Every Wednesday and Friday morning I drive thirty plus miles north of Atlanta to teach. Thankfully I am leaving the city at the time of day when most everyone else is coming into the city to go to work. So my ride is not too bad. The worst part of the drive is getting through Atlanta to get on the interstate. That three miles or so takes about as long as the other thirty miles on the interstate. Once I'm on the interstate I can cruise well above the speed limit if I am so inclined. Most of the time I'm not as it did not take long to realize that Cobb county police officers seem to have plenty of time (Cobb county must be a very peaceful and crime-free place) to pull over speeders on the interstate. Seeing someone going north pulled over for speeding at 8am on interstate 75 is ironic because all one has to do is look to the left at 75 south to see hundreds of cars sitting at an absolute standstill, their drivers unable to move at all, let alone speed. The further I get away from Atlanta the more sorry I feel for them. Coming from Atlanta I've seen what they have in store: twenty-five miles of pure misery. They might as well get off the interstate and go sit in their cars in a parking lot for a couple hours. Of course, as bad as I feel for them, I'm that much happier that I'm cruising along at seventy listening to Tom Waits implore me to hoist that rag.
Yesterday was a miserable morning of teaching. It's hard enough to get a nineteen year old excited about the history of philosophy, but it's even harder at 9:30 am. Their assignment was to read Hume, the most famous part of his Enquiry, where he deftly demolishes induction. I was hoping that the bright ones would pick up on how important this was, and how radical, historically speaking. But...nothing. Now anyone who's ever taught knows that feeling well enough. It comes with the territory. What set me off was the realization that most of them had no chance of even having any insight into Hume because they hadn't even bothered to do the work. I realize that this too is par for the college course. But our readings in this class are not long. Even were they to read them carefully, the average students wouldn't have to spend much more than an hour preparing for class. This would not be careful enough of course, and they'd still be confused about many of the details, but they'd have some idea of the big picture and could come to class ready to ask about the things they don't understand. But they, the large majority anyway, don't even bother to do this. One of them said once, tongue at least partly in cheek, that I do such a good job of explaining the text in class that there was no real need for them to bother reading it.
So after about an hour of looking at their bored, vacant faces (sleeping in two cases), I'd had it. I took out the syllabus and said "we went over this on the first day, and it's right here in the syllabus, but I'm going to reiterate it for you." I then reviewed the criteria for doing well in the class that I had outlined in the syllabus. Coming to class prepared and on time and all that stuff. Then I told them that we were half way through the semester and that, as a group, they were not doing a good job and needed to do better. I assured them that I understood full well that coming to school early in the morning to discuss empiricism and epistemology was probably not the most thrilling prospect and that I had to get up at a time when I might normally be going to bed in order to be in class on time and prepared. But if I could do it week in and week out then they were going to have to do it as well. I resented having to play the role of the stern professor who dishes out a healthy dose of shame to the students, but it was necessary. I much prefer to run my classes seminar style, as though we were a group of adults who were going to work through the material together. But clearly that's not possible here. We'll see how they react to this, but they're going to find that things are considerably less relaxed when they come back to class next week.
My second class has a much different vibe to it. It's smaller, the students are better prepared and more talkative, and it is usually much more enjoyable. To be fair, I'm presenting the material for the second time in this class, and I've already got some idea, from the first class, of where the pitfalls might be. And since I've been through it once already, I'm a bit more polished in my presentation. So I'll be curious to see how things go next semester when I'll be teaching the class again. But it's clear that I do need to spend some time rethinking my teacher persona if I'm going to be a more effective teacher.
