One professor’s confession:
… I wonder if I’m … subtly trying to get my students to like what I
like, and hate what I hate, by drawing all of my cultural references
from out-of-town newspapers, contemporary literary fiction, and
art-house cinema. I know that I can become visibly exasperated when it
becomes clear that my students don’t read The New Yorker, listen to NPR, or head straight to the documentary section when they go to the video store.
And a realization:
Despite our temptation (it’s our job, after all) to interpret texts,
art objects, and past events for our students, to tell them how things
stand in the world of ideas so that they can thereby adopt the right ideas and tastes, there is a point in every course where it has to be
up to the students to interpret those things. In those moments, we
teach best by letting go.
Well, that’s one.
(Hat tip: The Corner)
