I don't think it matters much if one teaches in Trinity or a cave, education for the practice of liberation, democracy and equality must overcome the ego of the educator (they must know what I know using the ways I came to know it), and grapple with the notion that people who we hope will struggle for freedom will not be rightly propelled as self actualizing people if they are "learning" out of fear.
Liberalism declares its position and beats its breast in order to prove it. Radicalism, I think, looks deep into the student, seeks strenghts (which are structurally necessarily there), both affective and cognitive. and builds on them. This is true in lecture halls and in seminars, and where it is not we need to find other ways to teach.
Of course they should know the Bolsheviks, the Long March, surplus value, reification, and why people are so easily made into instruments of their own oppression. Perhaps, first, they need to be told, or to discover, that they really can undrstand and change some of the world--and to wonder why messages of nearly all the school they have encountered are otherwise.
Michael, who initiated the thread, writes in ways that I suspect underpin his pedagogy as well---kindly, interactively, analytically, patiently, persistently, engagingly--and sometimes meditatively.
Every time I teach I wish I taught better, and can remember in detail all the dumb things i did, out of habit. Still, I also remember things that went well, when my ego slipped to the back and we were having a good conversation.
I figure Michael had a crummy day.
Why give quizzes?
At 07:29 PM 2/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Michael Yates wrote:
>
>>I have always tried not to an elitist academic. I seldom lose my temper
>>and I always treat students with respect. I am not telling you these
>>things as a joke or to make fun of students. But it seems to me that
>>capitalism has succeeded rather well in preparing young people to
>>believe just about anything and not to know how to analyze anything.
>
>When I talk to undergraduates I'm impressed by they don't seem to give a
>fuck about anything. They sit there, blankly. People tell me it's fear, but
>if it is, it's disguised as a great ennui. Maybe it's just me, or what I
>have to say, or maybe it's been the colleges I've been to. There are enough
>exceptions to make me think that maybe it isn't just me or what I have to
>say - Pace, the CUNY colleges (both of which are filled with motivated
>immigrant and native working class students), and the 2 Canadian
>universities I've visited (UBC & Laurentian). And then there are the
>seniors at Trinity, the elite Manhattan private school (George Soros' kids
>go there). They're very smart, very interested, and full of comments and
>questions. Of course, the school spends something like $23,000 per student.
>
>Doug
>
Rich Gibson
Program Coordinator of Social Studies
Wayne State University
College of Education
Detroit MI 48202
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/meap.html
Life travels upward in spirals.
Those who take pains to search the shadows
of the past below us, then, can better judge the
tiny arc up which they climb,
more surely guess the dim
curves of the future above them.