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Originally Posted by Jigsaw
But see, you are. What you are exercising (or would be, if you were the person holding the purse strings) is a kind of censorship; it is a kind of suppression of ideas. You are deciding what is--and is not--worthy to be submitted for consideration to the student body.
I firmly believe that a well-rounded education includes having any and all ideas, no matter how peculiar or repulsive, submitted for one's consideration. And I believe it's the college's unique job to do this, to allow even the peculiar and repulsive ideas free rein to be aired publicly.
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I'm all fine with opening for big ideas, but the problem is the quality of the lecture. Say there are two speakers for UFOlogy. One could present his ideas, theories, observation in a very clear manner and easy for all levels of audience, whereas the other speaker doesn't even know what he's talking about. the question is, which speaker would u want to invite?
i'd like to attend to lecture about UFOlogy, planet X, etc, but the quality of the lecture is always a problem for pseudoscience. your chances of getting a poor quality lecture is much higher than lecture on real science.
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Originally Posted by Jigsaw
because the students who did come to his lecture nevertheless learned a valuable lesson, even if they didn't learn anything about UFOs--they learned that many woowoos are disorganized, illogical, and unable to present their cases coherently. They saw one in action, and ever after, their reaction to "UFOs" will be, "UFOs? Nah, I heard this guy give a lecture on them one time, and man, was it boring..."
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umm... i don't think critical thinking is like that. the speaker presented in a boring manner thus making the students lose their interest is the
least thing university wants. What critical thinking should look like is if a speaker presents UFOlogy in an interesting, organized, logical (somewhat) manner such that the students would do their own researches about the said topic then decide on their onw. THAT is critical thinking.
so my conclusion is it's not the topic that is important, but the quality of the lecture (or speaker).