So begins my mighty return to sharing my opinions, views, et cetera via my much neglected blog.
Today's subject: Education.
Today's topic: Today's Students: Why aren't they participating?
Anyone who has ever taught anything to anyone aged past Tweendom will recognize that blank, non-participatory stare. That stare that makes you question whether the words you spoke and the questions you asked are in the right language, or if you said or asked anything at all:
Did those words make it through the "go-ahead-and-say-this", the "decency", and "teacher-appropriate" filters to the mouth? Is what I said phrased in such a way that it makes sense? Did I just refer to an R.Kelly lyric? (Hey, it happens from time to time in any decent English class). You quickly go through these and other self-conscious questions and then move on in hopes that something permeates that dull brick apathy and eye-mucus mortared stare before the youngins completely tune-out.
I currently teach a 100 level writing course. Every undergraduate at the institution, or any institution of higher learning has to take something like it or test out of it to earn their "unrelated" degree; it is not the toughest of classes, and I as a non-faculty, non-adjunct graduate student have no intention of making a required introductory level course holy Hell on earth for first year students. I try to steer away from the didactic grammarian stereotype that has become associated with us literary types, the looming ruler-across-the-chalkboard image that has kept people from learning to love writing for generations.
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| I will admit to being a bit of a Grammar Nazi though. Image via Imgur |
I want to get people to like writing, or at least understand its multiple uses and potential throughout all of society. I even advocate Twitter, given its enforced concision of 118-140 characters as a valid and superb writing tool. (It's also a great forum in which to practice your rhetoric, but I digress).
I enter the classroom every other weekday carrying a guide for that day's lesson in one hand and the text to be discussed in the other. Both passengers are littered with notes, interesting and/or relevant asides, and most importantly questions. Questions for the students. Questions for me. Questions that have answers. Questions that have no answers. Potential answers to questions that students may have. Questions to instigate questions. And yet, when both organic and carefully choreographed pauses in the lesson arrive for non-scripted dialogue, save for the token overly participatory student, there is nigh ever a word, just the question, the question to support the question, the rephrasing of the question, and finally the dreaded calling upon a random student who in turn responds with a coherent and thoughtful comment. It is at this moment I wonder,
why was that so hard?
Some may say that it's not fair to expect students to automatically have something to contribute to a discussion. To that I say, firstly, that life's not fair so get over it; and secondly, to contribute is *exactly* what students are to do within the Humanities. Also, it's not like the students are assigned a reading without an accompanying assignment; that's a big no-no (or a
hell no in some circles).
I always give students the chance to say what ever they want about a reading via a mandatory reading response. If they hated the text, that's cool with me. If they loved the text, that's cool, too. If they have no clue why they have to read this highfalutin nonsense (I've yet to come across a student who has actually used that term, but it's not hard to see it between the lines). They can say whatever they want about the text; they just have to do it in MLA format. I always collect,
read, and comment on these. Students almost always have some intriguing comment about the text that they for whatever reason have chosen not to share during class. And it is oh-so-irritating, even more so when I assist in other classes.
As part of my requirements as a graduate assistant I must observe others' teaching methods and assist students, primarily those of my teaching adviser. After a particularly infuriatingly unsuccessful discussion day within my own class (only four students had the text and I had to cut class short), I went to the class in which I aide. As I was taking notes, I paused to glance across the room as the professor worked to get her lesson across in the allotted fifty minutes. To my dismay, I saw that boredom encrusted look. And it occurred to me: students today have no clue how well they have it.
I'm not beating that dying socioeconomic horse here; students in today's classrooms are allowed to speak and to question texts and ideas. Today's educators are far from that aforementioned ruler-bearer at the lectern. Students have no fear of being humiliated by cracks of the rule upon their hands or ideas. They have the privilege of being able to say anything that they find pertinent. Anything. But so often they offer instead that silent, blank response.
Why do students with brilliant ideas and questions hold back their curiosity within a forum that fully supports it? Maybe it's because it's a private school, not unlike the ones that many of them attended K-12. Maybe it's because it's an institution founded by a sect of Catholicism that doesn't appreciate argument. Maybe it's because of fear, the fear of saying and doing something that goes against the "rules" enforced by Western cultural hegemony.
Whatever it is, educators need to help students get over it by encouraging discussion within all disciplines. With all the time and resources invested in that decade-plus of primary and secondary education at supposedly superior private schools prior to college, why are these students keeping that money in their mouth? Teachers of all levels and disciplines already know that learning and discovery are part of a never-ending dialogue between texts, scholars, and ideas, but most students are not comfortable in discussion until their third year of undergrad. That is
three years into a typically four-year long attendance within an institution. And I, the lowly graduate student responsible for teaching students how write, read, and discuss texts critically at the beginning of that residency am tired of silence; the education system needs to be restructured as to remove the enforcement of complacency and the intimidation of thought in young learners. Encourage kids to say something, damn it.
