Last Harkness

I don’t think that this past Harkness was the most productive so far. There was less of a focus on the material and what ideas were being presented than on how to meet the new restrictions, and so we never got to any real conclusions or new understandings, which was in a way a little less satisfying. I think that it was a good regulator, though---more participation is always a pro. And I really liked the asking questions option, and I don’t mean I think there should be roles assigned to how each person is expected to move the conversation along---judging by the last one, this will just translate to a spirit of not listening to each other. It did draw attention to how quickly questions and other segues into new subjects are dropped, though. In the end, I think more questions would benefit any Harkness. And even this new participation-checklist could prove to be really useful, but because these were meant to target points of improvement, this new emphasis on these points would mean that the growth would only come after these were embraced in time.