By Anonymous, Jul 1, 2009 in Musings, Pedagogy and Teaching
Sitting in the Starbucks on Nassau Street, just across from Princeton this week, I overheard a conversation between two political philosophy undergraduates that strikes me as either simply humorous or deeply troubling. I report it here as a way of inviting a conversation on teaching students in today's liberal arts environment.
A young woman met a young man for a brief study session. At 7:30 in the morning, they certainly displayed a certain kind of industriousness. I offer three snippets of their conversation, all spoken by the young woman.
After declaring that she had set a goal of herself of being a better student, she proceeded to go over the syllabus at hand, ticking off each reading: “That one’s boring. That one’s boring. Boring. Boring.”
Next, she remarked that she was excited about learning Spanish because “all of the good soap operas” are in Spanish.
Finally, she commented that she could not understand all the surprise shown by the media that morning over pop star Michael Jackson's death. "I mean, come on," she insisted in a tone that suggested she knew all the scandalous stories, "it was just a matter of time."
My first reaction was, as might be expected, one of smug condescension, fading into a slight outrage. But I began to wonder whether I was not missing a "teaching moment." I wondered how many of my students began the semester wanting to be better students, but found it no contradiction to declare that which they want to study better to be boring. I wondered, not whether I should assign more interesting readings (I think my readings ARE interesting), but how to get more students to see the connection between their grade driven desire to be a better student and an approach to the text that resists the impulse to give in to boredom. I do, of course, try to convey why course texts are worthy of study, and I often find students excited about the reading, but is it enough to assign reading in hopes that at least the best students will "get it"? Should I be spending more time teaching them how to not be bored? Does anyone have a proven method or a suggestion as to how to do this?
The lure of the telenovela (I gathered from the rest of the conversation that our young lady spends a great deal of time watching soap operas) is another easy opportunity for reproach. But I do often find my students exert a tremendous amount of effort outside the classroom engaged in strenuous efforts that look suspiciously like learning. Surely there is something this young student’s professors can point to in her desire to learn to speak a foreign language for the purposes of better understanding an art form (indulge me in this point for a moment) that she admires. I don’t mean playing YouTube clips of Days of Our Lives in the classroom, but drawing connections between our students’ private lives and their academic lives seems to be essential to introducing them to the leisurely aspects of the liberal arts education. Of course, we must lift her above the level of the telenovela to something more sublime, but surely she recognizes the allure of education as a means of illuminating art. Any thoughts as to how to make these links more explicit, or how to handle such conversations?
And finally, the Michael Jackson comment. Having watched some of the coverage of the King of Pop’s passing that morning, I was struck by how indulgent the media was in praising this profoundly odd man. Many commentators responded much as I did to the news: with sentimental reflections of my youthful experience with his music. As the media is wont to do, it had succeeded in turning this sentimentality into the day’s top story, affirming a sense of generational solidarity that obscured the story of a decadent man meeting a decadent end. Yet our student cut through the pluff of her seniors’ rhapsodizing and got to something essential: transformative artist, debauched lifestyle, early death. It struck me that we too often assume our generational superiority over the youth, and in doing so perpetuate cloudy dogmas—both in our appreciation of culture and in the classroom. But there is some value in being young, and it often begins in seeing through the received opinions of our elders. Of course, this also leads to a hubristic rejection of everything old, and an embrace of hipster esotericism. But that need not lead us to reject the insights of the young. Instead, it occurred to me, I could try more conscientiously to explore and probe the generational insights of the people who will, after all, in approximately ten years be attempting to revise the field. I had better be prepared for what is coming, and better prepare them to treat me with some dignity. Anyone have a story of how this kind of generational insight taught you something?
3 Responses to "What Can "the Dumbest Generation" Teach Us about Michael Jackson?"
Lee Trepanier on Jul 11, 2009
I think you're right that often times professors dismiss their students' concerns and curiosity as shallow and stupid rather than see them as starting points for engagement. I'm often amused when some of my colleagues complain that students aren't interested in the subject matter like they are. I often retort back, "Why should they be?"
It is not necessarily evident why everyone should be interested in this or that subject (I know for myself there are lots of subjects that I don't care to know about). As academics, we take this for granted that our particular discipline is critical to education, but is it? In some sense, students are right to ask us not to be "boring." What I think they really mean is why is this subject important to me other than a hoop I have to jump through for graduation? In this sense, the student's question reveals a desire to know something beyond the superficial: how is this subject related to my own life as a human being?
Of course, this doesn't mean the professor has to pander to the lowest common denominator, as you had mentioned. But it does require us to re-think our roles as professors and try to meet students half-way in their desire to learn, inarticulately expressed as it may be.
In terms of practice, the first book I will assign in class is usually a contemporary book that is easy to read and somewhat controversial in topic so they can "relate" to it. Afterwards, we look at more "classical works" to show how certain ideas and principles are connected to the conversations we are having today.
Julianne Romanello on Jul 13, 2009
What strikes me about the young student mentioned above is the intuitive quality of her comments. Perhaps without knowing the material on the syllabus, she has a sense that it will be something boring. She is drawn toward the telenovela. She has a sense that MJ's fate was a logical one.
Recalling my own time as an undergraduate with many encounters with "boring" materials, I think that a common intuition that students have is that materials that do not seem to pose a challenge for them are not worth their while. Reading Machiavelli's Prince, for instance, may seem at first an activity so strait-forward as to require hardly any effort on the part of the student. Simply relating it to the old maxim that the ends justify the means seems sufficient. And the intuitive response to this text may be that it is outdated, irrelevant, or banal. I think, then, and this is partly a restatement of Lee's response, that demonstrating the art and challenge of confronting a core text or even a popular t.v. show, may tap into a student's notion that what is difficult may be in itself more worthwhile and interesting than what is simple. Showing students that what they think is simple is not really so can peak their curiosity and make them think the material is exciting. When I learned how to read the Prince it was anything but boring. Most people do want to learn and most people also consider themselves good judges of the worth of things. Show them (gently, perhaps?) that they may not be such a good judge (or a good reader), and that becoming so is a challenge for the few, and they may have the intuitive response that this is something that they will be interested in and enjoy. Socrates, I reckon, wins again.
Lee Trepanier on Jul 13, 2009
I agree with Julianne's assessment of students today. I wonder if anyone finds it interesting that, in spite of the corrosive influences of contemporary culture, students - or at least some students - still desire to understand the complexity of a text or movie because the endeavor itself is worthwhile. It seems to suggest something perennial about our desire to know things in their multifacet forms rather than as a simple item of consumption.