03 November 2008
burn goody infinite!
So of all the complaints I was ever likely to receive, perhaps I should have been expecting this one...and yet...
So we have this student feedback thing today - they hate the rooms, they hate the timetabling - but so do we all, it's awful, how can we teach seminars to 12 people at ungodly hours in fixed-seat auditoriums that are supposed to seat 200, with no whiteboards, with no possibility of going anywhere else, forcing them to give presentations as if they were speaking to a giant auditorium filled with caustic monkeys. Of course it's crap, of course we would do better with more staff, and more cash, and better rooms. We agree to agree. Us against the bureaucrats. Go us! It's not like they'd shut us down or anything!
Regardless, they like the courses, they like us, they like the discussions, they like the student society, etc. But one first year rep, who declares herself a Christian, is a bit pissed off: 'you said this thing that made me feel bad!' Me: 'Oh no! What!' Her: 'You said that religion was confusing'. Me: 'But we were studying the Euthyphro Dilemma! Obviously it's about the basic conflict between Theology and Philosophy! How is religion not confusing in that it posits a basic commitment to moral certainty which may or may not lie beyond the bounds of its conceptual authority/dependence on a transcendent entity of one kind or another?!'
'I'm a Christian' she said, as if I were supposed to be impressed/chastened. 'Well I'm sorry if you felt sidelined', I said, 'obviously the more discussion the better' (and frankly, it's not as if my many, many evangelical students don't speak up all the frigging time). 'It's so obvious you hold a position on this,' she said. 'Do I?' I said, 'sometimes I play Devil's advocate [perhaps using the worst of all analogies], but you shouldn't be put off, that's what seminars and questions are for,' I say, trying to be open in the spirit of democracticityniceity, which would probably be the best approach to the fee-paying student in the age of teleo-utilitarian-investmentism (I should really stop reading Private Eye's pisstake of Brown-speak).
One of my other students interrupts: 'But that's what's good about it! She has this position on stuff! We have to treat our lecturers like human beings'.
Groan, I think. Oh no, I've become a human being. Crap. They think I have a position on things. And it upsets some of them. Oh no! This is awful! I want to tell them that I couldn't care less whether they believe in the God of Chips, or Buddhism or killing ducklings, or whatever. Christ, how wrong it is that I am on the other side of pedagogy, and how I should just quit and stroke leaves for a living or something, not that that would pay any money at all because that's not actually a job, but something like that, maybe. Growl, and I think that what we think is teaching is not teaching at all but an intricate form of pointless crowd-control for crowds who don't even need controlling, and that the resentment that students have is the general kind of resentment you get when you think that someone should know better than you but it turns out that they don't and that they're just as crap as you are, if not more crap, which is probably likely in the case of philosophy lecturers especially. And I feel bad, and I wish I were a hardcore Christian so that I would at least make some of my students a bit happy, if not the rest who would probably be unhappy anyway.
So we have this student feedback thing today - they hate the rooms, they hate the timetabling - but so do we all, it's awful, how can we teach seminars to 12 people at ungodly hours in fixed-seat auditoriums that are supposed to seat 200, with no whiteboards, with no possibility of going anywhere else, forcing them to give presentations as if they were speaking to a giant auditorium filled with caustic monkeys. Of course it's crap, of course we would do better with more staff, and more cash, and better rooms. We agree to agree. Us against the bureaucrats. Go us! It's not like they'd shut us down or anything!
Regardless, they like the courses, they like us, they like the discussions, they like the student society, etc. But one first year rep, who declares herself a Christian, is a bit pissed off: 'you said this thing that made me feel bad!' Me: 'Oh no! What!' Her: 'You said that religion was confusing'. Me: 'But we were studying the Euthyphro Dilemma! Obviously it's about the basic conflict between Theology and Philosophy! How is religion not confusing in that it posits a basic commitment to moral certainty which may or may not lie beyond the bounds of its conceptual authority/dependence on a transcendent entity of one kind or another?!'
'I'm a Christian' she said, as if I were supposed to be impressed/chastened. 'Well I'm sorry if you felt sidelined', I said, 'obviously the more discussion the better' (and frankly, it's not as if my many, many evangelical students don't speak up all the frigging time). 'It's so obvious you hold a position on this,' she said. 'Do I?' I said, 'sometimes I play Devil's advocate [perhaps using the worst of all analogies], but you shouldn't be put off, that's what seminars and questions are for,' I say, trying to be open in the spirit of democracticityniceity, which would probably be the best approach to the fee-paying student in the age of teleo-utilitarian-investmentism (I should really stop reading Private Eye's pisstake of Brown-speak).
One of my other students interrupts: 'But that's what's good about it! She has this position on stuff! We have to treat our lecturers like human beings'.
Groan, I think. Oh no, I've become a human being. Crap. They think I have a position on things. And it upsets some of them. Oh no! This is awful! I want to tell them that I couldn't care less whether they believe in the God of Chips, or Buddhism or killing ducklings, or whatever. Christ, how wrong it is that I am on the other side of pedagogy, and how I should just quit and stroke leaves for a living or something, not that that would pay any money at all because that's not actually a job, but something like that, maybe. Growl, and I think that what we think is teaching is not teaching at all but an intricate form of pointless crowd-control for crowds who don't even need controlling, and that the resentment that students have is the general kind of resentment you get when you think that someone should know better than you but it turns out that they don't and that they're just as crap as you are, if not more crap, which is probably likely in the case of philosophy lecturers especially. And I feel bad, and I wish I were a hardcore Christian so that I would at least make some of my students a bit happy, if not the rest who would probably be unhappy anyway.
