BILL TAYLOR RETURNS TO THE CLASSROOM

Bill Taylor is a born teacher. His measured headmasterly reserve to the side, he becomes animated, hands gesticulating as he describes The American Experience, a course he designed 20 years ago.

“We take an ideological rather than chronological approach to analyzing our history. How do we view ourselves as a nation? What role has religion played in our evolution? Why do we maintain the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ on our currency? How did the reality of wilderness shape us as a people? Wilderness offers opportunity, as in ‘Go west, young man,’ yet wilderness is also where sin exists. Think of Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter.”

To best engage his students in such explorations, Bill favors a round-table seminar style of discussion and intellectual debate rather than a ‘sage on the stage’ approach. “I want to challenge my students to think and question, not passively accept. They should be stretching themselves to make connections to literary and cultural references as well as historical relevancies.”

Bill developed this class back in the mid 1990s at T-P, and though the current course is a distant cousin of that 1990s iteration, he still incorporates a multimedia-rich library of visual and auditory resources, including iconic movies, You Tube videos of historical events and music of particular eras to complement the college-level texts. A vigorous emphasis on analytical writing helps prepare students for college.

“I’m delighted to have this opportunity to return to the classroom and work with our boys in this collaborative setting. I love challenging them to grapple with concepts in an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based approach. Engaging students in intellectual debate is germane to what we do at Trinity-Pawling.”

This course, which explores the religious, literary, and social history of our nation from the Puritans and Colonial America to present day society, is open to motivated upperclassmen.