On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:21:39 -0700, Louis Schmier wrote: >According to the research, come to our campuses and go into our >classrooms wanting connection far more than they want information, >and feel they get very little of it in the classroom.
Although some long time teachers might feel like laughing out loud at this statement, I think it should be given some thought. I don't know what research Louis is citing (citations and references to publications are always appreciated, as scholars we should come to expect that) and I don't really know how Louis or the research he refers to defines connection (operationally or otherwise) or whether there are different types of connections (only some of which are appropriate for a student-teacher relationships) but I think that maybe what is being referred to is a student's experience in the classroom that is accessible, comprehensible, and provides insight and perspective that cannot be achieved by any other means (not even by reading -- it is the interpretation and treatment by the teacher that makes the text come alive with meaning and helps the student to develop a new understanding that had not developed in just reading the text; consider the poems of T.S. Eliot and how commentary on the sources Eliot uses, his intent, and what he trying to achieve as an example). Louis' comments also reminds me of something that a student once said to me about a statistics text that was being used in a statistics class I was teaching: "It doesn't speak to me." I had a number of reactions to this, among which: (1) It's a goddamn statistics textbook, it's not supposed to "speak to you". (2) Perhaps the statistics text is not clear or makes its points badly (though I try to select texts that are accessible, I realize that what is accessible to me will not necessarily be accessible to students). (3) What was the student expecting to hear from it? I know what the statistics textbook is saying but maybe the student expects to hear something different from a statistics textbook (like less math and strange concepts like the analysis of variance). Prehaps the student will find a statistics textbook that will speak to them but they will probably have to read many statistics textbooks before they do. And, perhaps, after reading many books and not find one that speaks to them, come back to first text and finally better hear what it was saying. Maybe students want us to "speak to them" and good teachers try to but teachers have specific messages that they want to send and sometimes students won't want to/can't hear them. >That's why sports, Greeks, clubs are so vibrant. But surely one doesn't have to go to college to be involved in these things (well, substitute other organizations like the Elks, the rotarians, or the Knights of Columbus for the Greeks). >They give what the students want and need that they do not >generally get in the classroom. I'm a little confused. Though what sports, the Greeks, and clubs provide can overlap with what goes on in some classes, the college classroom should provide exposure to materials, issues, ideas, and activities that are hard to duplicate in other venues (e.g., experimental psychology laboratory). That is, of course, unless the college allows inbibing alcoholic beverages in class in which case the degee of overlap should signficantly increase. >Moreover, when they come into a class, the most important >question they ask is "who is this person," wanting to know of the >professor's character. My answer to this question is quite simple: "It's none of your business." For some reason you seem to think that a professor's character determines whether they will engage fruitfully in teaching activities. As long as I am professional and ethical in my teaching, as long as I do a good job in conveying the concepts, the interpretations, etc., relevant to the course I am teaching, my character doesn't enter into it. The course is not about me. Any professor who spend a lot of class time on their character should probably be evaluated for narcissistic personality disorder and/or psychopathy. >At the bottom of their list of questions is "what does this person know." Then I think that their priorities are off. In college and graduate school, I tried to take courses with professors that had specific expertise that I wanted to be exposed to. I didn't want them to be my friend or to present their character to me (indeed, their character was often manifested by how they presented the material they were expert in, whether it was compassionate and nurturing or disdainful and expressing disgust that they had to teach such morons [I guess being a member of that National Academy of Sciences excuses such behavior]). The classroom should give rise to intellectual experiences that occur in very few other venues and, I think, rarely in sports, the Greeks, and clubs. But that's just my opinion. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
