This semester, I'm teaching ENGL 370: Junior Seminar on the topic of Popular Romance Fiction.
I've assigned Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me, Beverly Jenkins' Something Like Love (at the urging of the Smart Bitch commentors), Suzanne Brockmann's Over the Edge, and a choice between Emma Holly's Fairyville (erotica) or Francine Rivers' Redeeming Love (inspirational).
We've finished our discussion of P+P, which I used as an opportunity to explore Pamela Regis's eight elements of a romance narrative (corruption in society, meeting between hero and heroine, attraction, barrier, point of ritual death, recognition, admission of love, and betrothal). Then we moved on to Bet Me. I spent the last class analyzing the theories of love presented by the characters (Tony's Chaos theory, Liza as a "love nihilist," Cynthie's four steps to mature love, Bonnie's belief in the fairytale). Next week, we'll be discussing the fairytales mentioned in the story (Cinderella, Snow Queen, Little Red Riding Hood, Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, and on and on...). And I'll try to keep you all updated as to the progress of the class.
That is not what I wish to write about today, however. I also spent the past week dealing with a student's personal concerns about the texts I have chosen. I will not betray her confidence by detailing the discussions she and I have had about the issue. Suffice it to say it was at her urging that I added the inspirational Redeeming Love as a choice instead of the erotic Fairyville. She is uncomfortable with various aspects of at least three of the texts I assigned and was asking if she could read something else instead.
Two important realizations came to me as a result of our interactions over the week:
1. I refused to change my assigned readings. I couldn't figure out why I was quite so uncomfortable with her request until I realized that the very nature of the request perpetuated the perception that all romance novels are interchangeable. No one would think to request that a professor change the assignment of Twelfth Night for The Tempest on the grounds that they're both problematic comedies and both written by Shakespeare, because we all know that they're completely different plays, despite their superficial similarities. No one would think to request that a professor assign Austen's Northanger Abbey instead of Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho or Heinlein for Asimov, or Stephen King instead of Dean Koontz, or Tom Clancy for Clive Cussler. The pairs may all reside in the same genre, but even the most cursory of analyses would indicate that the books and authors are completely different.
This does not change for the romance genre. Reading Suzanne Brockmann's Over the Edge is completely different from reading her own Breaking Point (which completes a story arc begun in OTE) or Time Enough for Love (a time travel category), let alone different from reading another author in the same sub-genre (Catherine Mann for the romantic suspense or Diana Gabaldon for the time travel), or another sub-genre altogether.
I chose the books I chose for very specific reasons. I wished to cover a broad range of sub-genres (contemporary romantic comedy, historical, suspense, erotica/inspirational) as well as a wide range of themes (fairy tales, theories of love, humor, critique of romance narrative, violence, memory, narrative juxtapositioning of successful and unsuccessful relationships, character maturation, sexuality, redeeming nature of love, etc.) and those themes could not be covered by blithely assigning an alternate text. No other books does what Bet Me does with fairy tales. No other book does what OTE does with memory, violence, and character maturation. No other book does what Fairyville does with sexuality as a way to explore emotions.
And I would argue that it is only in a class about popular romance fiction that a student would dare to suggest alternate readings because it is only popular romance fiction that has the reputation for being interchangeable--a reputation that I refused to succumb to.
2. This realization is much more general than specific to popular romance fiction, but it was very important to my self-perception and to the reasons I spent so many years of my life training as a literary critic. Because the discussion with my student was one that began because of religious beliefs, my metaphors and imagery here are religious, but I don't think that invalidates them. I imagine novels as the distillation of a collective soul or consciousness, in which we find what the accumulation of thousands of people believe and think and hope for. The very act, therefore, of excavating the layers of a novel through analysis represents a kind of ministering to the soul of society.
I will post more about the progress of the class as warranted.
The picture is titled "Girl Reading," from a fascinating artist, Oliver Ray.
What an interesting thought process to go through, in your first time teaching romance fiction.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised to hear that a student objecting is exceptional. I suppose I'm thinking partly of the many challenges against school library books. But also I think faith-based objections are among the types one is most likely to hear about. In some classes a lot of students might find some of the assigned reading distasteful, but in my experience it's most often been the students who feel some societal sense of righteousness who have been determined enough to have such a discussion with the instructor. Sometimes that's a religious belief; sometimes it takes the form of pointing out a dearth of women or minority authors.
This kind of discussion comes up in art and music too. In the academic setting it can be difficult to argue that a course assignment is objectionable, because that view could be chalked up to "taste". The instructor can easily counter that it's not a prerequisite that one enjoy the work at the outset; one goal is to teach appreciation (i.e. alter the students' taste). Indeed, some art forms require education to enjoy them! So to have any hope of winning the argument, it's probably easier to invoke a social standard. (Of course sometimes what's couched as a "standard" is really a personal taste, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)
Very good points about the way the students request demonstrated a dismissive attitude toward romance.
ReplyDeleteI also think the student's reasoning is flawed on a very basic level. How can a person be truly educated if they never allow their beliefs to be challenged? If they never learn to view material to which they harbor moral objections from the remove of intellectual inquiry?
It smacks of special treatment for a student who voluntarily enrolls in a class expect the professor to alter 3/5 of the syllabus to accommodate their personal preferences. And it's appalling that she felt she had a right to do so.
Further, what if the books in question contained a interracial love stories? Gay love stories? At what point do the student's objections become prejudice instead of preference?
How can a person be truly educated if they never allow their beliefs to be challenged? If they never learn to view material to which they harbor moral objections from the remove of intellectual inquiry?
ReplyDeleteI think this is key. Having one's beliefs "challenged" doesn't mean that one will necessarily change one's views, but it does mean that one will be encouraged to think them through and find logical ways to explain them to others.
And even if someone is exposed to ideas they find abhorrent, that won't automatically change their minds. But reading about ideas one finds difficult or even abhorrent can be useful. How can you mount a convincing challenge to those views without understanding the ideological framework on which they depend?
I wrote this off-line before seeing Laura's comments above, and of course I am echoing her.
ReplyDeleteFascinating. I agree with you (Sarah) that the assumption that all novels of a certain genre are interchangeable is both ignorant and offensive, and of course the only way to prove that it is untrue is for the individual to be obliged to read some of them. But to me, the most interesting issue to emerge from this is what I see as a widespread tendency to blur the line between external reality and the life of the mind. Reading a book about something is not the same as doing it and living it, and never has been, thank goodness. Reading about a orgy or a religious service is not the same thing as taking part: it is a safe, controlled environment in which the reader can analyse that situation and decide whether or not she would wish to experience it in real life. One of the central specious arguments for bowdlerisation and censorship has always been that merely reading ‘obscenities’ will ‘corrupt’ the hitherto pure reader, conflating the concepts of innocence and ignorance. Possibly this goes back to a primitive, atavistic awe of the magical power of the written word, but if so, it’s about time we got over it.
I assume that this young lady, like most of us, disapproves pretty strongly of murder and gratuitous violence? If so, does she also avoid reading books or watching films and TV programmes that feature these elements? If she is aiming for consistency, she should – and she certainly should not allow herself to hear or read about any real-life sex or violence. Perhaps a future as a hermit in the desert, after the pattern of some of the early Christian saints, would be a valid career path for her. She isn’t going to need a university degree for that.
How does this student expect to be able to argue her position (whatever that is) if she has not familiarised herself with the facts that will be placed before her by those arguing against her? What, indeed, is she doing at university at all, if she has no interest in or respect for rational debate? It seems to me that her convictions should have prevented her from embarking on tertiary education at all, since her view of the world is already complete and closed, and she has no interest in hearing about alternative perceptions, even for the purpose of countering them.
We are living in times in which the manifold achievements of the Enlightenment are being systematically attacked by the ancient forces of chaos and superstition, and there is a real danger of a global descent into a Dark Age of fragmented states and religious wars during this century: societies that are still in the Middle Ages are brandishing their swords, and those that didn’t experience the Middle Ages are showing signs of wanting to recreate them. Education is the only antidote. I wonder if it will be strong enough.
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so apocalyptic, but these people scare me.
AgTigress
The student's reaction isn't unique to reading romance novels, it isn't unique to literature, and it isn't new. I taught western civilization, medieval history survey courses, and early modern history at the college level from 1965 through 1982, with a couple of years before that as a graduate assistant.
ReplyDeleteIt was a rare semester in which some student did not object to some assignment and request a substitution. The reasons varied, but most were ideological (which could vary from a Jehovah's Witness objecting to Beowulf to a feminist objecting to John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
Virginia
Laura said, "How can you mount a convincing challenge to those views without understanding the ideological framework on which they depend?"
ReplyDelete"God says it's wrong" is enough of a challenge for the people who argue that position. Rational debate doesn't enter into it, because their beliefs aren't rationally based. Their beliefs are BELIEF based and that's good enough for them. Basically, "Because He said so," and there is no need for debate, because that's all that their "reasoning" will ever come back to. You and I, as fundamentally grounded in rationality and the enlightenment tradition see this viewpoint as a weakness. They see it as a strength and as all they need to justify their viewpoint.
And AgTigress, I like your point about conflating innocence and ignorance, because, after all, isn't that what has been done to the Garden of Eden story since it was first created and analyzed. Adam and Eve were forbidden the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, conflating ignorance and innocence right from the get-go.
And Virginia, I don't know if you agree, but a feminist questioning Knox is fundamentally different in my mind from someone objecting to something on religious grounds. A feminist IS looking to break down the objectionable text on reasonable, logical grounds, whereas a religious objection to something "profane" or "filthy" is not looking to do anything other than force their views of what is "acceptable" on others, leaving no room for debate.
"God says it's wrong" is enough of a challenge for the people who argue that position. Rational debate doesn't enter into it, because their beliefs aren't rationally based. Their beliefs are BELIEF based and that's good enough for them.
ReplyDeleteYes, but what I meant was that if an evangelical Christian wants to convert other people, he/she is going to have an advantage if he/she understands the existing belief systems of those people. Didn't early Christian missionaries often incorporated pagan festivals, for example, into the Christian calendar? That's maybe a very basic example, but it makes the point that converting people is perhaps most effectively done by first understanding them and their pre-existing belief systems.
A feminist IS looking to break down the objectionable text on reasonable, logical grounds, whereas a religious objection to something "profane" or "filthy" is not looking to do anything other than force their views of what is "acceptable" on others, leaving no room for debate.
Hmm. But what about feminists who say that Mills & Boon romances are "misogynistic hate speech"? I think any ideology (religious, political, etc) can become extreme and intolerant of dissent/discussion, and equally there will tend to be other parts of the same movements which are more open to debate and discussion.
I suppose that if one genuinely believes that one's own personal convictions are god-given, one can simply leave it to god to refute one's opponents.
ReplyDeleteIf a young person of 20 or so imagines that she already knows all that she needs to know in this life, because god said so, and it's all in the bible, what the HELL is she doing taking up a place in an institution of higher education that could be occupied to better effect by somebody who knows she still has things to learn? Seriously, what is the point? What do people like this think they are in university FOR? Why do they even wish to go there?
And if she wants to devise her own course of reading for the purposes of literary criticism, directly conveyed to her by the deity, then she can do that at any time on her own account, without needing to take up a place in a course designed and taught by an older and far better-educated person who knows far more than she does.
I admire Sarah's meticulous, correct courtesy in speaking of, and I am sure, to, this very silly girl, but I am as certain as I can be that no country should be wasting the demanding and extremely expensive facilities of higher education on individuals who are unable and unwilling to benefit from them.
Virginia: why do Jehovah's Witnesses object to Beowulf? Naturally they object like anything to the study of geology or prehistory, because they accept the date for the creation of the world calculated by Archbishop Ussher in the 17th century (4004 BC), but I can't think offhand what would offend them about Beowulf. Other than the fact that Old English requires a fair amount of intellectual effort.
ReplyDeleteSarah: a feminist questioning Knox is fundamentally different in my mind from someone objecting to something on religious grounds. A feminist IS looking to break down the objectionable text on reasonable, logical grounds
ReplyDeleteI have to quibble with the breadth of that statement. As I said above, I think these challenges often arise from a sense of righteousness. Righteousness can blinker one's viewpoint too. We have to engage all kinds of viewpoints "on reasonable, logical grounds". Feminism can go awry in much the same way as unreflected religious beliefs. I think one reason there's such a counterswing against feminism and "political correctness" (what a hostile term) is that some of the ideas have been applied thoughtlessly and as a means to bully people into expressing a particular viewpoint.
I'm just glad your student came to you, rather than dropping the course or going straight to the administration--or her church, or her Facebook group, or any path that's about bullying rather than dialogue.
AgTigress: no country should be wasting the demanding and extremely expensive facilities of higher education on individuals who are unable and unwilling to benefit from them.
If education were a customer-driven business transaction, I might agree. But what people hope to learn and what they do learn are often different things. A student who approaches university as simply a means to an end (career aspirations, etc) probably ends up learning facts, ideas, and ways of thinking beyond what he or she originally envisioned. I think the gap can be especially wide between what a young or inexperienced student envisions as the possibilities, and what the university provides; all the more reason not to dismiss people on the basis of their initial intentions.
I can't think offhand what would offend them about Beowulf. Other than the fact that Old English requires a fair amount of intellectual effort.
That depends on whether one reads for basic plot, or for more nuance. There's less effort required to simply get the gist. In any case, it's not a religious argument.
..what people hope to learn and what they do learn are often different things. A student who approaches university as simply a means to an end (career aspirations, etc) probably ends up learning facts, ideas, and ways of thinking beyond what he or she originally envisioned.
ReplyDeleterfp: your comments are thoughtful and your beliefs humane and inspiring. I concede that there may be a few cases in which what you say will apply. Perhaps my cynicism is the result of being old and jaded, but I am really not sure that higher education should be readily available to those who are not genuinely motivated to make use of it. Apart from anything else, the presence of those who do not wish to learn can be inimical to the learning processes of others.
The points you make are equally applicable to secondary education, which is, rightly, universal in our societies. If a person has not understood that learning is a lifelong process, and that a closed mind is a dead mind, by the time he is 18, then I seriously doubt whether that epiphany is ever going to occur, and it is certainly unlikely to do so at the age of 20 or 21.
But I respect your views, and wish I could be as sanguine myself.
Agtigress, I'd have thought most people of twenty think they know everything important.
ReplyDeleteI think conviction doesn't equal close-mindedness.
I think there is a fundamental problem in wanting to police people's beliefs - I'm not sure who makes the decision. We refusing to educate vegans? Those with strong or abhorrent political views?
Thirdly, I think if a university education does anything, it teaches you to think. And to argue that because people have closed belief systems they ought to be denied acess to the training that could allow them to examine those belief systems - that's, for me, very counter-intuitive.
And - completely obvious point, but no-one's made it - people from my church are currently studying medicine, teaching, pharmacy - all careers for which a degree is essential. To deny them those opportunities on the basis of their faith - from the point of view of someone like myself, who is a Christian, that doesn't look like a move that creates a more wholesome society.
Marianne McA
Sorry, another brief thought. There's a TV hypnotist here - Derren Brown, who's written a book called 'Tricks of the Mind.'
ReplyDeleteGood book.
And he's obviously a really bright bloke.
He talks about a lot of things, including belief - and how bad people are at being rational. And in passing, he does explain that he was a very evangelical Christian - and I'm almost sure that took him into his student life. And I know I was surprised that he hadn't thought through obvious things - like the circularity of the argument that we know the Bible is true because Jesus says so in the Bible.
Anyway, I thought I'd nominate him as a Pleasing Thought for AgTigress: proof that sometimes an epiphany can come later, rather than sooner.
(And his way of remembering lists works.)
Marianne McA
AgTigress, I'm not sanguine, and I agree the presence of those who do not wish to learn can be inimical to the learning processes of others. I've been lucky enough to find situations in which I've been surrounded by people who enjoy learning. Not everyone has that privilege. But I think in principle we have to try to foster opportunities for people to broaden their thinking, even if it doesn't always work. There's no hope if, as Marianne McA put it, "because people have closed belief systems they [are] denied acess to the training that could allow them to examine those belief systems".
ReplyDeleteIf a person has not understood... that a closed mind is a dead mind, by the time he is 18, then I seriously doubt whether that epiphany is ever going to occur, and it is certainly unlikely to do so at the age of 20 or 21.
In the US system students finish secondary education after 12 years of school, not the 13 years common in some countries. University is therefore a four-year program, not three. First-year university students' maturity is highly variable. Teaching undergraduates, I notice substantial changes in their thinking, particularly in their articulation of their own beliefs--as opposed to parroting their parents' views. But some students successfully resist learning. I think most instructors sometimes wish the Great Fly Swatter in the Sky would give those students a hard whap.
Marianne McA: To deny... opportunities on the basis of their faith
Yikes, that's not a good prospect. However, my interpretation was that AgTigress meant people who use their beliefs as earplugs against learning. (O AgTigress, please come inspect these words I'm putting in your mouth....)
people from my church are currently studying medicine, teaching, pharmacy - all careers for which a degree is essential
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is just coincidence, but all the subjects you list are vocational ones, and given that the context for this discussion is a course in an English Department, I think the Tigress's statement was perhaps made more with the arts, rather than vocational subjects, in mind. The Tigress can, and no doubt will, correct me if my assumption is incorrect.
I really don't want to launch myself into a debate about all the differences between primarily vocational courses, such as those you listed, and ones in which the course of study has no such direct link with future employment, but there certainly is a difference. And while I wouldn't say that students taking a vocational course aren't encouraged to think for themselves, I suspect that for their lecturers that's a somewhat less important educational outcome than it would be in a non-vocational subject such as English Literature.
For example, compare this explanation of why it's worth studying for a liberal arts degree:
A liberal arts education is not intended to train you for a specific job, though it does prepare you for the world of work by providing you with an invaluable set of employability skills, including the ability to think for yourself, the skills to communicate effectively, and the capacity for lifelong learning. [...]
You will study a variety of subjects, looking at the world and its people from various points of view. You will learn about ideas and beliefs that have guided human beings and shaped civilizations for thousands of years. What does it mean to be human? What have humans done, thought about, and felt? What is truth and beauty, and what are their value to life? How have we been shaped by, and how have we shaped, our social and cultural environment? What skills, methods or techniques can be used to examine the world and its people? These are some of the key questions examined by the Arts disciplines.
with this, about studying medicine:
Studying medicine is much more than just getting your MB BS degree and becoming a doctor: medicine is a vocation and a way of life. It’s about thinking of others and putting your patients first. It is challenging and demanding, of course, but highly rewarding. It’s also about variety (variety in workplaces, patients, illnesses, colleagues and personalities); teamwork and communication with colleagues, patients and relatives.
My point is that perhaps some subjects are more likely to involve students being obliged to think about things which challenge, or are not compatible with their pre-existing beliefs, than others. And certainly if someone doesn't want to try "looking at the world and its people from various points of view," then it would probably be best for them to avoid the liberal arts.
And I apologise in advance if I've offended anyone. It's rather late in this time-zone, so that's my excuse. I'm not trying to imply that vocational courses don't involve students thinking for themselves, or that they might not encounter ethical dilemmas in the pursuit of their chosen profession.
ReplyDeleteI think the opting-out attitude is something students carry over from secondary school, and possibly even earlier. I don't know how the system works in the UK, Tigress, but here school districts are run by elected local school boards, who can decide if a certain book can be included or banned in the curriculum and the school library. It is VERY common for fundamentalists of various stripes to object to books, usually on religious or moral grounds (the latter being sex and foul language); and they very often get their way out of sheer vociferous persistence. Mel and Norma Gabler notoriously got the Texas state textbook committee to refuse to buy science books that discussed evolution. As a result, because of the sheer size of the Texas market, no publisher would even issue a science textbook that dealt with the subject.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Norma_Gabler
What is so infuriating about such people is that they simply refuse to admit that people are even ENTITLED to hold alternate views! One famous example is banning THE WIZARD OF OZ because it has Glinda the Good Witch in it, and in their beliefs witches are by definition evil. (A position that I, most of whose friends are Wiccans, find ludicrous.)
Anyway, with this sort of background in secondary school, it's no wonder they think they can treat the college curriculum like a Chinese menu as well. The proper response, if they persist, it seems to me is either to suggest they'd be happier taking a different course, or recommend that they transfer to Bob Jones University or Oral Roberts University (perhaps even Wheaton College), where they'd find a curriculum more to their liking.
There is a very interesting essay in DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, a collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's essays, reviews, and poems, about her attending (anonymously) a school board meeting that was called because someone had objected to the inclusion of her novel THE LATHE OF HEAVEN in a high school literature course. She was prepared to stand up and defend her book if necessary, but it wasn't; the teachers, students, and other parents did a bang-up job on their own.
It's nice to know that sometimes democracy and free speech work!
The student who objected to John Knox on feminist grounds did not want to analyze the text on reasonable, logical grounds.
ReplyDeleteLike the student in Sarah's class, she didn't want to read it, because its premises offended her. She wanted me to give her a substitute assignment.
The Jehovah's Witness objected to Beowulf, in that instance, because it "taught a pagan value system." It had nothing to do with the difficult of Old English, because I was using a modern translation in a history survey course.
Virginia
I shall probably miss some of the points that have been made here.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I was not proposing excluding anyone from higher education on the basis of their religious or ideological beliefs. I was suggesting that if a student, for whatever reason, showed him- or herself unwilling to learn and take direction from a lecturer, and to be unwilling to enter into the normal processes of academic debate (which will certainly mean confronting some opinions that he dislikes), then it is doubtful whether there is any purpose in that student continuing the course. What for? Either from the student's point of view or the university's, it seems to me to be a hiding to nothing.
Imagine that someone has deliberately enrolled for a learner's course in watercolour landscape painting, and then adamantly refuses to pick up a brush. Or the learner in a riding class who refuses point-blank to mount a horse? What is the point of continuing with that student?
If a student is taking an English class and is supposed to be learning about the processes of the writing, reception and criticism of novels, if she won't read some of the set books (regardless of the precise reason for that refusal), she is dead wood as far as the class is concerned. My own view is that if she had any real intellectual and personal quality, she would be reading these allegedly wicked and depraved works, and doing her best to bring her fellow-students and teacher round to her way of thinking.
Laura, I was, indeed, thinking of arts subjects, in part because that was where this debate started, and perhaps also because of my own background, but of course there are plenty of other areas in which certain ideologies would run up against reality, as in the case of the Jehovah's Witness and geological time.
Marianne: you say, 'I'd have thought most people of twenty think they know everything important.' Is that really true today? Help. It was not true when I was 20, and it is not true of the few people in their late teens and early 20s I know well at this moment. If it is genuinely the case that most 20-year-olds today
think that they have nothing more to learn, and have got all the basics sussed, then even more has gone wrong with our educational system over the last 45 years than I had realised. I can remember being acutely aware as an undergradute of all the new facts and concepts I needed to grasp and all the ways in which I would have to use them.
I am sure there are other things that people have said that I have missed, but I'll comment when I notice them again.
Virginia: thank you for the explanation, which has left me with dropped jaw, and which, I think supports my case.
ReplyDelete'The Jehovah's Witness objected to Beowulf, in that instance, because it "taught a pagan value system."' Well, duh. What the *&^%$£ was this person doing in a HISTORY class anyway? They don't 'believe' in the facts of history and prehistory, so they should keep out of it.
I think that higher education is an enormous privilege. The 20th century was the first one in which it became accessible to young people who were not from wealthy and privileged backgrounds, and I think it should be treated with the greatest respect. If we look back even as recently as the 1940s, there were countless highly intelligent people who had not been able to stay in schooling beyond the age of 14, people who would have made the most of a degree course, and would have been able to better their own and their family's positions as a result. They were not given the chance.
My own husband, born in 1931, never went to university, through a combination of financial considerations and the educational disruption of the War. He is a now a respected scholar, with a D.Litt. degree earned on the basis of his published work (not an honorary degree - an examined one), but he had to take a long and hard path to reach that point. I was luckier, because I enjoyed the wider access to higher education that was the result of the 1945 Education Act in this country, but I was very aware of my good fortune even as an 18-year-old.
I am sorry if I sound like a really grumpy, bad-tempered old woman, but I am honestly resentful of pampered young people who have the banquet of higher learning placed before them as a right, and then just play with the food.
Sorry about typos, everyone.
ReplyDeleteAgTigress, I'm right there with you on most levels, but my long talk with my student did allow me to understand her viewpoint a little more, although not obviously to accept it. Her issue is that the language and certain sexual situations create images in her mind that she finds difficult to deal with. They are truly disgusting to her, filth, garbage. I don't think I'm overstating her stand here. While I vehemently disagree with her, if one truly feels that way, is one supposed to accept being disgusted, nauseated, and attempt to find some value in that which disgusts you or legitimately protest the text as without value? I would obviously argue yes. I think there's redeeming social value in pretty much any text out there, even if the value is the attempt to understand why other people might find it interesting.
ReplyDeleteBut then, these texts, and the situations in them that she is protesting, are not snuff films or kiddie porn.
I guess my point is, while I agree with everything that everyone is saying in the comments here, to a greater or lesser degree, I also vaguely understand her viewpoint. I think she's wrong, but I think if she considers what I want her to read on a level with snuff films or kiddie porn, then she was right to protest. I might question her value system that claims that a little swearing or mention of various sexual practices are truly heinous, but I guess I'd rather have her protest to me and us be able to negotiate an armed settlement, than have the American Family Association on my back unexpectedly.
AgTigress - I'm glad you were a more thinking teenager than I was.
ReplyDeletePerhaps my experience of university was more of a shock because schooling in N. Ireland was politically and religiously segregated.
I've such clear memories of going to university and encountering people who not only didn't believe what I believed - which I was fine with - but who didn't accept the truths that underlay my belief system. (I'm probably talking more about different closed political belief systems - can't remember huge religious debates.)
I agree with you about students having to accept the course. If they don't cover the material, they should fail. Being a wishy-washy sort of person, I'd add a generalised rider that the university has some responsibility to examine it's own belief system when setting the course materials - but I know Sarah would have done that.
"They don't 'believe' in the facts of history and prehistory, so they should keep out of it."
I'd disagree with that.
Marianne McA
Hrm, we need an edit feature. I would argue yes to finding social value in that which disgusts you when it is an accepted part of culture. Kiddie porn and slash films are not an accepted part of culture. Crusie's Bet Me obviously is.
ReplyDeleteSarah: you have obviously taken real pains to understand this student's position. I can certainly understand her point that it is painful to read fictional material which creates disgusting images in one's mind. We all know that. It is even more painful to read, or hear of, factual material that creates disgusting, nauseating images in one's mind - but don't we all have to face that issue, repeatedly, in adult life? What happens is that our brains learn to edit in such a way that we can cope, that we can blur the full horror of the image in a way that we could not do if we confronted it face to face, to reduce it to a symbolic, outline level rather than seeing it in detailed colour. I am both very literal in my thinking, and also highly visual rather than verbal - I see pictures rather than hearing words. Even so, I can cope with reading about things that I could not easily face in real life. People in professions such as the police, the military, and medicine have to go one step further, and learn to use their own 'edit function' to enable them to deal calmly with real-life situations that would overwhelm most of us. The ability to edit and interpret the messages received by our brains, through our senses, though it is a double-edged sword, is an essential part of adult human thinking. Some of the conditions that interfere with this mechanism, such as autism, can prevent people functioning normally in human society at all.
ReplyDeleteIt is not so much that we all have different triggers for disgust and revulsion (some of which are idiosyncratic, like abject horror at the mention or the picture of a spider, while others are almost universal, like graphic description and images of murderous violence), but that we all need to learn how to handle them, and merely avoiding them is not handling them.
Marianne: I am sure there are regional, and perhaps even more, generational differences. I do not claim any particular thoughtfulness as a teenager: everyone I knew was like that, both at school and university. Perhaps it was a 1950s thing. We did take life quite seriously. The War was over, poverty was easing, we could eat what we wanted, and those who had the ability and motivation could even go to university and have their fees paid and a small grant towards living expenses. We knew what our parents had been through, not only in the War but in the hard times of the 1930s. We were aware that we were lucky, and tried to make the most of it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how the instability and violence in Northern Ireland fed into your educational experience, both at school and college? You have described one aspect of it.
The reason I made that throwaway comment about Jehovah's Witnesses and history was that I simply do not see how their beliefs, as I understand them, can possibly be compatible with any rational teaching of history, so what is the point? Why would a student even wish to attend a class in history if he sincerely believes that all he is being told is either wicked or plain untrue? If a student does not wish to hear anything about human societies with pagan belief-systems, that cuts out everything prior to the 4th century AD in the West (unless Judaism is okay - I don't know about that), and an even wider swathe of history and culture elsewhere in the world. Any discussion of the Palaeolithic period and indeed the Neolithic in many areas is out, because the world did not exist prior to October 4004 BC. Leaving aside the question of species evolution, geology, too, is an impossible subject: it just can't exist.
Agtigress: "Why would a student even wish to attend a class in history if he sincerely believes that all he is being told is either wicked or plain untrue?"
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Perhaps they might want a particular degree or career requiring that qualification. Or they might hope to prove their beliefs true.
"I wonder how the instability and violence in Northern Ireland fed into your educational experience, both at school and college? You have described one aspect of it."
In the context of this discussion, it's why I feel so strongly about engaging with belief structures that are inimical to one's own beliefs.
I could even put it more strongly than that: it's why I feel it's worthwhile to engage with people who *know* things to be true that you *know* are to be false.
For me, that sort of interaction was a necessary part of achieving the peace process.
I think you're further along that line of thought, and talking about whether there's any point in unilaterally engaging with someone who is unwilling to reciprocate. I'd still say yes, but I could understand why someone would disagree.
Marianne McA
Marianne, your point about the peace process is well taken: but perhaps the long decades it took, even between mature and educated people, and with so much at stake, shows how very, very difficult it can be.
ReplyDeleteAt a very basic level, we take nearly all the things we 'know' on trust, depending only on the passing-down of knowledge and the analytical powers we have been taught to exercise. I suppose that I feel, at my age now, that trying to change the mind of a young person who 'knows' that the earth was created in 7 days starting on October 23, 4004 BC, or even one who believes that a variety of perfectly natural and commonplace sexual activites are wicked and disgusting, is not really worth the effort.
:)
"I suppose that I feel, at my age now, that trying to change the mind of a young person who 'knows' that the earth was created in 7 days starting on October 23, 4004 BC ... is not really worth the effort."
ReplyDeleteLOL. I sympathise. My fourteen year old came out of Sunday School today, saying that her teacher says that the complexity of the knee joint is evidence of God.
Happily, she didn't take it seriously, except for demanding that I henceforth worship her leg, so I gave her a 10 second overview of the Teleological argument, and half-heartedly suggested she read the relevant sections of Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker' and left it at that.
Marianne McA
LOL! Gosh, I should have thought that the human knee was pretty simple by the general standards of wonders of nature, and therefore hardly the most telling example to choose!
ReplyDelete:-)
Excellent post and ensuing discussion.
ReplyDeleteI have one question: Were all the enrolled students female?
Yes, everyone's female. Almost all of our English majors here are female. And all but one are African-American.
ReplyDeleteI remember once teaching THE BELL JAR, and someone objecting to it. When asked, she told me she was concerned it might call up too many harsh memories because she had recently attempted suicide. I thought a lot about that. It made me realize that literature and art can have a very powerful impact on us and can be dangerous. It also made me realize that I better take my job as an English professor very seriously when in the classroom. I carried a heavy burden of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteMarianne McA, replying to AgTigress, said in part:
ReplyDeletePerhaps they might want a particular degree or career requiring that qualification.
That is the attitude that bothers me the most. People who think like that about any particular bit of their college experience are not there to learn, they are there to get a piece of paper in order to move on to make money.
While part of me agrees with you, AztecLady, most of me just says, "Oh, come on! Don't be so idealistic!" Of course students go to college for that extra piece of paper and the money at the end of it. I imagine most Masters of all varieties are pursued for the same reason. Only the very wealthy or those who just don't care about money can afford to go to college for the sheer joy of learning. Maybe I'm just jaded because I've been teaching these students for more than a decade, but after the experience of high school in this country, that manages to wring every drop of joy in learning out of the experience before forcing it down the students' throats (and you have to understand, my DH is a HS teacher, so I'm not saying that to insult HS teachers), then it's not difficult to understand why most people go to college solely for the job at the end of it. Honestly, I think this country would be much better served with a stronger vocational education system that doesn't have a stigma. After all, plumbers and electricians make an awful lot of money, but because they're not "college educated" positions, they're looked down on by the general populace. Less underemployed college grads and more vocationally-educated wage-earners filling in the large gaps in the workforce would be a good thing, and then a university education would mean something in relation to the love of learning, rather than just as a means to an end.
ReplyDeleteAzteclady: I think that it is a counsel of perfection to aim for a situation in which all who enter higher education do so only out of eagerness to improve their minds.
ReplyDeleteMost of us have mixed motives for a great many of the things we do, and I don't think it is actually wrong for someone to hope that higher education will improve their social status, give them a wider career choice and (perhaps - only perhaps!) enable them one day to earn more money: it becomes depressing, though, if these are the only reasons that they can see for the pursuit of knowledge.
In practice, certainly in the UK, academic degrees do not guarantee better earning potential, though maybe they did in my day. Certainly anyone who decides to take up a career in any branch of academia regards the interest of the work as the compensation for the relatively poor pay. However, higher education does still (just) carry a slight social advantage, though obviously nothing like to the same extent as it did in the days when a far lower proportion of the population had access to it.
My own feeling is that we have to accept the fact that some people go to university for rather shallow reasons, but that once there, many will also be fired by enthusiasm for the work they are doing, and will grow and mature. However, if they are unwilling to accept the working discipline, and make no effort to learn, they should not be allowed to continue, because their presence is damaging for the teaching staff and for other students who are better motivated.
At tertiary level, chucking somebody out really is not going to ruin his or her life: it is perfectly possible to get on in life without a degree, and being at college is voluntary, not compulsory. In fact, the voluntary drop-out rate in some colleges in this country is very high, with students themselves leaving without completing their courses, because they can't be bothered to work.
The real crunch focuses further down, on the adolescents in secondary school who refuse to work and to learn. Their lives will be significantly harmed by failing to complete that basic education satisfactorily, and chucking them out is not an option till they reach the legal school-leaving age.
Anonymous: your comment about the possible dangers of studying texts that might strike a chord with those who suffer or have suffered from depression and related conditions is interesting.
ReplyDeleteOnly last week I read an article (sorry - can't cite it, because it was in a magazine in a dentist's waiting-room!) which referred to recent work showing that amongst older people with these problems, reading fiction or poetry that dealt with apparently depressing and pessimistic themes could be cathartic and very helpful, because it often assisted the readers to articulate feelings that they had previously been unable to express. Seeing them well expressed by others was apparently lightening to their spirits rather than the reverse.
Generalisations are always dubious, and if your student felt that she couldn't cope with The Bell Jar, she may well have been right, but others with a similar personal background might well have had a different experience. I agree that teachers at any level are in a position of great responsibility.
Will you assign the new Redeeming Love or the older version? I've read the older and I thought it was wonderful, and I've been afraid to read the new because I heard it had been sanitized.
ReplyDelete"How can a person be truly educated if they never allow their beliefs to be challenged?"
How true.
You should ask her to read Flowers from the Storm. Maddie is constantly challenged in her beliefs and slowly finds the right course for her AND her faith. But what's truthful about the way Kinsale wrote Maddie is that she never rejects her faith- she absorbs and learns from her new challenges and applies them through her growth.
If the young lady chooses to she has an incredible opportunity to grow IN her faith through this. She can examine what she disagrees with and will be able to form a precise argument as to why - otherwise she's boxing shadows.
Eva Gale
Honestly, I think this country would be much better served with a stronger vocational education system that doesn't have a stigma. After all, plumbers and electricians make an awful lot of money, but because they're not "college educated" positions, they're looked down on by the general populace. Less underemployed college grads and more vocationally-educated wage-earners filling in the large gaps in the workforce would be a good thing, and then a university education would mean something in relation to the love of learning, rather than just as a means to an end.
ReplyDeleteI would like everyone to have the equivalent of an associates degree, after which they can choose to pursue a strictly vocational program or a more traditionally academic one. I do think there's something inherently valuable about postsecondary general education, but, as you say, not everyone wants that four-year degree, nor should vocational programs be seen as lesser. Although don't get me started on the so-called vocational academies that now abound (the federal funding issue alone will make anyone in traditional higher ed cringe and cry, lol).
I suppose that I feel, at my age now, that trying to change the mind of a young person who 'knows' that the earth was created in 7 days starting on October 23, 4004 BC, or even one who believes that a variety of perfectly natural and commonplace sexual activites are wicked and disgusting, is not really worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 18 or 20, I believed both of those things. I've since changed my mind, but college was only the beginning of that process. When I was young, I was intense, impassioned...and certain of my world view. I never insisted a professor change a reading list for me, though. I probably wouldn't have even signed up for Sarah's class, because I'd been taught that any sexual thoughts or feelings not directed toward one's own spouse were wrong.
I did, however, have professors in some of my history and political science classes who were very patient when my participation in class discussions and essay assignments amounted to, "But...but...that's not what I was always taught." No one ever told me I didn't belong in their class, but they challenged me to take an honest look at the reading and consider the possibility that everyone, even the sources I trusted and relied upon, might have a bias.
Anyway, I don't think that just because at the age of 20 I was a fundamentalist Christian with intense certainties means that I should've dropped out of Penn and gone to Bob Jones or Liberty. I loved my college years, I value the education they gave me in how to think, and I'm glad I had professors who saw in me the potential for an open mind and pushed me to question everything.
There have been so many interesting insights in the comments on this blog.
ReplyDeleteSusan: I suspect that however deeply rooted your beliefs as an adolescent, you had a naturally enquiring mind which enabled you to confront and assess other ideas. Some people are unable to do this - and perhaps those who can are going to change and grow at their own pace anyway, with or without a college education.
I am tending more and more to the conviction that it is secondary education that really matters here, and that it is hugely important to train people how to think and how to question and debate long before they are even approaching university level. I was a believing Anglican Christian as a teenager and so, I am sure, were most of my teachers, but this did not interfere with a basically scientific, analytical approach to learning which emphasised the importance of thinking for oneself, of always testing and challenging hypotheses. This is the fundamental lesson of the Enlightenment upon which all the intellectual advances of the last 300 years have been based: the principle of believing what one is told without further question is medieval in spirit, and it should simply be illegal to teach that way in schools.
Tigress: I noticed the "forget the learning; just give me the degree" attitude back when I was at Berkeley in the 1960s, as a graduate assistant and Acting Instructor. Kids would protest their grades and demand a higher one even though they acknowledged they hadn't earned it. They only wanted the payoff--and that wasn't the learning.
ReplyDeleteGiven the time and the place, I shouldn't have been surprised that they let their politics interfere with their perception of the works they studied. As a medievalist, I thought it would be interesting to teach the Song of Roland in an Intro to Lit course for a change (Sayers translation); this happened to be a very small class at an odd time, and most of my students were upperclassmen who had avoided satisfying the English Lit graduation requirement for as long as possible and now were stuck with taking it or not getting the degree. One guy smugly announced--before reading the poem!--that he was on the side of the "pagans" (actually Muslims); he didn't bother to notice that whatever the rights and wrongs of the real history, in the POEM they are depicted as evil and treacherous.
Perhaps Sarah and others with problematic students should thank their lucky stars that they are not teaching in Arizona, where a bill has been introduced into the legislature that would permit students and professors to carry guns on college campuses...
ReplyDeleteYou know, if you're the type of student to carry a gun in order to take out a professor, I don't think you're going to be deterred by a law saying you can't. ;)
ReplyDeleteSarah Frantz,
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think this country would be much better served with a stronger vocational education system that doesn't have a stigma. After all, plumbers and electricians make an awful lot of money, but because they're not "college educated" positions, they're looked down on by the general populace. Less underemployed college grads and more vocationally-educated wage-earners filling in the large gaps in the workforce would be a good thing, and then a university education would mean something in relation to the love of learning, rather than just as a means to an end.
Oh wouldn't that be loverly? (My Fair Lady)
AgTigress, I agree that for most, if not all, there's a variety of reasons to attend college, and that being able to make a living afterwards ranks high among them. However, it's sad when someone who's studying to get a degree in Education sees nothing wrong in taking a particular course 'just to get' the paper that will allow her to teach. No, I'm not kidding--I met at least three people who said it that way to me.
I also feel very strongly about the waste--in tax dollars, mind--these students embody. But perhaps that is because, as an international non-traditional (over 30, divorced, with two kids) student, I had to pay full out of state tuition for the entire time I attended college, and so I tried to make the most of out of it. While many of the 18 to 24 yo around me were, literally, goofing of on loans and scholarships, etc.
Robin, I would prefer higher standards set in secondary education than having everyone attend college for two years.
But that's due to a different cultural perspective: in Mexico and Venezuela, for example, all the stuff in the 'general education' part of the US college degrees (60 out 120 credits while I attended college in Florida a few years ago), is actually taken in high school. Humanities, literature (both in the main language and universal), history (idem), math up to calculus, basic anatomy, chemistry, biology, etc--all by the time you turn 18.
AgTigress:
This is the fundamental lesson of the Enlightenment upon which all the intellectual advances of the last 300 years have been based: the principle of believing what one is told without further question is medieval in spirit, and it should simply be illegal to teach that way in schools.
AMEN!!! *grin*
But, Sarah, the law means that you can carry a gun, too, and shoot back!
ReplyDeleteRemember the Doonesbury hall monitor with the machine gun mounted on the arm of the desk?
This, to me, sounds a bit dismissive and condescending:
ReplyDelete'"God says it's wrong" is enough of a challenge for the people who argue that position. Rational debate doesn't enter into it, because their beliefs aren't rationally based. Their beliefs are BELIEF based and that's good enough for them. Basically, "Because He said so," and there is no need for debate, because that's all that their "reasoning" will ever come back to. You and I, as fundamentally grounded in rationality and the enlightenment tradition see this viewpoint as a weakness. They see it as a strength and as all they need to justify their viewpoint.'
I'm an evangelical Christian [if I must label myself], and I write romance--I write for Harlequin Presents and I write some sex/love scenes. I'm probably in a minority, but I do believe in the power of romance and don't think you can write the full story of a romantic relationship without addressing the sexual element.
Many Christians don't have the attitude that they will or will not do something 'Because He said so'. Or at least that is grossly trivialising the matter and dismissing a person's faith as blind obedience. I would imagine her stance comes from the biblical command to flee temptation, and reading anything with sexual content can be temptation for some people, temptation to thoughts or actions they do not want to indulge in.
I'm uncomfortable with the dismissive way some people treated this woman in the comments, assuming her faith is blind/weak/biased. Having a faith in God does not necessarily mean you refuse to challenge yourself, your beliefs, or use rational argument. Yet at some point, if you know what you believe, you will naturally stop questioning and wondering about everything and instead live out your belief system in your everyday choices, as everyone generally does, which is what this woman appears to be doing.
Kate
Tigress, you have no ideas the ravages No Child Left Behind have performed on secondary education in the US. I think it's been mostly a good thing at the lower levels, increasing reading and math scores. But in secondary ed, it's forcing teachers to teach to the test and ONLY teach to the test, so any thoughts of, well....thinking are thrown out the window if you don't first memorize that the eighth amendment to the constitution guarantees ____ right. So, teachers pretty much have to teach a "sit down, shut up, and absorb" method of learning in order to get all the *information* into the students, rather than teaching critical thinking and analysis skills. It's very sad.
ReplyDeleteKate, in my statements about belief vs. rationality, I was trying not to valorize rationality. I had a professor in college who was an evangelical Christian and he did a fabulous job of teaching me the difference between belief and reason and teaching me that belief, religious belief especially, is not effected by reason because it's BELIEF. More importantly, he taught me that that is not a bad thing. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." I have a lot of respect for people who can believe in a religious figure or system, my husband included. I actually respect this woman's right to her beliefs and the feelings that those beliefs raise, and I've tried not to be dismissive, no matter how strongly I disagree with her position. I've tried to put aside my disagreements and deal with the issues from a purely pedagogical standpoint, rather than focusing on our disagreements.
ReplyDeleteI don't think her faith is blind/weak/biased at all. I think her faith makes HER biased (although not blind or weak), but I think her faith itself is obviously a strength for her.
I've tried to discuss this in a general way, rather than get into the details of my discussion with the student, which would contravene any confidentiality I have with this student. That's why the initial post was about MY pedagogical choices and MY understanding of what it means to be a literary critic. I can't control what other people say in the comments--which isn't a justification or an excuse, just an observation.
Sarah: I am afraid that 'teaching to the tests' is happening in UK education now, too. The nub of the problem is at primary and secondary levels: college is already too late. A child who masters speaking, reading, writing and basic maths at primary school, and who has learned to love both Art and Nature; a teenager who has discovered how to use his/her brain to absorb and analyse facts or alleged facts - these people will be able to cope with most of what life will throw at them even without formal higher education. Some of Azteclady's interesting comments above are directly relevant. I think that neither the USA nor the UK challenges its children and adolescents enough. Over the ages, empires and successful businesses have been built, and great art has been created, by people who had had little or no education in our sense. We need to do better.
ReplyDeleteKate Hewitt: I hear what you say, and I understand perfectly the difference between religious conviction and acquired knowledge. I was a believer myself in my youth, and I remember well how it felt, and how it informs one's life.
ReplyDeleteIn the context of a teaching environment, however, if a student's personal beliefs seriously undermine her ability to take a given course in the form in which it has been carefully planned, and lead to her taking up an undue amount of the instructor's time and attention, her position may start to interfere with the learning experience of other students, and this is selfish.
My analogy of the person who joins a beginners' riding course and then refuses to mount a horse may seem simplistic, but at bottom it is a similar situation. Should the instructor spend time discussing this student's difficulties, perhaps trying to provide her with a life-size model of a horse on which to practise keeping her back straight, elbows in and heels down - meanwhile neglecting the keen novice horsemen and -women who want to move on, to improve their skills, learn to rise to the trot, use reins and knees and heels to communicate, and generally to enjoy all the manifold pleasures of the horse-human relationship? Or should the teacher suggest that the dissenter give up on learning to ride, and join a course more suited to her interests?
On the specific issue you raised about 'fleeing temptation', we are again entering the territory of reality versus fiction. If a person is unable to withstand temptation in the guise of a fictional story, she is going to have a hard time dealing with real life. But in any case, Sarah mentioned that the problem was more with disgust - the very reverse of temptation - and I addressed that issue in an earlier post. Again, we encounter many things in real life that we find disgusting, and may learn to handle them better through the exercise of dealing with them in a fictional context.
Over the ages, empires and successful businesses have been built, and great art has been created, by people who had had little or no education in our sense. We need to do better.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean that we need education to counter neo-imperialist tendencies and to prevent capitalist exploitation of the workers?
Not really! I believe that imperialism, capitalism and the oppression of the workers are almost wholly independent of education.
ReplyDelete:)
I believe that imperialism, capitalism and the oppression of the workers are almost wholly independent of education.
ReplyDeleteNot when it comes to university funding or the amount of admin academics are expected to perform! ;-)
You do seem to think that education can have political outcomes outside the classroom. Or am I misunderstanding your statement about "there is a real danger of a global descent into a Dark Age of fragmented states and religious wars during this century [...] Education is the only antidote." And the study of imperialism and/or capitalism is certainly important to a great many academic disciplines.
I think that people who can think clearly and logically are better armed against the forces of chaos than those who can not, and to the extent that education should teach rational thought, it is therefore part of the defence against the threatened return to a medieval mind-set.
ReplyDeleteI am not very hopeful, however.
Agtigress and Sarah, thanks for your responses. I hear what you're saying, and i was reflecting after I wrote the post that it certainly is a different situation when taking a course and needing to read the set texts versus what you would read in your own time, for your own pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how far apart disgust and temptation are, to be honest--often we are disgusted by our own temptations and longings, and certainly fictional situations (movies, books, television, etc) can create temptation to act or think in a manner that one, as a Christian, would resist.
Faith makes you biased--yes, but I would argue that *no one* is unbiased. Everyone has a faith, even if that faith is a l belief that there is no God, or a belief in the power of rational thought. That is informing your world view and opinions as much as anything else, and thus creating a bias. I'm not saying that's a bad thing--just a reality for all humankind. I suppose I take exception to the idea that people with a faith in God are biased, while people who do not believe in God are not. I'm not saying you were making that point, only that it seemed an overall implication from the discussion.
Kate
Kate
I think that people who can think clearly and logically are better armed against the forces of chaos than those who can not, and to the extent that education should teach rational thought, it is therefore part of the defence against the threatened return to a medieval mind-set.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't think of medieval theology as a "force of chaos." Certainly, Aquinas's work is extremely orderly, and the medieval political theory that the secular sphere was divided into three estates, ruled over by the monarch (God's Vicar on Earth) isn't chaotic either.
Maybe you meant totalitarianism and inflexible ideologies of a variety of different types, which, though orderly in themselves, cause chaos when they come into conflict with each other? Or the chaos that may ensue as a consequence of climate change?
Laura: I did not make myself clear. I was not defining medieval thinking per se as chaotic; some of it is, indeed, very orderly and elegant, and though I find much of it impenetrable myself, that is my own inadequacy. There have been outstanding thinkers and scholars in all periods, working within the constraints of many different societies.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the kind of breakdown in society that faces us all today will be chaotic, and that as you speculated, part of the reason for this will be the conflict of different ideologies, exacerbated by the insoluble problem of dwindling resources and grotesque human over-population. Climate change will be a part of that.
Those whose mind-set is most flexible and inventive ('scientific', if you like) will probably be best equipped to handle it, rather than those who take a more rigid and fatalistic view.
Kate: certainly we are all biased. No argument there. One of the greatest difficulties in many fields of study is to try to step aside from one's personal and cultural conditioning, and to observe data in an objective way. Nobody can actually succeed in being completely objective, but we can all do our best to identify and allow for our own subjectivity, and to analyse the factors that skew our perceptions.
ReplyDeleteDisgust and temptation: no, I can't follow your argument, there. Things that tempt me do not disgust me: things that disgust me do not tempt me. To me they are opposites.
Perhaps, as this thread is now quite long, I ought to reiterate the assurance that I gave some way back that I have never advocated excluding anyone from some educational opportunity on the grounds of religion or ideology. But I do think that any student whose conduct, for whatever reason, starts to undermine the work and learning of his/her colleagues, is better removed from that course, for the sake of the other students' progress.
The reasons could be legion - from ideological convictions to intellectual limitations, from illness to sheer idleness. Many will not be the fault of the student, in the sense of a deliberate choice (the novice rider who refuses to mount the horse could be frightened, rather than recalcitrant). If I had ever enrolled for a class in advanced mathematics, my presence would certainly have held others back, as I would probably need one-to-one tuition to make any headway at all. It don't think it's my fault that I find maths difficult, but it would be my fault if I disrupted a class of more numerate students by insisting on staying on and monopolising the teacher's time.
Kate, I agree that no human is exempt from biases--cultural, religious, what have you. However, it is more often than not (in my limited experience as a late college student) those with fundamental religious views who loudly and proudly proclaim that their FAITH overrides knowledge, facts, and science.
ReplyDeleteThese people (not by any means all religious people but those who think this way) fit Sarah's comment above. When confronted with a syllabus that doesn't agree with what they know because of their religious learnings, they don't examine it. They don't accept discussion or analysis; they know, dammit, and that's that.
If forced, because it's required to gain a degree, to take a class and produce the work, they do it in as superficial a way as they can, all the way despising having to even 'touch' the subject. Frankly, any student with that attitude, regardless of his or her reasons, is occupying space and wasting resources that perhaps someone else would be more keen to appreciate and make the most of.
(I hope that made sense)
agtigress said "Sarah mentioned that the problem was more with disgust - the very reverse of temptation - and I addressed that issue in an earlier post. Again, we encounter many things in real life that we find disgusting, and may learn to handle them better through the exercise of dealing with them in a fictional context."
ReplyDeleteThank you agtigress. This is exactly the problem with this young lady that bothers me the most. This girl needs a real life reality check. If she is going to close herself off to things she finds filthy and disgusting she is going to have a very hard time dealing in the real world.
We all have to do things in life that we don't want to do. I don't want to fill out my tax return, but you know what, I have to do it. When my kids vomit in the car, I find it filthy and disgusting and I don't want to clean it up. But I have do it. I can't negotiate or barter with someone else, I still have to do it. I am a police officer. Last month I had to investigate a crime scene that had the victims brain matter splattered on the wall. I found it filthy, distgusting and morally degrading but I could not go to my chief and say, "sorry, but I don't want to look at this repulsive mess, get someone else to do it." I would have been fired.
When I was in college if a professor told me to read something, I read it. Period. I feel sorry for this girl, I really do. She is going to have a very hard life trying to avoid the filthy and disgusting. She needs to grow up and open her mind.
Just to clarify, I think disgust and temptation can go hand in hand when dealing with matters of a sexual nature, especially in someone who has been brought up as a Christian and has strict sexual morals in place already. For example, the man who is aroused by pornography, disgusted by his reaction, but still is tempted by it. *Not* comparing romance to pornography, just trying to explain how this young woman might feel about reading a book with explicit sexual content. If she objects so strongly, though, I would think the better course of action would be drop the course than try to change the sylllabus and thus affect other students' experiences.
ReplyDeleteRegarding bias: I think in certain situations you can try to leave your bias behind and be more objective but a Christian would tend to view the world through her bias willingly, as that is how she sees the world, and I imagine that anyone with a strong faith/belief system (whether theist, atheist, Buddhist, etc) would do the same.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Kate
Kate: I think we may be using rather different definitions of 'disgust/disgusting' here. '...the man who is aroused by pornography, *disgusted* by his reaction, but still is tempted by it.' This is surely a usage that is close to 'mortified' or 'ashamed'. It is an intellectual or emotional rejection of a physical attraction, not an instinctive rebellion against something viscerally repulsive. If something is viscerally repulsive, it cannot tempt.
ReplyDeleteI meant 'physically nauseated, repulsed, revolted', and this is the usage, too, that Kim is assuming in her post above. There certainly are some sexual practices that many people would find 'disgusting' in the latter sense, and this was what I took Sarah to mean when alluding to her student's response.
Your comments about 'willing' bias are truly alien to me. Personal bias really must be set aside as far as possible when studying other people and other cultures, however much one believes that one's own viewpoint represents the truth, simply because not everyone shares that belief. We cannot study other cultures, past or present, in the context of our own and by the standards of our own, because the result will be violently skewed. We have to try to imagine the context in which people behaved as they did in the past, or in other places.
I do not see this as being a problem for good scholars who have deeply felt religious convictions. I know people in my own profession who are deeply committed theists, but who, in working with the evidence of past, pagan societies, try to see those through objective eyes as far as they are able. I have to say that, for a scholar, being unable to perceive any part of the world, past or present, other than through the filter of his own religious or political convictions, is a profound fault.
Could I just add that I have really enjoyed this debate and the patience and courtesy with which it has been conducted by all concerned, even when there have been quite wide divergences of opinion.
ReplyDeleteWould that all internet debates were as seemly!
:)
I agree, we are using disgust/disgusting in different ways, and mine is perhaps closer to shame although I think it still falls under disgust in terms of a strict definition... you're right, some people would find certain sexual practices disgusting, or repellent, and that is different than being disgusted by one's reaction to the material--although Freud might have a field day with sexual repression/disgust masking desire/etc!
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
I have to say that, for a scholar, being unable to perceive any part of the world, past or present, other than through the filter of his own religious or political convictions, is a profound fault.
I agree, and I was not clear on what I meant. What I was trying to get at was that people view the world--*their* world--through their bias willingly, because their beliefs naturally affect their life choices. You still may try to step away from your own biases/beliefs to understand where someone else is coming from; how else could we hope to understand other people? But when it comes to making your own decisions, choices, or how you perceive the world *for yourself*, then that is through the bias of your belief.
Sorry I have not been clear on what I mean in previous posts. All I was trying to point out was that there is a tendency (or so it appears to me) that Christians/theists have this 'bias' that everyone else seems naturally excluded from. Not that anyone said this specifically on this forum; it's just a pervasive feeling I've received from various sources/comments. So all I wanted to point out was that *everyone* has a bias, and while we might try t o shed that bias when we want to study or understand other people and cultures, it is still the filter with which we view our world and make our decisions... otherwise why have a belief system at all?
Does that make sense? I'm typing with three children carousing around me and am losing my train of thought as I write!
I wholly agree that we all have a biased view of life: it is unavoidable. But it may have little or nothing to do with religion or political ideology - in other words, it need not be deliberate or conscious at all, and that is often when it is most insidious and dangeroys, because the person believes those views to be universal standards. At bottom, it is culturally determined.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to decide, after appropriate study, to become a Buddhist, it would change quite a few of my innate internal biases, but it would not change all of them: it would not change my past life experiences, which have moulded much of my personality, nor many of the prejudices and peculiarities of my own nationality and generation.
Biases are unavoidable. What is important is to be aware of them, and to accept that, even when one believes oneself to be 100% right and enlightened, not everyone will see things in the same way. That is where one needs to step aside, and try, however difficult it may be, to see through the other person's eyes. The world will look different then.
Tigress, I guess I would point out that my student IS aware of her biases and did what she thought was appropriate in coming to me and discussing them. I obviously didn't agree with her request that I change the syllabus, but she was acting within a reasonable standard of behavior and with recognition of her own issues with the texts. The point I was trying to make was not that I thought she'd done something wrong in the first place--I think she dealt with her issues in a very mature manner--but that I disagreed with her request for specific reasons. I want to make that very clear. I have a lot of respect for this student as a person, no matter what I think of her opinions about specific issues in some of the texts we're reading.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about biases, agtigress. And I don't think they're all formed by religion or politics either, although certain religions have a very clear world view that an adherent to the religion endorses, which therefore provides a more 'standard bias' than that created by your own personal experiences, preferences, what have you.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in regards to Sarah's original post, I can understand why she would disagree with the student's request. Certainly in the context of an academic classroom experience one needs to challenge one's assumptions, beliefs, and even comfort levels. All I was objecting to was some of the comments which seems judgmental towards the student's religious preferences. Now with clarification, I don't think they necessarily *meant* to be judgmental.
Now, I must return to my current work-in-progress, which, in light of the most recent post, could fall under the multicultural heading as the hero is a sheikh...
Kate
Just some passing thoughts:
ReplyDelete(1) If only one student reads the inspirational romance, how do you teach it? Have her give a detailed report on it to the class?
(2) This won't happen in your current situation, but what if you put an AA or interracial romance on the reading list and a student objected because of religious/moral beliefs. (Yes, there are people other than neo-Nazis who hold such beliefs.) Would you excuse her from reading it? Give her an alternate? Or tell her to read it or leave the class?
Just out of curiosity, did the course announcement include the fact that some of of the reading material would contain explicit sex? Or did they only find out after enrolling for it? If not, that would be one way to keep out the objectors.
I have been enjoying this discussion mightily although my time constraints have made me lurk instead of contribute. There hasn't been much for me to say, really, as you have touched on most of the points I might have made. So much insight here, and so many good perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI think that the journey and the destination of both art and faith are similar--for me, both are about making meaning. A work of art can disgust me ("Clockwork Orange," for example), but I can still find meaning in it, and regard it as important and enlightening. Faith helps me interpret my life and my experiences in a way that brings meaning and value to them.
Another thought--as I read the Gospels, I see the ministry of Jesus as being all about stepping outside one's comfort zone and learning to embrace "the other." It's all about turning outward, learning and growing--not turning inward to protect and insulate.
Thanks for the great discussion.
Talpianna, we don't have "course announcements" or descriptions beyond the generic or anything like that here. Basically, students are in the class because they need it to graduate. There isn't a choice between my junior seminar and a competing junior seminar that might be on a topic more suited to the feelings or sensibilities of various students. I announced on the first day of class what the texts were about, but that's as far as "forewarning" went.
ReplyDeleteAs for a neo-Nazi or similar in class, well, there I would be unwilling to compromise, because that kind of feeling is generally accepted as wrong and creates a very unsafe space in the classroom. So, no, I wouldn't be willing to deal with a student like that on the same level as I've dealt with this student. And I would hope that this would go without saying.
But that's due to a different cultural perspective: in Mexico and Venezuela, for example, all the stuff in the 'general education' part of the US college degrees (60 out 120 credits while I attended college in Florida a few years ago), is actually taken in high school. Humanities, literature (both in the main language and universal), history (idem), math up to calculus, basic anatomy, chemistry, biology, etc--all by the time you turn 18.
ReplyDeleteI never know what to do with these experiential comparisons. I guess I need more context to figure out what they mean. Here's part of what stymies me.
Florida's secondary schools are ranked almost the worst in the US, so some of that may be remedial coursework. On the other hand, as I said above, US secondary schools end in year 12, but many students in the US *do* complete all of the above coursework before then. And as much as secondary curricula vary, US university curricula vary even more--far more widely than in most developed countries. Those international differences are partly about scale and decentralization. There are also differences in structures and philosophies--but countries group differently by educational philosophy than they do by scale. So there isn't really a fixed group of educationally similar countries.
It's also difficult to compare because in aggregate, at the upper educational end (university-bound students), inter-country differences are small in many domains. It's often the less academically-inclined students who take very different paths in different countries.
Also complicating comparing educational structures is the fact that countries can have fundamentally different goals for education, and different scales of common curricula. E.g. the US isn't one enormous school system; it's 15,000 public (free) school systems with considerable autonomy, plus private (fee-based) schools. US schools have libraries and extracurricular activities, whereas those facilities are a civic function rather than a school function in some countries. There are other big structural differences to account for too, in making comparisons.
On a more philosophical level, I'm not sure that pushing everyone through calculus, etc, as early as possible is the right thing to do. Particularly in light of the vocational-educational discussion above. Secondary school, and even early undergrad, is still a time of discovering one's interests and skills, so there's an argument to be made for providing a broad curriculum that doesn't advance students as fast into specialized directions.
The "liberal arts" educational model oriented toward breadth and discourse has a lot to be said for it. As does the specialty-oriented approach. Two different philosophies, both with merits. There's room for both, particularly in a heterogeneous system, but you can't evaluate the systems' performance the same way.
Anyway. It's hard to explore these topics in depth in this setting, but I love seeing that as soon as Sarah posts on teaching, we all get passionate and, ahem, wordy about it.
Has anyone else here read THE GRAVES OF ACADEME by Richard Mitchell ("the Underground Grammarian")? It's available online here:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/2rh3es
It's an indictment of what the education theorists have done to education, especially in dumbing it down. Compare the low expectations of, and poor performance by, so many students today with the one-room schoolhouses so memorably depicted by Jesse Stuart in THE THREAD THAT RUNS SO TRUE over half a century ago.
I haven't read the Graves book, Talpianna, so I'm talking on opinion and personal experience here, and we all know how much that is worth, but I do want to say that I'm always leery of arguments that start "50 years ago our education was so much better." 50 years ago, our education ignored huge swaths of the population who dropped out after middle school, including a huge number of agrarian and ethnic minority students. So while our drop out rates suck today, they sucked 50 years ago, too, but weren't documented as well. And once a goodly portion of your population drops out, especially the underprivileged part, it's definitely easier to teach the rest. FWIW. YMMV.
ReplyDeleteSarah, my point was that before modern "educationism" came in, no one thought of splitting off the less academic. They were encouraged to learn Latin and such in their one-room schoolhouses, if they wanted to, and many of them could and did.
ReplyDeleteI attended a one-room, eight-grade, school house. We didn't learn Latin, because the teacher didn't know Latin, but because the teacher spent so much time with other grade levels, we were expected to read whenever we weren't working on lessons. I made it through the World Book Encyclopedia two and a half times before they sent me on to high school in 1952.
ReplyDeleteThe art teacher came one afternoon, once a month. The music teacher came one afternoon, once a month. They spent the other mornings and afternoons of the month visiting other rural schools.
There was one bookshelf, 36 inches by 8 shelves, in addition to the storage room that held obsolete textbooks. Once a month, the bookmobile came, took away whatever was on the shelf, and replaced them with a different set of books.
The capacity level of the students in the one room ranged from "slow" to "advanced." They didn't use "gifted and talented" back then.
My high school graduating class had 21 people in it. The teachers were very stretched to cover all the mandatory subject matter.
Education fifty years ago wasn't that much more wonderful than it is now. I think one of the main differences is that since the schools were so much smaller, there was much less pressure for uniformity.
Virginia
I almost missed this lovely debate. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI had the best (or worst) of both worlds. My undergrad degree is in French Lang and Lit with minors in English Lit and History. (Why, one wonders--I can only say it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
When I examined my career choices as a non-native speaker, teaching French on the collegiate level, I was fairly certain I would wind up in a junior college in Topeka.
So I went to medical school.
Med school taught me the value of a liberal arts education. Oddly enough. The bio nerds were all about science and proof, but less so about being analytical and deductive. Problem solving as a skill set came from the undergrad profs not the med ones. That still strikes me as peculiar. I spend all day, every day, problem solving for people. Yet, problem solving wasn't even addressed at my med school. I think that that is a large deficiency in the medical education system today.
I agree that no one should be forced to learn calculus, although I did it.
Someone in my undergrad assigned The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich--at least one volume, IIRC. I was disgusted, horrified, appalled, but I read it. It would never have occurred to me to object to the prof about the assignment.
On the other hand, my med school class was instrumental in getting rid of live dog labs (vivisection, what a lovely word). We did it, because we had to, but our representations about how distasteful the class was got it removed from the curriculum the next year.
Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly the aim of a liberal education is to teach you to think.
--Jackie L.