Self-Doubt and Teaching

A while back, I told a friend about my students, "Every year I'm a year older and and every year they're the same age." He didn't quite get why I'd have trouble relating to them and I realized that I'd explained myself poorly. I'd like to take another shot at it here.

It’s not that I don’t relate to them, although the cultural gap is growing—not all of them have seen Star Wars, for example, and most sitcoms I watched they haven’t. They still know who Madonna is. The problem is that I became me because of a charismatic experience of being taught by someone who could really do the job when I was their age. In comic book terms, to be a perfect geek, it was my origin.

I face my origin every time I teach. I face that romantic passion that propelled me down this course. When a man is a young, he is willing to pay any price for the object of his passion. All you can see is the Holy Grail, shining, clothed in white samite. No price can be too great to taste again this holy glory. This moment is, at its essence charismatic, in the Weberian sense of the term.

Charisma is the experience of the divine. This can, but need not refer to a deity. Rather, it is the experience of newly found power against the monotony and limitation of everyday life. Most students have experienced this only in its romantic form, which we call infatuation. You meet that special someone and, suddenly everything becomes possible. Their very presence is intoxicating. You feel you can do anything at all when that person is with you. I ask the students if that feeling is love. I always love their emotional response. They know that it’s not but, looking in their eyes, you can feel the pain that accompanied their discovery that it wasn’t. The students tell you it’s not because it doesn’t last, that you don’t really know the person yet and that when you do, they’re never as magnificent as they seem while you’re infatuated

I explain to them that the reason that the person seems perfect is that because our image of them is one-sided. We can see only what we like. Invariably, everything has another side and the thing that we like contains things that we don’t like that are associated with it. In fact, we often learn that the thing that we like needs that thing that we don’t like in order to work at all. So while what we imagine is more imperfect than the world in the sense that the world is much more complex and our vision is invariably too simple and reductionist to be of practical use, what we imagine is more perfect than the world in the sense that it is inspiring, it lets us know what we desire to change the world into. But the imagination has a powerful impact on our emotions. Human beings love power and the imagination is at the root of that love. You have to be able to imagine the world differently in order for power to be meaningful.

Well, when I was their age, I took up the quest to become a professor. I loved what a good teacher could do and loved theory. I wanted to be the one and forge the other. The price didn’t matter; I would take up the quest. When I said I would do anything, I had no way of understanding what that word “anything” meant. I did not understand pain or sorrow in anything but the most superficial sense. This is the essence of innocence. Innocence is a strange thing in that it is both beautiful and a source of shame. We try to preserve it in our children because of its beauty. Yet losing it shows us that we cannot be who we imagined ourselves to be and this is a source of pain and, for a moment at least, shame.

I see that innocence in their eyes. I loved the intoxication of charisma, the romantic zeal, the passion of being young. I see a very young Talal in their eyes and I know the road that they will walk and what they will learn on that road. Because I am, sadly, very romantic I remember the pain all too vividly. I cannot shield them from it. I would not be their teacher if I did.

I know what my teachers were for me and I know, therefore, the limits of what I can be for them. I remember how I judged my teachers when I was their age. Because I know the pain of their journey and how badly I needed a teacher when I was young, I live in fear of their judgment. But it is not really their judgment. It is the judgment of that young Talal whose innocence I have spent. I know his suffering exactly. It is his passion that I have spent and if he were to look at me and ask, “What have I become?” I feel as if I would wither and die.

Now and then, there is a student whom you must perforce disappoint because they want to be indulged in a childlike way and you must be stern. Most of the time, I do this without difficulty. But, now and then, there is one who reminds me very strongly of the old Talal. Now the old Talal was a great believer in legitimate power. But now and then there were times in which he could not defer and then he was quite defiant. When it happens that I have a student who reminds me of the young Talal and he or she is defiant with me, even though I am certain that I have not wronged him or her, I cannot help but wonder if I have become that which I hated as a young man. I do not believe I have. But there is always room for doubt.

One can’t do without self-doubt. It is central to good leadership. Machiavelli said something along the lines of, “A leader needs good information, but hierarchy distorts good information. All you can do is reassure your subordinates that they can tell you anything. But if they can actually say anything to you, it because they have no respect for you.” For this reason, a leader needs self-doubt. Because in the final analysis, the leader is responsible for his actions and must actively work to compensate for the fact that the better he does his job, the less able others are to check him and the worse his flow of information becomes. Without self-doubt, any leader will become a tyrant.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll keep coming back. But seeing myself through their eyes is the part that gets harder on me every year.

Why I Hate Online Classes

Teaching online sucks. This is the first five minutes of a lecture. It took me hours to compile. I gotta admit I gotta admit I'm glad the class was cancelled.

Thinking About Ethical Neutrality in Teaching, Part I

Teaching went fairly well this term. The class design isn’t really where I want it to be quite yet, but it’s getting close. When you start applying for jobs, the vogue thing is to have a teaching philosophy. At some point I have to develop one of my own. It’s a while before I go on the market (there’ that nasty bit called the dissertation to finish first). But I’ve been pretty focused this term and so, I thought I would reward myself by allowing some philosophical musing. I’ve really scaled back on indulgences (like this blog) and I need to get cracking on cleaning the house and writing my oft-referred-to-seldom-seen research proposal. But some fun first.

The excerpt is from a play called History Boys, by Alan Bennett, the playwright who brought us, among other texts, The Madness of King George. Unlike most teacher stories, the teachers are very human. The play is a marvelously constructed study in different types of conflict The excerpt we’re going to read is the central intellectual conflict between the two leading characters, Mr. Hector and Mr. Irwin. Strangely, from my perspective, both are queer. Today, I'll do the exegesis and next time, I'll do the proper discussion.

HECTOR:	A romantic idealist who is obsessed with the ostensible purpose of education—that it help you live a good life. He is meaning, fleeing from the violence of being represented in a form. His self-image is that of a rebel who protects his students from, well, “mechanized petrification.” When Hector hits the boys, it’s typically with a rolled up paper and symbolic and not painful. The boys ham it up in response. They have a tender and deeply humorous relationship. Hector has a good deal of trouble with the problem that life cannot be lived entirely on the level of grand meaning. He has a reprehensible penchant for feeling up his male students’ crotches while taking them for rides on his motorcycle. His wife doesn’t know and apparently doesn’t care enough to find out. Hector is now stuck team teaching with Irwin because he got caught.
IRWIN:	A tremendously gifted rhetorician with an all-consuming obsession with controlling his image in the eyes of others, he nonetheless comes across as engaging, affable and charming. He is a very able teacher. While he lacks a moral compass, his need to control his image prevents him from falling into the sorts of difficulties that have essentially done Hector in. In the play, the character’s fate is to be bound to a wheelchair and to become deeply corrupt. In the movie, he’s on crutches for a few weeks and he becomes less corrupt.
DAKIN:	The best-looking boy in class and among the most clever in an exceptionally brainy class. He is already sleeping with the headmaster’s secretary. He is very aware of the queer characters’ sexual attraction to him. My guess is that he’s a Kinsey 2. Destined to be a lawyer, he is enormously attracted to Irwin, as Irwin offers him the power of becoming a player in the game. He has issues with Hector, although it doesn’t seem that getting felt up on a motorcycle is prominent among them. Ironically, he is the character who has the clearest view of Irwin’s immorality. Strangely, while I don’t think he shares that immorality, he does not seem disturbed by it.
POSNER:	The youngest boy, probably a Kinsey 6, he has a deep crush on Dakin, who, while not encouraging Posner, is not at all upset by the fact. Posner is the only student that Hector will not feel up. My gut instinct is that the reason this is the case is that Posner is the only one of the boys who might really want to feel back. I doubt Hector is really up to something like that. Posner is Hector’s best student, although not his favorite. Posner does, however, care very deeply for the ideals of truth and beauty. He is the sort of boy who is wounded by his education. This is the type of wound that never fully heals. In the play, he winds up isolated and a little insane. In the movie, he becomes a teacher with a deep understanding of melancholy.

It’s strange that Bennett should change the Irwin and Posner’s fate so dramatically for the film. Whether this is pandering to Hollywood or relenting mercy for his characters, I cannot tell. The other boys don’t need too much description to understand the scene.

Boys come in, followed by Hector. They sit glumly at their desks.

IRWIN	Would you like to start?
HECTOR	I don’t mind.
IRWIN	How do you normally start? It is your lesson. General Studies.
HECTOR	The boys decide. Ask them.
IRWIN	Anybody?

The boys don’t respond.

HECTOR	Come along, boys. Don’t sulk.
DAKIN	We don’t know who we are, sir. Your class or Mr Irwin’s.
IRWIN	Does it matter?
TIMMS	Oh yes, sir. It depends if you want us thoughtful. Or smart.

The first criticism of teaching, if you will. Students are aware of their instructors’ expectations and clearly put on a performance. An inevitable part of any relationship of power, yet I imagine one that is not consonant with Hector’s self-image. Hector wants to break through the scene to a moment that is “real.” Timms is the class smart aleck. His suggestion that all the world, including Mr. Hector’s class, is a play, doesn’t go over very well with Hector.

HECTOR	He wants you civil, you rancid little turd. (Hits him.)
TIMMS	Look, sir. You’re a witness. Hitting us, sir. He could be sacked.
IRWIN	Settle down. Settle down. I thought we might talk about the Holocaust.
HECTOR	Good gracious. Is that on the syllabus?

The opening of the rift begins here. A statement like “Good gracious. Is that on the syllabus?” is almost completely bizarre for Hector, a teacher who routinely ignores syllabi. For him to ask a question like “Is that on the syllabus?” is a clear admission of discomfort.

IRWIN	It has to be. The syllabus includes the Second World War.
HECTOR	I suppose it does.
IRWIN	Though in any case the scholarship questions aren’t limited to a particular curriculum.

Irwin has been hired by the headmaster to prepare the boys for scholarship examination to get into Oxford and Cambridge. A subject is a subject to him. He’s there to teach a technique.

HECTOR

But how can you teach the Holocaust?

An ethical question directed at Irwin. To Hector, a subject’s not just a subject. Moreover, the question is not asking for the proper technique. Hector clearly means that one cannot teach the Holocaust.

IRWIN

Well, that would do as a question. Can you ... should you ... teach the Holocaust? Anybody?

The question is neatly deflected. Presumably, from Hector’s perspective, this is a dilemma that is to be resolved by the instructor before class begins. But it’s always good form for a teacher to throw a hard question out to the room. Irwin is a master of form.

AKTHAR	It has origins. It has consequences. It’s a subject like any other.
SCRIPPS	Not like any other, surely. Not like any other at all.
AKTHAR	No, but it’s a topic.

Akhtar speaks in the voice of the scientist. Our methods do not change because of how we feel about the subject. If they do, we have clearly not practiced ethical neutrality.

HECTOR	They go on school trips nowadays, don’t they? Auschwitz. Dachau. What has always concerned me is where do they eat their sandwiches? Drink their Coke?
CROWTHER	The visitors’ centre. It’s like anywhere else.
HECTOR	Do they take pictures of each other there? Are they smiling? Do they hold hands? Nothing is appropriate. Just as questions on an examination paper are inappropriate. How can the boys scribble down an answer however well put that doesn’t demean the suffering involved? And putting it well demeans it as much as putting it badly.

Hector’s concern, then, is one of reverence—our reverence for the dead, for these dead who experienced and suffered “unspeakable” horror. To give a thing a name, to speak that name, makes the thing an object. It makes it subject to our power. The emotional impact of an object must, perforce, be less than that of an unfathomable source of awe. Objects are objects because they can be manipulated. Much like the name of God, Hector would not speak of the horror, for in his view we should not become desensitized to it. Such an awful thing should not lose its awe.

IRWIN	It’s a question of tone, surely. Tact.
HECTOR	Not tact. Decorum.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

TACT:	Ready and delicate sense of what is fitting and proper in dealing with others, so as to avoid giving offence, or win good will; skill or judgement in dealing with men or negotiating difficult or delicate situations; the faculty of saying or doing the right thing at the right time.
DECORUM:	That which is proper, suitable, seemly, befitting, becoming; fitness, propriety, congruity, especially in dramatic, literary, or artistic composition: That which is proper to a personage, place, time, or subject in question, or to the nature, unity, or harmony of the composition; fitness, congruity, keeping.

Decorum refers to that which is appropriate to the object about which a person speaks. For Hector, to speak of this must be an act of reverence. Tact refers to what one says to win over the listener. To Irwin, what is central is understanding how to avoid the emotions that would prevent his point from being made. An object is an object. The key to dealing with objects is knowing how to use them. Whether the object is the subject of discussion or the subject who listens, an object is an object.

LOCKWOOD	What if you were to write that this was so far beyond one’s experience silence is the only proper response?
DAKIN	That would be your answer to lots of questions, though, wouldn’t it, sir?
HECTOR	Yes. Yes, Dakin, it would.
DAKIN	‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.’

Hector groans and puts his head in his hands.

That's right, isn't it, sir? Wittgenstein.

I have some pity here for Hector, although I feel Bennett is so good to him that I ought to be made of sterner stuff for the sake of justice. The hardest thing for a teacher to hear is that the point of his or her teaching, the point over which he or she has labored to persuade the student, has not sunk in at all. We try so hard to guide their attention to what we profess to be valuable. When we no longer occupy the stage of their mind however, it is shocking to see what they have instead taken from what we said. They’ve listened, but they have not taken the point. These moments of futility are the hardest ones for me to bear.

IRWIN	Yes. That's good.
HECTOR	No, it's not good. It's ... flip. It's ... glib. It's journalism.

OED tells us that, a journal is, among other things, “A record of public events or of a series of public transactions, noted down as they occur day by day or at successive dates, without historical discussion.” The word “journalism” is, of course, a round condemnation in this particular text. I can’t help thinking that the distinction of recording events without historical discussion is the reason why. Although, clearly, this attack is made on the historical discussion itself. I think the essence of the insult is that the historical discussion is not real and is, in some sense, a sensationalist fraud.

DAKIN	But it's you that taught us it.
HECTOR	I didn't teach you and Wittgenstein didn't screw it out of his very guts in order for you to turn it into a dinky formula. I thought that you of all people were bright enough to see that.
DAKIN	I do see it, sir. Only I don't agree with it. Not . . not any more.

Dakin, who perhaps for a time has been under Hector’s spell, is disenchanted. I don’t know if that disenchantment is with Hector’s ideals, with Hector himself, or both.

TIMMS	Sir.
HECTOR	(head in his hands) Yes?
TIMMS	You told us once. . . it was to do with the trenches, sir ... that one person's death tells you more than a thousand. When people are dying like flies, you said, that is what they are dying like.

For once, Timms isn’t making a wise crack. He’s beginning to make intuitive leaps between new material and other things he’s learned. He’s beginning to think. He’s not there yet, but he’s gaining on it.

POSNER

Except that these weren't just dying. They were being processed. What is different is the process.

There it is. The moment of insight.

IRWIN	Good.
HECTOR	No, not good. Posner is not making a point. He is speaking from the heart.

Irwin is praising Posner’s insight. What Hector objects to is not the praise, but the reason for the praise. Irwin is praising the technical performance, not the meaning of the statement. What offends Hector is the divorce of rationality from sacred meaning and its grafting onto a purely instrumental process in which the outcome is a simple and mundane victory or loss. He would not see sacred meaning fall into Irwin’s hands. The tools of the temple were never meant to be used for Irwin’s kind of work.

DAKIN	So? Supposing we get a question on Hitler and the Second War and we take your line, sir, that this is not a crazed lunatic but a statesman.
HECTOR	A statesman?
IRWIN	Not a statesman, Dakin, a politician. I wouldn't say statesman.
DAKIN	Politician, then, and one erratically perhaps, but still discernibly operating within the framework of traditional German foreign policy ...
IRWIN	Yes?
DAKIN	... and we go on to say, in accordance with this line, that the death camps have to be seen in the context of this policy.

Pause.

IRWIN	I think that would be ... inexpedient.
HECTOR	Inexpedient? Inexpedient?

Dakin is exulting in new-found power and using it to make a swipe at Hector. Irwin is focused on the work and probably doesn’t notice. Hector is outraged by the fact that Irwin is completely senseless to the meaning of what Dakin has just said.

IRWIN

I don't think it's true, for a start ...

This is Irwin’s genius. The argument isn’t tactful, so he calls it untrue. Don’t be the Devil’s Advocate unless you can win the case. The win-loss record is what makes the reputation.

SCRIPPS	But what has truth got to do with it? I thought that we'd already decided that for the purposes of this examination truth is, if not an irrelevance, then so relative as just to amount to another point of view.
HECTOR	Why can you not simply condemn the camps outright as an unprecedented horror?

The obvious, moral answer. Hector is upset because coming to this conclusion should not, in his view, take so much work. Notice that because of the timing of Hector's outburst, Irwin is freed from answering Scripps' very poignant question.

There is slight embarrassment.

LOCKWOOD	No point, sir. Everybody will do that. That's the stock answer, sir ... the camps an event unlike any other, the evil unprecedented, etc., etc.
HECTOR	No. Can't you see that even to say etcetera is monstrous? Etcetera is what the Nazis would have said, the dead reduced to a mere verbal abbreviation. What have we learned about language? Orwell. Orwell.

This is a link to Orwell’s essay, if you’re interested. Hector has lost the room. His attempt to sacrilize the method of reason and link it solely to the good has failed to win the class over. He has failed, like Plato before him. Unlike Plato, however, he was in the room to hear his students reject his teaching.

LOCKWOOD	All right, not etcetera. But given that the death camps are generally thought of as unique, wouldn't another approach be to show what precedents there were and put them ... well ... in proportion?
SCRIPPS	Proportion!
DAKIN	Not proportion then, but putting them in context.

Tact. Dakin’s getting the hang of it now.

POSNER

But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained then it can be explained away.

Posner sees Hector’s point more clearly than anyone else in the room. Indeed, we discover, a few lines later, the reason that he might be more inclined to. He alone in this room is living the argument. Recall that Hector’s argument is pedagogical. It is an argument about the proper values for teaching to follow, a protest of the tactical process that Irwin is teaching.

RUDGE

‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.’

Hector groans.

To understand all is to forgive all. What Hector is trying to say about why the Holocaust shouldn’t be taught has just become fodder for the process Irwin is teaching. This happened because Posner has learned that point by taking part in the debate sincerely. What Hector has tried to teach as a supreme value has become one more clever position, despite the fact that Posner is utterly sincere and not trying to be clever for the sake of cleverness. Irwin’s winning the game, the game that Hector refuses to let be a game. "He shoots, he scores!" Leave it to Rudge, the class jock, to see the puck slide in most clearly.

IRWIN	That’s good, Posner.
POSNER	It isn’t ‘good’. I mean it, sir.

And Posner did mean it, too. The irony, however, is that without the process that Irwin is championing, Posner would never had faced the dilemma and never formulated the position. Remember that Hector would never have let the dialogue happen, had he been given a choice.

DAKIN

But when we talk about putting them in context it’s only the same as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After all, monasteries had been dissolved before Henry VIII, dozens of them.

Dakin is intoxicated. A world in which nothing is sacred is a world where everything is a potential object of power. What's whiskey compared to that?

POSNER	Yes, but the difference is, I didn’t lose any relatives in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
IRWIN	Good point.
SCRIPPS	You keep saying, ‘Good point.’ Not good point, sir. True. To you the Holocaust is just another topic on which we may get a question.
IRWIN	No. But this is history. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don’t see it and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past and one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be ... even on the Holocaust.

The bell goes.

What’s sad here, is Irwin comes off really well. He comes off as a scientist should. I think the play shows us in other scenes that this isn’t what he truly believes. Yet, whatever Irwin's intentions, the awakening of Posner in the dialogue shows the power of the process.

IRWIN	I thought that went rather well.
HECTOR	Parrots. I thought I was lining their minds with some sort of literary insulation, proof against the primacy of fact. Instead back come my words like a Speak Your Weight Machine. ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.’ Ugh.
IRWIN	I was rather encouraged. They’re getting the idea.
HECTOR	Do you know what the worst thing is? I wanted them to show off, to come up with the short answer, the handy quote. I wanted them to compete. It’s time I went.
IRWIN	Went where?
HECTOR	Oh, home. Home.

In a sense, Hector really isn’t alive to Irwin. Hector’s just a helpful object. Irwin scares me.

We Beat the Fuckin’ Bears (and That's What Counts)

Now and then you need something that’s good for your soul. And on New Year’s Eve, we beat the fuckin’ Bears. That was good for my soul. I watched the game on my brother-in-law’s 42-inch TV screen. He’s got a pretty cool sound system hooked up to it. The Pack dominated the game. Rex Grossman, that limp-dicked loser, got pulled and Brian Griese threw the Bears’ only touchdown. The Packers offense came alive. Donald Driver hoisted Brett Favre—a moment that perhaps defines our season, as the Packers are becoming a real team again. And Favre cried in the interview at the end. I hope he comes back, but you know, I’m okay with it if he doesn’t. And it's not that I won't miss him.

It’s funny. For the first time I feel like the bastard is grateful for having been Brett Favre. He’s beginning to be likeable to me as a person. Yeah, I’ve worn his jersey for years. He’s Brett Favre, after all—legendary quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. I admit it. I’m in awe of him. But he’s been an asshole for a lot of his life. For the first time, he appreciated what he had. It did my heart some good. At least, if he retires, he sees clearly what he’s taken for granted and can be grateful before it’s over. He’s only a year older than me. Maybe, just maybe, he's begun to learn what football has to teach him about life. And if he has, then it hasn't been a waste and it was good that he came back. Because life is more important than football.

I’ve been dealing with something of a personal crisis over the past two weeks. That particular Arab-Israeli class was one of the hardest classes I’ve ever taught. You see, the evals weren’t good by my standards. I mean, I got an average of 4.1 out of 5 points on all the indicators—the numbers were fine. The statistical breakdown made it fairly clear that there were only one or two students who really hated my guts. That’s certainly acceptable—my guts are not there for them to love. But, basically, the general consensus on all the written eval sheets was “This class is really interesting, but it’s too damned hard.” That evoked a great deal of bitterness in me. I did tell them after all, that the course was hard. It’s the Arab-Israeli Conflict. There’s nothing easy about it. That said, their course mean was strikingly normal. The class clearly wasn’t too hard for them to handle. It was simply harder than they wished to work. And between their complaints and their numerous personal problems, they drained the soul out of me. That left me resentful, because they didn’t match my commitment to them. They just whined and bitched and killed any affection I had for them.

Of course, Craig would say to me (and he’s right) that I have to match their level of commitment. One cannot expect them to match mine. Jamie Mayerfeld once gently reminded me, “Talal, this is the most important thing in our lives, not the most important thing in theirs.” And he’s right. My emotional response to this course is a direct result of a failure in discipline on my part. My guts are not there for them to love. I try to leave them with the joy that can only be found in a genuine encounter with knowledge. But ultimately, Plato is right that education is about turning a person in the right direction and praying that they see what they need. I’m better at it than most, but at the end of the day, it's they who have to see, not me. More than just my will is at work in this process. And, ultimately, and what’s more to the point, whether they like me is not is not material. I can’t be hurt because we didn’t connect. It’s great when it happens (and has happened often enough that I know that I don’t suck at this), but ultimately my guts are not here for them to love.

Like Favre, I have a deeply rooted need to believe that I can be the difference maker. The last two seasons have taught Favre that football is a team effort. Now don't get me wrong—Favre was never the sort of asshole that Terrell Owens or Randy Moss are—Favre’s a genuine leader. He doesn’t have delusions that he doesn’t need the team. But he used to believe that no matter what went wrong, he could always make the difference. The past two years have been a sharp lesson to him that for a man to be Brett Favre, you need more than raw talent and discipline. You need a supporting cast. Yeah, Favre has made the difference for the Packers for a whole decade. But there are no-win scenarios. And some seasons, you can’t win for losing. Yes, I made errors last term. But ultimately, if any class makes it to the next level, it relies on more than my will and skill. I worked goddamned hard last term. But that isn't enough. They’ve got to want to go there. And now and then, you get a bunch that just aren’t that interested in working that hard, just like sometimes, you’re rebuilding.

I need to remember the victory over the Bears. Even in a lackluster season, there are golden moments. And there were golden moments in that class. I’ve got to remember my love of the game. Favre seems to have learned to be grateful for being Brett Favre. I need to remember to be grateful for being me. I’m a pretty lucky bastard. I get to teach stuff like the Arab-Israeli conflict for a living. And I need to get the head straight about that last course. Life is a slow boring of hard boards. I can’t lose my passion or my sense of perspective.

A Question of Discipline

Lenny Sanchez, one of my students, came by to go over his last paper and plot strategy for his next one. When talking about future iterations of the course, he suggested to me that one way I might work more classroom dialogue into the class is by reducing my coverage of history by as much as half and making students much more accountable for their reading in order to obtain historical knowledge. The need to make more time for discussion is vital. Where we’ve had most of the open discussion is during the prep sessions. But it’s at that point that they’re most able to actually discuss the material, as they begin to argue with a background of knowledge. And the dialogues are superb. We do need more of those moments, though. Two or three a term isn't enough.

Of course this constructive engagement comes to me by way of one of the most methodical undergraduate students I’ve met in my career. I can count on Lenny to read. The same is not true of most undergraduates. But his point is well taken—I do mirror their reading a great deal. The current system is not adding as much value as it could. Lenny asked me what the central message of the course was. I told him that the central message is that while the content of any prejudice is entirely constructed, prejudice itself is endemic to human nature. The content of a particular prejudice is taught, but in the absence of that teaching, we’d simply go ahead and create new prejudices reflexively. The most that we can do is to internalize the discipline of trying to control our bias. This is a lifelong struggle. We will never be beyond the effect of prejudice. Lenny’s response was to say that my core message is getting lost in the history. What could be more disturbing for a teacher?

The multiple choice quiz is undoubtedly unpopular. What I used to do for students in the writing link is make them timeline, which frankly, seems to me to be far more work. Yet I’ve never encountered the resistance to the timeline that I do to the multiple choice quiz. It’s as if the students resent the very fact that they are required to use their memory. That itself I find offensive. One can’t speak coherently about the facts if one doesn’t know them. Yet if it is my goal to better prepare them for the paper, I personally think the timeline is more beneficial. Perhaps I should return to that.

I’ve never really liked the idea, but I might try using the Socratic method and just randomly call on people to present the material and assume they’ve internalized the data on a level necessary to discuss it. I don’t know quite what to do yet. I do know that I can’t teach this the way I teach an intro level class. In order to understand this, they must reach a higher level of discipline. If they don’t attain that discipline needed to understand it, it is definitely better that they not attempt it at all. I actively prefer that they not. The half-baked idiotically loose images that people have of this conflict are a core part of why it is so lethal. I refuse to become part of the problem. But Ellis has always made a point of telling me, “Look, Talal, I understand what you’re saying. But that isn’t going to shut down their curiosity. They’re still going to look for an easy answer. Slapping their hand and telling them to behave isn’t going to solve the problem.”

At the start of term, Glenn Mackin and I were having a conversation. He suggested that the ideas are what make the detail worthwhile. But the difficulty is that one can’t understand these particular ideas well without a strong command of the detail. But I need to find some way of making them want to master the detail. What they want is a fun little pseudo-seminar where they get a smattering of the tastes and colors of the ideas and get to play with them and explore. That’s absolutely out of the question. That said, there is a place for play and exploration, even with ideas as potentially lethal as these. But I’m having trouble finding the boundaries.

How do you make someone want an arsenal of facts at their command?