20190414.0430

Another article that LinkedIN recommended I read is Adam Grant's 8 April 2019 "The Office without A**holes" (the asterisks are in the article; I have no scruple about such words). The piece is a transcript of a podcast that talks about assholes at work--who and what they are--and their negative effects on the workplace, as demonstrated by formal study. Grant also relates methods for diffusing the kind of jackassery described in the piece, including affording employees greater agency and developing company cultures that tolerate absence rather than obnoxious conduct from performing people. That does not mean that nobody should ever feel upset or offended, but there are differences between putting across hard-to-hear ideas and using them, or other interactions, as chances to vent institutional authority.
It should be obvious why I was attracted to the article at first. My writing, here and in other places, does not seldom revel in the opportunity to use words deemed impolite, as witness the papers on bullshit I've delivered at major conferences and the occasional entry into this webspace with the "NSFW" tag. In them, as in Grant's article, the juxtaposition of the "naughty" word with "professional" or "intellectual" spaces amuses--or so it is hoped. (Some folks never do get past themselves about it, and it is possible that I occasionally go a little further with my jokes than ought to happen.) And, indeed, I was reminded as I read of others' works on bullshit, namely James Fredal's 2011 College English piece, "Rhetoric and Bullshit," with which I've done much.
Such is not all I take from the article, however. As I reflect on it, I am perhaps most aware of how grateful I am that my workplace--small as it is--is generally free from assholery. There are, of course, bad days, as there will be with any group of people; even my family, whom I love, sometimes vexes me in such ways. All it takes is inattention to what is going on, really, and few or none of us can attend to every utterance with the care and concern needed to avoid being an asshole altogether. (It occurs to me, too, where the metaphor of calling people assholes fails. Yes, things unpleasant to the senses emerge from them, but without the expulsion, death would soon follow--and not a nice one.) But on the whole, things are good here. It's one of the many reasons I'm not looking forward to being on the job market again--and, again, I do not anticipate needing to be, but I'll not let myself be caught unprepared for it if I am.
I've been among assholes, I've worked for assholes, I've been an asshole. (Ask my students.) It is nice to be away from them, even for a little while. For still must I go out into the world...

20190306.0430

It should come as no surprise that I have a personal library; I was for many years engaged in formal study of English languages and literatures, and I spent no small amount of time trying to be a professor in those same fields, and they call for books more than most. Even before that, I was an avid reader, given to spending money on books instead of on the kinds of things that others of my age, when I was of such an age, spent money on. And while I have made much use of the libraries where I have been, and I have at times pruned items out of my collection, I have tended to hoard the printed pages. There are several reasons, of course, and I may come back to them in another post, and it may even be that some of them still apply. But I think I may be about to go through and rid myself of some of the books and magazines and journals I have acquired over the years; I think they have outlived their usefulness to me, and the sentimental connections they embody and reinforce are not what I need them to be.
Clearly, not all of my books and suchlike fall under such rubrics. There are the fancy copies that my wife and I keep in the living room, decorations for it and advertisements to those who visit us that we read. (Yes, it's a bit snobby.) There are the copies of books I still use for what research I do, their pages stained by the oils of my hands as I've flipped through at high speed, looking for that one line to quote or that one passage to summarize. There are the copies I've been given as gifts, tattered from age and use by now and falling apart, but kept because they came from people I still value. And there are no few that I use in the recreational activities I still undertake--because I am a raging nerd, and the things I like to do involve reading even when they're not typically thought of as "reading."
But I also have boxes and boxes of academic journals, as well as many issues of them still in their wrappings. Some, such as CCC, College English, PMLA, and Profession, I no longer subscribe to; I am not a member anymore of the organizations that produce them, and I have no reason to be so. I will never be a real college professor; I will never be a full-time teacher. So there is no need for me to align myself with the MLA or the NCTE; they do not represent me, and they should not, so I should not give my time or the representation of my time that is the money I earn to them. And I probably ought not to continue to give space to works that I no longer use and am not likely to open again.
To be fair, such a thing feels like quitting. It feels like another admission of defeat, another acknowledgment that I have been wrong. It is not, at least not so much; when I undertook to get such things, I had honest hope that I might be one of the fortunate folks who picked up a professorial job. If I am wrong, it is in holding onto a hope that will never be; letting go of the things that informed that hope and that emerged from pursuing it is more a correction than an error. Such a correction is good to have, even if the reminder of error that it necessarily is is not the most comfortable thing to have provided.

20190303.0430

In the past, I have done a fair bit of summary and response in my online writing--not only in this webspace, but in others I have maintained and currently maintain. Sources have ranged across CCC, College English, Profession, the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, and others, some of which I no longer read with anything approaching regularity. And I have benefited from doing the reading and thinking about the reading that are needed to write summary-and-response pieces; I have had to keep more abreast of things to do so than I would otherwise be likely to do, and that has helped me to be more engaged with the world around me, even as it has annoyed me greatly at times (because the world is not as I would have it be, and for reasons I tend to think bad).
I am not doing that exercise this month, at least not consistently in this webspace, although I may well return to it. It is, after all, good for me. But thinking on it does lead me to think about the reading that I no longer do. I've let quite a bit of reading go along the way, which is something that is strange for me to consider despite the fact of my doing it. I have always prided myself on my ability to read both quickly and deeply, and I have long worked--successfully--to incorporate what I read into what I do. But much of what I used to do, I do no longer, or do so little of that it makes no sense for me to maintain the subscriptions that facilitated my reading. Thus, I have let go of a number of my professional journal subscriptions, and I am rarely in the kind of library that would let me get around that lack with any real skill.
Oddly, however, I feel that I am doing more useful work with my reading and writing now than I did when I was doing more such reading. What I note seems to be taken more seriously, and I feel I am writing that kind of writing with greater skill and nuance than was formerly the case. And it seems I am doing more writing, overall, whether in this webspace or in others, or in my personal journals, or for other projects entirely. It would seem that I was getting in my way with what I was doing to try to get my way; I no longer do as much of that, so I am not as much in my own way, and more gets done. It's a good thing, although it is still strange for me to think on.
I had thought that my identity would be as one thing, one particular thing that it has not been allowed to be. But after being pushed aside from that thing, I seem to be doing more to approach that thing than I had done before. It is a paradox, perhaps, but not one that I think I will work to puzzle out so much as to enjoy.

20181223.0430

On 18 December 2018, Liz Teitz's "Closed College's Stranded Students Have Plenty of San Antonio Company" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. Opening with one affected student's story, the article reports on the recent deaccreditation and closure of Education Corporation of America schools, as well as other for-profit school closures and the difficulties students affected by those closures face as they try to balance discharging debts incurred and transfer of credits to other, hopefully more stable institutions. Other affected students' stories and comments illuminate the situation that many others face, and the article closes on a comment about the relative value of a potentially thwarted education.
The piece follows up on earlier comments Teitz made and which I discuss here. As I look back at the earlier piece and the current, I notice that the students quoted are all identified as female, and while it is likely as a function of the curricula taught at the now-lapsed Brightwood College, which seemed to focus on the feminized field of nursing, it is at odds with my experience teaching at for-profit schools. Those I've taught at have been more populated by male students than female, at least so far as I can tell, and I've taught in the putative service courses of the English composition sequence for the most part; those courses, per Timothy Carens's "Serpents in the Garden," serve as a microcosm for the schools as a whole, since they are among the few universally required courses (and the students at for-profit colleges are not typically those who have AP, CLEP, or dual-credit work to exempt them from sitting for them), so if I have perhaps one or two female students in a class of ten, then I have to expect that the enrollment in the school at large is similar.
But whether or not the reporting matches my experience, there is an implication in it, namely that it is largely women who are affected by the closures of for-profit colleges. And that has implications in turn. For for-profit colleges are typically attended by those who are obliged to defer their education--people like my mother, who is a graduate of such a school (long) after having attempted a degree while in the US Navy. She was, for several reasons that I'll not go into, obliged to set aside her education on her initial attempt and to defer a second attempt for what ended up being decades until she finally did find her way to a for-profit school, where she thrived. Conversations with my students suggest that the same is true for them; they had had to set aside their educations for some time, their reasons varying but their own. They have been and are members of less privileged populations, obliged to make choices that conduce to their further and ongoing de-privileging, and the malfeasance of the schools of last resort to which they turn serves only to keep them where they have been and where they are trying to leave.
When "the way you're supposed to do it" doesn't work, and through no fault of your own, you ought not to be blamed for looking for other ways. We are fortunate that more do not think to take more drastic measures than they have.

20181112.0430

Across a couple of days not long ago, in one of the roleplaying games in which I participate, a couple of things happened that I get to experience fairly often--things I am sure my erstwhile colleagues get to experience, as well. In one instance, a person with whom I play online remarked--in jest, admittedly--"Being a professor is easy. You just wear bad ties and sleep with hot girls to fix their grades. That or hunt down artefacts in exotic locations with a trusty sidekick and a whip." Later, another of my fellow gamers commented "I wonder if I should worry more about my grammar now we have an english prof hanging around [sic]." While I replied that "I don't work when I'm off the clock," which is true, it joined the earlier incident to give me cause to consider some of the strangeness in how the professoriate, particularly the humanities professoriate I tried without success to enter, is regarded in the world outside.
I've not looked into the matter in nearly the detail Timothy Carens does in a College English article I've referenced any number of times ("Serpents in the Garden," so you know). But I have encountered the viewpoints repeatedly that the work of teaching is easy--and the work of teaching at the college level, particularly for a for-profit, where "I paid for my A" is the perceived rule of the day is easier--and that English teachers at all levels act from compulsion to "fix" people's grammar. (Not that what most folks call grammar is grammar, and not that their "fixes" to arbitrary and capricious systems are objectively correct.) And there is some justification, to be sure. Teaching work is done largely inside, and there's not much heavy lifting. (There does seem to be a risk of getting shot that appears more prominent, now, though.) Those called to teach tend to experience it as a calling, and those who respond to calls tend to be engaged with them most or all of the time. (The parallel is to clergy, from whose ranks Western academics descend.) But it is also the case that the work of the classroom demands much time and effort outside of it, far more than is seen and more than is recognized by those outside; it is also the case that that time tends to restrict outside outlets, and with their lack comes a necessary focus on what is had.
The further away from a full-time career in academe I get, though, the more aware I am of what I lacked while pursuing it. I am more fortunate than many in that I got to have time with Ms. 8 in her earliest days, but I also remember that much of the time I was with her saw my attention divided between her infant needs and the demands of work I was doing--not all of which was directed to her support and her mother's. There was much I missed as I was locked away at work on my research--and with that having come to naught, or as close to it as makes no difference, I find I have a fair bit to regret. It's why, anymore, I work to not work when I'm not on the clock. I don't always succeed, but things are better than they were.

(As an aside, my post from yesterday is not incomplete.)

20160514.0915

I am still at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While here, I have been attending to some scholarly business, which I report elsewhere--here, for example. Too, I presented a paper yesterday, which went reasonably well. But I am also attending panels because I want to attend them. Some discussion of such things follows.


My own paper, "The Malorian Kay as Fredalian Figure," reads the presentation of Sir Kay the Seneschal in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as enacting the kind of bullshit James Fredal defines in his 2011 College English piece, "Rhetoric and Bullshit." I admit that there is some immaturity in my presenting the paper as I did; there is something that remains funny to me about getting to say the word "bullshit" a couple dozen times in an academic paper given to an audience of academics. But that does not mean that the rubric Fredal lays out is a bad one, and it does not mean that the application of that rubric is invalid--and my audience seemed to have taken the point. There is merit in applying emergent tools to established works, and the discussions that ensue from such applications--whether directed to the topic or working on some related idea emerging from the underlying situation--are well worth having. I am happy to have been able to stimulate such things, even more than I am to have gotten to write a fun paper with a number of jokes embedded in it.


I also attended interesting sessions. One of them related to the Ballad of the Lone Medievalist, a publication to which I have contributed a chapter that is currently under review. It was a roundtable session, with a number of speakers who more or less improvised their presentations. Some common threads emerged from their discussion, at least to my mind and ear. Many speakers addressed the institutional pressures that vitiate against the presentation of the medieval in the classroom. Many also addressed the seeming impetus for medievalists to be tasked with the teaching of all pre-modern materials in their disciplines. The inherently interdisciplinary nature of medieval studies received much attention, too, as did the need to be willing to be wrong, both as a way to develop cultural competencies and as a way to be better able to approach the truth of things--the one great project on which all sincere academics are working. Each reminded me of things that I have known but have not always kept in the front of my mind, and each spurs me to something like hope in my own ongoing search for work that makes use of my talents. I have need of such hope.


There will doubtlessly be more for me to report, both in this webspace and elsewhere. Whether I will get to it soon, I am not certain; there is much to do, and some of it involves traveling well away from where I can comfortably or effectively report it. But I will continue to make the effort to account for my deeds and doings; hopefully, they will be of help to someone or another, which would make the efforts worth expending.

20160126.0640

Work continues, of course. A freelance order did come in yesterday, one asking me to read the latest volume in a series I have read for my client before. There is some comfort in returning to a familiar fictional milieu, to a set of characters already known, to a writing style both already encountered and easily negotiated. The reading was quickly done, and the write-up that will proceed from it is begun already. Whether I will be able to finish today or not, I am not certain; another job has asked me to attend a meeting, and that meeting time will necessarily cut into the time spent on the write-up. Even if I do not get the job done, however, I will get a lot of work done on it, so that anything I may have to take care of tomorrow will be easily handled. Or such is the idea I have about things. I hope it is a good one.

Aside from that piece, I have some scholarly reading to do. I was able to update one of my projects yesterday; the update can be found here. I also picked up another book that has a section I might need to include in that project--but I have to do the reading involved before I can make that determination. It will likely be a day or two before I can get on that work; I do need to clear out the paying work before I can turn to the not-paying, and the research work is at this point not paying (although I continue to hope that it will pay off in improved prospects for academic jobs). I enjoy it, though, and there is some chance that others will find it useful; it is the kind of thing I would have liked to have seen when I was doing some of my own research. Accordingly, I hope to keep it going for a while yet, as well as pushing out a few more things that might well appear on it later.

More scholarly writing needs doing, too. I am working on a paper I hope to send to College English at some point; I hope I may be forgiven for withholding details about it. Still, there is a lot of data-crunching that needs to be done; I have pulled quite a few numbers from my source materials, but there is other information I need to note, and doing that will require more detailed investigation than I have yet made. The work should not be difficult in itself, but it does seem as if it will be extraordinarily time-consuming, so it will be a while before it is done--and it is all the more urgent that I get on the task in short order. (I seem to recall saying similar things about the revision of my dissertation into a scholarly monograph. A working copy of it still sits on my desk, gathering dust; maybe I ought to attend to it first.) And other projects likely need attention as well; obviously, work continues.

20151006.0628

The papers I am having my students write this term are, in large measure, prescribed by program dictates. That is, there is a required sequence of major assignments in the class I am assigned, one established in the interests of normalization. The idea is that all sections of the class will be largely equivalent to one another, demanding much the same tasks of the students within them, so that those who teach them afterwards can make stable, reasonably reliable assumptions about what skills and training the students have had. The idea is not a bad one, overall, in part because there should be some consistency among iterations of a single course within a single semester, and in part because the normalization allows for some structured guidance for the novice teachers who most frequently teach the course. (That the course is largely ascribed to novice teachers is a problem in itself, I admit; I am convinced by several CCC and College English pieces that argue the point. And I am suddenly reminded that I need to read more from those journals.)

The paper my students are currently assigned is a textual analysis. They are set to pick apart a piece of writing (something recent from the Opinion section of the New York Times), looking at it in terms of its overall effectiveness at fulfilling its evident purpose for its presumed audience. I have to wonder what would result from such attention to my own writing--which is not something I can reasonably provide, being too close to the composition of it to be able to assume the necessary perspective. (Also, I am minded of the...issues attendant on self-critiquing work. Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" comes to mind as an easy example of how such endeavors can go wrong.) That does not mean I am not aware of certain things in my writing, to be sure. My prose entries to this webspace, for example, are usually 500 to 550 words or thereabouts, and they tend to include both a single link and the statement that "work continues." The word count is something I set out to do, as I believe the length is useful as a sort of warm-up for a day of reading and writing, as well as teaching of the same. The others, as well as other features I have seen and do not note here, are largely organic, authentic products of my writing process and development. What they suggest about the audience I explicitly and implicitly try to address, about my expected primary and imagined secondary readership, about what I am trying to do for each, I am not certain--although I know that they are revelatory of things of which I am normally unaware. Whether I succeed in any of it for any of them, I am also unsure. It is to uncover such things that my students are set on the current paper. I have no small hope that they will succeed, even if the pieces they read ultimately do not.

20150315.0822

I missed Ultimate Pi Day. I do not miss that today is the Ides of March. Prospective dictators for life, beware.

In a Pythonesque turn, I just read Danielle Steel's Prodigal Son--not from any great desire to read the book or books by the author, mind, but because I was paid to write a review, analysis, and summary of it. Such is the freelance work I most often do. Among the many comments made amid the over-extended exposition in the novel is one that ostensibly marks a turning point in the early life of the protagonist. (He--and it is, of course, a he--is not the most sympathetic character, really, being a Wall Street investment banker leading up to the 2008 crash. He is, in fact, part of the problem.) Interestingly enough, the turn comes as the result of actions by a high school teacher and an English professor. Despite the many, many problems in the novel, therefore, I have to concede that there is some reason for reading it (aside from the paycheck for me); the book quietly reaffirms the value of involved, engaged classroom instruction.

Not all media do, of course. A brief survey of public "debate" reveals great unease about teaching as a profession, frequent assertions of Shaw's adage about teaching, and outright hatred and anger (such as I have discussed before, if some years back). A more concrete discussion, and one more targeted at the professoriate in English, can be found in Timothy L. Carens's September 2010 College English article, "Serpents in the Garden: English Professors in Contemporary Film and Television." In it, Carens points out that the dominant portrayal of the English professor is as a predatory, exploitative figure, using the position to secure sexual favors from students until they surpass his (and, again, it is almost always a "he" who is the professor) critical abilities. In few if any cases are teachers noted for the advocacy they do for their students--unless it is by teachers themselves, who are then roundly decried by others in the "debate" as betraying their biases.

Steel does not follow suit in Prodigal Son. In the first chapter of the text,* amid a lengthy explication of the protagonist's personal history, the comments are made that a single high school teacher wrote a glowing recommendation for him to get into college and that an English professor made available both tutoring and the testing that identified a learning difference (thus offering an explanation for earlier academic troubles, themselves an impetus for behavioral difficulties). Clearly implied is that the combination of the two enabled the protagonist to enter into the financial field where he had, over twenty years, made much money for himself and his clients. While the argument can be made that, by enabling a character who has to be regarded as an active component in predatory financial practices that contributed to worldwide economic crisis and workforce dislocation, the teacher and professor under discussion are themselves complicit in the world's problems, the counterargument could be advanced that the protagonist himself suffers financial dislocation (and familial as a result) and so appropriately atones for his sins. The counterargument could also be made that tutors cannot be held to account for the actions their pupils take after the tutelage is done.

A stronger argument could be made, though, that by assigning to the protagonist--with whom the novel works to develop readerly sympathy and at least partially succeeds by the end--the benefit of the teacher and the professor, Prodigal Son tacitly validates the experience of the classroom. It reiterates the positive influence that one or two engaged instructors can have in the lives of students--even amid systems that do not always or even often conduce to instructor engagement. And because it does so in a mass market production likely to have substantial reach--the Amazon.com page for the novel offers glowing statistics for its purchase and readership--it is likely to spread that message to many, perhaps serving in some small way as a corrective to the prevailing disdain for the profession of teaching. I partake of it yet, as I have made obvious, and I will take any help I can get.

*I suppose I ought to note that the copy of the text I read for work is an electronic one, so pagination is unstable and thus inappropriate for citation.

20150309.0702

The struggle to return to some semblance of normalcy after the hour stolen for Daylight Savings Day continues...and I note with some interest the intersection, pointed out to me by many, of International Women's Day with the shortened day in the US (as well as the coincidence of Black History Month in the US with the shortest month of the year). That I had considered neither is a mark against me; I evidently have more learning to do, more work to do to recognize and critically interrogate the ways in which I am privileged, and more fighting against my defensiveness and feelings of guilt and shame about the matter to conduct. I doubt that I am alone in it.

Yes, I get defensive, or I begin to get defensive, about accusations of privilege. I view myself as having worked hard to get where I am in life, and I continue to work diligently to maintain my position and to try to improve it. When I hear people talk to me about privilege, part of me hears it as a dismissal of the effort I have expended and continue to expend, and that sits ill with me. I come from people who pride themselves on their hard work and work ethic, and that background (as well as the prevailing academic tendency to measure worth in terms of production of pages of research, which is work of a different sort altogether) ensures that tacit or explicit accusations of laziness do not sit well with me.

I know, however, that while I have worked and I do work, and I have not been so privileged as have many who are in my line of work,* I have been very much privileged in other ways. I do not have to worry about whether or not I will encounter people who are, in at least many respects, like me. I do not have to worry about seeing my demographics represented, or represented in plenitude, or represented in variety; I do not have to worry about seeing versions of me deployed as tokens only, surface-level motions toward inclusivity. I do not have to worry about whether or not those who are like me will be depicted as heroes--they may also be villains, yes, but they are also villains. More, I do not have to worry that I will be pulled over by police for driving the wrong kind of car or driving in the wrong neighborhood. I do not have to worry that I will be assumed a criminal because I wear a hoodie one day--or that I will be shot for having my hands in its pockets. I do not have to worry that I will be sentenced more harshly because of the color of my skin. I do not have to worry that, if I am assaulted, it will be because "I asked for it" in how I dressed that day. I do not have to worry that if I am sexually assaulted (and I am not conditioned, as many others are, to worry about being sexually assaulted) I will end up pregnant and possibly have to suffer through a pregnancy I did not want and could not anticipate. All I really have to do is worry about whether or not I will be able to make enough money to live the way I want to live and work to earn or otherwise acquire that money.

It is a privilege.

*Donna Dunbar-Odom discusses the issue eloquently in Defying the Odds. Catharine Olive-Marie Fox does so as well, albeit with a different perspective, in "Toward a Queerly Classed Analysis of Shame: Attunement to Bodies in English Studies" (College English 76.4 [March 2014]).

20140721.0720

Along the way back from Texas to Sherwood Cottage yesterday, my wife and I talked about my journal-keeping. As I think I have noted, I have kept a journal for some years, switching from gathered legal pad pages to inexpensive bound volumes in spring 2005 and upgrading from them to nice leather-bound, gilt-edged volumes while I lived in the Best of the Boroughs. (Brooklyn treated me well; I feel obliged to sing its praises even living away from it.) I am nearing the end of another such volume, the twenty-fifth in just over nine years (I did not say I was good at keeping a journal), and as I want to continue to keep one, I have to see about procuring a successor volume. And that means I have to think about what type of volume I want for the next volume, either to maintain my current practice or to change it, and if to change it, how to do so.

Determining how best to proceed requires that I contemplate what I want to do with my journals. It is a task to which I am giving attention...in the journal. But similar questions obtain here; how ought I to proceed with the entries on this blogroll, and to what purpose do I make the posts that I make? In answering the latter and more fundamental first (because it is more important, and it is easier), I look back at the earliest entry in this webspace. In it, I write of the same kind of impetus that prompted my switch in journal-writing: the desire to offer my comments in a socially-privileged form. What I had been doing before, making status updates (now lost) on a vanity site (that still exists but that I do not maintain as I ought to do), seemed no longer to suffice for my purposes. Although it was not until late last year that I began to make daily or near-daily posts (and some of those, I admit, are made more to post daily than to post well), there seemed to be a difference in presentation that pushed me to do a better job of writing for this blog. If nothing else, it has equipped me to better carry out the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society here.

So has the work in public intellectualism--if I can call it that--begun early in this blogroll and continued intermittently throughout. Whether or not it has done any good for me to offer summaries and responses to the piece I have read in, say, CCC, College English, the New York Times, PMLA, and Profession, I do not know. They have helped me to better understand what I have read, certainly, and that has helped me to be better in the classroom, but I am not sure that they have been of benefit in fostering conversation about the kinds of things that need to be discussed better than they generally are. I have tried to encourage it as I can; it has been another of the standing projects of this blog that I do so. I have to wonder, however, at the effectiveness of it. Perhaps it is another thing at which I need to keep working. Perhaps I have my answer to the earlier point, as well; I ought to keep doing what I have been doing, hoping that it will make some kind of breakthrough and practicing for other writing venues whether it does or not.

20130214.1230

Yes, I know that it is Valentine's Day.  I have already told mine that she is my Valentine--not that she needed the reminder.

This blog post is not about that.

It will be no secret to those few who read this blog with even as much regularity as I update it that I devote quite a bit of thought to my teaching.  The argument could even be made that I think about it too much, that I am wasting mental effort on something that is not my "real" work of humanities research--or that I am wasting my life on several things that do not matter ("Why do we need to teach this crap, anyway?  And what good is it to look at a poem like that?  Who cares?").

I am not going to address the issue of such arguments at the moment; I bring them up only to acknowledge their existence and use them as context for what I do want to discuss: a perhaps not so strange idea I had about my teaching.

One of the things that I tend to do in my classrooms is to bring in examples of the kinds of writing I want from my students.  In my remedial and developmental classes, I am obliged to explicitly teach expository modes such as description, narration, and contrast.  I therefore bring in passages from my own understanding of English-language literary canon and more mainstream publication that I find illustrate those modes.  In my more "normal" first-year composition classes, I bring in examples of short literary-critical essays, so that students can actually look at what one ought to look like, rather than trying to guess based on preconceived notions that are almost always wrong.

In my technical writing classes, I bring in examples of technical writing that I come across in my own (entirely too slow) readings.  Sometimes this is in the form of committee reports published in Profession, CCC, College English, and the like.  Sometimes it is in the form of reports and proposals I have had to do, although redacted--there are some things about which it is not appropriate for students to know...

One of the things that I hope to point out to the technical writing students with the examples is that technical writing ought to be clear and explicitly instructive.  It focuses primarily on the efficient transfer of information, rather than presenting knotty concepts that tease the reader to think through them or attempting to foster a specific range of aesthetic response (as much literary writing does).  And that means that it ideally supplements clear and lucid presentations of evidence, solid explanations of how that evidence functions, and an explanation of any unusual terms in it with clear graphics and paratextual features (subject headings and sub-headings, for instance) that guide reading effectively and facilitate quick reference.  Sentences will be of mixed length, usually simple in structure; parenthetical phrases and subordinate clauses are minimized.  Vocabulary will be of a somewhat but not fully formal register, with jargon in place but (in most cases) defined either upon first use or in a glossary at the end of the work.

It occurred to me as I was looking over materials for my play of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG that the gaming materials are themselves fine examples of technical writing.  The core book for the current edition of the game offers a fair bit of data--simple explanations of game-play mechanics and examples of the kind of narratives that drive the game*--with explications of game play and discussions of how the core rules interact with themselves.  Graphics abound, including art meant to impart understanding of cultural norms and mores and tables that neatly encapsulate the evidence that is described in detail in the text, and the information throughout is neatly divided by clearly distinguished hierarchical chapter and subject headings and sub-headings.  They join an extensive index in facilitating quick reference, and that index joins a substantial glossary that clarifies a great many terms that are unfamiliar to those newly approaching the game--the jargon of the RPG experience.

I have nursed the idea for some time that I ought to do some kind of paper on the topic (have I ruined my ability to do so by making this blog post?)--sometime, when I have time and the other projects I already have on deck are done.  But I had the thought within the past day or two that I might use the game as an example of technical writing for my classes.  I am already quite the nerd--who else would teach English?--so that I would risk little abrogation of my teacherly identity by bringing in such materials, and the example would serve to highlight the extent of the socio-cultural space which technical writing can occupy.

The only question I have, then, is about the manner in which the material would be received, both by students and my colleagues.  Would I be excluding students yet more by bringing in materials from a sub-culture which I occupy but which many if not most of those in my classroom do not?  Would my colleagues look at me (even more than many do now--"You're young; you'll feel like I do when you have some experience") as frivolous?  Should I worry about either?

I welcome the input of those of you who do look at this from time to time, however many you may be.

*I suppose that comments about this will be required at some point, but one of these per day is enough for me, I think.

20120926.1928

On my subway ride to work today, I finished reading my copy of the September 2012 issue of College English.  Among its pages is an article by Kurt Fosso and Jerry Harp, "J. Hillis Miller's Virtual Reality of Reading" (79-94).  I am not familiar with the work of Miller other than as the two discuss it, but even in that discussion, I found much upon which to think.

Fosso and Harp repeatedly assert that Miller works to establish in his own critical work the idea of the literary world--that is, the world described within works of literary art and craft, in which their plots take place and their characters exist--is a virtual world, one which prefigures the text which gives a reader access to it.  They note that, in Miller's conception, "the literary work does not exist only in this or that copy of a text, nor in the mind of the author, nor in the experience of a reader.  Rather, any given piece of literature can be said to exit only in a dynamic interaction of texts, writers, readers, and hermeneutics" (81).  They also go to great lengths to present Miller's ideas as partaking of the tradition of the Platonic Ideal, and they state that art, being necessarily an incomplete presentation or representation, functions best when it acknowledges its own imperfectness.  Fosso and Harp depict Miller as positioning literature as a form of virtual reality long before computer-aided virtual realities gained mainstream acceptance in popular American culture, concluding that Miller's ascription of value to literature specifically because of its ability to immerse readers in an alternate reality is his own overriding, central tenet.  It is perhaps a bit simplistic an assertion with which to conclude, but the article overall does a fair job of relating Miller's major works to an audience perhaps not wholly familiar with them.

Fosso and Harp do situate Miller in a long tradition of literary criticism and one of its parent disciplines, philosophy.  My own biases, developed through my own years-long course of study and strange quirks in my literary tastes, tell me that Miller's assertion that literature at its most successful depicts events that take place in a world that exists before and after the text* is an echo of Tolkien's assertion in "On Fairy-stories."  I will admit that it is entirely likely that Miller has not read that particular bit of Tolkien's corpus; writers of genre fiction of any sort are not terribly highly regarded in a great many academic circles, and those who work in fantasy literature are typically worse off than the rest.  Similarly those old proponents of works by "dead white guys."  But the presentation of Miller as making the argument that there is a literary world for each text that pre-exists the text seems to me to be Tolkien's assertion of storytelling as a sub-Creative act written again.  For the Prince of Fantasists, it is the employment of allusions to remote histories--the reference to a pre-existing reality within the text--that does so much to lend his Middle-earth corpus the sense of being a living world, which sense fosters much of the appreciation of his work.

*This is, of course, according to Fosso and Harp's presentation of them.  I have no reason to actively doubt that they are--I tend to accept the editorial process of College English as being valid and resulting in the publication of good scholarship--although I am certain that there are other ways to interpret Miller.

20120924.2053

As I might have mentioned once or twice, academic journals seem to have some trouble in reaching me, despite my avid reading of them.*  Just a day or two ago, well into the month, I received my copy of the September 2012 issue of College English, and I have only today made a start on reading it.  A new editor has taken over work on the journal, which happens, and with that editor have come a new appearance for the journal and changes to the format.  The former makes little difference; I am more worried about the inside of the publication than the outside.  The latter, I am not yet sure of; I shall have to see what comes of it in the coming issues--provided they actually get to me.

As it is, I am going to have to order an issue that seems to have vanished.

Anyway, I have already plowed through a couple of the articles in the volume, including Tara Lockhart's "The Shifting Rhetorics of Style: Writing in Action in Modern Rhetoric" (College English 75.1 [September 2012]: 16-41).  Lockhart makes a passing comment that, "As they worked toward an effective style in their own writing, the [authors of Modern Rhetoric, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren,] also gained a better sense of the middle style they hoped to encourage in students" (21).  It put me in mind of another article that I have recently read, one by A. Abby Knoblauch entitled "A Textbook Argument: Definitions of Argument in Leading College Textbooks" (CCC 63.2 [December 2011]: 244-68). In fact, I think I may try reading the two articles in conjunction to see what kind of productive dialogue I can find between them...

To return, however: Lockhart's remark reminded me of comments I have made before on this blog (such as one here) which address the necessity of continuing learning to effective teaching.  That there is such a need is evident to me, and for several reasons.  One, and one which I likely need a bit more help in learning, is that continuing to learn keeps the teacher humble; it is useful to be reminded that there is a lot of knowledge out there that I do not yet have.  Too, it is helpful to be reminded that knowledge changes, and pressing on with researches in all fields makes manifest at least some of the ways in which it does so.  Further, continued learning allows the teacher to model processes for students--and to empathize with them as they struggle with much the same process (although, as one or two students have commented to me as the new term at my institution has started, their struggles are a bit more pronounced, since they do not have the dedicated years of practice in learning that I do).

To be reminded of the fact, and to be validated by seeing it reinforced in print in one of the major journals in the field in which I do most of my keep-earning work, is a good thing.

*Of course, since in one sense to read something is to devour it, if emotions and understandings can be ascribed to the creations of humanity--and it is something of a commonplace to associate the written word with the child, so that it can be inferred that people in fact so so ascribe--it is understandable that a journal would resist coming to me.  Their pages prove a tasty dish, if not for me quite so much as for Strand's narrator.

20120715.1639

A few days ago on another blog I "maintain," I discussed a recent experience of rejection, not of the once frequent in my life romantic variety, but of the still too common in my life publication type.  In the discussion, I note that I relate my own failure as a learning experience, and I hope in doing so that I am modeling the kind of writerly behavior the results of which I want to see from my students.

Putting the piece together reminded me of some of the reading I did a while back, and when I finally went to my office at work,* I was able to pull up the article which writing my blog entry had brought to mind.  It is 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), pages 196-206.  In the piece, Tobin makes the case--convincingly, to my mind--that teacherly revelations of personal experience should not be exempt from the same evaluations applied to other teaching tools and rhetorical maneuvers; that is, invocations of the self ought to be used in the classroom only when effective in illustrating particular concepts or developing the necessary ethos to teach.  He also points out that the risks inherent in revealing personal experience differ for instructors based on their own positions--something that comes across as obvious once stated but that needed to be laid out just to have it in the open.

In relating his own experience in employing various depictions of himself to his classes, he presents something of a paradox--although he is careful to say that his anecdotal experience ought not to be taken as Truth, so that the difficulty in resolving it is somewhat mitigated.  The conundrum is this: the exposure of the self can be a markedly effective teaching tool, but it can just as easily undermine the ability of a teacher to teach.  With this in mind, and knowing that the students I expect to have when I return to work are largely of lower socio-economic status, educationally disadvantaged (many dropped out of high school or have been away from formal schooling for quite some time), and in many cases immigrants or the children of immigrants, I have a question to pose: Is my relation of my own failure to get a piece published likely to aid my teaching (by presenting me as grappling with many of the same issues as my students, so that I am not asking them to do things that I do not demand of myself) or hinder it (by showing me up as someone who cannot do and thereby according with the old saw about those who teach)?  Or are there other options which I have not considered?

As ever, I look forward to input from others.

*I am on leave during the Summer 2012 term.  That only means that my classroom teaching is on hold.  I am still academically active, if not so much as I could otherwise hope to be.

20120327.1152

I find the preconceived notions about and interest in the academic world my students have refreshing, if at times confusing.

When I teach writing,* I make the point to my students that they ought to avoid bombast, lest they end up coming across as Oswald Bates from In Living Color.  Usually, I phrase it as something like "don't be fancy for the sake of being fancy," and the students usually claim to understand and then show that they do not quite get it as much as they say they do.  But that is a commonplace.

This semester, when I discussed bombast with one of my classes, one of the students brought up the insistence of many who hold a PhD that they be called "Doctor," a group among which I cannot say I do not stand.  The student remarked that calling for the use of an earned title is "fancy for the sake of being fancy" and that he (the student is male, I promise) would rather call someone "Mr." than "Dr." based on that idea.  Here, I confess to being confused; while I am well aware of an anti-intellectual, anti-authoritarian strain in the prevailing culture of the United States (something John McWhorter discusses at length in Doing Our Own Thing), I am not sure that the student has thought his position through.  It seems quite a bit less artificially ostentatious to insist upon the use of an earned title than to prefer an unearned one--and such honorifics as "Mr." and "Ms." are accorded based on (usually) imposed qualities rather than upon merit.**

Less confusing was a more recent discussion I had with a technical writing class I taught.  In it, I had the students read an article Lisa Melancon and Peter England wrote, "The Current Status of Contingent Faculty in Technical and Professional Communication" (College English 73.1 [March 2011]: 396-408).  They did, and the discussion that followed was one of the best periods of teaching I have done.  I did notice that many of the students' questions and comments were about tenure: what it is, why it matters, and what effects it has (and the lack of it among instructors has) on teaching.  They seem to have arrived at the opinion--of which I approve--that more classes at the introductory level ought to be taught by those who are most invested in their institutions and who therefore should have the most to gain from students of all sorts acquiring solid educations.

It is good to see that students in technical fields at a technical college understand the value of firm grounding in the humanities.  There is some hope yet.

*Insofar as writing can be "taught," which depends greatly on how "teaching" is defined.  But that requires more consideration than I can really give here and now.  I suppose it will have to wait.

**I am aware that there are problems in this statement.  I know that gender is performed, and that the presence of intersexed and trans-gendered persons complicates matters.  I know also that a great many people who have "earned" titles have not actually earned those titles.  I know not, however, a better way to phrase the ideas, for which I apologize.

20120321.1429

In his contribution to "Evocative Objects: Reflections on Teaching, Learning, and Living in Between," Doug Hesse remarks that "schooling is designed to teach things that mere living never will" (329).  I find the comment to be a provocative one, problematic in one sense, but illuminating in another.

The problem in the comment comes from the idea of "mere living."  While I am one of those whom Hesse identifies as having "never lived outside schooling for any appreciable length of time" (330), I find that there is not terribly much "mere" about my life--and many if not most of the folks I know have had far more interesting times than have I.  Many of my graduate school classmates (and no small number of my undergraduate classmates, in all honesty) spent quite a bit of time in the "real world" before returning to school--and the students in my classrooms now are often in the same situation.  They, and many of the other people whom I know through non-academic schooling (I am a student, albeit not good enough of one, of martial arts), church, and having been in the non-academic workforce while in high school and college, have had a variety of experiences, traveling and living around the world, engaging in activities of various degrees of illicitness and entertainment, and facing challenges of which I can barely conceive.  Facing censure, imprisonment, deportation, maiming, and death, sometimes on a daily basis, implies that there is some substance to that which is done, and a number of people I know face such things regularly; even more than is the case with me, there is little "mere" about the living that many people I know do.

That said, instructional as a fully lived, un-"mere" life can be, Hesse is correct in noting that there are things school teaches which cannot be had, or cannot be had with anything like reliability or certainty, outside of it.  If nothing else, schooling offers exposure to a number of ideas and concepts that typically do not fly about in conversations among non-academics.  If they do, they are usually not connected to the thoughts that other people have, over the many centuries of records of such thing, put together and disseminated.  Typically, the kind of time involved in formulating and developing an idea that school affords is not to be had outside of it, and the relative leisure to develop ideas, as well as the resources to see where they and similar ideas have already been developed and tested, is certainly of great value.

Obviously I think so, or I would not have spent so long in the classroom, both seated and standing in front of it, as I have.

It is incumbent upon those of us who do have the privilege of life in the academic establishment to keep in mind that there is quite a bit of world outside of the ivory tower, upon which we depend.  It little behooves us to condemn the working world as "mere," however true it is that we are able to offer to it something it cannot get, or can only get with great difficulty and little reliability, elsewhere.

Work Cited
Hesse, Doug, Nancy Sommers, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. "Evocative Objects: Reflections on Teaching, Learning, and Living in Between." College English 74.4 (March 2012): 325-50. Print.

20120131.2121

Since it is the end of the month, it makes sense that I would be finishing up my reading of this month’s College English. In particular, I wish to respond to William M. Morgan’s review essay, “Process and Performance: Style in Composition and Rhetoric,” in which he evaluates and critiques two relatively recently published textbooks. It is not to his specific assessments that I wish to respond, however; I do not know the texts Morgan discusses well enough to either agree or disagree with his valuation of them--although I am inclined to go along with him, given that he specializes in the field and I do not. Rather, I wish to address some few comments that he makes in offering his critiques; they resonate with things that I have been considering recently in the blog (such as the posts I make here and here).

Morgan makes the comment that, given the lack of engagement of compositionists generally with the subject, “public intellectuals specializing in literary criticism and other fields step into the vacuum of discussion about style, and speak for [compositionists] to a public still hungry for a reductive understanding of style as correctness and mechanics” (269-70). That the public does have such a view of writing, of “good English” in general, is amply attested by my own experience. Whenever people find out that I teach English, they promptly inform me that they will mind their usage--despite the fact that they readily admit that “English is not [their] best subject.” My students also look to me first and earliest for help with their commas and spelling--despite the fact that they never follow up on my best advice, which is to read more. I try to stress to my students that the content of what they write--whether it makes a claim and supports that claim with abundant and abundantly explained evidence--is far more important than whether they have every jot and tittle in its exact place. The latter can be corrected with a modicum of time and attention, but the former can only be amended with significant effort--if it can be changed at all.

There is much that is written that is empty, even if it is exceptionally well proofread. That people tend to jump to the idea that it is only in mechanical perfection that a piece of writing be deemed good is a lamentable one, and it underpins, I think, many of the tacit assertions that courses in writing are service courses best relegated to the least skilled in the profession and least able to engage with the students.  And that creates a problem in that it tends to foster students who are taught poorly, thereby lacking the skill sets to make adequate judgements but having in abundance a view of the study of writing that is...less than favorable.

It is a circle that needs to be broken by and by, Lord, by and by.

Morgan adds an invocation of Stanley Fish as an exemplar of the problem he outlines in compositionists not acting as public intellectuals (!) before making the assertion that part of the reason they tend to not do is relates to "the field's history of 'female coding,'" which, "when combined with literacy studies' masculine anxieties about its own prestige and with the relative dearth of women who are recognized as public intellectuals, causes the media and the public to look outside the field for commentators on the state of writing and teaching" (272-73).  I am particularly struck by this remark for a number of reasons.  One is my own wrestling with my identity as a man hailing from the working classes and a family of tradespeople who opted to become a scholar; I very much have "masculine anxieties," although not so much about the field's prestige as about the "female coding" that still persists for teaching and reading at large.  Another relates to that very "female coding."  Most of the professors I had through undergraduate and graduate coursework have been female.  Much of the work done examines the construction of, and works to deconstruct received notions of femininity.  That literary studies, which I have seen as female-dominated in practice (although I will admit that my experience may well be atypical), has "masculine anxieties" strikes me as odd.

Then again, many things strike me as odd, as I do many people.  And, as I said, my experience may well be, well, odd.

Work Cited
~Morgan, William M. “Process and Performance: Style in Composition and Rhetoric.” Review Essay. College English 73.4 (January 2012): 268-81. Print.

20111117.1118

I have been at the front of the classroom for some years now, teaching English language arts and reading (and one or two other things) to students from kindergarten up into even graduate-level courses (the latter once or twice), and I like to think that I do decently at my job.  Part of that liking comes from my inculcated tendency to desire to excel at anything I do, particularly those things for which I am paid--I am hired to do a job, and as long as I take the paycheck, I ought to do my best to do well at the job for which I receive it.

A larger part of that liking comes from my belief in the value of education.  That I prize it should be evident; I would not have spent as long seeking formal education as I have did I not believe in its value.  That I prize it for things other than the potential to earn me a higher or steadier paycheck should also be evident; I could be making a lot more money right now than I am, and with a much lower credentialing requirement, for more or less the same amount of energy I put into the job I have at the moment.

Because I value education highly, and because I feel compelled to be of some good and useful service to the communities in which I take part, I teach; the job allows me to do both.  Because I feel compelled to be good at my job, I invest much in my teaching, doing my best to keep up with current research in both pedagogy and the subject matter of most of the courses I teach: writing; that drive is why I subscribe to both CCC and College English.  And it is why I do worry about what happens in my classroom.

I know that I push my students hard.  I honestly do not believe that students benefit from lax standards or overly fluid deadlines.  I do work with the students I have who act responsibly; that is to say, for those students who keep me updated on what is going on with them (for such things as medical or legal troubles, or the inevitable deaths in the family), I adjust deadlines and requirements to varying extents.  One student this term has benefited from an extra two weeks to complete an assignment, for example, while another has been excused from class meetings (although not assignments, thanks to the wonders of email) because of knee problems.  So I am hardly unmerciful or inflexible.

But I can only bend so far, in my work as in my body (I cannot do the splits, nor am I able to bend at the waist quite so far as I should like).  There are limits to the leeway that I can extend to my students.  There are things that I cannot teach through email or through recorded audio or video.  There are deadlines I have to meet which I cannot extend, and they require me to report on the progress my students have demonstrated--they require that the students have made some demonstration.  And there are the simple facts of my other classes to teach and the other work that I have to do to be able to accomplish what I need to accomplish.

Do I no longer have needs as I work to help others meet theirs?  Should I not value my own education as much as I exhort my students to value theirs?

And it is because I have to say such things as "as I exhort" of my students' valuation of their educations that I have some worry, one reawakened by a conversation I had with one of my colleagues yesterday.  Although I do not necessarily agree with all of what that colleague was saying--some of it was overly reductionist; almost nothing in life is only either/or--I do think that some of the things said were dead on.  It is necessary for a truly successful educational experience, as has long been known, for the learner to have intrinsic motivation to learn.  There has to be something within the student that compels engagement with education for it to work well.  But there is no way to directly foster such motivation; there is no magic bullet with which students can be shot, the wound from which is itself a deep and abiding love of learning.  It can be fostered indirectly through the provision of extrinsic motivation; I can reward students for performing and punish them for not, so that the desire to gain reward and avoid punishment drives action and, hopefully, provides the opportunity for intrinsic motivation to take hold.  Put simply, I can give them reasons to go on and hope that they find their own reasons to keep going along the way.

The thing is, I cannot do it for them.  I cannot give to them something which I do not recall actually acquiring.  As far as I remember, I have loved to learn, to acquire and work with knowledge.  I am sure that I had to be taught it, that I had to be cajoled along, but I do not remember it happening.  And so I do not have the experience with it that others, I think, have.  Lacking that experience, I cannot teach it--one cannot pass along that which one does not have.

From those of you who read this, if you would be so kind, could I get some view of your experience in coming to love learning?  Or could I get direction as to where I might meaningfully look for reports of such experience?  Or if you hate it, could you tell me why?

And if I am simply being a fool...well, perhaps I do not want to be told that.

20111012.1618

One of the recurring assignments in my classes is one which requires students to summarize articles from the New York Times, usually the opinion/editorial section.  Students benefit from the practice in reading and in writing, and it allows me to begin teaching attention to the sourcing of materials.  It is a good exercise for them, and one with which I have had quite a bit of success.

Every so often, I experience a coincidence, a Jungian synchronicity.  Recently, one of them came about as a result of the summary assignment.  One of my students had written a summary of David Brooks' September article "The Limits of Empathy," which appeared in the New York Times on September 29, 2011.  In the article, Brooks notes that empathy, the idea of being able to understand how and what other people are feeling, is overrated.  He calls it "a sideshow," arguing that it is used to display that we are "trying" to be better people, but that the display, because not coupled with ideological rigor or organizational/institutional alignment, is insufficient to ensure right action.  A weakness in his treatment arises in his invocation of the Nazis, but his use of other information is effective, making for an interesting article.

The Jungian occurrence derives from my other reading.  I had not long before received College English 74.1 (September 2011), in which is an article by Rutgers University English professor Ann Jurecic titled "Empathy and the Critic."  Jurecic seeks to complicate the concept of empathetic reading.  She notes that the development of empathy--commonly regarded as the foundation of moral action--is frequently put forward as a justification for teaching literature; reading well-written works helps us to understand people, and in understanding them, we come to treat them better.  She also notes an opposing view, that reading a text explicitly to seek out connections is to be overly simplistic or even to assume an offensively hierarchical power dynamic.  Neither viewpoint is sufficient to her understanding, and she maintains that effective teaching recognizes both as being simultaneously true--in addition to other things.  As is to be expected from a work in a high-profile academic journal, Jurecic's article makes ample use of previous researches to sufficiently support its points of contention, and as should be more frequently the case than is true even within a composition-focused journal, the article is easily read and understood even by someone (such as myself) who does not have extensive background training in rhetorical and pedagogical theory.

Having finished reading the Jurecic piece the day before the student turned in the summary of the Brooks piece, I had the College English article fairly far forward in my mind when I read the New York Times article to be able to grade the student's work.  (That is another reason I have students write summaries of news articles: it helps me stay informed.)  Even though Jurecic does not take into consideration the treatise that seems to have sparked Brooks' writing, Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, there is a fair bit of overlap among their sources; Jurecic also  takes into account the viewpoint that Brooks expresses, although I sincerely doubt that Brooks had read Jurecic before writing his article.

I do agree with something that both voice: fellow-feeling is not enough.  It is fine and good, as Brooks notes, to be able to understand the lives of those around us.  But being able to imagine ourselves feeling as others feel does not mean that we will be able to do anything to make things better for them--or that we will be motivated to do so, which he also writes.  Perhaps it is only because I am so evil a man as I am, but there have been a number of times that I have been well aware of what others have felt, even to the point of having felt it or something very much akin to it myself, and have thought that the others damned well deserved to feel the way that they did; sometimes people ought to feel like shit because they have acted shittily.  I tell my students from time to time that I have no sympathy for them precisely because I have faced down heavy course loads with lots of homework.  Even now, even having a full-time teaching job at which I could easily remain for the rest of my career, I have homework to do--and this little piece is not part of it, so that there is more writing waiting for my attention when I get done with my regular day.  I am not about to assign less work to my students because of it.  And if Brooks is right, I am wholly justified in my actions; he argues that the "sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code [sic]" does more to make people "good" or admirable than their ability to engage with the psychological states of those they encounter.  He uses the example of the adulterer, who takes pleasure in undertaking a reprehensible act and so is to be shunned even if the reasons for the actions are understood; similarly, while I understand why my students complain about the amount of work I assign or the nature of it, I fail to agree that their complaints should alter my teaching.

Jurecic also articulates the position that empathy, defined as the ability to perceive and understand the emotional states of others, is insufficient.  She would have empathy be the underpinning of academic, institutional, and pedagogical practice, so that the understanding of others comes to inform and direct the treatment of them.  This makes much sense to me.  Certainly, as an educator, I am obliged to treat my students with a certain degree of courtesy--really, I am obliged to do so because I am, or am at least trying to be, a decent human being.  And I do keep in mind that my students have not had the many advantages which have been mine.  Aside from white male privilege, which I have noted has been to my benefit (here, here, and here), I came up in a place, time, and situation which encouraged me (specifically, rather than just because I happen to be a white guy) to spend a great deal of time tending to my studies; many, if not most, of my students have not.  As such, my teaching does necessarily accommodate that difference to some extent.

I maintain, however, that 1) entry into my classroom is on my terms, terms which I openly publish to my students along with the means to fulfill those terms or escape them; and 2) where a student starts in terms of background knowledge and academic socialization is not tied to how hard a student is willing to work at this point to improve.  As such, when my students complain about the amount and type of work my classes require, or the standards by which I evaluate that work--and they very much do--I pay little heed.  I try not to let what pity I may feel for their life circumstances occlude my evaluation of the work that is submitted to me or my judgment of what skills and levels of skills are necessary to pass out of my class, for while I may as a person feel for them, I know that they will ultimately be judged on the quality of what they do.  And just as the bad home life of a killer does not mean that the person killed is not dead, the poor prior education of a student does not mean that a sentence written unclearly and saying nothing in fact is clear and content-laden.  Perhaps it is an expression of empathy, somehow, and an appropriate reaction to it that drives me to act as I do in the classroom; I do feel for the students (in many cases), but I know that if I allow it to unduly affect me in the moment, I will not be able to help the students get to a point at which they no longer have to feel the way that they currently do.

I can hope.

Works Cited
~Brooks, David. "The Limits of Empathy." New York Times. New York Times, 29 September 2011. Web. 12 October 2011.
~Jurecic, Ann. "Empathy and the Critic." College English 74.1 (September 2011): 10-27. Print.