I
I am glad about these things and glad I am going away this weekend to write because teaching is so painful – for reasons Jennifer Cascadia has discussed in relation to her high school teaching experience in several comments threads on this blog.
Today I spent over an hour explaining to a colleague at the professorial level why I am so frustrated with the basic language textbook we are using, and another hour asking an instructor for advice on how to manage the the language course of which we are each teaching several sections.
The professor said: “I agree with you, and I have discovered that the portion of the text you are teaching is the worst. I think you should use your creativity to reform the course. I realize that it is difficult to change the textbook, nevertheless I think you should use it very selectively, in whatever way works for you.” This was encouraging in a theoretical sense but discouraging in a practical one since it involves so much work. Frankly, I would rather change the textbook and have done with the matter.
The instructor said: “The problem is not the book, it is the students. They are not prepared for the course and they do not study. They are, indeed, not students. The only way to put this course in perspective and preserve time for our own creative pursuits is to recognize these facts, drop all idealism about teaching, and walk the students through the book.” This, oddly, was more encouraging: discover the line of least resistance and take it. How do you vote? To say that I am discouraged is to put it mildly.
I also have a plagiarism case to deal with in a senior course. It is not from a student who wants to be dishonest, it is from one who is scared. I know I can just come down on him for plagiarism but I do not think that would be the most helpful strategy in this situation. This student is a major with a hard life and is infinitely more interesting to me than the children in the course with the textbook problem. And I could go on.
II
I feel still like a fish out of water, fresh of the boat and dazzled by a brave new world. Nearly twenty years away from graduate school and still, every time I say I am going to get serious, I start thinking like a person teaching in an R-1 department, not just an R-1 university. And yet when I do not think in this way I lose my bearings and do not make headway in my research program.
I need a new subject position and I do not know how to formulate it. I have no problem with underprepared students, but I do not understand the replacement of the academic mentality with the bureaucratic one. I need to become a split subject: high school teacher by day, researcher by night. I need to care both more and less than I really do.
III
Unlike most of my posts, which are caffeine fueled, this post is fueled by wine. And we have mandatory drug testing in our university, although faculty have never actually been tested. And when the drug testing policy was instituted a colleague said, they do not need to test for drugs, but if they tested for alcohol they would be quite amazed at the results.
And it is true, we all need a drink. And I, for one, should drink more and more often, I am coming to realize. Let us therefore drink wine, and discuss fruit from our gardens and Kerouac.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The problem with teaching and writing are that they use the same creative talents. Teaching uses them up.
I suppose that is true even in non-problematic teaching situations … although I find that good classes and good students are actually also good for writing … but yes.
I do not understand the replacement of the academic mentality with the bureaucratic one.
Like I said, it starts in school (I’m not sure what level — perhaps creche?) with behaviourism. Western society has adopted behaviourism as its credo and “behaviour management” as its ideal. Therefore there are, no longer, any minds — and indeed, if most people encountered a mind, they wouldn’t know what to make of it.
It is true. So what one must do is lower expectations: do not expect to encounter a mind.
The problem I have is that some students have minds but no skills, and others, behaviorism-fueled skills, but no minds. I am happy to deal with the minds, skilled or not. But I am miserable dealing with the rest.
The truth was spoken by I think the Harvard Guide to U.S. Colleges and Universities, which we read when I was in my first year as a professor. It had special warning signs on the entries for the universities I liked: WARNING. THIS PLACE IS APPROPRIATE FOR INTELLECTUALS ONLY. IF YOU ARE NOT AN INTELLECTUAL YOU WILL NOT BE HAPPY HERE.
This explained a lot. Right now I am wishing I were in social work, community medicine, or public interest law … as long as I am living in this retrograde state, this would be valuable work which I could make some sense of. But the dissonance between having an intellectual job with intellectual requirements and dealing with what teaching is here, is well nigh unbearable.
So I shall remember: do not expect to meet a mind.
I think that expecting to meet a mind was my downfall in the teaching prac, too. If I operated as if I was hoping that the students would do something spontaneous, they took that as weakness and rebelled against ‘my authority’. On the other hand, I couldn’t bring myself to apply constant dampeners to their behaviour. That is the way that authority is maintained these days in public schools. You ignore all spontaneous behaviour (sending the message that it has no interest for you), and you apply dampeners — a tone of disinterest, a determination to press on mechanically no matter what may come, and an attitude of emotional flatness (that will not emotionally arouse the children). In such a way, you guide the children to see that spiritedness has no value for you, and that if they want attention they are to mechanistically comply. This is the way it is done in Australian schools — and I could not bring myself to do it.
In Zimbabwean schools, on the other hand, as I have mentioned, there was more a desire to SEE the spiritedness of the children on the part of teachers. One encouraged individuation very much, but led the students to understand that the rights of individuation were a privilege which had to be paid for by their compliance in class time.
The Zimbabwean model makes *so much* more sense. The Australian and apparently, the current U.S. model is really depressing!
Yes, the Zimbabwean model makes sense and hopefully it is still in place.
What you get with the Australian model is the flight of the authorities away from the chance of being perceived as authoritarian or elitist (if you encourage individuation in some kids, what about the kids who can’t or won’t individuate — won’t they feel bad or something?)
Yes – this too. I have the idea I should learn to be like that for certain situations, split myself somehow. I am not sure the effort would be fruitful. There has got to be a way to conserve some form of integrity throughout the day … it is the only thing which ever worked for me … but I have not yet perceived the way.
Step 1 probably is not to see the matter so catastrophically as I am doing right now.
The best thing to do might be to adopt the Australian approach of passivity. That will at least save energy. Set out a number of rules clearly, and if the students do not come up to scratch, then you can effectively divide your personality by smiling at them benignly whilst awarding them a D. Be very positive to them — students brought up on behaviourism love a positive attitude. But keep awarding the Ds, insofar as their levels of achievement do not change.
(I don’t think that I could, personally, even do this, because I care a bit too much about maintaining communication at the level of the realities I see, but this would be a strategy if you could stomach it.)
This I can actually do in a certain way. And I think for many, I do get through. But: I do not like the attitude of certain students at all, at all, and I do not think the materials we are using meet our goals at all, at all.
So it is a difficult conundrum. But basically your recipe is right; what one must do is figure out how to handle the materials in a way one can believe in, and show that one believes.
I do not believe – I see why someone studying with these materials would not do well unless they were a star student – and I keep asking, is this working for you? This is too liberal. My mistake here is to assume they want to learn, not that they merely want a grade.
Yeah, it is weird how in order to be liberal, you need to be able to command the students’ respect. In order to be able to be liberal, you need to be, to a certain degree, authoritarian.
Otherwise, what happens is that you ask, “Is this material working for you?” and the student (who is unable to see that you are asking them a question out of respect for their autonomy — an autonomy that they happen not to have) freaks out and feels, “The education system isn’t working properly because my teacher is coming to me for advice!”
So, somehow those who have been brought up on the milk of behaviouristic human kindness end up being the most authoritarian when they think the system isn’t working rhythmically, mechanically enough. They freak out.
Yes. Although to contain my depression about this I have to remember: I am reacting primarily to one student and to the oppressive textbook.