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Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Mind your As and Qs
'Why do you ask us so many questions, rather than just giving us answers?' This comment from a first year student was a challenge to my teaching style, but also to the very purpose of higher education.
Are answers useful? (he asks, posing another question.) In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the definitive answer is given to the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything.
42. So, now you have the answer to everything, what are you going to do with it? (another question).
To bring this back to our subject area, let's propose that the answer to any public relations problem involves media relations. Is this necessarily true when the problem concerns internal communications, or in a fast-changing and fragmenting media landscape? Will it necessarily be true ten or fiteen years from now? Why limit the scope of the discipline or the range of future practitioners? So, I'm sorry, I'm sticking with questions.
Besides, questions (what's the meaning of life?) are so much more interesting than answers (42).
Posted by Richard Bailey at 09:17 AM in Students | Permalink
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