Comments on: What You Really Really Want

By: scribblingwoman

scribblingwoman — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 17:04:39 +0000

Teaching Carnival II is here!

Doodles of a fifteenth-century student, University of Aberdeen Library (link from Derek Hughes on C18-L) Can one start a…

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By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 03:23:57 +0000

I wrote something recently about creeping philosophical naturalism:
the illusion that one is not -can be other than- a participant. Standard economic theory and polling as policy are both akin to this, or come from the same root. To study people as if you were not one of them, and then to address them: How?
When has any good novel or work of art ever been written entirely to cater to an audience? There’s always a conflict, hidden or overt. The ‘client’ is always the enemy. but sometimes of course the enemy is right and deserves to win.
A teacher has authority and should act accordingly; but some haven’t earned it. Each case is individual and yet part of a larger group. Some students say fuck you for lousy reasons, and some are absolutely right. The point if one wants to systematize anything is to systematize conflicts not results.

I’m tired of attempts to turn the necessary ambiguities of life and communication into clear cut divisions. Such logic leads to a sort of observational passivity that I find grotesque. Giving the people what they want without making them fight for it is copping out.

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By: Kerim

Kerim — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 14:32:23 +0000

I also think it is important for us to be honest, as teachers, that what is best for the student’s own learning process is not necessarily what will get them the best grade. I tell my students that if they want to really learn something they need to take risks, to overreach, and that doing so may, in fact, result in a lower grade. For instance, when choosing a paper topic there is always a safe bet and a more risky one. Not everyone will be able to pull off the more risky option – they may in fact fall flat on their faces – but they will learn much more by trying. Now I try to take their risk taking into account when grading – but such students are usually B+ students, not A students.

For example, a student may try to apply a concept learned in another class when it doesn’t really apply to the topic at hand. The one who stuck to the paper topic as assigned will end up with the better grade, but the other student will probably learn more from having tried and failed to move beyond what we had talked about in class.

(Of course, there is always the possibility that they are just being lazy and they didn’t actually read the assigned reading, so they figure they can save time by using something they did read – even then, I think laziness can be a great source of creativity – but still, no “A.”)

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By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 22:59:02 +0000

So far, none of my students have come out of my classes concerned that I’ve spent too much time discussing the gender symbolism of initiation instead of getting down to the more marketable skill of learning how best to incise initiate’s backs. Perhaps a lab section?

More seriously, in my experience students who are uninterested in learning typically feel this way because they’ve been failed by bad teachers who have managed to convince them academia is boring, fatuous, etc. So I typically try to 1) make studying interesting and 2) explain to them how reasoning, argumentation and yes, proper punctuation are in fact business skills that they will need in their careers. So I always emphasize that although the content may not be relevant for their career, the skills you use in class ARE, that THAT is why they should try to learn them.

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By: No Nym

No Nym — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:13:11 +0000

If you wanna be my blogger, you gotta get with my friends. Make it last forever blogging never ends,
If you wanna be my blogger, you have got to give,
Blogging is too easy, but that’s the way it is.

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By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:49:42 +0000

I generally agree with this post, and the attitudes of the commenters so far. However, a word of caution: there’s a lot to be said for getting a job. And sometimes, a student’s interest in getting a job is not manifested in terms of a desire for an A based on mediocre work. Sometimes the student’s anxiety on those grounds stems from a concern that what they are learning is the academic version of their field, not the trade version. Perhaps this is less of an issue in anthropology, where there’s less of a standard business version of the field, but as a law student, its certainly a worry I have at times.

Sometimes I feel concerned that, while I can wax eloquent on various legal theories and political philosophy, I am going to have to learn how to actually, you know, pursue and try a case, *after* I obtain employment. Which of course I will, law school has adopted that way of doing things intentionally. But its worth at least considering. Is the reason your students seem to have no desire to excel because they are interested only in credentialing, or because they want to excel in an aspect of your subject which you are not teaching them?

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By: Michaela

Michaela — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:00:10 +0000

From the other side of the pond, I understand your concerns in highlighting what it is that students really want.

In my experience in the UK higher education market, the students are not concerned either for satisfaction or their grades. They do not want to know what they need to do to get the highest mark. They would rather settle for mediocre and not put in the blood, sweat and tears that they need to get a first class honours. What they want, is a piece of paper that says they have a degree, all so that they can get a job.

Given this shift in expectations of the students, academic staff are experiencing a transformation in the system, which they are trying to overcome, with greater and lesser degrees of success.

For further discussion of the impact that this is having on the academic life cycle of social anthropologists in the UK, a new blog has been set up recently which will be addressing these changes – http://learningandteachinginhe.blogspot.com

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By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 05:46:56 +0000

Nice post, Rex.

In my seminars on advertising and marketing in Japan, I begin by telling my students that not once in my over two decades of working in the advertising business have I seen anyone make big bucks by repeating what others have done. I then explain that doing a competent job of gathering and presenting information will get them at most a “B” in my class. To get an “A” they will have to impress me. That will mean doing markedly better than members of this class and others who have taken it before him and will—necessarily—involve taking the risk of trying to do something original.

For a lot of students that’s a scary proposition and many never do get over the shock of discovering that I mean what I say when I say that doing what the teacher says to do will never be enough. What encourages me is the number who do get the message, work their butts off, and produce really interesting work.

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By: Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

Golublog: An Anthropology Blog — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Savage Minds blog entry . Doing an op-ed piece about teaching and the state of the academy when you are as green as I am is, of course, a crazy and hubristic thing to do. But I’ll use the starlet’s excuse: “I was young! I needed the money!

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