I have a professor this semester who is very concerned with the class suspending our judgment. I get his main point; he wants us to thoroughly understand an argument before we go agreeing or disagreeing with it. He doesn't want us to make snap judgments or to refuse to open our minds and consider new arguments.
However, I am irritated with his presentation of it. I cannot suspend my judgment while understanding an academic argument. I have to judge each piece of the evidence, each logical step, each implication, in order to move on to the next step of the argument with any real kind of understanding. How can I clearly understand what a writer means without judging his evidence and logic as I go? Following an argument without judging it as you go seems like a gigantic waste of time, at the very best. "Now that I have completely understood what John Q. Academic means, I will start again and decide if his argument makes sense."
I feel a little insulted that he thinks that we won't have open minds, consider evidence and ideas that are contrary to the ones we hold now, and change our opinions if warranted. I also don't like to be told that I haven't considered long enough to have an opinion (just to be clear, I was not personally told this. It's a whole class kind of thing.) I know when I understand something; no one else can have that information about me. The only thing he can really do is point out to me if he thinks I have misjudged or not considered something relevant.
And no, I have not read the entire body of work by the author or even the entire book under discussion. Just consider that whatever I say is preceded by "At my present level of understanding, considering the information I currently have (including the assigned reading), taking into account the context of my knowledge, ...."
I think this actually says more about the state of graduate students that it does about this particular professor. He has said this so many times that I can't help but think he must encounter closed-minded students who don't think things through or understand their own level of understanding pretty often.
Yuck.
