[MD] Teaching ZMM

Matt Kundert pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com
Wed Jun 3 09:19:59 PDT 2015


Hi Everyone,

Last year I had the opportunity to teach ZMM a couple times for Honors Freshmen Composition.  It was fun.  I have the opportunity to do so again, so I thought I'd ask the group if they have any suggestions for Essay Topic Questions.  It's a very old way of doing things, but I haven't thought of anything better.  (Not my metier.)  Here's the old set:















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1.         What role
does “care” play in the narrator’s attempt to heal two worlds?  How does it function at different levels of
the narrative?

2.         What’s the
relationship between the subject/object distinction and the classic/romantic
distinction?

3.         What does
the end of the novel proper (Ch. 32) mean for our understanding of the
narrator?  Is it a happy ending?  Compare the final sentences to the epigraph.

4.         Discuss some
central philosophical ideas being articulated in the context of the narrator’s
relationship to either John or Chris.

5.         Is Plato a
good guy or a bad guy?  Develop an
account that accentuates the complexity of answering that question.

6.         What is the
narrator’s attitude toward Phaedrus?  Is
it consistent throughout, or does it change? 
What is the significance of that?

 





Some of these were developed from the Guidebook.  Partly what prompts my question is the number of people who chose (2), and did miserable on it.  I mean, it didn't ruin their semester, but I realized in grading it that it was partly my fault.  This is not a philosophy class, so I do not develop lesson plans around philosophical angles and context.  Part of my instruction plan is immersion (i.e. "throwing you into the deep end of the pool"), but I've realized that as effective as Pirsig is in introducing the tools of abstract thinking on his own, these kids (18yrs) are just not ready for it on their own.

What people did better at were questions that allowed them to talk about the story, esp. #1, #4, and #6.  However, I'm now tired of all these questions.  The second time I taught the class, I wrote an essay with them, during class (ZMM, Part 2-style).  I wrote this prompt, that I want to swap in:















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7.          What are some of the environmental allegories
used in the novel?  Explore at least two,
developing the implications of them on the philosophical ideas of the
narrator/Phaedrus.  Are there any
relationships between the allegories?  Do
they get in the way of each other?





(We did mountains and rivers.  It was great.)

So, what I'm asking is this:

(1)  Any suggestions for new questions that balance story elements with abstract elements?
(2)  Any suggestions about tweaking the old ones?  Esp. #2, but also #4 (e.g., being more specific...?).

Best,

Matt
 		 	   		  


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