DEEP READING with JUSTIN McDANIEL (056)

DAVID LaROCCA: Hello, dear listeners. This is David LaRocca, last heard introducing Episode 35, and you are at the Point of Learning with my friend of 39 years Peter Horn. After his recent episode with Eric Hudson on the perils and alleged educational promise of artificial intelligence, Pete turns to Justin McDaniel, who in one class invites—make that sequesters students for extended durations of reading literature: detention as an aid to attention. In another class: bespoke asceticism. The lesson: limitation as a condition for liberation. Through practices shaped by constraints, students learn how to better cope with the losses, failures, and tragedies that will inevitably befall them. If you'd like to hear how McDaniel has profitably imported Buddhism into a hustle culture, business school environment, giving students a chance to regard others compassionately and forge unlikely friendships and rethink the inherited values and myths that got them into an Ivy League school in the first place, then join us, won't you, for Pete's conversation with Justin.

[01:24]

PETER HORN [voiceover]: On today's show, a professor who doesn't want students in one particular class to take notes, highlight passages, or even look up unfamiliar words.

JUSTIN McDANIEL: I don't want you to read for information because you've been taught to read for information. I want you to read for experience, impression, emotion, and let that literature wash over you.

[VO]: That's Justin McDaniel. In another unusual course he teaches at Penn, students voluntarily adopt some habits of monastic life.

McDANIEL: I mean, the central premise of the course is Why does every single religious tradition throughout history have a group that voluntarily takes on dressing restrictions, hair restrictions, food restrictions, sexual restrictions, speech restrictions? Why do humans do that?

[VO]: We also talk a bit about his introduction to Buddhism course, where students are challenged to support and rely on each other as they explore what it means to be selfless.

McDANIEL: Learn how to be a little selfless and trust another person and really say, Okay, my education isn't just about me. My education is about how well that I respect and want another person to flourish.

[02:51]

[VO]: Justin McDaniel is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Professor of the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently serving as chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Penn, McDaniel specializes in Buddhism and Southeast Asia. The author of four books and more 100 published articles and book reviews, McDaniel has won grants, fellowships, and teaching and advising awards for his work in previous positions at Harvard University, Ohio University, and the University of California, as well as at Penn. But he has also attracted a good deal of attention in recent years for two especially unusual courses that he teaches, which is what I called him up to talk about on September 16, 2025. The first of these courses, called “Existential Despair,” is fundamentally a class that encourages deep encounters with literature. The “existential” in the title refers to ordinary human experience, and the despair caused by loss, failure, and other hard edges of living. Students read about 4000 pages total in the class, but they do it all in class. There are grades, but there are no tests, no outside reading, no homework, no phones or computers. And there’s no syllabus—or at least not one that students know about in advance. When they show up at 5 p.m. for a class that meets until midnight, they never know the book McDaniel will assign them to read in full and discuss in a darkened seminar room that same evening. The class is so popular that about 10 times as many students apply as can be admitted. Last spring, McDaniel had 40 slots and …

[04:31]

McDANIEL: I offered interviews to 417 [students] 10 minutes only, and I think it was 225 took me up on the interview. Not everyone I offered an interview took it, but—

HORN: Right, but still 225!

McDANIEL: They just thought, Oh, it'll be impossible to get in. Why should I waste my time? But yeah, so I ended up interviewing well over 220.

HORN: 220. And you're really looking there for a range of personalities, like majors, the things that they're interested in, maybe personality types as well—introverts, extroverts?

McDANIEL: Personality types. Yeah, different majors, with nurses, engineers, philosophers, Wharton Business School, data analytics, computer science theater, so yeah, all over the place.

HORN: So I know what attracted me as an English teacher who saw a big part of the job, for me, was to try to think about how can I design an experience so that kids will discover the magic, the power of immersing themselves in a book. And one way that I think that I will know that I have done my job is that if, unprompted by any curricular requirement anywhere, at some point they pick up a book later in life and enjoy it for pleasure. I know that's for me, that would be a big impetus, but what drove you to construct this particular course?

[06:10]

McDANIEL: Well, it was really out of frustration. It was about 10 years ago, and I was giving a lecture in my Intro to Buddhism class. I teach Buddhist studies, I teach languages and Asian history and Asian religions and things. And when you're giving a lecture on any subject, I think any teacher—you've probably done this a thousand times, you'll say, “Well, this would probably will remind you of what Morrison wrote on this,” or “This idea would've been brought up by Carson McCullers” or pretty well-known authors. I mean, you're not saying anything obscure. And I would just get all these blank looks at people and then sometimes, Who you mean? Who's Cormac McCarthy? “Of course you know who that is!” or Who is James Baldwin? Of course, I don't have to teach you this stuff. That's basic knowledge. It'd be like, No. They just didn't know. And I said, well, where are they getting their cultural knowledge from? Where are they consuming? Do they know who John Coltrane is? And I'm not trying to stump them or lead them down obscure ways. I'm just talking about things that bring cultures together. And I was just so flabbergasted that these were kids in an Ivy League school and just what were they consuming outside of class and what were their teachers giving them? And then I would talk to students and the students I'd met hadn't read a book cover to cover since they were eight, nine years old.

HORN: And may I ask a question, because you've been teaching a while, right? You were at several schools before you were at Penn. Would you say that you've noticed a difference over the course of your career? Oh you have? Okay.

McDANIEL: Yeah, definitely. It's been reduced, and I think that it's funny that it's reduced among the highest, most competitive kids. When I was teaching at less competitive schools, I think the students were actually better read and had more time. And I think what happens is that the most elite students, they're in a lot of SAT prep courses. They're in a lot of activities, a lot of planned activities. They're in a lot of tutors, they're in these—they create “engineered well-roundedness,” as I like to say. Make sure you have a little bit of volunteer work and make sure you start at your own club and make sure that you show innovation and leadership and make sure you do a little music and a little math, and that's great, but that just having free time, just having downtime. And what do you do with that downtime?

HORN: As far as literature, they might only be exposed to the most interesting three paragraphs of any given book that are followed by multiple choice questions!

McDANIEL: I’d guess in their AP class on English literature, it was learning as much summaries of books just for a test and not actually, like you said, learning to dive into literature just for the sake of it. So they'll know the essay answers, but they won't actually be able to tell you about a piece of art or have any kind of visual literacy about how to look at it or just simply enjoy it in their spare time. I just remember getting very angry one day at about 120 students in a lecture, and just really kind of just lashing out at them and just said that “You might consider yourself accomplished, but you're not educated. You haven't got an education. You've simply got a series of accomplishments and prizes, and that doesn't impress me at all. And if that's the way you're going to go through life just to put things on your resume, then I don't really have time to talk to you.” And I had two students that came to me after class and you were just like, are you okay? You really kind of bit our heads off! And I'm like, “Well, I'm not really okay because this really disappoints me. I have children and I hope that they wouldn't turn into this. And is this a condition of the modern age or is it—who should I be blaming for this?” I grew up in a very humble circumstances. I did not have leisure time, but I think I had a great advantage is that I worked in restaurants and things like that, and I think I had a great advantages. My parents had no expectations of me. It means that they didn't put any pressure on me. So as long as I made money and could help pay bills, I had my time to myself. I never played sports. I never was in clubs. I never did activities. I just worked and went to school. And so in my downtime, I would just read or go to museums or things like that, with my friends often, and that these kids, they're so overscheduled that I don't think it's their fault. I just think they're not given time to do this. And so these two students asked me, they said, “Well, tell us what books we should read then.” And they're very bright students. One was a finance major and one was an architectural major. And I said, “No, I'm not going to give you a list of books because what you'll do is you'll take that list of books, you'll read the summaries of them, and you'll use it to impress people and just pad your resume with that. You're well read, but you actually won't read the books and I don't believe you.” And they said, “No, we really will.” I go, “Well, prove it to me. Show up in my office this Saturday.” And we have a library in my building—the Classics Library it's called, just where the Classics majors meet on my floor of my building. And I said, “I'm going to lock you in the room.” (I didn't actually lock the door. They were free to leave, but—) “Here's two books.” I got 'em the books. I said, “Here's two books. I don't want you to know what you're reading ahead of time, because what you'll do is you'll get a Google summary—and now it’d be an AI summary—and then that'll be the equivalent of reading to you. I want you to read raw, and I'm taking your cell phones from you and just read the book. That's all I want. I don't want you to know about the background of the author. I mean, obviously you can read the front matter of the book, but that's it.” And after they read over eight hours just alone—they had brought lunch—and at the end of that time I was blown away! Their discussion, the level of intelligence that they showed in that discussion. Their sophistication was so impressive that I was like, “Oh, it has nothing to do with your intelligence. This has to do with the situation.”

[13:18]

HORN: Do you recall what that book was? They both read the same book …

McDANIEL: Yeah, they read Revolutionary Road [by Richard Yates, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962]. Okay. And that's a book a little too long for my courses. That's like 420 pages. But in my courses I max out about 340 pages.

HORN: Yeah, I had a question about that, but I did want to go back to your own, say high school. Can you point to a profound reading experience that where something kind of opened up for you?

McDANIEL: Well, I read a lot. I'm dyslexic, so—which we didn't know, in the ‘70s, that wasn't—I mean, it existed, but it wasn't a common thing to know.

HORN: It wasn’t tested as frequently.

McDANIEL: I just was in the low level classes all the time. I didn't do very well in school. But my teachers, when I was young, me and this other kid, Charles Johnson, I still remember, we were pretty good in class. And the teachers—I went to Catholic schools—they said, “Oh, yeah, they prepare,” but we would do really terribly on tests. So they put us in one of those trailers in a parking lot and kind of Special Ed. And it was interesting that I could read very, very fast and I could retain the information, but I couldn't edit and I couldn't spell very well. So I would take pictures of pages in my head, and then I'm not very good at line editing, you know what I mean? Because dyslexia, it'll flip around the words, so I'm better at reading quickly. And so that was just, I learned to like, oh, well, if you don't make me write an annotate it summary of the book, I can talk to you about the book all day long. I need to read it once, I'll retain it, and I'll talk to you about it. It's funny, my friend in the class, he had the exact opposite. He got stuck in the details and he had trouble getting a forest perspective. You know what I mean? He was just a great kid. But it was nice that, and I had long bus rides and long train rides and stuff a lot. And for school, I didn't go to school very close to my house. And so I had the advantage that we didn't have cell phones, so I would just bring a book. And so we would just read a book on the way to school, read a book on the way home, and the libraries were really good.

[16:05]

HORN: So in the format of your class, the existential despair class, the students are given a book at the start of a particular class meeting. They don't know what it is going to be ahead of time, and then they have, what, four or five hours to go and read it?

McDANIEL:  Usually about four and a half, because originally the class was eight hours, 4 to midnight, but Penn changed their scheduling system, so now we have to do 5 to midnight. So I have to give my lecture much faster. I used to give about a 40-minute lecture. Now I give about 25-minute lecture, and sometimes I don't lecture at all. And then they read. And then the people who finish fast or faster, they have a journal that they can write in about the book alone or I start putting them in small group settings. I pull them out of the classrooms and I put them together so they can start discussing the book. And then once everybody's finished, we have a general discussion.

HORN: The difference, for example, between you and Charles in your approach to reading invited this question: How do you contend with students’ different reading speeds? Because I imagine there is a bit of a range, or is that one of the things that you take into account when you interview, or how does that work?

McDANIEL: Yeah, I don't want to limit anyone getting in the class based a reading speeds. So usually the slowest I've ever seen is about 30-35 pages an hour, and the fastest I've seen is about 150 pages an hour. So usually about 50-60 pages an hour.

HORN: Okay, so you kind of budget for that when you're thinking about the length of the book.

McDANIEL: There's been a few times, very rarely, that a student hasn't finished the book. And then some students will say, “Do you mind if I skip discussion? I really just want to finish this book.” And I say, that's fine, but I generally want them to be able to go to discussion. And then certain books, I'm like, No, you have to finish the book. I don't want to ruin this experience for you. But that's so rare if you give them five hours. Generally, they read it all.

HORN: Now hearing that the kind of notetaking for you about your reading was more labored, that was a more difficult process. That's another dimension that makes sense about leaning towards, Hey, let's just focus on our talk and discussion about it. And so you do this in a dark room to heighten the sense of—

McDANIEL: The discussion.

HORN: Yeah, exactly. Reading in a dark room, harder to do! Discussing though [in a dark room]: the first time, does it take a little bit for students to adjust to that, to get comfortable with that and to get comfortable with each other? Or how do you orient them?

[19:17]

McDANIEL: Yeah, I mean, they're comfortable with each other because even though they're not speaking to each other, they're around each other and they're placed in small groups. I used to have them placed in pairs, but now I have them placed in groups of about four to six people that they read with because they spread them over a whole building. We're in about six or seven different classrooms. And so they're reading in these small pods, and then I'm just rotating and checking on them. I'm just going from room to room to room to room. And sometimes, yeah, I give them little prompts. Sometimes I give them little things, but they're highly, highly discouraged ever to take notes. I want them not to stop reading. They're highly discouraged from using any pencil, underlining, highlighter. I really don't like that. I just want them to read. And I say, This is not about analyzing the literature. If you don't know this vocabulary word, figure out in context. I don't want to use your dictionary. I don't want you to read for information because you've been taught to read for information. I want you to read for experience, impression, emotion, and let that literature wash over you. And I think we have this cognitivist assumption in learning that it's about what you know and retain, and that's a very, very limited way of learning. Think about some of the most profound experiences you've ever had. They might've been on a first date, or they might have been hanging out around a campfire with friends, or they might've been on a train where you meet a stranger. You weren't taking notes, you weren't there gathering information. You weren't investigating and interviewing your friends. You weren't compiling a profile of them. You were simply engaged in a profound discussion about any subject in a shared subject. And that's a form of knowledge. It might not be information gathering, but it's a form of knowledge. And that's what most of us do most of the time. Most are engaged in experiences where we're not expected to remember. You walk down the street every day maybe in a certain part of town you live in, and I bet you couldn't recall the name and the color of every sign you pass and exactly what they say, even though you've been on the street a thousand times. You're not walking down the street to gather information; you’re walking down the street because you're on your way to somewhere, right? You won't be able to walk through the forest and tell me what type of every tree. Some people are good at that, that's great, but if you don't know the name of every tree, you can still enjoy the forest! And so that, I want students to be able to feel that they can enjoy literature without being able to replicate it for a test, without being able to retain it, to give back to someone, because that's their experience with literature: to prove, to show their work—

HORN: Get ready for the reading check quiz!

McDANIEL: They don't have to prove they did the reading, because they’re doing the reading right in front of me, and I'm giving them really good literature. You have to pick good books. You do have to pick something, choose something for them that is going to—I don't pick books that are going to relate to their lives. I think that's the worst thing you can do, because this idea that we only can listen to news that fits our politics, or we only can look at art that matches our identity, whether we're Asian or White or Black or whatever. No, literature is literature, art is art. Music is music. You don't have to be in a certain background to appreciate an excellent piece of music from Lebanon or an excellent piece of music from Korea. It doesn't matter if you're from those places. You can enjoy literature from Russia or Ireland or France or Ghana without having any connection to those places. It's just beautiful literature. It's beautiful art. And so I'm going to find a book that speaks to a 20-year-old's experience in America. No, I'm not going to find a book about that. Some books are about the characters are elderly, sometimes they're straight or they're gay or they're children or I don't care if it relates to a 20-year-old in America, I really don't. Because if that's the only way we're going to reach people, then what we're teaching them is the only thing important about them is their own experience. What's important about literature and art and music and theater and sculpture is about that you are introduced to its experience of being a human and that you can relate to other people. And so that if you are reading about a middle-aged woman in North Italy struggling with a marriage, even though you are a male, 19-year-old college athlete from Ohio, you can learn something about the experience of someone else. But also just the experience is that one day you are going to be middle-aged and one day you are going to be struggling and that you have a map of human experience, a little greater detailed map of human experience, and that's going to help you, in a sense, traverse those parts of life that you inevitably you'll face.

[24:37]

HORN: And so for the discussion, when you've given a little bit of a lecture, maybe about 20 minutes at the start, they go off to read, come back, and then (there in the dark room) is there an essential question that you develop [for students] from your own experience? Is it something you come back to from the lecture, or do you encourage the students to frame their own or start, or how does it typically work in terms of how they get talking?

McDANIEL: It works different for each night. Usually I want the students to start the discussion. Usually I want to see what has impacted them. There's certain things that if they're going down certain paths and kind of missing, I think, a huge aspect of that book, or I heard that in small discussions—because I've heard a little small discussions before the big discussion—that if somebody had brought up in one of those small discussions, I'm not going to call them out in class, but it'd be like, Oh, well, Claire or Daniel—I won't say their names—but I was listening, overhearing a discussion, and we haven't gotten a chance to talk about that. That's really important. So to make sure that I don't believe that any book has an essential meaning, and I'm not a huge fan of authorial intention. I mean, that's fine. The intention of the author is fine, but I'm more interested in reception and how that book is received.

HORN: And in the frame of existential despair there, I assume that “existential” is spelled with a small E, even though it's in a course title—that it refers to the despair of just existing as a human being with the things we have to contend with mortality loss.

McDANIEL: Right. Well, I get a lot of students—it's funny—that'll come into the interview and they'll be really trying to get into the class, and that's great. I mean, that's fine, but they'll be like, I've read a lot of Sartre and I've read a lot of Camus, and I'm like, Well, no, this course isn't about Existentialism. So I think they assume that it's about existentialist literature—

HORN: If they show up in a black turtleneck with a clove cigarette, is that usually a tell?

McDANIEL:  Or, that's right. What happens? Exactly. And I was like, no, I mean, those are great authors, but this course is not on Existentialism, so I don't want you to be disappointed that we're not reading that group of authors that you associate with that. Generally, I have a theme for each semester, and I never tell the students what that theme is, and I just see if they can figure it out at the end. What linked all the books together?

HORN: Oh, alright.

McDANIEL: Yeah. But sometimes, I mean the theme's relatively loose. I've had a theme on obsession where every book has to do with some kind of obsession. Or family: every book has to do with family that almost every book had troubles with family, things like that. I really enjoy the last class where students try to guess the theme and how wrong they all are getting it. But it's interesting to see how they try to figure it out because that means they're learning and that means they're reflecting. Getting the answer—who cares? I don't really care about that, so I care about how they process them.

HORN: You don't have wiseasses who are like, “I'll take DESPAIR for 300”? No, not like that? Good.

[28:12]

David LaRocca here once again, this time with the pitch inviting you to pitch in. Today's appeal comes with a plea for more first name diversity. As listeners to the show know, Pete has hosted many Jonathans. There was musicologist Jonathan Hiam, education historian Jonathan Zimmerman, social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, education advocate Jonathan Kozol, journalist Jonathan Rauch—and those are just the ones I can remember off the cuff! Indeed, there are also Johns: John Webb on caring for migrants, John Hali on excellence under pressure, and John Opera on photography. If you need a reason for making a financial contribution to a solo passion project run by my old friend, contribute so we can hear from someone not named John … athan. Over eight seasons, Pete has tirelessly brought you vital topics and nuanced debates central to what and how and why we learn visit patreon.com/pointoflearningpodcast to make it official. Disclaimer: overrepresentation of Jonathans and Johns does not preclude future guests with those first names.

[29:30]

HORN: Well, maybe it's time then to shift gears to the other class that I wanted to ask you about. It's called “Living Deliberately,” or as the kids call it, I guess, “the Monk Class,” because this seminar concludes with an actual trip to Thailand after students have spent a full month without their cell phones, not speaking to, or engaging in physical contact with other people, which you've asked them to do. And of course, they're all very clear that that is an expectation. And so can I ask you, at this point, may I ask you a question about your religious identity?

McDANIEL: Yes.

HORN: Because you were quoted in the article as being “largely raised by priests and nuns.” That was a line of yours. I know that you hold a Master's in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, which by my estimate you earned in your late twenties, which was also the decade when you lived for a time in a remote Buddhist monastery in Thailand. One of the people in the article referred to you as “some monk dude.” So I just wanted to ask, because I know that your home academically is in Religious Studies there at Penn, right? I mean, although you are a Professor of the Humanities, so could I ask about that, or is it perhaps relevant in terms of how it informs how you teach?

McDANIEL: I don't think it's really important for how I teach or anything, but yeah, I was raised Catholic, pretty strict Catholic, and I consider myself a Catholic, but I've studied a lot of Buddhism. I've practiced a lot of it, have many Buddhist friends and have certainly conducted many Buddhist rituals. I’ve conducted funerals and weddings and all those as a Buddhist. But I also have my Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian studies, which is largely Hinduism, and so yeah, I'm all over the place. My kids are Jewish, so there you go, but matrilineal. And so yeah, I would say that I'm more interested in dedication and discipline. I think that's what interests me about religion. So I am just interested in any group of people, whether they be Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or Zoroastrian or Taoist or whatever, that take on voluntary discipline where they don't have to. I mean, there's certain people who are forced into it, of course, but people who say that I'm going to take up a religious path or a dedicated path—I'm also interested in people do that as a scientist or a musician or a chef, that I'm very attracted in a sense, just to people who very disciplined in pursuit of a craft. And I think whether you are a professional actor or dancer or a chef or a musician or a monk or a nun, I think those are all come from a human motivation for centeredness that I find very interesting. And so I don't care for a student who takes the monk class what their religious background is, and most of the students who take it aren't religious really at all. I've had a few that are pretty religious, but very, very few over the years. One thing also, I've taught this class since 2001-02, and so longer than Existential Despair, and only in the last five years have I been able to take students to Thailand, so most classes never got to do that. And then one time I took a class to Ireland to experience life in Ireland, and so a lot of students didn't have that opportunity to do it.

HORN: I think that explanation certainly makes sense of the title which you chose, “Living Deliberately,” the idea that you would have discipline—I should say that to prepare for this interview, I read a novel last week as fast as I could, not taking any notes (but I didn't know that was a preference at the time). And then today, I applied a coat of polyurethane to the soffit on my side porch for two and a half hours without music or podcast, just being there and paying attention to it. And it was a small step that I offer it lightheartedly. But I think the small changes of saying, This is what I'm doing right now, this is where I am right now, this is what I'm hearing smelling, feeling.

McDANIEL: And with polyurethane, you're smelling a lot!

HORN: Yeah, it was a good time. I'm not saying it wasn't, but yeah, it was an exercise. So from my understanding, just as you set up the idea with the course is to get a taste—is it in Religious Studies [department]?— so to get a taste of actually practicing this in a measured way, in a limited way and seeing what it feels like, what it does for you, what it opens up, but it maybe liberates you from, okay.

McDANIEL: Yeah, and it's just like that the central premise of the course is why is every single religious tradition throughout history have a group—whether they're formal monks or nuns or whether they're Orthodox like Hasids or Sufis or things like—I don't call Sufi “orthodox”—but that have a dedicated group that voluntarily takes on dressing restrictions, hair restrictions, food restrictions, sexual restrictions, speech restrictions. Why do humans do that? I mean, if our job in evolution is to seek protein and procreation largely, why are we doing things directly against that? Why is celibacy a thing? Why is fasting? I think these seem completely against evolution and also the idea that we live a life in order to be happy. Why take on things go against, supposedly, happiness, and is there a more profound type of happiness and more sublime sense of living? And why does every religion, every culture have this? When students ask these questions, we can give them psychological answers and sociological answers and economic answers, but they're only really getting around the subject, they're kind of explaining it away instead of explaining it. And I said, Well, why don't we actually just try to do this and let's take on restrictions and see if there's something of value to this? And universally, universally, students have found great value.

HORN: And is it something that, do you take it on as well for the month or how does it work for you in your role?

McDANIEL: I teach other classes and I have children, and so I do a lot of things with them, but I do actually speak at faculty meetings and give talks. I have to give lectures in other classes. I lead a relatively monastic life myself in terms of, I don't really have any social media—

HORN: God bless you!

McDANIEL: Yeah, I don't really—no offense—I don't listen to podcasts. I don't.

HORN: [stony silence]

McDANIEL: I largely read. I like music. I do like to listen to music, but I only listen to music when I'm not doing other things. Generally. I don't listen to music while I walk or anything like that.

HORN: You're saying you actually listen to music? Like put on a recording and listen.

McDANIEL: I generally like to do it that way, not always, but generally, my guilty pleasure is probably sports radio. So I listen to a lot of Phillies games and a lot of Sixers games, so I'm a Philadelphia sports fan.

HORN: You're in a good place for it.

McDANIEL: Yeah, I'm having a good few years. I grew up with a lot of despair over Philadelphia, but we've been better lately. But it's great to see the students. I wake up very early too, and they have to wake up at 5:30 in the class, and so I'm up for that. And sometimes I meet them for activities in the morning. Other times they're assigned with their partner to do an activity in the morning.

HORN: I'm sorry—is that for the portion where they're preparing for the trip?

McDANIEL:  No, for the whole class from the very first night.

HORN:  Okay.

McDANIEL:  So they do the dressing restrictions, food restrictions, sleeping restrictions. I mean, they can sleep as much as they want. They just have to get up at certain time. I don't care when they go to bed, but I encourage them to get as much sleep as they need. And I have no restrictions on the amount of food they eat. They can take as many calories or as little as they want, and there's no restrictions on medicine, of course, anything like that. But they do have restrictions of when they can eat, what they can eat, stuff like that. That's the whole semester.

HORN: That's the whole semester, but then silence only kicks in for a month?

McDANIEL: No, they have a preparation, so they're reduced from 100 words a day to 50 words a day to zero words a day.

HORN: They start with 100 words a day?

McDANIEL: At the start, yeah, with, yeah. And then they have spending restrictions to what money they can use and stuff.

HORN: Wow. Alright.

McDANIEL: And so the first week, they have no restrictions on speech. They have to talk to their other professors. They've gotten permission before the semester starts from their other professors that they can take the course and still take mine. And jobs. So if they're in a job, they have to talk to their bosses and things like that to make sure that they can do it and generally they can. So if they're in a fraternity or sorority or they have roommates, they have to prepare their roommates and they won't be able to listen to music, they won't be able to listen to the radio. Even on in the background. They can't have a TV on in the background. So I have one student who went to live with his uncle. He moved out the dorm because his uncle lived close by just because he wanted a more monastic experience, his own bedroom and stuff. It's like, Okay, well that's what you're going to do. But again, it's an elective class and nobody's forced to take it.

[41:23]

HORN: It strikes me that one thing that these two very interesting and unusual courses have in common is that they share a stripping away to essential elements, like the essential element of one's encounter with the difficult pleasure of a book, or as we just talked about with this. Is this something that shows up in any of the other courses that you teach? I mean, it seems like you have been very deliberate in the design of the learning experiences for these two, but as you're teaching, I imagine you teach courses in Buddhism or in the languages of Southeast Asia or maybe Southern India. Are there features where you take that into account as well?

McDANIEL:  Sure. Yeah. I'm teaching a course like an Intro to Buddhism course. Now, there's no interviews to get into it or anything. Anybody can sign up for that class, but there's no individual work in the class because one of the biggest teachings Buddhists teach is selflessness, or they promote selflessness as the highest goal, and so the students have to have a partner in class. And so the one partner reads to the other, and the other one takes notes. They're judged and graded as joint work, and most students are only used to getting a grade based on their own individual work. No, you're graded on how well that you learn with someone else. And they have to create a monastery at home, a monastic space. They have to design their own chant, their own hand motion, their own way of starting off their study session together. They have to have a symbol that they work around, but it's all up to them what symbol and what chant, and then they come together and they read to each other and take notes with each other over three hours, and then they summarize their discussion in class and things like that. So we're just starting that and we're seeing how it works, but students are so worried about What's my grade going to be? Which is normal. I mean, grades are important for jobs and grad school and all these things, but learn how to be a little selfless and trust in other person and really say, Okay, but my education isn't just about me. My education is about how well that I respect and want another person to flourish.

[43:55]

[VO]: That’s it for today’s show! My great thanks to Justin McDaniel for taking time to talk. A link to Dave Zeitlin’s excellent article about McDaniel’s classes for The Pennsylvania Gazette may be found on the show page for this episode. Thanks also to Grammy-winning artist and friend of the pod Rinde Eckert for allowing me to use several of his compositions as special underscore for this episode. Thanks as always to Shayfer James, who might finally be done touring Europe, where he spent most of September. If you’d like to hear the words for the songs he graciously permits me to use as intro and outro, or get tickets for future tours, visit shayferjames.com. Finally, thanks to you for listening, rating, reviewing, and sharing this episode with friends you think might dig it. If you think you’re ready to make a one-time or recurring donation, click the link on the show page to learn more. Point of Learning is written, recorded, edited, mixed, and mastered by me here in Sunny Buffalo, New York, where we’re looking at a remarkable high of 73 degrees on this September 30th. I’m Peter Horn, and I’ll be back just as soon as I can with another episode all about what and why and how we learn—see you then!