In today's New York Times (Yes, Rebel Girl gets the paper delivered to her canyon doorstep. She's old school, very old school.), Michael Roth (president of Wesleyan University) reviews the new book by Mark Edmundson, professor of English at the University of Virginia—highlighted earlier this week by the editor of this distinguished blog.She recommends the review and the collection of essays with the title "Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education" as a good way into the academic year.
What is it now, Day Three of an unprecedented 18 week semester?
Sometimes in her feverish early semester dreamings, Rebel Girl imagines a book club for the college where faculty and staff and administrators read texts like this throughout the year and get together to discuss them monthly in gatherings where tea and wine flows and the food and talk sustain all in ways that truly help what we do here at the little college in the orange groves. Could we get some FLEX credit for that?
excerpt:
...Much of “Why Teach?” concerns the impediments to this search. Under the guise of practicality, universities and their “customers” now stress that education should provide a return on investment. They speak of excellence and innovation, and what they really mean is money and notoriety. They talk of a well-rounded learning experience, and what they really mean is checking off boxes denoting that you’ve taken required courses that weren’t too challenging. Mr. Edmundson contends that the “corporate university” has abdicated its mission to confront our prejudices and conventions while inspiring our passions and talents.
He fervently advocates for the transformative power of a true education because he experienced it firsthand. In high school, he cared about football and rock ’n’ roll more than about literature until he was stirred by great teaching and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” “I think that the highest objective for someone trying to provide a literary education to students is to make such moments of transformation possible,” he writes.
This “highest objective” is also extraordinarily fulfilling. “Teachers who have been moved by great works have been moved to pass the gift on,” he says, with a nod to Wordsworth and Coleridge — and to all professors who introduce students to books that have changed their own lives. Art inspires us; teaching changes us.
Mr. Edmundson worries that too many professors have lost the courage of their own passions, depriving their students of the fire of inspiration. Why teach? Because great professors can “crack the shell of convention,” shining a light on a life’s different prospects. They never aim at conversion, only at what Emerson called “aversion” — bucking conformity so as to discover possibility.
To read the rest, click here.
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6 comments:
I like this quote: "He knows the studies showing that students spend less time than ever on their classwork, and he writes of an implicit pact between undergraduates and professors in which teachers give high grades and thin assignments, and students reward them with positive evaluations."
So much of our recent FLEX week was not spent in addressing how to be more successful teachers in the classroom or how to meet the real needs of our students but rather, sadly, how to be managers, how to be workers, how to move them in and out as quickly as possible.
Dream on, rebel girl. Book club? Ha.
At the college where I teach, the college president picks one book for the Annual All-College Read (faculty and staff). We read one of Edmundsen's a few years back "Teacher: The One Who Made a Difference." I expect we'll read this one next year. it's a nice project, not too formal. But it inspires a lot of conversation among people throughout the year. I believe the project has noticeably increased respect and empathy for faculty among administrators. I recommend it.
Wonderful idea to have an all-college book club, and it should be open to all faculty, staff, and students.
By the way, it's Wesleyan (not Weslayan) :-)
What a wonderful piece. (I am deeply addicted to the NYT Book Review, for it seems always to be full of such fine essays.) I love Emerson's "aversion"--to conformity or convention. Great notion of the (or "a") central purpose of teaching.
MAH
People like you, 10:48, make me despair for the human race.
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