content analysis

Greetings after a long absence!  I thought of telling you all that I had fallen victim to an experience closely paralleling Tom Hanks’ in Castaway.  But alas, the truth is much more mundane.  Summer was simply too packed for me to post.  I was delightfully somewhat removed from the Internet during the summer months.

I had hatched a glorious return during the first week of classes, but those of you who are employed by liberal arts colleges know too well of the extensive faculty workshops that accompany the beginning of a new year.  For those of you who are less familiar, let me describe a few of the key features of these events:

The Liberal Arts: our faculty workshop is rife with panel discussions and small workgroups that consider pedagogy and the mission of the liberal arts.  While I know well that this would be misery for many, I view it as gift that I work for an institution and have colleagues that eagerly engage in serious conversations about pedagogy.  Or more simply people who believe that discussion of the liberal arts should be a living one.

Curricular Theme: Our current curricular theme involves the increasingly globalized society and encouraging our students to think about the many questions and challenges that reality presents.  To kick-start a conversation on this topic (rather than resorting to cliches), we were treated to two truly excellent speakers in professional positions with global relevance, each of whom spoke for 45 minutes.  We then had another hour to just ask them questions and have a dialogue.  What a pleasure to engage in an interdisciplinary, intellectual conversation!

Pondering: To paraphrase Weber, all the most intellectually productive times I have enjoyed were spent laying in a hammock just thinking.  The informal tradition at my institution is that faculty take nearly a full week just before the beginning of classes to prepare their syllabi — even if they’ve taught the same classes for twenty years.  It’s a wonderful time when we think carefully about the process of education, chat about assignments, and swap readings.

Though I personally cherish the community and intellectualism that this programming encourages, it’s also damn time consuming.  Of course, the semester only gets busier.  But somehow, I’m now re-acclimated to the pace.  So, it’s my sincere hope that I’m back now — like for real.

Just one more thought: Like many, I was saddened to hear of the death of gifted writer, fellow liberal arts educator, and thoughtful human being, David Foster Wallace.  Others, with more expertise or greater poetry of language, have already offered insightful commentary on the man.  But I just wanted to post quote of his that speaks volumes about his personal biography, but also resonates for its honesty about our historical era:

There’s something particularly sad about [living in America around the millennium], something that doesn’t have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It’s more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it’s unique to our generation I really don’t know.

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a very funny blog called Stuff White People Like. Then, this morning, on under the apt title, “whiteness studies,” Jeremy Freese of scatterplot linked to soaring reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon.com. All this thinking about white people made me consider an issue of ethics and pedagogy related to race.

At my institution, we have a much beloved instructor who teaches a somewhat “edgy” courses about race. He’s fond of blowing apart racial myths and exploring racial inequities in manner that students can easily relate to. He manages to push our largely white and conservative pool of students and still get the best teaching evaluations bar none. He’s cool; he gets it. Virtually every minority student at the institution takes his courses. He’s white, but much like Bill Clinton, he’s completely accepted by minority students.

Recently, he offered a new course exploring white culture restricted to only white students. He was able to get away with that stipulation by only admitting white students who had taken his race class and keeping it under the radar, not letting senior faculty, the chair, or any university officials know about it. Upon learning about this, two opposing thoughts occurred to me: a) how dare he impose a race restriction that return us to segregated classes?, and b) my God, just imagine how productive that class could be, if it gave white students a chance to honestly explore race.

To address point b first, the course covered the history of racism among whites, stereotypes of whites (and their functions), and tried to develop ways to have more equitable and honest multi-racial interactions. By all accounts, students left the course with a far more nuanced notion of race, greater sensitivity to non-whites, and a few became radicalized on the issue of race.

At the same time, to do this under the radar without approval from the department, the institution, or the community seems unethical. Moreover, regardless of whether the community would have consented, the entire notion of barring non-white students is unjust. And that’s to say nothing of how white was even defined for the purposes of admission to the class.

While there is much to be concerned with in this particular example, it does raise the broader question of how we can teach race to white students (and really get through to them!) without them feeling fearful of saying the wrong thing? How can we teach it in a context where white students quietly nod and jot down whatever the instructor says?

Clearly, not all institutions are the same. Some faculty maybe lucky enough to teach at a school rich with Lefty undergrads all too willing to approach race critically. But, perhaps, that situation makes it even more difficult to really challenge students’ thinking.

I’d be interested to hear my reader(s) comments. What do you think?