More on Teaching Philosophy

Quite some time ago, I mentioned that I was engaged in revising my statement of teaching philosophy.  I have had occasion to work on it and review it a bit recently, for reasons that will remain private for now, and I am reminded, as the Fall 2012 term is about to begin at the school where I teach, that it is frequently helpful for me to discuss my own thoughts and understandings as I try to get students to develop their own.*

I remain convinced that if there is no challenge, there is no reason to improve, and the improvement of the self is the reason behind education, formal and informal.  Even an online satirist is aware of the latter, although he couches his assertions...indelicately.**  Although, as I know and have noted, many of my students are not convinced of the utility of what I teach--mostly rhetoric and composition, despite my academic background being mostly in literature--their lack of conviction does not negate the truth.  For we are all engaged in telling stories and in presenting arguments, and it behooves us all to be able to do so convincingly.  Too, we are all presented with stories and arguments seeking to compel our beliefs and actions, and it is incumbent upon us to be able to understand and analyze them so as to be able to reject those which are made poorly or are based upon bad ideas.

Thus, while it is perhaps true that my students will not ever have to compose a formal essay after leaving my classes, and they may never be positioned such that they are in direct opposition to another person in a debate, they will have to convince their bosses that they deserve to keep their job--and maybe that they even deserve a raise.  They may have the misfortune of being in a position to have to convince a jury of their peers that they are innocent of wrongdoing, or the similar misfortune of having to convince a jury of someone else's that they have themselves been wronged.  They may be in a position to be asked to do a thing that they find somewhat questionable, and so they will have to decide if the cost is worth the benefit.  Many will find themselves needing to impart lessons to the young without making the overt statement that so often prompts resistance.  Some of them will seek to prevail upon another person to give them the time and opportunity to fall in love with them.  None of these are insignificant concerns, and all of them are aided and abetted by deploying the skills my assignments teach and of which they foster practice.

Those assignments offer a relatively low-risk laboratory for those skills.  The worst that can happen to a student in my class as a result of the assignments is that the student gets a bad grade--and, in many cases, that grade can be brought up.  It is a far lesser consequence than erring in the "real-life" applications of those skills outside the classroom, and so it seems to me that students are well-served to be well and truly challenged in the classroom.

*Lad Tobin's Opinion piece, "Self-Disclosure as a Strategic Teaching Tool: What I Do--and Don't--Tell My Students," from College English 73.2 (November 2010: 196-206) comes to mind as one resource related to discussing one's own personal engagement with the subject matter being taught.  Mark Edmundson's "Against Readings" in Profession (2009: 56-65) springs to mind, as well.  So, too, does much of the training in teaching I received as an undergraduate and a graduate student.  It is not formal citation, I know, but it should suffice in a piece of writing so informal as a blog to account for whence some of my ideas derive.

**I make a point of trying to invoke current and popular media in my teaching and examples, as noted here, here, and occasionally here, among others.  Sometimes, my sources use naughty words.  Then again, so do major authors such as Shakespeare and Twain...

To Begin the Fall 2012 Term

It has been a while since I last posted to this blog, it seems, and with good reason.  I did not teach over the summer, after all, taking some time off for the first time in some years.  But I am back now, and I will be teaching at TCI this fall.  As such, I offer the following comments:

First, I have my teaching schedule.  In the Fall 2012 term at TCI, I will be teaching three sections of ENG 099, one section of ENG 101, one section of ENG 202, and two sections of HUM 110.  This is a bit different a distribution than has been true for me in the past, and some of the courses are changing.  Updates to the relevant pages on my teaching website are therefore still forthcoming.  I will likely post announcements about them as they happen.

Second, I will be performing more in the way of collegiate service during the term.  Some of the specifics are not up for public discussion.  At least one set of them is, however; I am chairing a special session at the 2012 South Central Modern Language Association conference in San Antonio, Texas.  I look forward to it, and while I will be away from TCI to do my work at the conference, I will leave materials behind me for my students to do.  So, dear students who read this, do not feel as though I am neglecting you.  Even did I not leave stuff behind me for you to practice those skills we discuss in classes, I learn much from conferences, and so I come back from them with more to teach you.

Third, I look forward to working with my new sets of students.  I do hope that some of the changes and some of the things I am trying out in my teaching this term will help students to learn better--and me, too.

About Negative Evaluations

The academy--that is, the totality of the practicing and aspirant scholars involved in formal schooling--has two primary purposes: the dissemination and development of knowledge.  Both are necessary, as knowledge is of no value if it is not shared, but without the development of knowledge, there ceases to be something which can be shared.  It is therefore the duty of all scholars to work towards both ends--even if it is all too often the case that one is neglected in favor of the other.

I strive to perform both of the scholar's duties, to teach and to uncover more to be taught.  It is a commonplace that the latter informs the former, that by doing research in the literary humanities I increase my own base of knowledge, which I can then pass on to my students.  The type of knowledge gleaned, however, is not always of the expected sort, as I was reminded this morning.

As part of my work to develop new knowledge, I write papers (much as I ask my students to do).  As part of my work to disseminate that knowledge, I try to get those papers published.  That means that I have to send the paper out so that other people can read it and evaluate it for its form, its content, and a few other factors that vary by the publisher (again, much the same thing that I ask of my students, if on a slightly different scale).  A bit more than a year ago, I sent out a paper; today, I got an email saying that the paper had been rejected.

Not "Fix this up and we'll take it," but more like "No, it's not getting published."

I was not entirely pleased to find in the email what I found (again, as is often the case with my students when they receive my comments).  I have never excelled at accepting criticism gracefully, and, like many others, I do not like being told that something into which I put some effort does not suffice.  How unfortunate, then, that the world little concerns itself with my likes and dislikes.

After thinking on the email and the paper for a while, however, I was able to get far enough away from my initial emotional reaction to consider what the comments were actually saying.  The first thing was that they were discussing the paper and not the writer; it was my work, not myself, that was being evaluated.  Since it is the case that even the great ones err in the areas of their greatness, it is no shame to me that one individual effort was found lacking; it simply means that I must learn more and work harder.  I can hope that my students can come to the same realization for their own efforts.

The second was a reminder of something that I tell my own students.  For in the paper, I had performed a close reading of a particular poem.  That is to say that I went through the poem, line by line, and laid out its features of rhythm, rhyme, and syntax.  Doing so left me with several pages of details, which I gathered together in coherent prose, complete with appropriate citations, sound transitions, and all the adherence to the conventions of academic American English that could be asked.  What I lacked was something to do with the detail.  I got so caught up in picking out the small bits of information that I neglected to employ them for an end beyond themselves.  Thus the paper was incomplete despite its merits and despite butting right up against the maximum acceptable word count, so that it deserved the evaluation it received.

My knowledge developed as a result of my writing and submitting the paper.  I do have a much better understanding of the features of the poem about which I wrote, which is good.  Better, though, is that I have something teachable (even while I am on leave): at times, a solid, well executed effort just is not enough to meet the requirements of a given task.  That does not mean, however, that no good comes of the effort, and it does not mean that the person who makes the effort is of no value.  It just means that the person has not succeeded...yet.

Sample Summary

William H. Green's "King Thorin's Mines: The Hobbit as Victorian Adventure Novel" was published in Extrapolation 42.1 (Spring 2001: 53-64).  In the article, Green asserts that Tolkien's children's book The Hobbit partakes of a long tradition of juvenile novel commonly associated with Stevenson's Treasure Island, largely because it closely mimics H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines.  Green explicates a number of textual parallels to support his thesis, including the socio-economic status of the protagonists, their marital status, and a number of specifics of plot and milieu.  Green is not always wholly accurate in his parallels, however.  In one example, he asserts that Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins is an old man, while Tolkien makes clear that Baggins is instead in early middle age.  In another, Green draws a parallel between Tolkien's depiction of Thorin and Company's encounter with the trolls and Haggard's recounting of danger from elephants; it is not as clear a textual parallel as a number of his other examples.  Those other examples, though, admirably support Green's key point that Tolkien borrows much from Haggard, leaving the article a solid piece of scholarship.

Sample Summary

As with a few previous examples of summaries, this one has been excerpted and adapted from another blog I maintain.

Joan DeJean's "A Long Eighteenth Century? What Eighteenth Century?" which appears in the March 2012 issue of PMLA, bemoans the increasing presentism of foreign language departments in the United States.  DeJean does not claim any scientific rigor or statistical validity, simply noting that "Enough of a trend emerged" from those surveyed for the author "to feel that it was time to sound an alarm" (317). The alarm derives from the increasing dearth of new hires--and of faculty positions generally--in period specializations in pre-modern non-English languages, although Italian manages to hold onto its "holy trinity--Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio" (317), and Spanish, because of other factors, has enough enrollment to keep its variety to some extent (318). Even so, DeJean paints a depressing picture, one which forebodes ill for the study of language in the United States.

Definition
Presentism /prĕz'ĭnt*ĭzm/ (n.)- focus on the present and near past (within the last fifty to one hundred years), to the exclusion of earlier events

Sample Summary

The following is excerpted and slightly adapted from another blog I maintain.

In Gail Collins's 27 April 2012 New York Times piece "A Very Pricey Pineapple," the author reminds readers about the massive economic underpinnings of the various educational "reforms" that have been pushed through in the past decade or so. Collins points out that a few companies are making quite a bit of money from the emphasis on standardized testing in the executions of the tests themselves as well as in the production of textbooks to suit the tests and even schools and teaching programs in which to embed the whole thing.  By bringing out the pineapple imagery, she links edu-business to the absurd, offering an effective satire on the institution and calling therefore for a change to it.

Spring 2012 Semester Commentary

This is the final week of the Spring 2012 term at Technical Career Institutes, after which I will be on leave until the fall.  I do look forward to having the time off, which I will be using to travel around the United States and across the Atlantic to Ireland and the United Kingdom, but I find that I will miss some of what I have had here this term.

That is not to say that I will miss all of it.  Some things about this term I am glad to see go by.  One of them is the catastrophically high failure rate in my freshman composition classes--and it is not the result of poor performance so much as no performance.  Every semester, the students who fail my classes do so predominantly from simply not turning in work; they are bright and capable, but do not submit assignments.  It is not even that they turn work in late; they simply do not turn work in.  And this semester has been particularly bad for that.

I always wonder what I could have done to prompt better submission rates.  I am not going to step down the rigor with which I conduct my classes; that would not be helpful in the least, as I have mentioned from time to time.  But it confuses me that, given my penchant for assigning work that students can use their media activities (movies, television shows, video games, comic books, and music, so far) to complete the work, I do not see more submitted.

I will miss some of my students from this term.  Although I did have to deal with some who were objectionable, and I had to endure seeing so many falter when they need not have done so, I had a fair number of intelligent, engaged, and interested people in my classes.  More students can well be like that, although I realize that doing so is not easy; much serves to make unpalatable the expression of curiosity and willingness to try out new ideas that undergird being a good student, and I know that many of my students see no point in becoming good students.  They are out to get passed through with their credentials so that they can go and do what they think they want to do; they do not realize that there are other things, things which might not initially appear to be worth doing but, upon investigation, are well worth undertaking.*

Some of my students have come to realize it this term.  And I am glad to have been among those who helped them do so.  It is that gladness that makes me just a bit sad as I shake my students' hands and send them on their merry ways, done with my class and my students no more--at least, until the fall.

*I do not mean by this to say that the kinds of things for which my students are trained by their coursework at Technical Career Institutes are not worthwhile.  I have worked with my hands before, and I well know the satisfaction that comes with actually building a thing.  I know also the satisfaction that comes with moving only a little and seeing another person's full momentum set aside as if it is nothing.  But there is a great glory in looking at a text and seeing in it multiple levels of meanings; it enriches my understanding of the world, and so I am able to participate the more fully in that world.

Sample Summary

Tim William Machan's "Chaucer and the History of English" appears in Speculum 87.1 (January 2012: 147-75).  In the article, Machan asserts that Chaucer's place as the focal point of traditional histories of English is predicated on a flawed perception of his representativeness of a coherent Middle English.  He situates the tendency as one beginning even among Chaucer's immediate successors, and remarks on the long history of critics of English as a language citing Chaucer as their major point of reference.  Machan points out as a primary proof of the instability of Chaucer as a foundation for understanding of what "Middle English was really like" (to paraphrase loosely) the inconsistency of use of the second-person personal pronoun.  His analysis asserts that Chaucer's usage of different numbers in that pronoun does not seem to conform to a grammatical principle, and so understandings of the character of Middle English grammar based on Chaucer's usage are necessarily suspect.  While he does admit to the restrictions of his study, Machan does well at pointing out what he purports to point out, and his well-written article indicates a promising field of inquiry for other scholars.

Announcement

Students, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation, "The Establishment of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as the Standard Text of English-Language Arthurian Legend," today.  This completes the course of study for the PhD.

Sample Longer Paper

Students, below appears an example of the six- to eight-page longer paper, discussed on the course website here.  In this case, it is derived from the earlier contrast paper, although you are not obliged to expand upon your own contrast papers to put yours together.  When formatted as it ought to be for submission as a paper--which it is not on the blog--it is of a good length for submission.

As in previous semesters, I color-code to highlight various parts.  The text brought straight over from the earlier version appears in white, as it did before.  New material in support of my thesis is in blue.  The counter-argument and its materials are in red, while the rebuttal and its are in green.  Please do not color-code your own papers; I do so as a convenience for you.

The typifying features of good citizens are their normal adherence to and participation in the structures of public order coupled with a willingness to set aside those structures when they become unduly oppressive or otherwise untenable. Both Corran Horn from the Star Wars Expanded Universe and the Asimovian Hari Seldon are figured as good citizens by their respective authors. Of the two, however, Seldon is clearly the superior example of good citizenship.

Of course, there is not consensus that good citizenship is in something as simple as participating in public order while being willing to step outside of the structures that support it.  In one sense, criminals and villains--who are not normally considered good citizens--appear to be good citizens when good citizenship is measured by the rubric of participation in structures of public order and the willingness to set aside those structures.  Certainly, they fit the latter; crime is, by definition, a transgression of the prevailing social contract, a setting-aside of public order, so that criminals by their very criminality begin to adhere to at least one definition of good citizenship.  And in doing the latter, they can be argued to do the former.  One of the things that any structure requires to define itself is something in opposition to which to define itself; we know what we are as much by what we avoid as by what we do.  Criminals and villains provide a foil for public structure, and in so doing, they support those structures by giving them something against which to align.  So to label citizenship merely as participation in public structure coupled to willingness to step outside of it appears to be overly simplistic, and therefore a poor basis for judgment.

Appearance, however, is not necessarily truth.  Although it is true that by their actions, criminals and villains provide a useful focus for the structures of public order and therefore help to guide and focus them, such participation is not typically considered "normal," a status for which the earlier definition calls.  Also, being willing to step outside requires that there be a common state of being inside the structures, and criminals and villains are generally not regarded as being within the systems that they oppose.  And in any event, the definition of citizenship as participation in and selective exception from the structures of public order accords with a summary of definitions of citizenship reported in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Dominique Leydet, who labels citizenship as membership in a political community along with the assumption of the rights and duties thereto appertaining.  One of the duties commonly understood as attendant upon membership in a group is to work to maintain and enrich that group, which from time to time means that the group's practices and policies must be evaluated--which can only be done from outside.  There is thus a prevailing concept of citizenship that requires the ability to stand outside the system to support it.

There is admittedly no question that Corran Horn is a good citizen, thusly defined, in the Star Wars universe. Certainly, he participates actively and amply in the structures of public order across a significant span of time. His initial in-storyline appearance is as an officer of a local constabulary, one conducting an investigation into a kidnapping (Stackpole, Omnibus); as a member of the constabulary, he is necessarily a participant in the structures of public order, since it is in many respects law enforcement groups who are the primary points of interaction between the general populace and governmental structures. When he reappears in the story, he does so as a commissioned officer in the armed forces of the New Republic, one seeking entry into an elite unit (Stackpole, X-Wing 1-28); commissioning as an officer is a specific and somewhat rarefied recognition of status among the structures of public order, being a position of command in the vital maintenance of the public against external enemies. Both his positions and the actions he takes within them quickly assert his deep engagement with the structures of public order, showing him as willing to offer his skills and his life at some of the highest levels of performance and utility to an underpinning of public order. Some years of storyline after his attempt to enter an elite New Republic force, Horn is a ranking officer in that same force, showing that he has remained engaged with it in a substantially acceptable way (Stackpole, I 10). Horn’s ranking as a captain, and therefore position of command within an elite unit,  represents his display of significant ability in the support of public security and order, and therefore engagement with them.

Most importantly, Horn accepts his role as a Jedi, taking a place among "the foundation of stability in the galaxy" (Stackpole, I 482). In doing so, he lodges himself firmly as a member of the core proponents of order in the Star Wars universe, so that his involvement in the supporting structures of the public is absolute.  And he does more in that regard; he rises, in time, to the rank of Master in the Jedi order, speaking on behalf of the Jedi to various interplanetary governments (Allston 8).  In doing so, he displays himself as participating in high levels in the structures of public order, since diplomacy cannot be conducted absent those structures, and it is not carried out by the mean.  By occupying a position of command among the very underpinnings of public order, therefore, Corran Horn cements himself as a participant in them.

Just as there is no question of Horn’s participation in civic structures, there is no doubt the he does, at times, set aside his participation in them to serve other ends. During his constabulary service, he deliberately misleads an overseeing officer from higher governmental authority. Not much later, he participates in a firefight to protect people who are themselves engaging in illegal activities, not only protecting them, but also inflicting property damage on non-combatants and allowing those he protected to escape any consequences for their participation in illegal actions (Stackpole, Omnibus). In neither case does he adhere fully to what his participation in social structures would require--as a peace officer, he should not aid and abet illegal activity, and he certainly ought not to violate the rights of others in doing so--although in both cases his actions serve the greater good. The same is true of an incident in his service among the military elite of the New Republic--an outgrowth of an illegal rebellion whose legitimacy was still contested (Stackpole, X-Wing 99). In the incident, he effectively commandeers a squadron for a run on an enemy, a contravention of military protocol and in fact a violation of direct orders (Stackpole, X-Wing 229-35, 241-42). Even though charges against him for his breach of discipline are dropped (Stackpole, X-Wing 259-60)—itself something which smacks of a detachment from social structures, since the maintenance of public order requires that deviations from it be dissuaded, typically through punishment for transgressing—that they are brought is an indication that Corran Horn is willing to set aside the structures of public order, even though he more commonly is an avid supporter of them. Taken together, they validate him as a good citizen.

The Asimovian Hari Seldon, however, is a better citizen than is Horn. For instance, his participation in civil structures occurs at higher levels and is more varied than that of Horn, so that it can be spoken of as stronger. In Asimov’s Forward the Foundation, Seldon begins as the head of the mathematics department at a major research university in the governing seat of a galaxy-spanning empire (6-7). The position is one of some responsibility, not only in teaching--which is itself a significant civil structure, since it is through teaching that social structures are inculcated into new participants in them--but in research and in administration; it is itself an iteration of and privileged position within a social structure, so that Seldon’s tenancy in it situates him as participating in the structures of public order. Later in the novel, he is appointed from that position to the highest non-hereditary post in the empire, that of First Minister (112). In a very real sense, in his appointment as First Minister, he becomes the structure of public order, so that he necessarily is a powerful participant within it, and to a degree much greater than any warrior in service, however skilled the warrior or elite the cadre in which the warrior serves. Moreover, much later, Seldon serves as the founding editor of an encyclopedia described as being a comprehensive collection of the knowledge and understanding of the galactic empire (Asimov, Forward 456-61). The attempt to encapsulate the sum of a society’s knowledge for its preservation cannot be anything but an intimate engagement with the structures of public order, since public order is built upon a society’s knowledge of itself.

The encyclopedia Seldon founds serves as a cover for a deeper and more vital work of maintenance of the structures of public order.  The research he had done as a department head was directed towards that work, as well.  For Seldon had become aware that millennia of progress were being negated and much that was good being lost, with a dark age of thirty thousand years to follow the dozen or so millennia of stable society at the end of which Seldon stood (Asimov, Foundation 36-37).  The encyclopedia project served to hide a nucleus for the immense reduction of the scope of the dark age, a seed from which galactic civilization could regenerate itself in one thousand years instead of thirty times that many (93-96).  The system relies on his ability to predict future events with mathematical rigor, dealing in broad probabilities in a manner analogous to that in which the behavior of subatomic particles can be predicted en masse (Prelude 15); the system therefore relies on a stable foundation (if the pun may be pardoned).  By setting up a system which would allow the structures of public order which he had served to renew themselves in a thirtieth of the time it would otherwise take them to do so, Seldon makes of himself something of a messianic figure, one who comes to be in fact the focal figure for systems of public belief (Foundation 158; Edge 7, 16).  Even more than during his stint as First Minister, then, he is an embodiment of public order, making his participation in its structures manifest.

At the same time, Seldon is regarded as setting aside normal social conventions. Apart from common accusations that the professoriate is removed from public life or, worse, that it is aligned against civic structures, Seldon is viewed as a threat to public order.   In Prelude to Foundation, Seldon spends quite some time as a fugitive from Imperial officials, which is hardly an alignment with the usual standards of participation in civil structures.  Further, while on the run, he violates a number of the socio-cultural norms of the populations which agree to hide him.  Most notably, he violates the sanctity of the Mycogenian Sacratorium both in terms of entering it as an outsider and in bringing a woman where women are forbidden, which hardly rings of going along with cultural expectations, espeically since his doing so is a capital offense (237-41, 259-65).  The death penalty is not capriciously handed out, so that the assignment of it to Seldon serves as a marker of just how far he has stepped outside the normal bounds of good conduct in order to further his scholarly mission.  Certainly, he goes further outside of it than Horn, who is up for rebuke but not for any kind of major punishment by the society against which he transgresses--and a disciplinary rebuke is far less than execution, so that the latter indicates a more grievous offense.

Also, in Foundation, he is brought up on charges of treason, not least because he asserts from the knowledge given him by years of socio-mathematic study that the empire in which he lives and which he once served so prominently is doomed to die (31-38). As a result, he is exiled along with his followers to a world at the end of the galaxy, one appropriately named for being at the end of it (42). Whatever the reason for his making the assertion--and he is correct in making them, it must be admitted--the mere facts of his statements serve to undercut broad belief in the stability of social systems, so that in making the statements, Seldon is disengaging from the structures of public order. More than simply disobeying orders as Horn does, he is undermining confidence in the ability of society to endure, which is a much stronger detachment from the structures than is bucking the chain of command. Seldon therefore goes farther afield from the normal dictates of society than does Horn, even as he is more thoroughly engaged in those structures during his long life—even to the point of being a messianic figurearound whom systems of belief are built. He is therefore clearly a superior example of a good citizen.

That Seldon is the better image of good citizenship serves as a reminder that older works—and Asimov’s novels of Seldon are older than Stackpole’s works with Horn—yet have much to teach.  They provide useful standards for judgment yet, and so they ought not to be set aside blithely.

Works Cited
~Allston, Aaron. Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi--Outcast. New York: Del Rey, 2010. Print.
~Asimov, Isaac. Forward the Foundation. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Print.
~---. Foundation. New York: Bantam, 1991. Print.
~---. Foundation's Edge. New York: Del Rey, 1982. Print.
~---. Prelude to Foundation. New York: Bantam, 1991. Print.
~Leydet, Dominique. "Citizenship." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford U, 1 August 2011. Web. 5 March 2012.
~Stackpole, Michael A. Star Wars: I, Jedi. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1998. Print.
~---. Star Wars Omnibus: X-Wing Rogue Squadron. Vol. 3. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2007. Print.
~---. Star Wars: X-Wing--Rogue Squadron. New York: Bantam, 1996. Print.