Well, it’s that time of the term when the Scroogey, bah humbug “student blooperers” are out in full force all over the cyber world, and so many in academia do themselves an injustice whenever, however briefly, they are suspending their charitable holiday spirit.
During my 46 years as an academic, do you know what I noticed, what I am still noticing, and want all of us to think about? There is a gap between our professionally private and professionally public selves. In the privacy being with colleagues, there’s the perennial moaning and groaning, the self-pitying frustration, the finger-pointing, the blaming, the bad mouthing, the snide comments, the demeaning jokes, and the offering of denigrating proofs how studens’t dumb mistakes reveal the “dumbing down” of higher education. And, when held to task, all this is always justified as academia’s version of locker-room talk: “innocent fun,” “idle chit-chat,” or “coffee talk.” I wonder if any of them remember when they were a target of such unkind comments. I wonder if they remember how they felt. I was, and I do. I can tell you that the less than politie words that I used showed that I didn’t appreciate their ridiculing “I didn’t mean anything by it” one little bit. I didn’t then as a studet; I didn’t then a professor; I don’t now though I am retired.
Let’s start by admitting that professors do talk differently with their colleagues about students when students are not around. In department meetings, at faculty socials, in faculty lounges, at conferences, in email, on FaceBook, professor’s language and tone often change. I’ve heard and seen it over and over and over, year after year. Think about what such mental roping off of one personna from another does. Understand how impatience and demeaning erodes understanding, lulls sympathy, and weakens efforts of support and encouragement. Think about how they influence the treatment of a student with whom we come in contact. Think about the emotional and performing cost to the student. Think about the emotional and performing cost to us academics. Think about the justifications that come into play to demote the classroom to second place and students to the level of distraction in the quest for research, publication, promotion, security of tenure, and academic renown. Think about how tenor and temperament and fundamental attitude matter; they really matter; they matter a great deal. I mean why make the effort if you believe “it’s no use?” Why continue to fight if you thrown up your hands in surrender.
Since late 1991, when my epiphany, that “deep time,” as focused and intense a spiritual experience as I ever will have, was a portal to thinking about numinous past personal experiences and daily current experiences, was and continues to be enormously important to me. It ultimately led to my conscious daily living according to my self-composed “Ten Commandments of Teaching,” and to take the sacrements of my “Teacher’s Oath.” Everything in and out of class revolved around abiding by those commandments and the tenets of that oath. At their core is unconditional human dignity and respect for each individual and a treatment of each student as a sacred, noble, unique, and significant human being with untold potential: not to be prejudiced against any student for any reason, not to shame a student, not to speak ill of any student, not to use a student as a punch-line, not to use students as a punching bag to vent frustration with and anger at the administration, not to use students in a power-trip, not to impose a powerlessness on a student, not to show up as someone different among peers when and where I could safely let my hair down, and not to have a different standard when among other professors from that when among students.
The problem is that such rationalizing and blaming only exacerbates our anguish. They’re merely a form of running away. They don’t meet the true situation head on. They don’t liberate anyone from frustration. They don’t ease the ache and discontentment. They’re a form of “look what I have to deal with” self-pity. And, they aren’t very kind or caring. They don’t engender a true sense of service. They don’t develop deep trust. They don’t establish respect. They darken rather than illuminate. They don’t recognize any human parity, that sacredness, nobility, and uniqueness of each of us human beings. They don’t don’t allow for unconditional faith, hope, and love. They’re a barrier to being intently and intensely aware, alert, and attentive. They cling to ignoble stereotypes, generalizations, and labels. They perpetuate grudges. They don’t help in the effort to prevent drop outs. They don’t lead to an understanding that we’re in the people business, that education is about people, real people, living people, unforgettable people, compelling people, amazing people, flawed and incomplete people, people with contradictory characters.
The acquisition of a degree, the securing of a title, the gaining of tenure, the lengthening of a resume do not automatic in and of themselves create or negate our morality. We to do that; we make that choice. We have to ask what values did we inherit when we became academics, which ones should be retained, which ones should be discarded, which ones should be modified. We have to ask those old values new questions. We constantly and incessantly have to ask and sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, ask and sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, ask and sift through and rearticulate our sense of meaning and purpose, again, again, again. Still venturing, still changing, still growing, still discovering. still finding ourselves. And, be both unafraid and unashamed of doing it.
Now I know that not all profs to this, but most do. Since 1991, I started asking and remaking the academic values I had inherited. From then on, I consciously watched my feelings, thoughts, words and actions, knowing that when I demean a student, I demean myself. I say and have said for decades that when someone says, “I didn’t mean anything by it,” of course she or he did; when they defended themselves with “it’s just innocent fun,” there’s no innocence about it; when they said in their defense, “it’s only a joke,” it’s never an devalued “only,” for they were dead serious; when they argue that “it means nothing,” sure it does, for it reveals the truth of deep-seated attitudes. They’re all rationalizations for not talking a walk along that extra mile. They’re excuses for not supporting efforts to retain students. They’re all reasons offered for the need to cull the herd. Each time any “look what I have to deal with” blooper is offered, I think of the helping and saving hand offered by Birdsal Viault to me when I as a student was a frequent target of those “why try” and “it’s no use” bloopers.
Think I’m being a dour tight ass who should lighten up, that we need humor during this tense to alleviate the pressure-packed time of final exams and calculating final grades? Well, my answer is why make jokes at someone’s expense. You know, I am an amateur flower gardener. I’ve learned some simple truths: there is no such thing as a “no maintenance” or “low maintenance” garden; nothing will ever go by the book; nothing will ever be as we wish. Bugs, pests, weeds, disease, and weather will see to that. Plants will wilt; plants will wither; plants will be choked; plants will be eaten; plants will be diseased. Do I give in and give up? Do I sneer, gnarl, and curse? Do I ridicule and blame? Do I throw up my hands in disgust and walk away in surrender? No, the best of my gardening skills are my commitment and dedication and perseverance, my willingness to get my hands and knees dirty, my quest for solutions, my willingness to adapt, my willingness to change my ways. And, those skills will be revealed in the most challenging of times. I see and listen deeply with a loving heart. I remain serene. In the face of all that I find new ways; I redesign; I replant; I trim and prim; I continue to plant new plants; I continue to embed new seeds; I continue to nourish new seedlings. I patiently pull weeds; I deal the bugs and pests; I faithfully fertilize and water; I caringly nourish; I lovingly tend. Only then will the flowers, all flowers, have the opportunity to thrive and bloom. In the classroom, I am the gardener of my own life; I water and nourish and tend to my own inner garden. It is the only way I know that I can I help each student, unconditionally, to have the opportunity to nourish the garden within each of them, and to blossom.
Louis