Well, it’s that time of the term when the Scroogey, bah humbug “student
blooperers” are out in full force all over the cyber world, and so many in
academia do themselves an injustice whenever, however briefly, they are
suspending their charitable holiday spirit.
During my 46 years as an academic, do you know what I noticed, what I
am still noticing, and want all of us to think about? There is a gap between
our professionally private and professionally public selves. In the privacy
being with colleagues, there’s the perennial moaning and groaning, the
self-pitying frustration, the finger-pointing, the blaming, the bad mouthing,
the snide comments, the demeaning jokes, and the offering of denigrating proofs
how studens't dumb mistakes reveal the “dumbing down” of higher education.
And, when held to task, all this is always justified as academia’s version of
locker-room talk: “innocent fun,” “idle chit-chat,” or “coffee talk.” I
wonder if any of them remember when they were a target of such unkind comments.
I wonder if they remember how they felt. I was, and I do. I can tell you
that the less than politie words that I used showed that I didn’t appreciate
their ridiculing “I didn’t mean anything by it” one little bit. I didn’t then
as a studet; I didn’t then a professor; I don’t now though I am retired.
Let’s start by admitting that professors do talk differently with their
colleagues about students when students are not around. In department
meetings, at faculty socials, in faculty lounges, at conferences, in email, on
FaceBook, professor’s language and tone often change. I’ve heard and seen it
over and over and over, year after year. Think about what such mental roping
off of one personna from another does. Understand how impatience and demeaning
erodes understanding, lulls sympathy, and weakens efforts of support and
encouragement. Think about how they influence the treatment of a student with
whom we come in contact. Think about the emotional and performing cost to the
student. Think about the emotional and performing cost to us academics. Think
about the justifications that come into play to demote the classroom to second
place and students to the level of distraction in the quest for research,
publication, promotion, security of tenure, and academic renown. Think about
how tenor and temperament and fundamental attitude matter; they really matter;
they matter a great deal. I mean why make the effort if you believe “it’s no
use?” Why continue to fight if you thrown up your hands in surrender.
Since late 1991, when my epiphany, that “deep time,” as focused and
intense a spiritual experience as I ever will have, was a portal to thinking
about numinous past personal experiences and daily current experiences, was and
continues to be enormously important to me. It ultimately led to my conscious
daily living according to my self-composed “Ten Commandments of Teaching,” and
to take the sacrements of my “Teacher’s Oath.” Everything in and out of class
revolved around abiding by those commandments and the tenets of that oath. At
their core is unconditional human dignity and respect for each individual and a
treatment of each student as a sacred, noble, unique, and significant human
being with untold potential: not to be prejudiced against any student for any
reason, not to shame a student, not to speak ill of any student, not to use a
student as a punch-line, not to use students as a punching bag to vent
frustration with and anger at the administration, not to use students in a
power-trip, not to impose a powerlessness on a student, not to show up as
someone different among peers when and where I could safely let my hair down,
and not to have a different standard when among other professors from that when
among students.
The problem is that such rationalizing and blaming only exacerbates
our anguish. They’re merely a form of running away. They don’t meet the true
situation head on. They don’t liberate anyone from frustration. They don’t
ease the ache and discontentment. They’re a form of “look what I have to deal
with” self-pity. And, they aren’t very kind or caring. They don’t engender a
true sense of service. They don’t develop deep trust. They don’t establish
respect. They darken rather than illuminate. They don’t recognize any human
parity, that sacredness, nobility, and uniqueness of each of us human beings.
They don’t don’t allow for unconditional faith, hope, and love. They’re a
barrier to being intently and intensely aware, alert, and attentive. They
cling to ignoble stereotypes, generalizations, and labels. They perpetuate
grudges. They don’t help in the effort to prevent drop outs. They don’t lead
to an understanding that we’re in the people business, that education is about
people, real people, living people, unforgettable people, compelling people,
amazing people, flawed and incomplete people, people with contradictory
characters.
The acquisition of a degree, the securing of a title, the gaining of
tenure, the lengthening of a resume do not automatic in and of themselves
create or negate our morality. We to do that; we make that choice. We have to
ask what values did we inherit when we became academics, which ones should be
retained, which ones should be discarded, which ones should be modified. We
have to ask those old values new questions. We constantly and incessantly have
to ask and sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, ask
and sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, ask and
sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, again, again,
again. Still venturing, still changing, still growing, still discovering.
still finding ourselves. And, be both unafraid and unashamed of doing it.
Now I know that not all profs to this, but most do. Since 1991, I
started asking and remaking the academic values I had inherited. From then on,
I consciously watched my feelings, thoughts, words and actions, knowing that
when I demean a student, I demean myself. I say and have said for decades
that when someone says, “I didn’t mean anything by it,” of course she or he
did; when they defended themselves with “it’s just innocent fun,” there’s no
innocence about it; when they said in their defense, “it’s only a joke,” it’s
never an devalued “only,” for they were dead serious; when they argue that “it
means nothing,” sure it does, for it reveals the truth of deep-seated
attitudes. They’re all rationalizations for not talking a walk along that
extra mile. They’re excuses for not supporting efforts to retain students.
They’re all reasons offered for the need to cull the herd. Each time any “look
what I have to deal with” blooper is offered, I think of the helping and saving
hand offered by Birdsal Viault to me when I as a student was a frequent target
of those “why try” and “it’s no use” bloopers.
Think I’m being a dour tight ass who should lighten up, that we need
humor during this tense to alleviate the pressure-packed time of final exams
and calculating final grades? Well, my answer is why make jokes at someone’s
expense. You know, I am an amateur flower gardener. I’ve learned some simple
truths: there is no such thing as a “no maintenance” or “low maintenance”
garden; nothing will ever go by the book; nothing will ever be as we wish.
Bugs, pests, weeds, disease, and weather will see to that. Plants will wilt;
plants will wither; plants will be choked; plants will be eaten; plants will be
diseased. Do I give in and give up? Do I sneer, gnarl, and curse? Do I
ridicule and blame? Do I throw up my hands in disgust and walk away in
surrender? No, the best of my gardening skills are my commitment and
dedication and perseverance, my willingness to get my hands and knees dirty, my
quest for solutions, my willingness to adapt, my willingness to change my ways.
And, those skills will be revealed in the most challenging of times. I see
and listen deeply with a loving heart. I remain serene. In the face of all that
I find new ways; I redesign; I replant; I trim and prim; I continue to plant
new plants; I continue to embed new seeds; I continue to nourish new seedlings.
I patiently pull weeds; I deal the bugs and pests; I faithfully fertilize and
water; I caringly nourish; I lovingly tend. Only then will the flowers, all
flowers, have the opportunity to thrive and bloom. In the classroom, I am the
gardener of my own life; I water and nourish and tend to my own inner garden.
It is the only way I know that I can I help each student, unconditionally, to
have the opportunity to nourish the garden within each of them, and to blossom.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
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//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
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/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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