I’m still in a “Susan Boyle-ish” mood; I’m getting into the groove as I get myself psyched up for a two day workshop on collegiate teaching at Lethbridge University; as a cancer survivor, I’m still feeling the warmth and humanity of all those smiling and cheering students on the front lawn of my campus last night who gave up their precious study time for upcoming final papers and exams to give their love and time for the Cancer Society’s Relay For Life; and, so, I’m about to get myself into trouble. But, I’ve been hearing and reading, as I always do at this end-of-term time, many a sighing getting-ready-for-the-end-of-the-semester-paper-reading-exam-giving-final grade-compilation-crunch comments from my head-shaking colleagues here on campus and across the internet world. So, having gotten into my protective suit of Kevlar, here goes.

 

     So many of us academics just love to pretend that they’re so clinically objective, that the physical and academic appearance of students don’t matter and don’t influence their thoughts, feelings, actions, or judgments. Well, the truth is that they do. We’re all human, and there isn’t an objective bone in our body. When it comes to academics far too many of us are crotchety, intellectual, and academic snobs. We turn our backs and let so many students drown in an ocean of “they’re not worth it,” “what’s the use,” “they let me down,” “they can’t,” “they don’t know how,” “they don’t want to,” “they’re disappointing,” “in my day,” “when I was a student,” etc, etc, etc. It’s always something, and I’m not sure most of it is either nonsense about appearance or a reflection of our disinclination to devote the demanding time and effort to the needs of students away from the demands of our precious research, publication, and quest for tenure or promotion. So, the academic culture is the height of ambivalence between proclaimed objectivity and lived subjectivity, from the rare adoring surprise when one minute a “don’t belong” demonstrates she or he does and turning away with disdain just as easily the next minute when so many seemingly prove that they don’t. For so many of us, struggle, overcoming, improvement, growth, progress, process, and change in a student aren’t enough; raising an F or a D to a C or low B isn’t enough; being a consistently “C student” isn’t enough.

      So many of us want academic novae; so many of us want students and their transcripts to look the intellectual part. We adore and reward the academically drop-dead-easy-to-teach-wow 10s; we ignore and shun the down-and-dirty-got-to-work-hard-at-ugh 2s, 3s, and 4s, and tell them to drop dead. Most us want students to have an academic “sizzle” that we can brag about in our annual evaluations and institutional reports. Achievement is in GPAs, titles, scholarships, and recognitions. It is not in a student’s struggle to find a way or to find her or his way. After all, isn’t that why so many of us are impressed with those students who have the adjective, “honors,” or this and that “scholar” describing them? That stuff is easy to “market” in both academic and non-academic circles. So many of us just don’t go for the challenging or resisting intellectual and academic ugly ducklings, and don’t believe there is a swan lucking inside them. So many of us aren’t inclined to nurse the fallen sparrows.

      Don’t so many of us so often make that first impression, snap judgment correlation between appearance and talent, transcript and potential, grades and learning as so many of us once did–and regrettably sometimes still do–with skin color, religion, ethnicity, and gender? Don’t so many of us find it easier and less demanding to hone accomplishment in the already accomplished than to prospect for, dig for, haul out, sweat over, cut, and polish the raw stone into a gleaming jewel? And when students don’t live up to the mythology of our correlation, when they have frumpy transcripts or shabby appearances or drab performances, we more often than not “dis-” them; we engage in ways so that they are disheartened and disillusioned; we act in ways so that they are disrespected, dismissed, disenfranchised, disregarded, disengaged, and dis-just-about-everything-else; they’re treated as academically and intellectually unworthy, unkempt, unnoticed, unwanted, unclean, unglamorous, unfashionable, unattractive, uncouth, unfortunate, unknown and un-just-about-everything-else.

     But, in all of this, who is unattractive? That struggling student? Or us? Who should be ashamed? That beseeching student? Or us? Who is breaking the promise? That promising student? Or us? Why can’t each of these students dream? Why don’t we allow them to dream? Why don’t we help them follow their dreams? Why don’t we help them achieve their dreams? Instead, too many of us engage in the academic version of abuse, derision, demeaning, laughter, smirking, mocking, weeding out, grinding into the dust; we direct energy away from our heart and soul, and too often sap theirs. Pogo was right. We are our own enemy.

      We need the courage to split the sea of smug; we need the courage to treat each and every student as a sacred some body; we need the courage to have goose bumps when we engage with each student; we need the courage to sustain our wonder of each and every student; we need the courage to maintain our euphoria for each and every student; we need the courage to draw out stirring creativity and imagination in those “don’t belongs;” we need the courage to find talent and ability in those “they’re letting anyone ins;” we need the courage to develop the raw and unique potential in the unlikeliest of people.

     It would help if each day we all read and lived John 7:24 and, my favorite biblical passage, Micah 6:8.

 

Louis