Aug 31, 2010

Ready to talk??

Last Wednesday, I had a great opportunity to attend the very special class at Tokyo University. Th guest teacher for the class was Prof.  Michael Sandel from Harvar Univ.. 
(in this building, the class was held)
His class is called "Justice" which itself is really interesting to not only as a student but also as a Christian.
I watched his classes online and on Japanese TV. I happened to find the information of the class by going through internet sites while I was at work. (just make sure, I was going through my company' websites ok?) So I applied to the class not knowing that there was keen competition, the applicants were ten times as many as the fixed number. 
But, God totally blessed me and I received the acceptation from the office. (I typed wrong email address so they called me which it is another miracle!!)
class scene
His class is very unique in his style. Though the size of his class is about 1,000 student, he interacts with students and proceeds his teaching with discussing the problems of moral justice. 
In the beginning he mentioned to the talk that says Japanese are too shy to engage in discussion. Well, I thought that makes sense to some degree.

For example we discuss case like this
 a famous nineteenth century legal case involving a shipwrecked crew of four.  After nineteen days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the weakest amongst them, the young cabin boy, so that the rest can feed on his blood and body to survive.  One of the reason they chose him was he was orphan and had no family but rest of them did. Another was that he drank sea water against other' opposition.
So, was the action they took was right?

There was really good discussion. He concluded saying "Japanese are ready to engage in deep philosophical discussion!!"

Yeah, they are ready!! 
As a Christian, I thought Japanese don't think about spiritual and much deeper problem in life, compared with people form west.
It proved to be I was wrong.
  
We can talk about that!!
"What's the meaning of life and death?"
"What is the truth?"

So it was really encouraging class.
I will talk little more on the discussion part next time.

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