Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I couldn't finish that thing. If her prose is this leaden, I have more sympathy for her students.

i took similar types of classes in undergrad (on various provocative ideologies) and never got confused between the text and what the professor believed. if someone thought a text we read was racist the professor might've opened it up for discussion and pushed back but never would've become so entangled in the material that it became clear that they were teaching their own beliefs. i even took a class on poverty taught by a major scholar of social work + american poverty and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way. it was obvious from reading any of his books where his political sympathies were but it didn't interfere with his ability to be a somewhat neutral proxy for understanding the material.

and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way.

But it's a two-way street. I'll bet part of the reason he was able to do that is that the conservative students were respectful and engaged with the texts, instead of skipping the reading and then getting in touch with the prof personally to tell him that his course was prejudiced against job creators.

like it seems to me that if the students were pushing back on this professor that the readings were racist, she could have interacted directly with their concerns in the classroom within the text. "show me what sentences specifically bothered you," etc. but instead she chose to shame them in a public statement which implies to me that she was trying to do what the students accused her of.

also it's super easy for me to believe that it went down that way bc a lot of this doctrinal ideological social justice material is clearly polemical + political, so it's not hard to believe that the person teaching it was polemical + political as well.

it's tricky, but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind. to create that kind of value-neutral space (which is of course constructed and itself beholden to particular politics and values) is the entire point and benefit of higher education. it's not as simple as a naive endorsement of "keeping politics out of the classroom" but i think you've got to buy into the classroom as a particular space with its own subject positions and possibilities for knowledge that also in no way proposes itself as the objective or "right" point of view.

but then i also think people's politics are not amendable to change from a frontal assault.

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

The questions -- really, belligerent interrogations -- you posed in class today seem pertinent both pedagogically and epistemologically

that's a lot of polysyllabic words in one sentence – and an opening sentence

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 17, 2016 9:41 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the professor who wrote that sounds awfully full of herself and convinced of her own righteousness. i'm sure some of her students are turds but this seems a case of it takes two to tango.

in other words,

but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind

yes.

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

epistemologically and philosophically!

Her students had belligerent interrogations in class as well as hollow stares and silent voices?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dxPVyieptwA/hqdefault.jpg

"their inability to put wonder bread on the table" reads to me as a classist jeer at ppl who are presumably too poor and ignorant to shop at whole foods or whatever

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, March 17, 2016 11:03 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, otm, obviously she's right on the merits of her course content, but there's a difference between having that knowledge and having the skills to get people to think about challenging ideas in real ways.

eephus! also otm upthread that students at the university level need to meet profs halfway by doing the readings and not dismissing ideas out-of-hand, something anyone teaching on race, gender, or sexuality has to deal with all day every day

ime students doing the readings was a problem for every humanities class no matter what the major or ideological perspective

hasn't changed!

yeah. i had some blank stares this morning and the assigned reading was just a philip k dick novel, so i empathize with anyone teaching the kind of stuff that the course in question was about. (on the other hand, maybe it gets them riled up in a way an old novel simply cannot match...)

yeah, good point xp @alfred

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

this is otm btw and i tried to do this when i teach and continue to try to do this whenever i read.

i once complained to a mentor professor that my latin american politics prof was too conservative, and was basically told that I had been totally duped.

cuz Latin American politics profs are famously accused of conservatism

lol the one conservative in the field :p but i can imagine if you're a student you might not know

haha yeah, i was a callow 19-year-old, thought i knew better and was further left than most everyone else. I was also happy to judge others quickly, and likely to take the aforementioned "Weberian 'value neutrality'" as right-wing.

cuz Latin American politics profs are famously accused of conservatism

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 17, 2016 10:21 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i took a bunch of latin american literature courses that were all related to some political event/movement, so we always ended up talking politics. the profs seemed pretty left-leaning. what do you mean by conservatism? is defending indigenous rights and talking about how the us treats latin america as their backyard conservative? i got the sense that if you weren't on the indigenous peoples' side you were heavily questioned

this was in canada, by the way

he was being sarcastic

I was being sarcastic.

oh ya i tried reading upthread to get some context, sounded strange!

are you being sarcastic.

i just unkilled half of the users in this thread

makes sense

now.

https://camo.derpicdn.net/e55aab1348897449395cdbeb1aaa6dc2c4f252ab?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdata.whicdn.com%2Fimages%2F60407330%2Foriginal.png

yeah, if you guys know a trick to getting students to do the readings consistently, whatever the content, let me know

the "trick" is to teach texts assuming the students haven't read them. when teaching a text I enact it, read passages as needed, my hope is to spur a few students to read it later. ime in USA it's better at better unis ; when I worked in brownbackistan it was way worse.

yes—that and constant tiny quizzes on basic content to incentivize them

The shift in ed-tech seems to be interactive text with micro-assessments built in that teachers can monitor but i imagine that would get pretty tiresome for the kind of students who just want to get on with the reading.

I don't bother with constant quizzes because I'm lazy & hate grading. & (as a rationalization?) think that you can't teach good work habits in college, like if a kid doesn't care by then, then it's not my problem, I'm there to teach to the kids who care. the value of a usa college degree isn't much anymore, and whoever looks at grades (anyone?) knows that a B may as well be an F, so I don't sweat it: whittling down the As "matters", so I make it hard to get an A, and don't care beyond that. this is all in the usa, it's way different in france, guess I'd say better but I'm still too new to say for sure.

happy to see this thread morph toward "how u teaching?"

i learned good work habits mostly after college

it disturbs me to think that whether a student will get an A, B, or C is pretty much fated on the first day of the semester so i try to make the work i give them capable in principle of helping them level themselves up at least one letter if they try.

that sounds right to me, though everything rides on "if they try"

i had a teacher once who imagined a course with an opt-in grading scheme, where you could do enough to get a C without having to do the work that would qualify you for a B, A, etc., and so on, with no higher grade guaranteed by doing the optional work. he guessed that would result in better work submitted, but a lot less work, since a lot of people would just take what they were comfortable with getting if it meant no extra work. that would be a nice way of figuring out whether your students actually are trying, save you the trouble of having to insinuate that they might not be trying, etc.

it disturbs me to think that whether a student will get an A, B, or C is pretty much fated on the first day of the semester so i try to make the work i give them capable in principle of helping them level themselves up at least one letter if they try.

― j., Friday, March 18, 2016 10:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think this is true! i've been surprised by students many times.

mods, plz change thread to Free Speech and Creepy Pedagogy, thx

well, maybe they are "fated," but it often isn't evident what sort of student they are until well into the semester. and needless to say (?), some students are good at some things but not at others. perhaps a student will not make useful contributions to class discussion, but then does a great job on their first essay. in such cases it's a pleasant surprise.

xpost

ha!

my pedagogy is only occasionally creepy.

as long as it's cool that we're having this convo in this thread...

it's been interesting to see how many students in our major at my university don't turn in any work for whole courses: like, more than 50%? quite a bit more? 70%+? college is free so I guess most? students are just like fuck it, this is hard, don't want to try, who cares. I don't really get it. also it's illegal to have admissions standards being requiring that one pass the big high school exam (which does include philo tbf). however it's pretty easy to get kicked out of university if you screw up & all of these students who don't turn in work are kicked out. just weird but you do see pretty easily who is trying.

admissions standards "beyond" passing the big high school exam, the "bac"

Having just filed some grades and noted the number of zeros (i.e. outstanding ones), I usually wait until late April for the "My mom got bit by a gecko, can I still turn in my paper?" lines.

i do get surprised sometimes, but if i grade honestly then most students just start out not writing/thinking at a level i consider appropriate for 'A' papers, and it takes the kind of skill that can't be acquired during a single semester.

i'm seeing more not-turning-in-work-at-all when teaching online courses. but in person, last semester i had a student, at a very pricey private school, who had more or less been showing up all semester and even took the final, but then just didn't even turn in a term paper until i'd hounded and wheedled it out of them a few weeks after the deadline so they wouldn't fail.

why bother hounding them? if they want to fail, let them fail.