Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

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.

and less grading for you!

inextirpable concern for student well being

is that some cross being inexplicable and inextricable?

?

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/198606/the-daoud-affair

A group of 19 professors in France drew up a statement accusing Daoud of a series of ideological crimes, consisting of “orientialist cliches,” “essentialism,” “psychologization,” “colonialist paternalism,” an “anti-humanist” viewpoint, and other such errors, amounting to racism and Islamophobia. Le Monde published their accusations. A second denunciation came his way, this time in private. It was a letter from the author of the New York Times Magazine profile, the American literary journalist Adam Shatz. In his letter Shatz professed affection for Daoud. He claimed not to be making any accusations at all. He wrote, “I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose, or even that you’re playing the game of the ‘imperialists.’ I’m not accusing you of anything. Except perhaps of not thinking, and of falling into strange and potentially dangerous traps”—which amounted to saying what the 19 professors had said, with the additional accusation of stupidity.

Daoud published the American journalist’s letter in Le Monde, just to make clear what he was up against—though he did it with an elegant show of friendliness. He explained that he, and not his detractors, lives in Algeria and understands its reality. He noted the Stalinist tone of the attacks on him. He insisted on the validity of his own emotions. He refused to accept the political logic that would require him to lapse into silence about what he believes. And then, in what appeared to be a plain and spiteful fury at his detractors, he declared that he is anyway going to do what the detractors have, in effect, demanded. He is going to silence his journalism: a gesture whose emotional punch comes from The Meursault Investigation, with its theme of silence. Or, at minimum, Daoud threatened to be silent—though naturally the calls for him to continue speaking up have already begun, and doubtless he will have to respond.

He insisted on the validity of his own emotions.

something like this should be written on the tombstone of the human race.

I'm not sure why Le Monde published it, those aren't "professors in France". For instance, the only philosopher on the list is a South African who works at UC Irvine (noted for being Derrida's USA hideout). He does "critical race theory" which is one of those american areas of philosophy that draws upon French philosophy but is ignored by the French. at least one of the sociologists works at the lol new school, enough said. others are americans. others are post docs or grad students. I don't see a single French professor on the list.

I know I'm cap'n save a french academia but if there's a beef, it's between americans and Daoud, americans who couldn't interest an american newspaper enough to print it because Daoud writes in French.

interesting! thank you for the correction/clarification.

and i don't mind cap'n save a french academia. i'm perfectly happy to believe that the american academy is uniquely ignorant + polemical and that europe universities have their shit more together.

hah well that's not the case but when it comes to this issue at least French academia hasn't lost its shit. we have other shit going on, like biweekly strikes against the new labor law for example.

That quote from Shatz is not exactly what I'd call a "denunciation" though of course I haven't read Shatz's whole letter

well he accuses him of not thinking so, like the article says, it's basically a soft denunciation

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. If I wrote that to a friend I'd be saying "you're acting in a way that helps out people who are motivated to say bad things about you that aren't true," and that would not be at all the same as saying "all those bad things about you are true plus you're stupid."

shatz in LRB:

The exaggerations in Daoud’s New York Times piece about behaviour in the Arab world were too sweeping, the leaps of judgment too swift. He seemed to be breaking taboos about Muslim ‘sexual misery’ for their own sake, without realising that some of these taboos are clichés in the West, in racist circles where he would not be welcome except as an ‘Arabe de service’. Daoud has always refused to be muzzled by fears of the ways others might use his writings; if racists choose to exploit his criticisms of Islam, he can hardly be blamed for it. It is an admirable stance. But to write in blithe disregard of nuance and complexity – and of the battles waged by the Arab women in whose name he spoke – struck me as irresponsible, and unworthy of him. I wrote to him in the hope that he would climb down from this mountain of hyperbole, and instead explore the ambiguities of sex and power in his fiction. He replied that my letter had confirmed his decision to ‘return to literature’ and ‘leave journalism’.

Yeah, I would definitely not call that a "denunciation." It's what I'd write about somebody whose work I respected and thought was worthwhile.

i understand there's a difference between saying "your work is useful for racists" and "you are a racist" but ultimately both are censorious moves i thnk

But who knows, maybe I'm going around denouncing people without knowing it!

i understand there's a difference between saying "your work is useful for racists" and "you are a racist" but ultimately both are censorious moves i thnk

I just think that difference is vitally important to keep in the forefront of our mind -- e.g. because I think there are people in BDS to whom both you and I would like to say the former and not the latter (setting aside for a moment the people to whom we would like to say the latter)

and it is super annoying when the response to saying the former thing is "OH STOP LEVELING THAT TIRED ACCUSATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM AT ME," which response elides exactly that difference.