The following is a column for blogs that reflect on the process of teaching. I expect the column will grow as time passes.

Stanley Fish on Convictions

June 13, 2007

In one of his weekly posts for the New York Times, the literary critic Stanley Fish briefly analyzes whether it is possible for the mind to analyze an issue in what we might call an objective fashion:

But why not come to a situation with no beliefs, or with the beliefs you have held in abeyance or bracketed, and take a good, hard look at the facts? Aside from the point I have already made (that any facts we look at will be available and perspicuous only from the perspective of some belief or other), what is it exactly that we would be looking with? Unless there is a corner of the mind that observes purely – and if there were all disputes could be settled by just going to it – we can only look with or within the convictions that anchor our minds and provide the possibility of judgment. It is within a conviction or belief that some assertion or description will seem to us to be right or wrong, adequate or inadequate. Absent a belief that grounds it and gives it a direction, the mind would be rudderless and incapable of going anywhere.

I agree that human beings are limited in their ability to step outside their own convictions. Every active perceiver of this world is fundamentally a biased perceiver. We take in ideas and facts only through a heavy screen of our own convictions. But.. and this is a big BUT.. the human mind is certainly able to bracket its own beliefs and ideas about the world. Not perfectly, but to a limited extent.

Fish pokes fun at this notion when he writes: "Unless there is a corner of the mind that observes purely..." Well, that makes it sound ridiculous, but I would propose that the imagination plays a role similar to this. The ability of my mind to reason: "If I valued this and believed that.. then maybe I would reason or act thus." That is a fundamental part of our cognitive ability.. and it is essential for either the writing of fiction or the reconstruction of the past. Linguistically this ability manifests itself through the easy use of counter-factuals.

I worry that Fish's denial of pure perception devolves all too easily into a denial of the worth of striving to imagine other people and their convictions. Fish himself is a master at this effort, and I have heard him in a lecture walk easily through the religious convictions of John Milton. That imaginative reconstruction of the convictions of another person (often distant in time) is at the heart of what I consider liberal education. Getting students to think imaginatively and counter-factually about historical figures is difficult. I have found that it means asking them to bracket their own values and convictions and try to imagine the world as it was perceived by someone else. To do this purely might be impossible.. but to do it a little is everything.

Fear of a Wired Planet:
Technology in the University

March 24, 2007

The Washington Post carried an interesting editorial on the use of the internet in schools by Jacqueline Hicks Grazette ("Wikiality in My Classroom"). The first half of the editorial was ho-hum.. a student turns in an exam that cites Wikipedia but provides no clue as to how the article was used. That is a problem for any citation, not just one that comes from an internet source. This stuff was a little too ethic-y for me.

The article moves on to more interesting ground at the end as it comes round to provide a couple of examples of the positive use of the internet. A history teacher gets students to create a wiki-page on a topic that they have researched. Grazette herself has students listen on the Internet to oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court. She then winds up by commenting:

Making use of kids' natural comfort with online learning may require a different skill set for teachers. Most schools do not evaluate teachers on the innovative use of online technology... Changes will be needed in how teachers are trained and rewarded to fulfill the Internet's educational potential.

Now there I fully agree.

I have spent the last few days thinking about the syllabi for two courses I will teach in the spring term. In both I am trying to imagine the best ways to get students to use the resources provided by the internet.. and prodding them to be creative. I have a few principles swirling in my mind:

1) Students need a better philosophy of the internet. College is a time to transition from being a consumer of web information to being a creator. This re-frames the issue from what can I or can't I get from the internet, to what can I add to the internet? Assignments can push students to contribute new information, and by that very goal they will be driven to non-web sources. For example, why not ask students to write a Wikipedia entry on a topic/person that is not well covered? In such a case students can hardly crib from Wikipedia.

2) Traditional student papers go from the student to the teacher.. get a grade and then fall into a black hole. Why not allow student work to gain a wider audience? Last fall I had individuals work on a final project in which they marked on Google Earth important historical sites in Middle Eastern cities. At the end of the term I gathered their work and posted it as a single .kmz file (posted here). I have watched proudly as that .kmz file gains exposure and attracts hits from Google Searches.

3) The so-called Web 2.0 philosophy that encourages sharing and collaboration can apply well to the classroom. Wikipedia has the following to say about it:

A social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"

That sounds like a classroom ideal to me. This would mean finding ways to let classes pass on their knowledge to the next class. I have been toying with the idea of assigning the work of a past class to an incoming class.. and then finding ways for the new class to add something that could be passed on to the next class. This may not result in a project that experts in a given field will find interesting, but it does allow for a learning experience in which sharing and collaboration is built in.

4) A concern of mine is that students do not generally become well-rounded in their writing ability. They are pushed to write academic papers but do not learn to switch modes.. perhaps write an opinion column for a local paper or longer article for a magazine. Obviously the writing of an academic paper is important.. especially since many students go on to graduate school. But if we think in terms of a life skill, then writing could be seen as a mode of self-expression.. a habitual part of a thoughtful life. If this is a goal, then blogging has a lot to offer. It is a format that allows for direct engagement with ideas.. and a working of those ideas out in words. The web allows us to present writing as a part of daily life. Imagine if all incoming freshmen were told that they would be required to blog regularly for four years! What could be better for intellectual development?

Man or Butterfly?

March 11, 2007

I find that one of the hardest things to communicate in the classroom is the idea that a text is doing something. Students are generally comfortable with the idea that a text is saying something that can be discussed. They are also generally comfortable with the notion that a text might be pleasing aesthetically. But that a text is working to make them think in a certain way or pushing them to action is a much harder sell.

In wrapping up Freshman Studies we looked at a work I had not read: Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Burton Watson translation). A well known passage from this work is the one about the butterfly:

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. [45]

There is a level of teaching in that passage, no doubt. The change of states is something to be accepted and definitional clarity is to be avoided. Also there is a level of humor in the passage that is hard to miss. But the passage flits away from either an expository or aesthetic interpretation.

I would argue that the butterfly analogy is also meant to suggest a way of thinking about mental states. It is not the case that anyone will ever really be confused about whether he is Chuang Chou or a butterfly.. but it is the case that one should live as if this confusion were possible. By thinking a lot about this passage.. repeating it in your mind perhaps.. you can start to see the world in a better way. With this, though, we have arrived at an altogether different way of analyzing a text.

The parables of Jesus came up as we talked about Chuang Tzu. The term "parable" seems somewhat limiting, and it would be hard to classify a passage like the one above as a parable. But the mention of the parables was helpful since they are embedded in a narrative and therefore obviously doing something in a context. You can read the parables and think about reasons why the Jesus of the Gospels is telling such mysterious stories. They are stories with a purpose. Harder to get across is the idea that the Gospels themselves are motivated texts.. just like the parables but without the narrative frame to explain that.

You could imagine the passages from Chuang Tzu within a narrative framework. We would find ourselves in a setting and a learner would come to Chuang Tzu to ask a question.. to which Chuang Tzu would perhaps tell a story or cite some authority from the past. Then we would see how the learner responded and whether he was praised or not. Within that framework it would be easier to understand the way passages are meant to affect change and not to be subject for debate. But since the passages come bundled together with no framework, the reader must learn to mentally build in that framework.. by pondering: if I were the historic learner, how would this passage be aimed to make me act in the world? That question will get us closest to the intent of the passage.

Teaching Close Reading

January 25, 2007

Every class I teach could be subtitled: "how to read". The fun of teaching ancient literature is exactly the challenge that its cognitive assumptions and material references pose to the modern reader. Read a modern novel and one is immersed in a world that is largely understood.. and shared.. but step back a few centuries and the opacity of the world rises steeply. The interesting points in such old works arise only as they are read closely..

I had a friend back at Emory who was interested in getting students to read closely.. and his idea was to work through painfully brief sections of text.. in detail. The work he chose for this exercise was the Prelude of William Wordsworth. He made his way through specific passages over multiple class periods, asking the students to re-read the text and to consider aspects of it at length. I always wondered if that was really the best way to get students to read closely?

I should say that one of my tactics is to make sure that every reading assignment is doable. I know from my own experience as a student that the quickest way to invite skimming is to demand too many pages. Whatever time is allotted to reading I want to be spent really reading.. not powering through an absurd number of pages. At the same time reading closely is not a skill one gains by doing it once successfully. It is rather the kind of skill you acquire as your reading experience becomes more diverse and broad. And if this is true, then to spend four weeks of class time on a few pages in Wordsworth is a bad idea..

I connect the skill of reading well to that of writing well. Sure, certain aspects of writing can be taught.. but the most important aspects of writing take something else: practice writing. Perhaps heretically, I doubt the possibility of rapid improvement in a skill like writing. It is a skill too connected to the ways we mentally process the world.. and too dependent on the world of language that exists already in our heads. So how do you learn to write well? Read a lot and write a lot.. and think a lot too. That is the bottom line.

So how does one prod students toward the art of reading closely? Get them to read diverse material. Then model close reading by asking the types of questions that a close reader asks. Why does the author express things in this way? Isn't that quite different than what we would expect? What values are being assumed here? One of the greatest gifts I have acquired from teachers is a cast of mind.. a way of approaching texts.. and this came through listening to their questions.

I don't think writing should be taught by atomizing a single written essay.. by examining all the details and helping students to turn it into a perfect essay. Change those passives into actives! That time is better spent writing something new. In the same way reading should not be a matter of atomizing a paragraph or chapter and pouring over it ceaselessly.. in the way that my friend had his class read and re-read portions of Wordsworth's Prelude. Better to let it go and read something different.. with fresh challenges.

Authority in the Classroom:
Reading Stanley Milgram

January 4, 2007

This term, which has begun in a whirl of activity, I teach Freshman Studies. The class starts off with a book that has really grown on me: Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram. This is the book on the topic of that experiment in which individuals are asked to administer an educational exam and each time the "learner" gets a question wrong he received a shock. The shocks increase in intensity until the "learner" begins to holler that he wants to stop the experiment.. and it is evident that he is in extreme pain. The surprise of the experiment is the high percentage of people (over 60%) who were willing to proceed to the maximum voltage.

It is a good book to reflect on as a teacher.. On the first day of class I generally walk into a class and write my name on the board: Professor Smith. And that is only the least subtle of the actions that are geared to let students know who is in charge. That sense of "being in charge" in turn engenders obedience on the part of the students. As Milgram points out this state of being under someone's authority is a position that human beings are habituated to from the earliest moments of their lives. Who is out to tear down family and education?

At the same time this structure of authority is what legitimizes terrible action. Commentary from Milgram and others often focuses on large scale atrocities like genocide, but I think his insights are perfectly applicable to smaller scale situations. A while back when we read the biography of Woody Guthrie, I was interested in the description of banks foreclosing small farmers during the dustbowl years.. and thinking about the bankers who had to carry out those official "policies". That is a parallel case of people doing terrible harm but not allowing themselves to question their actions.. as long as it is a "policy" it must be OK.

Obedience to Authority opens up the possibility of a critique of systems and institutions. People are largely drones, programmed to follow orders and carry out commands. The crux of moral action is not in the heart of the individual, but in the gears of the system. That runs strikingly counter to most religious and popular views of good and evil.. and it is interesting on the internet to find uses of Milgram as an exposer of human individual "depravity".. such language only betrays an insufficient grasp of Milgram's work.

But back to the implications for my teaching. I am teaching within an institution. My words and actions are setting up a system of authority. In some ways I find that disheartening. I think to myself: let's just forget this Dr. and Prof. stuff.. and then let's just exchange ideas equally.. but so long as I am handing out grades and evaluating, there is not much I can really do to lessen my authority.. I am limited to cosmetic changes.. if I go further, what I am doing ceases to be higher education.

It is easier to think in terms of education as a tool for prodding students to be more willing to challenge authority. But if that is to happen it will not be from the content of my talks.. but from my responses to students. I have had plenty of experiences in grad school where I have witnessed authoritarian professors teach anti-authoritarian ideas.. and of course never see the conflict between their actions and words. Milgram leaves me with a desire to redouble my efforts to present myself in the setting of the classroom in ways that encourage students to strip off more of our common dronehood..

A Motto for Teaching

March 10, 2006

Today I discovered a teaching motto in the Library of Congress. I remember noticing it often last summer, since it is well situated for me to glance at as I ascend the final round of stairs on my way to the Middle East and Africa Reading Room.. but I never thought of it in terms of teaching.

I think I will tuck that picture into my future syllabi.. and mention it on the first day of class.

Writing does make an “exact” person.. learning to take ideas and set them down in ordered form builds a habit of reasoned thinking. Numerous times I have started out with what I could have sworn was a great idea, but then as I started trying to write, it all seemed suddenly hazy and vague. Writing is a form of self criticism..

Reading makes a person “full.” That is a literal word for the feeling that one has after reading. I remember my year in Cairo, Egypt.. when I was just studying with no opportunity to teach.. and how unnatural it felt to be taking in so much without any place to go with it. Knowledge makes a person full in the sense that one is ready to overflow—i.e. share with others.. whether in the classroom, with family, or even with others in a community.

The most difficult of these three precepts to grasp was “conference makes a man ready.” Today came my breakthrough when I realized that “conference” was another way of saying social interaction. But then how does that make one “ready”? I take that to mean a person is able to think on his or her feet.. that person is ready to answer directly. That starts to explain why student participation is important.. something I have trouble explaining at times.. Sure students acquire knowledge, and sure they learn to write a good paper, but they also should be ready to state a point of view in a social situation.

I was thinking about another quotation today (these are just two out of many up there on the second floor of the library). This one asserts that “The true university of these days is a collection of books.” That would be the autodidact's motto, and it seems to come from a time when books were suddenly available to everyone.. in a lending library or for purchase. That must have been an exhilarating time, and there must have been something of the feeling that is now connected to the World Wide Web, which also inspires its share of exaggerated praise. And today while I did some work at the Library of Congress, I thought about how a library is a lot like the World Wide Web.. suddenly an immense amount of knowledge is open to someone like me.. But while I like the exhilaration that comes with all that open knowledge, I think a university is more than shelves and shelves of books.. or DSL service on a computer. A university adds a human dimension to all that knowledge, and nurtures a sense of wisdom from the use of that knowledge. That at least is how I imagine a university..