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Articles Tagged ‘Teaching’

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Reading Byron after Columbine

Friday, May 18th, 2007

On Wednesday I began teaching my new English Literature 2 class (from the Romantics to post-colonial and postmodern literature), one of those four-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week intensive surveys. I began, as I always do, by discussing what the so-called “Romantics” celebrate in their poetry: nature, sex, drugs, revolution, social justice, non-materialism, the artist genius, the Byronic or romantic outcast…. These values were an easier sell forty years ago than they are now, but the one that strikes no sparks at all from contemporary students is the notion of the romantic outcast. The very word gives them chills. [read on]

Learning “Humanities”

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

I’ve been having a perfectly wonderful time grading exams today. No, really. I mean it. One of the courses I teach is called, for lack of a better term, “Humanities.” I require students to attend or see ten “cultural events” or objects (paintings, sculptures, buildings, rock concerts, car shows, dance performances, opera, etc.) and to (1) compile a portfolio in which they comment on what they’ve seen, using the terms applicable to that field, (2) make two oral reports to the whole class on what they saw, using those terms, and (3) write, at the end of the semester, an extended essay about the impact on them of those experiences. (This of course invites what they call “sucking up” or saying what they think the teacher wants to hear; but there is a genuine quality in many of their papers that encourages me to believe it isn’t all sucking up.) Most of my students come from the working class. Most are, by US standards, “poor.” That’s why they’re attending community college. They had little exposure to art in their childhoods; their school teachers were busy teaching them to pass multiple-choice tests, not how to see the world around them. Most of them had never been to an art museum or a live theatre performance till I forced them to do it. Here’s a sample of what they’re telling me: [read on]