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Holiday message, 2023

Wishing you a season of growth and renewal! Matthew Rascoff reflects on how we develop through, and delight in, dialogue with our intellectual “parents” and our own students.

The only thing more humbling than learning is teaching.  

This quarter I co-taught in the COLLEGE program’s introductory course, “Why College: Your Education and the Good Life.” This new course helps first-years be more intentional about their time at Stanford, with assistance from educational thinkers from global traditions, from DuBois to Confucius and from Freire to Plato. It was meaningful to help our students “choose whose children [they] would like to be,” in the words of Seneca, whom we read in the penultimate week. 

For Seneca, while we cannot choose our parents, we do have the power to choose the communities and conversations that shape us. “There are households of the noblest intellects,” he wrote. “Choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too.”  

As the quarter, and the year, come to a close, I reflect on the lesson of another ancient sage, Rabbi Hanina, who said: “I have learned much from my teachers, even more from my friends, but from my students I have learned the most.” Our students reminded me of the pleasures of being part of a learning community, of reading great books in fellowship, and of exploring new intellectual terrain. 

Those pleasures are rare, but they need not be. Stanford Digital Education is committed to democratizing access to knowledge by scaling teaching enabled by technology. We have proved that we can teach moral philosophy in ways that resonate in the lowest income communities in America; that the history of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X can offer valuable lessons for today’s change makers; and that we can equip the next generation with the tools to harness biology to improve well being

May 2024 bring you new opportunities to learn and to share your knowledge.  

Matthew Rascoff
and the Stanford Digital Education team

 

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