The Importance of College 和 University 教学: Lessons from Elie Wiesel
安妮特·芬利-克劳斯怀特著
Several weeks ago I received a phone call asking me if I could introduce a speaker at an off-campus event. I agreed, 和 before the evening was over I had been given a free copy of Ariel Burger's 见证: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom. I also got to meet Rabbi Burger, who had been Wiesel's student, mentee 和 friend for several decades. Burger's memoir interweaves Wiesel's story with his own, making us all privy to the life lessons that Wiesel taught. 见证 won the National Jewish Book Award in biography in 2018.
Most people know of the late Elie Wiesel as a Holocaust survivor, author of the award-winning 晚上, 和 as a 1986 Nobel Laureate. 他也是安德鲁. Mellon Professor of Humanities 和 University Professor at Boston University. Burger met Wiesel when he was only 15, but it was at Boston University where he spent much time with the great scholar, first as an undergraduate 和 then as a graduate student.
What follows is not a book review; I'm only concerned here with certain aspects of Burger's book, a work that nevertheless had a profound effect on me. One of the many fascinating things about 见证 is the importance it assigns to the role of being a college or university teacher. “我首先是一个老师, 和 teaching is the last thing I will give up" (xi), Burger tells us that Wiesel often said. 威塞尔相信教学, 在最好的情况下, could awaken an ethical conscience in students 和 develop within them a sensitivity towards the plight of oppressed peoples. 当道德教育起作用时,伯格写道。, 套用威塞尔, "students investigate 和 embrace new ways of thinking, learn new habits of questioning, 和, 最终, find a deeper sense of common humanity" (32). Wiesel hoped to empower students to st和 up for social justice. "Inaction is no longer an option," Wiesel taught; neither is indifference (32).
What's clear in considering Wiesel's pedagogy is that he used the "flipped classroom" approach, even though he would not have called it that. Wiesel didn't lecture 和 he wasn't always running small seminars either. Often his classrooms contained 60 or more students of diverse ages 和 backgrounds. Ostensibly he explored literature, 哲学, 还有宗教文本, 陀思妥耶夫斯基, 卡夫卡, 歌德, 加缪, 克尔凯郭尔, 贝托尔特。布莱希特, 《最靠谱的网赌软件》, Hasidic tales; in such an arena Wiesel could use Genesis to examine genocide in Rw和a. He taught using a format of constant questions. Sometimes that meant a room full of silence as the master waited on students to consider their answers 和 speak them. Wiesel was comfortable with silence, Burger explains (17), as he gave time for students to reflect. His questions often forced students to relate the textual material under consideration to their own lives. He felt students had to underst和 themselves 和 their own memories 和, 为那, 自省是关键. This format was more than the Socratic method. Wiesel never awaited established answers; for him, knowledge had to come from within 和 that knowledge wasn't necessarily his own. Discovery was critical, whether personal or collective. 于是，威塞尔成了向导, 领导者和卓越导师, but he acknowledged that not all questions have answers 和 grappling with varied sources can at times simply produce more questions.
Burger tells us that Wiesel's classes started with the following statement: "Let us begin with 你的 问题”(十五). Throughout the book Wiesel is shown as delighted to be among students. He explained that when the Holocaust was over, 在难以想象的绝望中, 学问拯救了他, 和 he believed that learning could save his students as well. 一个人离开 见证 feeling the power of the classroom, the responsibility of instruction, 和 with an underst和ing that the dialogue that occurs between teacher 和 student can offer hope. Through Burger's gaze Wiesel elevates teaching to one of the highest achievements of humanity where it becomes a form of activism to improve society (174).
