Guide
Guide > Core: The Modules > INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBRARY

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBRARY

Goal
The goal of this module is to provide students with a variety of humanistic texts that will help illuminate and expand their knowledge. In this module, students will be able to read how experts in diverse fields frame the cross-cultural issues they themselves have encountered and examined so far. The Library provides, in some way, the culmination of the students' work as it gives them access to the expert's viewpoints and therefore allows them to gauge their own insights against that of a higher authority.

Methodology
This approach to culture is the opposite of the traditional one, where the first (and often only) task given to students is to read texts written by experts. Here students are doing the reverse: they have first formed their own impressions - based upon the analysis of the three questionnaires, the national opinion polls, the films, the media. They have formulated their own hypotheses, checked them against their peers, gauged them against other primary materials. Now they will read what experts in the field have said.

We believe that this approach allows students to draw a lot more from these texts, to read them more in depth and in a much more enlightened way, since they themselves have, to some extent, become their own experts.

The library is, in our minds, an essential component of Cultura because students need to know what experts have said. The texts they read will allow them to go to the root of some phenomena (in the case of historical texts) or to discover totally new and different perspectives they had not encountered before (in the case of literary texts, for instance). These texts can therefore create an even more powerful impact.

The readings can help students strengthen the points of view they have formed since the beginning of the project or lead them to question some of their earlier assumptions or to reassess or refine their views. In any case, these texts will allow students will be led to add more depth and nuances to their knowledge.