I'm curious what your experiences with this have been. Have you ever STOPPED using material in class because a student complained that it challenged his or her feelings? I teach at a Christian SLAC, so it's something in my consciousness all the time, but I'm curious what the rest of your experiences have been.
Oh, and I've missed you. I have lots of misery to share that I've stored up from this academic year that kept me too busy to even blog (the nerve).
- The Contemplative Cynic
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Some keen readers asked me to
link to this earlier post from our page.
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Some keen readers asked me to
link to this earlier post from our page.
Hi, Cynic!!! Good to see you back. I'll look forward to hearing more about his year's misery when you've recovered enough to talk about it.
ReplyDeleteI think the linked article contains some bits and pieces of truth, though the two replies (linked from the sidebar) probably do a better job of explaining what's actually going on: the problem isn't so much the students as the administrators and the whole student (and parent)-as-customer mentality, especially in the context of the decline of the tenured (or tenure-eligible) professoriat.
I have to admit that I haven't witnessed much of the political-correctness-policing that, at least anecdotally, is on the rise among college students. But I teach a required course to students who tend to be fairly career-minded/instrumentalist about their educations, many of whom are first generation (college, American, or both). I also let them choose their own topics for the major research project, and it's a review of the literature, not a researched-argument-type essay, all of which minimizes the chances for complaints that I'm being "bias" in any particular direction. I do encounter occasional resistance to the amount and difficulty of work I assign, but it's hard for that resistance to be framed as an objection to the material when the students pick the material (though occasionally they object to having to find their own topics, too). So no, I'm not particularly worried, nor have I changed readings, etc., in response to a student complaint (because I haven't gotten any).
But, as Koritha Mitchell (one of the authors of the reply articles) points out, I'm also, as a white woman, working from a position of considerable privilege -- maybe even more so than a white male in this case, since left-leaning students are less likely see me as the enemy/oppressor than a white man, but my presence in a position of (some) authority also doesn't produce the degree of cognitive dissonance for more conservative students that seeing a woman (or man) of color in charge might. Middle-aged white women teaching required courses may not get a lot of respect or enthusiasm, but, barring the occasional student with mommy issues, we're also sort of a neutral category -- just another "teacher," okay until she unfairly dispenses a "bad" grade -- which, admittedly, can open the door to all sorts of other complaints and accusations, but, at least at my institution, those are still dealt with at the departmental level first, and those who field the complaints are pretty good at boiling things down to their essence.
This all makes sense. Thank for the warm welcome back and taking time to analyze what's going on. I don't get as much resistance as I always expect from our students, but I do notice a fear that they exhibit for NEW learning. Weirdly, my teacher-ed students are the most anxious of all the groups I teach.
DeleteOne example: I had students practive making origami (It was for a lesson on the atomic bomb and we had read about making paper cranes and I showed them pictures and footage of visiting two peace museums in Japan) as a fun "let's do something different with the last 5 minutes of class today. THAT elicited a lot of resistance because they claimed, "I'm not good at this. I've never done this before." It was as if they thought I was expecting them to have already mastered a skill and were resentful to now have to "look dumb in front of others," as one girl bemoaned.
Perhaps that level of fear isn't quite what this article is referencing but it made me wonder why they thought I expected them to have mastered an origami bird before enrolling in Comp 1A.
Teaching chemistry doesn't provide much opportunity to explore controversial subjects - not even evolution! - but it's not your own experiences that limit you. The worry of what could happen, based on a few well-publicized examples, holds everybody back. Fear works.
ReplyDeleteI find that the main limitation is students who are so frightened of the subject that their minds shut down.
DeleteExcellent point about fear, in general. Are we just more anxiety prone?
DeleteDo I teach topics that some students find offensive? Oooohhhh yeah. Do I drop those topics? Noooooo! I double down (or maybe lean in) and add more material about them next time around.
ReplyDeleteMy very first semester as a proffie, I taught Cultural Anthropology and Physical Anthropology (aka Human Evolution) back to back. On the very first day, a student in Cultural said he intended to argue with me all semester since he agreed with everything Rush Limbaugh said. Then someone in Physical said she was a Christian and would be arguing with me all semester about evolution. My. First. Day. Teaching.
I've since learned to come on strong the first week and issue warnings and consequences for disruptive behaviors like "monopolizing class time with arguments about course content." (from my syllabus). I tell the Little Dears up front that they won't pass unless they show they can apply the concepts and observations the way scientists* do.
I still get the occasional throwback, like the guy who always wore chain mail and a cloak and asked me one Apologetics question before every class. (Why must they always raise the boring old non-issues like thermodynamics? ) But most of the time in recent years, I repel enough of the wilfully ignorant in the first week that for most of the semester, I only have to reach the regular sort.
*I'm not going to defend Cultural Anthropology as science in general, but some of it is basic empirical observation of other cultures, and my Limbaugh fan refused to believe even that much.
Sounds like you're fighting the good fight, Proffie G. It does help to have disciplinary methodology/standards to fall back on -- in other words, to be able to insist that you are teaching a way of thinking/knowing, not a belief system (though I think we can admit there is some overlap), and that students need to gain practice with disciplinary methods, and the results they produce, whether or not they "believe" those results.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of offending(!) some of my fellow humanities proffies, I'll admit that I'm not sure my own field of literary study is as good as it needs to be at distinguishing between disciplinary methodology and values that may or may not inform and/or derive from that methodology. It can be done (theory, which is sometimes maligned as transmitting ideology, can actually help with this, because it identifies underlying assumptions/ideologies), but it isn't always. Of course, student misunderstandings also play a major role. Just because we're reading an author, that doesn't mean we expect students to agree with everything (s)he, or hir characters, say; in fact, most authors create characters whom they expect to doubt/question/disagree with, but students, and their parents, don't always realize that. Reading and discussing _Huckleberry Finn_ (unexpurgated, of course) can be a very good way to begin learning how to read with such issues in mind, and I wish more American high school students still had that experience (carefully/sensitively handled, of course, and in combination with writings by actual African-American authors of the same period, which isn't hard to do, and some of the female authors Twain lampoons in the novel as well), but I understand why many don't.
P.S. Did you really have a student who wore chain mail and a cloak to class? We have a few students who dress in what I think could be identified as "steampunk" style (when I saw the first one, I thought she -- an English major who habitually dressed like a 19th-century governess -- was impersonating Jane Eyre), but I don't think I've ever encountered armor, or even a cloak (the latter seems more surprising).
DeleteWe need a database of images (Instagram or SnapChat for College Misery) where we can post pics of our students (& colleague, let's face it), who wear weird things to class. I had a boss who wore Star Trek uniforms (always a red one).
DeleteYes, he was quite the character. But at least he used his legal name, unlike the guy who wore an insect costume (killer bee-decorated hoodie with hood up and sewn-on antennae; striped backpack; goggles) and would answer only to "Captain."
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me of the homeless guy at my Starbucks who calls himself James T. Kirk.
So far I haven't had anyone in my life with actual tinfoil under the hat, but it's only a matter of time.
I teach graduate business courses and once assigned a paper to an Intl Business class on the evolution of thought on free trade since WWI (or something like that). One student refused, explaining she didn't believe in evolution.
ReplyDelete*Snort laugh
DeleteEver since I first read the article from the link in the older post, I've been wondering about this: Edward Said is mentioned as an author whose works disturbed students enough for them to complain about their instructor. But it seems to me that the students most likely to be made uncomfortable by the works of Said would be white males – and that the people who are asking for trigger warnings on Ovid (and the like) are overwhelmingly *not* members of that demographic. I'm admittedly not in the humanities, but a priori, I would guess that complaining about Said is a different phenomenon altogether.
ReplyDeleteWhat is so threatening about the notion that we have essentialized the Orient? My students are quick to point out that "things like racism" don't really happen anymore with their generation. Yet pointing out that the ways in which we have structured our truths about others is threatening?
DeleteI was having a bit of a "one of these things is not like the others" moment with that, too. It seems to me that a student well-versed in the language/theory of triggers, microagressions, etc. would be more likely to cite Said as support for a complaint than to object to his work, but maybe I'm missing something. Maybe someone considered Said anti-Semitic? That's one of the areas where the extreme right (his usual critics) and some members of the left occasionally find themselves in odd-bedfellowship.
DeleteHmm, given that the whole "there is no racism anymore" idea is a form of Orientalism, perhaps that's what's threatening.
DeleteCan we say "Orient" again? Forgive my ignorance -- I'm happily in a field that uses many more numbers than words and can pretty much ignore how class material makes students "feel." (Although I did once have a little snowflake who came in right before the exam to announce that she just wasn't "comfortable" with the material. Holy Cow! Does algebra now demand a trigger warning?)
ReplyDeleteI'd avoid "Orient" and "Oriental" (as a way of referring to/describing a place or a person), but "Orientalism" -- a theory/word coined by Said -- is okay (because it describes, in an analytical way, a particular way of looking at, and othering/exoticizing, places/people once described with those words). How's that for complicated?
DeleteAlso, see Cynic's better definition -- "the idea that we have essentialized the Orient" -- above. I suppose, to make that definition absolutely clear, once might put "the Orient" in scare quotes.
DeleteWhat Cassandra said. The PC movement is to not call anywhere or anyone in Asia "the Orient" or "Oriental" because Asian has replaced that. We can refer to "Oriental rugs," but not "Oriental people." I was using the jargon of Edward Said, whose theories date back to pre-PC times, but also which use the term "Orientalism" to mean that we stereotype or essentialize a whole culture or nation or people based on how we define them (the Other). Said was putting it in terms of the East (hence the term "Orientalism") but the concept itself can refer to any "othering" that takes place.
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