Student Workloads

PAGE 4 OF 4

 
In reply to Ruth Ginsberg's comment about choosing time with her daughter
rather than a sentence of Wittgenstein, I say BRAVO Ruth!  You chose
correctly.  In graduate school, I was forced to spend an inordinate amount
of time studying Wittgenstein.  Yes, he's influential in 20th century
thought and now some feminists are using him for new feminist theories,
particularly Cressida Heyes at McGill University in Montreal.  But, he's one
of many.
The problem seems to me that the "masters" or (DWEMs) are overly revered by
Talmudic scrutiny of their every word.  Close textual anaylsis is useful,
but not as a religious homage, which is what happens in many graduate
seminars.  There's a big difference in reading aloud and using heurmeneutics
as a pedagogy, which to my mind always ought to involves connections to the
world in which we live.  I believe someone once said "The purpose of
philosophy is not to understand the world, but to change it." (But, he's no
longer revered, indeed he's excoriated in most circles.)

 
Ruth P Ginzberg <ginzberg  @  BELOIT.EDU> wrote:
 
> I can see where there is pedagogical value to ...
> [having students read material aloud] in
>some instances, for reasons other than just to make sure
>that the students are reading the text.
>
>However, I gotta say, I DID drop my grad school Wittgenstein
>class in which we read (& discussed in class) 1 sentence
>per class meeting.
<stuff deleted>
 
In Lewis White Beck's graduate seminar on Kant's
_Critique of Pure Reason_, a student reader was
chosen by Beck for each session (no advance warning).
Beck (and, after a short while, the students) could
tell a lot about how well the reader understood the
passages read aloud, and Beck would explain how
and why to re-read to increase understanding.
The reader was always free to stop and ask questions.
Given how obscure and turgid Kant's prose is, this
method was helpful.  (No doubt it was also helpful
to have the "Dean of American Kant scholars"
leading the seminar.)  But not every obscure
writer is well-suited for this pedagogical approach.
 
To add a comment to another theme in this thread:
reflection on my 21 yrs. of teaching experiences convinces
 me of the importance of reading a relatively small quantity
of material very closely.  (I find Richard
Feldman's _Reason and Argument_  to be a very helpful
handbook for students.)  This works best if I guide
students through several drafts of papers after we've
constructed a model paper in class.  By
semester's end, they've begun to acquire the
relevant skills, and, perhaps as important, they're
convinced that acquiring such skills is worthwhile.
Even in larger classes, it's possible to convince a
a majority of the students that acquiring the skills is
worthwhile by constructing models.
 
David.
 
 
David F. Austin <david_austin  @  ncsu.edu>
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy and Religion
NCSU, Raleigh, NC

 
I discovered the value of reading out load in a graduate seminar on
sociological theory where we had to read enormous quantities of Talcott
Parsons.  The only way I survived the reading was to read it out loud to
myself at home; I could "hear" the meaning much better, and while slower,
at least I understood (sort of) what he was trying to say.
 
I advise my students to read their papers out loud as part of the
proofreading process -- their ears are better than than their knowledge
of grammar, so they are more likely to catch grammatical errors, and
perhaps faulty logic and poor organization.
 
Pat Christain
christia  @  gort.canisius.edu

 
I have had two professors who used a variation of the idea below:
They made exams open to discussion, provided that all discussion took
place over email, so that all students would have the benefit of the
discussions, merely by readingtheir mail
Also, one of the two professors set up a Web page, on which each student
published the seminar that they lead -some variant of this might be
suitable for undergraduates.
 
Alana Suskin
alanacat  @  wam.umd.edu
 
On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Lynet Uttal wrote:
 
> I have been toying with the idea of teaching my students how about the
> "division of labor." I think that if we structured assignments so they at
> least talked to one another about the readings, that that would also
> accomplish some of what we're trying to do here.   Maybe it would be more
> effective than skim reading in isolation?  Has anybody been trying anything
> like this?
>                                 Lynet Uttal
>

 
Ruth P. Ginzberg wrote:
>However I AGREE that a major reform in the financing of education
>is what is badly needed here, and I do *not* wish to give the
>impression of saying that "just because I nearly killed myself,
>so should you."  I worked VERY HARD to become a professional
>educator myself, fueled very much by a DEEP desire to CHANGE
>(rather than perpetuate) some of the things I had to do in the
>name of "education."
 
Okay, shouldn't we *collectively* do something about this?  It seems quite
often that our discussions result in personal improvement (which is not a
bad thing) but here is a situation that *many* of us are having problems
with.  We agree that there is a problem with the attitude some students
have toward class and we agree that to some extent this problem has an
outside cause (despite my student who "won't think")--government
defunding/underfunding of education.  What should we *do*?
 
 
Nikki Senecal
senecal  @  chaph.usc.edu
"If you buy eithe Clinton or Dole, you get the other one free."
                                -- Herman Leder, The Nation Letters

 
Hi everyone.  Ruth Ginzberg's comments about her experience in graduate school
finally got me to write something for the lst on students and "close" textual
reading.  I teach an undergraduate sociological theory course and I use primary
texts rather than secondary readings.  I believe that it is important, for
example, for students to be exposed to Weber's and Marx's own words, rather
than someone's interpretation of their work.  I often read whole paragraphs out
loud.  Yes, some of the students --at first-- are uncomfortable with what I am
doing.  But as the semester progresses, they begin to see the value of close
reading.  I think that this helps prepare those who plan to continue on to
graduate school.  But I think it helps everyone to see that its okay to
slow down and concentrate.  I have found that assigning less reading (when the
material is difficult conceptually) and requiring a deeper level of
understanding, empowers students as learners.  The less prepared students begin
to feel more confident with the material and the advanced students feel
gratified when I read something in class that they have already underlined in
their own text.
 
I have found that this technique has the added value of focusing class
discussion and enabling more students to take part.  I also hope that it helps
when they sit down to write their take-home exams because a larger percentage
of the students have worked with the text on their own.  We'll see...
 
Like others on the list, I have found this extended discussion to be very
interesting.  Thank you all for taking the time to participate in the
discussion.  I know that I have learned a lot!
 
Darlaine Gardetto
University of Missouri-Columbia
socdcg  @  mizzou1.missouri.edu

 
Another variation on having student-groups read and discuss assigned
selections that has worked well for me is "double-layer groups" or
"super-groups."  Each primary group (A, B, C, and D) is assigned to
discuss and interpret a piece of the day's assignment:  one article
out of three, one chapter out of five, three paragraphs from a single
article.  Often I give specific guidelines for what I want them to
be looking for.  Each student needs to take notes.
 
Halfway through class, we switch to supergroups, each one comprising
one member from each of the earlier groups (ABCD, ABCD).  Each student
is then responsible for "teaching" the others what her/his primary group
learned, and the supergroup as a whole is asked to integrate the the pieces
of information and argument.  (In a longer class period, students can
return to their primary groups & compare notes, or present to the whole
class & compare/discuss conclusions.)
 
This is what I would do if I were lecturing or leading a whole class
through the reading, but it's often a lot more effective if students
take the iniative.  It is time-intensive, may take some practice on
the students' parts, and can indeed show up on student course evals
as "not teaching."  But it's also dynamite for "critical thinking,"
and I think it finds a good balance between close reading for students
who are (for whatever reason) not wholly prepared for class, and
discussion of issues that concern the whole assignment.
 
This whole discussion has been very interesting to me.  On a more
general note, another factor in the "too much reading," beyond time
constraints and textual difficulty, is emotional/ideological resistance.
My bright, enthusiastic students surprised me last spring by insisting
that they were overwhelmed by what looked on paper to be a fairly
ordinary number of pages to read.  It took me too long to realize that,
at least in part, they weren't rebelling at the sheer mass, but that
they were reacting to the challenges that the texts (Morrison's _Bluest
Eye_ and Erdrich's _Tracks_, e.g.) posed to their self- and world-
concepts.  They couldn't *say* this (since in theory they "agreed"
with what we were talking about), but when they repeatedly reassured
me that, well, no, the problem wasn't with going from sentence to
sentence, and that they did spend time on the reading, I had to look
elsewhere for the problem.  Without in the least absolving students of
the need to have these self-revelatory experiences and tackle the
"hard questions," and without disagreeing that many students just
_don't_ _read_, I wonder if WS classes are particularly vulnerable
to these complaints because of the sub-textual efforts involved for
many students.  And if so, can we give students the language and
necessary permission to change "I can't keep up with the reading"
to "It's hard to keep up with _this_ reading because of the changes
I'm having to go through"?  (Michael Carroll's comments about
sympathetic but not already converted" seem appropos here, too.)
 
shelley
 
 
    *****
Shelley Reid
English Department, Austin College
(Home of the Fighting Kangaroos)
Sherman, TX  75090
SREID  @  austinc.edu
    *****

 
Carrie,
 
I teach at a community college and most of my students are people with full
time lives who want to finally start on that degree. We cover 16 chapters of
our text, hvae 3 exams, one group project, and an optional paper (this is the
first quarter of Business Law).  That means we cover a chapter per class
period. I know that is a lot of reading, but to make it easier for students
to grasp essential concepts I provide a detailed syllabus giving objectives
for each chapter as well as review the previous day's work for the first 15
minutes of each class.
 
I do expect my students to keep up. Part of that is "I did it, you can do it"
but the far larger part is that I am not asking them to learn anything that
isn't important or necessary to do well in the second quarter. I appreciate
the amount of time you are talking about, because I prepare new lectures and
materials every time I teach the class. Maybe women's studies is different in
terms of time. Or, perhaps professors are afraid that you won't get the
information unless they demand that you read it.
 
Patty
 
bia10  @  aol.com
bia43  @  juno.com

 
As a student, I felt overwhelmed by the amount of work for classes. I
had a baby; I had at least two jobs; I had no measurable help. As a
teacher, I load down my students in a similar fashion but try to
remain open to modifications as the class progresses.
 
I still have readings from classes that I took at the beginning of my
grad education that I will get to one day. And the reading doesn't
end. I think it is a mistake to treat the reading from any class as a
closed unit of work, to be begun and finished in a closed period of
time.
 
As one professor of mine used to say,"The mountain is huge; you just
have to start climbing." Reading is the undertaking of a great
adventure, as is education. In some ways, it must lead us rather than
the other way around.
 
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
 
                                    George Carlin
 
Stephanie in Seattle
chastsg  @  dshs.wa.gov

 
          i haven't seen anyone explicitly address the need to teach
          students the "culture" of the university, and to be really
          explicit about the "social conventions" of one's own
          classroom or discipline.  just because a student has entered
          a college/university does not mean that s/he has any idea of
          what the expectations of this new culture are (e.g. reading,
          attending class, using the library and so on).  smaller
          institutions often do a better job of providing good
          orientations to the experience than do larger institutions,
          but even when a "university 101" class exists, its lessons
          may not translate well across a student's experience.  for
          instance, unless an institution has a well integrated
          "writing across the curriculum" program, students may find
          that expectations for written work vary dramatically from
          class to class.  and the differing expectations of
          instructors will inevitably lead to students finding that
          reading assignments do mean different things in different
          classrooms--as someone pointed out earlier, even if your
          syllabus is very detailed, you have to be sure that students
          understand that this handout is important.  one of the
          members of the sociology department here includes a tear off
          sheet at the end of the syllabus (which includes detailed
          discussion of her expectations about attendance, work
          deadlines, the penalties for plagiarism and so on) that a
          student signs and returns, something along the lines of  "I
          have read this syllabus and understand its contents."
 
          joann castagna
          joann-castagna  @  uiowa.edu

 
I think this discussion about amounts of reading is really wonderful. I
went into all my classes this week and asked my students how many of held
down at least 30 hour a week jobs and more than two-thirds of them raised
their hands (I teach at a traditional university).
 
I'm sure if we all thought about our own reading practices as students we
would have to confess that we didn't always do /all/ the readings. I
borrowed the informal study group structure of my grad school days and
turned it into a formal class structure to conquor reading materials.
 
Students are responsible as a group for common readings and then
individually for divided readings. In small groups they summarize and
discuss the divided readings. We can cover more material with more depth
with this strategy. The students enjoy it as well. Their summaries count
in their participation grade so they are rewarded for their work or
penalized for blowing it off.  Most importantly though, is the norm it
sets for student work. In explaining how the divided readings work, I
emphasize that students are responsible to /each other/ for the work. That
students who slack cheat their groups and run the risk of making their
classmates very resentful. This shifts the responsibility and
accountability.  The students become accountable to themselves, which IMHO
encourages them to act more responsibly in the class.
 
Laura Sells
University of South Florida

 
> Just a brief FYI.
There are women's studies programs developing a one or two credit course
about "negotiating" the university/college specifically for women and/or
women's studies majors/minors.  It would be a combination of learning the
bureaucracy, learning to be assertive (but not obnoxious) with teachers,
administrators, and staff among others; managing financial aid; managing
time for school, work and family; etc.  (If anyone reads this and is
developing such a course proposal, maybe you could share it.)
 
If I were developing such a course I would also talk about learning to learn
in general--about treating the undergraduate experience as something like a
resource or guide for future reference in addition to thinking of it as a
time of instrumental preparation that has a beginning and an end.  In other
words, it is unrealistic for students to think they are going to fully
experience or absorb everything they are offered over the course of getting
a BA (I know I did not), but that does not mean they shouldn't have a
plethora of memories, experiences, papers and ideas to refer back to later
in life.
 
Incidentally, I often make up an extended reading list and place readings on
reserve for students to use as a resource for writing papers during the
semester or for future work on related topics.
 
Renee
 
Dr. Renee Heberle, heberlrj  @  potsdam.edu
Politics Department/Women's Studies Program
309a Satterlee Hall
SUNY Potsdam
Potsdam, NY  13676
Office Phone:  315-267-2555
Home Phone:  315-265-2513

 
>Christina writes: ". . . I get more out of material when I read it aloud. I
advise my students to read their papers out loud as part of the 'proofreading
process.'
 
The writing coach of the Dallas Morning News, Paula LaRoche, a very
well-known seminar leader/teacher, says that whenever reporters read their
articles aloud, the editing process is much improved by doing so. In fact,
sometimes a reporter will think a story is completed. Paula has them read
questionable sections out loud. She says they always say, "Gee, I didn't
really know about that passage until I heard it!
 
Christina's comment is a good extension to the thread on this board about
reading.
Thank you.
Bettye Pierce Zoller
ZWLPUB  @  AOL.com
Communicating With People and Helping People Communicate
http:www/inc.com/users/bzoller.html

 
I thought the following would be appropriate in terms of the discussion
we've been having about students/reading/studying/etc. To save Joan
some time, I apologize for sending this message, realize that many
subscribers don't want their bandwidth wasted on such frivolous
tripe, and promise not to do this again (well...at least not for
another year or so...).
 
niki Benokraitis, Sociology Dept, Univ of Baltimore
nbenokraitis  @  ubmail.ubalt.edu
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------

 
        Then Jesus took his disciples up on the mountain and gathered them
around him.  And he taught them, saying,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit.
   Blessed are the meek.
     Blessed are the merciful.
       Blessed are you who thirst for justice.
         Blessed are you who are persecuted.
           Blessed are you who suffer.
        When these things begin to happen, rejoice, for your reward will be
great in Heaven."
 
And Simon Peter said, "Do we have to write this down?"
    And Phillip said, "Will this be on the test?"
        And John said, Would you repeat that?"
And Andrew said, "John the Baptist's disciples don't have to learn this stuff."
    And Matthew said, "Huh?"
        And Judas said, "What's this got to do with real life?"
 
        Then one of the Pharisees, an expert in the law, said, "I don't see
any of this in your syllabus.  Do you have a lesson Plan?  Is there a
summary? Where's the student guide?  Will there be a follow-up assignment?"
        Thomas, who had missed the sermon, came to Jesus privately and said,
"Did we do anything inportant today?"
 
        . . . And Jesus wept.
 
------------------------------

 
On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, joAnn Castagna wrote:
 
>           i haven't seen anyone explicitly address the need to teach
>           students the "culture" of the university, and to be really
>           explicit about the "social conventions" of one's own
>           classroom or discipline.
 
 
I would like to add to JoAnn's remarks that one should also address the
fact that students often don't have the sophisticated reading skills we
all take for granted.  For instance, do they know how to read purposefully?
If they know about purposeful reading--the need to scan--searching for main
ideas--skimming, do they know how to use the structure of the articles
you assign them to help them understand the contents and main ideas.
 If you have a real problem, it might not only be overload-it might also be
that Janey cannot read purposefully and therefore is floundering.
 
Naomi Graetz
Dept. of English as a Foreign Language
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Beersheba, Israel

 
I have very much benefitted from the on-going pedagogical discussion; I've
printed out a number of the suggestions.  And I thank you all for your
contributions. I have a question to pose that hasn't to do with women's
studies per se (since I don't teach women's studies) but certainly fits
into the issue of making the university more user-friendly for students--
more feminist, if you will.
 
Most of the discussion has centered on reading loads; many of the
suggestions are appropriate for classes that introduce *ideas* that can be
read about and discussed.  What does one do, however, in a class--a
lecture course--in which one is attempting to impart information, for
example a history course?  I'm a music historian; I teach various & sundry
lecture courses in which I try to give students (most of whom have little
background) information about developments in musical style, aspects of
the culture to which the music is a response, and so forth.  I teach such
surveys in chronological fashion; there is some reading but lots of
*listening* (both in and out of class).  Does anyone else on the list
teach music, for example, or other courses that do not lend themselves
readily to dividing up into discussion groups?  (It is hard to get a
discussion group going about the development of 18th-century comic opera,
for example, when most of the students don't have a clue what
18th-century comic opera *is*!)  I don't have such problems in seminars,
but I would greatly appreciate suggestions, either on or off the list,
about how to make lecture courses of this nature work better.
 
Many thanks!
 
Katherine Preston
kkpres  @  facstaff.wm.edu
The College of William and Mary

Comments: cc: Kate McKenna <kmckenna  @  oise.utoronto.ca>
 
On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 13:22:19 -0400 sreid wrote:
 
> This whole discussion has been very interesting to me.  On a more
> general note, another factor in the "too much reading," beyond time
> constraints and textual difficulty, is emotional/ideological resistance.
> My bright, enthusiastic students surprised me last spring by insisting
> that they were overwhelmed by what looked on paper to be a fairly
> ordinary number of pages to read.  It took me too long to realize that,
> at least in part, they weren't rebelling at the sheer mass, but that
> they were reacting to the challenges that the texts
 
This is a really important point.  We miss something crucial if we don't pay
attention to the labor of personal/social transformations which are stimulated
 by
the reading.  I know that this is a factor still in my own ability to read
 academic
work.  There is no precedent in my family for a woman attending university.  It
 has
taken me many years to acquire a sense of self which includes woman as
intellectual.  My ability to read has opened up through several layers, over
 time,
marked by personal crisis.  For example, I went through a crisis in my marriage
just before entering a Master's program in psychology.  It didn't end the
 marriage
(now 21 years old) but it ended my "wifedom" as I understood that role.  It was
 a
break with the past.  This freed up a tremendous amount of emotional energy
 which
I was then able to pour into my new studies as never before.  I felt suddenly as
 if I
had learned to think.  I have been through this same process (very often through
 
crises involving redefinition of femininity and separations from the domination
 of
particular men or structures of masculinity) several times now, including over
 the
past year in the context of my post-doctoral work.  My capacity to read
 increases
with each resolution.   We have spoken of technical ways to address the "too
 much
to read" problem but we won't solve it until we begin to address these kinds of
underlying (or dominating) processes.  For anyone interested, I recommend a
wonderful dissertation recently defended by a friend, Kate McKenna, at the
 Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.  It is called
 "Intersubjective
Dreams and Nightmares: Exploring the Subtext of Pedagogical Interactions."
 
 
Kathryn Church
Post-doctoral Fellow
Faculty of Social Work
University of Toronto
kathryn.church  @  utoronto.ca

 
Hi all,
 
I wanted to briefly share a couple of strategies I use to address a
couple of concerns that have recently come up on this thread in terms of the
different kinds of "trouble" in reading.
 
TROUBLE--I tell my students at the beginning of a term that it is always
OK to admit (to me, to themselves, and to the class as a whole) that they
had "trouble" with a particular reading, but they must be prepared to
tell what _kind_ of trouble they had.  (This idea comes from the
teaching strategy of my mentor, Ellen Berry, who used in it our graduate
courses.  I have "simplified" this issue quite a bit for use in
100-level courses).  I give them a guideline to help them identify their
trouble:
MEDIA TROUBLE--this deals with the reading's physical presentation (it is
a photocopy & they missed a page; the print is very tiny; the images are
dark or smudged, etc.).  When a student has "media trouble" we discuss
options for solving the problem (what I could have done).  I usually only
have one of these a term.
TECHNICAL TROUBLE--this deals with reading skills, etc.  The discourse
(what some people call "jargon" I name discourse, in an attempt to be
less negative about the fact that every discipline/subdiscipline has a
language) is unfamiliar; there are lots of "hard words" that the student
had to look up (or couldn't find); the reading's structure was unfamiliar
or seemed too subtle, etc.  Once again, we discuss in class strategies
that help students overcome "technical trouble."  One thing I encourage
(we are a traditional university) is that students (after a few weeks of
class) try to find someone in the class they are comfortable with and
trade phone numbers.  That way they can discuss the readings before class.
IDEOLOGICAL TROUBLE--this deals with how it feels to be reading something
whose basic premise a student disagrees with.  I get quite a bit of this
when we do work in women's health issues and in issues about racism.  I
always work with students on strategies to help them "read through" their
difficulties.  In other words, we focus on the importance of
understanding the other person's point even if we don't agree with it.
One thing that students with "ideological" trouble seem to find helpful
is outlining the reading.  (I know, I know--I had to outline chapters of
my high school history text & learned _nothing_ from the experience.)  In
this case, outlining is only the first step, and should be done if
possible _before_ in-class discussion of the reading.  I have found that
the structure and "officialness" of the outline helps students to feel
confident that they are getting the arguments down in notes without
expecting them to "agree" with the reading.  Then we use the outlines in
discussion.  I often encourage them, before exams, to construct arguments
against the points in their outlines.
 
I imagine others do very similar things; I'm really appreciating the
exchange of strategies and information!
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Jeannie Ludlow=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
                   jludlow  @  bgnet.bgsu.edu
"I wish more people would share the ways of the grandmothers.  I think it
would help the present world situation if we all learned to value and
respect the ways of the grandmothers--our own as well as everyone else's."
                          --Beverly Hungry Wolf (Blood/Blackfoot)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

 
The recent discussion on this list about students complaining they have
too much to read causes anger to rise in me re the students.
Two points please.
 
    1. the phrase "too much to read" strikes me as an oxymoron.
       I have yet to meet a book that didn't somehow provoke my
           mind.
 
    2. recommend students read the book "How to Read a Book"
           by Mortimer Adler. It should help any student willing to learn.
 
As a professional librarian I am working my butt off trying to eradicate
illiteracy. Daily, I here complaints about too much homework by students,
both high school and college.  There is a ALA (American Library
Association) poster displayed in this library that sums up my feelings on
this matter. It says
 
"Libraries are the second defense of freedom, reading is the first."
 
If students value their freedom, they will value reading.
 
Bruce Keener
 
 
Bruce H. Keener                         kwdbk  @  lakeland.lib.mi.us
Kentwood Branch Library                 616-455-2200 (phone)
4700 Kalamazoo Ave. SE                  616-455-2528 (fax)
Kentwood, Michigan 49508

 
I've mostly been lurking on this student reading discussion, but since it seems
to be going strong I thought I'd add a stray thought.  I've been working on a
paper on infotech and pedagogy and reading some of the futurist visions of
what the university will look like one day.  If you want to be really scared
take a look at the educom home page on the web (www.educom.edu/program/nlii),
especially at the essay there by Carol Twigg in which she describes the need
for a "national learning infrastructure."  Her argument takes in many of the
concerns that have been raised in this discussion--students trying to juggle
job and school etc.--but her solutions are pretty scary (at least to me),
raising visions of students sitting in their home in total isolation with their
computer terminals, going to college at their convenience. College campuses
will disappear, becoming simply degree granting central offices.  Since this
vision of infotech is being bandied about pretty regularly, it might behoove
those of us who still believe that teaching is a face to face activity to get
involved in this discussion.  Mind you I am no luddite when it comes to
infotech; I use lots of it in my teaching (that's why I'm writing this piece),
but I get worried when I read that pretty soon students won't have to leave
home to go to college and that the cost of maintaining campuses and faculties
will simply disappear.
 
 
I'm sure in my morning haze I have not made my point very clear,but my main
purpose was to suggest that we might want to take a look at some of this
material and become  part of this conversation (a conversation about
student-centered pedagogy that manages to miss all the insights of a decade of
writing about feminist pedagogy.
 
cheers
Laurie Finke
finkel  @  kenyon.edu

 
I see a fundamental contradiction between two postings.  Laura has her
students divide up readings and present their summaries to the rest of
the class, so they can cover more readings without overburdening anyone,
while Naomi notes her students lack of sophisticated reading skills.  I
would love to do what Laura describes -- and have tried repeatedly to
organize classes around this concept -- and have ended up teaching the
articles myself because the students completely misunderstood them.  It
is *very* difficult for many of my students to pinpoint the main points
of articles, much less critique them.  This does not appear to be a
function of too many other responsibilities -- my best students tend to
be the older mothers returning to school -- but lack of critical reading
skills.  I just can't trust them to explain the most important points to
each other.
 
I now try to hand out reading guides, with questions to answer about the
difficult readings, which helps some but not all of them.  But I
essentially expect them all to have read all the readings so we can talk
about them together.
 
Pat Christian

 
There have been many useful suggestions for dealing with the "reading
mountain." I would like to take the issue in another direction.
 In reflecting on the discussion, I discern a pattern of concern at
individualistic levels (including my own responses) - a forgetting of the
feminist understanding of context for comprehending individuals' behavior
and moving toward change. Therefore, this question: shouldn't we discuss
with students in class the conditions that make it too difficult,
sometimes impossible, for many to have enough time to do the work the
necessary
course work and the conditions in education that failed to prepare many
students to read well (analytically, critically) - then move the
discussion to what kinds of collective efforts can change those
conditions.
  The last-named comes from my recognition (after a while) in teaching
that
helping students understand victimization leaves them with a nihilist
sense, a sense of hopelessness, helplessness; that I have an obligation to
help them develop projects for changing bad conditions - actually working
with the axiom that the personal is political and connecting academics
with activism, not only on their own behalf but for others in their
present and future.  Any thoughts on this?   beatrice
   bkachuck  @  email.gc.cuny.edu

 
Hello,
    This discussion has really prompted me to take some kinds of
actions.  First, the faculty in our department are going to be
meeting one evening to go over our syllabi with one another and to do
a workshop on some of these issues.
    Next, I have been trying to engage students in a discussion of
theire reading, social, and work loads.  What was ironic was students
were saying it wasn't too heavy and so on and so on.  Then, during
our group discussions, I asked each group whether the individuals had
read the chapter because they seemed to be dog paddling around the
concepts.  Well, lo' and behold, these students who said the reading
load here was not too heavy had NOT READ THE CHAPTER!
    However, I have been printing the suggestions and concerns generated
by this topic and our Social Science division will be working on some
answers.  Thank all of you for raising this issue and contributing
your experiences.
 
Peace,
Barbara
 
Barbara J. Peters
Social Sciences Division
Long Island University - Southampton
Southampton, NY
(516) 287-8236     bpeters  @  sunburn.liunet.edu