Postcards from Stanland. David H. Mould

students repeated what they had heard, without thinking much about it.

      Rote learning has its place if, like our neighbor Dima, you need to recite Pushkin. I told my students that, beyond some basic concepts, I didn’t care what they remembered from my brief lectures; it was their ability to analyze and apply the knowledge and conduct research that was important. Still, it was difficult to combat the passivity that the chitat’ lektsii tradition engendered. In the second semester, I taught a course titled “Contemporary Issues in Journalism” for fourth-year students. I encouraged them to debate ethical issues such as conflict of interest, faking and staging, and invasion of privacy. Some asked questions and offered thoughtful opinions, but at least half of the class seemed bewildered when I asked them what they thought. They felt uncomfortable discussing issues about which apparently there were no correct and clearly defined answers to be regurgitated on a test. These students were in their final year, and all said they wanted to be journalists, but most seemed remarkably unreflective, lacking in intellectual curiosity.

      There Will Be Tea