Although I took many different courses in college, I would only consider a few teachers to be really outstanding. And outside of the computer courses, I would say that Dr. Young was just about the best. He taught a class called The History Of Western Civilization, and he taught it very well.
I must admit that most of the class was probably turned off by his class, because he was somewhat controversial. He wasn’t interested in dates and other boring facts … he was interested in who, what and where. He seemed to care more about whether or not we understood the subject than whether we had memorized who did what when.
He spoke about the Bible, and alienated much of the class. I found this topic very interesting, as he spoke about this book from a historical viewpoint. He claimed that the bible had been rewritten at least four times, and submitted evidence to the class to support this claim. As you can imagine, this produced some very spirited discussions, especially among some of the more devout class members.
Most of the time, however, Dr. Young spoke about western civilization. I could tell from the way he lectured that he loved the subject … unlike most teachers he actually enjoyed his students and he invited comments and criticism. He didn’t get angry or annoyed when student disagreed with him, which was something that I found very refreshing.
Dr. Young made me think about a subject which is generally considered to be very boring, about a subject which I was previously uninterested - the history of Europe after the dark ages. While I am very interested in history, I never cared much for that period of history. Dr. Young seemed to bring it alive for the first time.
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Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.