within that year, except for customary vacations. If
we encourage professors and students to think about inquiry,
mastery, and intellectual growth (as opposed to the primary
consideration of cramming a body of material into 14 weeks,
with meetings at fixed intervals), then perhaps we are taking
one small step toward establishing not only an atmosphere of
freedom, which will induce participation in Birdwood, but
also a spirit in which learning is undertaken at the varying
paces and in the varying ways that are appropriate for varying
topics and disciplines.

(31) To make this quite concrete: Let each professor, when
he announces his courses a year ahead, specify what it is he
hopes to accomplish—as distinct from providing a list of topics
to cover or a series of books he wants to run his students
through. If he does not know—if he wishes mainly to
"explore" a topic, not knowing quite where at the other side
of the woods he will emerge—let him say so; but if, as is more
likely, he wishes to work through some problem or topic
toward a desired goal or purpose, let him candidly assert what
he wishes to accomplish with his students, He knows what his
aim is, and he should try to be clear rather than coy about the
matter. There is plenty or room for game-playing in
intellectual activity, but gamesmanship is quite another thing
and needs to be diminished. (If, of course, a teacher believes
he has good reason for letting a course reveal itself only
gradually, this may be defensible pedagogy, and he should
frankly announce that he prefers to be a bit mysterious and
has good reasons.)

(32) Let us further assume that, once selected, the
Birdwood faculty can manage to meet together and sort
themselves into roughly two groups, half the faculty agreeing
to teach mornings and half afternoons. Then (we are still
working about a year and a half ahead) let each professor
announce for his courses the times he prefers to meet, the
approximate frequency, and the proposed number of credits.
Let students then begin to figure out how they can contrive a
schedule, and when the first week of the year arrives, let it be
a casual one in which all the odd variations and changes in
schedule are proposed and decided upon- the class that was
going to meet MWF9 is switched to Monday evening for three
hours with November off for independent work; the
semester-length course for 3 credits is seen immediately to
involve a stimulating group of students who wish to plunge
more deeply, and the course is changed to a year course for 7
credits with cancellation of the professor's spring course in
some other field; two courses suddenly find reason to merge;
another course spins off subgroups. In short, let chaos reign
for a while, on the assumption that it is purposeful

chaos—groping for the right way to do things rather than
settling resignedly into the time-boxes and course-boxes of
traditional academia which produce as much somnolence as
they do order.