as for teaching pedagogy, pshaw. i doubt it would help. the teachers of pedagogy often don't have a clue either. mine was even more foundational a point, altho pomo pedagogy does explore this issue - a lot. my only point was, if you unpack the way we teach, just a wee bit - peel back only a couple of layers of the onion - you will find that almost every aspect of the practice reproduces capitalist socialist relations - the very relations of exchange this "free" university model is supposed to overcome. this goes for grading, for ideas of what counts as the "proper" amount of work and who defines it, etc.
IOW, you aren't going to create a space that challenges to the relations of exchange by slapping a price tag on it with the MSRP slashed and a big red NOw 100$ off! FREE!!!! $0.00!!!!!!"
more anon to the rest of your interesting comments. just not a lot of time today.
At 07:23 AM 2/28/2012, Wojtek S wrote:
>shag: "no one ever is taught to be a university teacher. i was in THE
>only university that, at the time, taught people how to become
>teachers"
>
>[WS:] This certainly rings the bell. I was taught how to do research
>and write research papers, nut not how to teach. This was to be
>acquired by osmosis, I guess. OTOH, they did not teach grant writing
>either - a skill that is now crucial for obtaining academic
>employment.
>
>While we are at teaching teaching - there was a lot of talk about it
>among grad student in my grad school - perhaps because most of them
>worked as instructors or TAs of one sort or another. In other words,
>since the subject was not formally taught, people tried to teach
>themselves by sharing experiences. The impression that I got from
>these conversations was that one cannot just teach - one has to
>entertain the students. This idea was lost on non-US TAs, especially
>Asians, who were good at math and science but not so good at
>entertaining, and there were some serious cultural differences in that
>respect. They had terrible time.
>
>So while I agree that pedagogy should be a required course in all
>graduate programs, I am also aware of its limits while dealing with a
>bunch of brats who believe that when they pay the top dollar for
>university admission, it better be entertaining. Based on casual
>observations from many years ago I think that community colleges are
>much better in that respect than 4 year universities.
>
>Wojtek
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