I
had a fairly interesting conversation with my P466 teacher not 20
minutes ago. I’ve learned that teachers are pissed off at how the
university corrals students who aren’t qualified or caring into
their courses.
I
hope I haven’t undersold the idea that I do believe that most
teachers are trying their best to teach you and actually care if you
learn something. A phrase that stuck out from my teacher was “it’s
bigger than you or me.” She had to cancel a class that she spent 15
hours preparing each class for. I have to spend four months in a
class that I’m barely interested in and don’t have much a clue
how to understand. I think her problem is worse. The real point is
that they are both bad situations and I don’t think we should both
have to resolve ourselves to the fucked up nature of it all when
there is a bigger problem that can alleviate both of ours.
I’m
an advocate of as close to one on one teaching as possible. You get
to have an actual relationship with the person you’re working with
and find out the best methods to teach them. If you are really
passionate about a topic you can get specific answers or focus on
specific questions. You get to structure the goals and pace of the
course to your needs instead of just taking in information and
spitting it out piece meal. A refreshing thing to hear from my
teacher was that this is how her classes used to be conducted. She
used to have kids who really wanted to take her course and could
handle the technical jargon and wanted to go on to study the topic
later in life.
At
least one significant problem is at the university level. This
semester is special. The class had to open itself up so that enough
seniors could graduate on time. You either take the only class
available to you, or you arrange to stay another semester or the
summer etc. Does this not seem foolish on its face?
So
you want kids to graduate. Maybe it isn’t explicitly about money
because, as my teacher pointed out, a few kids here or there dropping
out or taking an extra course or two doesn’t really matter in the
end. (I still think there is something to be said about the money,
but she may have some insight I don’t know.) How can you say you
care about someone’s education when you’re willing to put them in
a class designed to be over their head and outside of their
interests? How can you not see how many kids are enrolling and
appropriate classes or requirements in a smarter way?
College
is supposed to be the place where you can get technical and learn the
things that you simply can’t learn on your own.
This line stuck out
as well in our conversation. The technical jargon of biology or a
medical field, you almost certainly can’t learn alone. The cutting
edge experiments and new labels of genes, diseases, etc…isn’t
going to be in your Google searches. If this is a ridiculously smart
teacher expressing this sentiment, why does college feel and act like
it wants to pump you full of random facts and requirements and kick
you out the door? Yes, you can be “open” to all sorts of things
and pull some form of potentially helpful information anywhere you go
and from every teacher you talk to. I think every time I get told to
just “be open” or “deal with it” people are missing the
point.
When
you dedicate your time, effort, and money towards something,
especially something that acts under the guise of truly caring about
your time, effort, and money, it shouldn’t be a “deal with it”
or “struggle to get something out of it” relationship. I don’t
mean that you shouldn’t work hard. I don’t think that you won’t
have to adjust. I simply think there should be a higher standard that
this institution holds itself to. It should literally be in the
business of empowering and enabling. I really do think that the good
will and societal philosophy that “education is good” get
subverted by business interests. I think no matter what you think you
are or aren’t getting out of school, it is in some way correlated
with someone who’s got more power and more money than you do and
how they think the school should run.
This
is beginning to sound conspiracy theorist-y. Of course it could be
something else. We could just collectively be too non-caring or
stupid to identify the actual problems. Enough people could just be
happy with how things are run, have their own excuses or explanations
and would never work to change things. Maybe I’m one of a handful
of people who’s really this frustrated about the topic with not
much a plan or strict evidence to back up my claims. I tend to think
that it’s actually a combination of every story you could tell, to
some extent, and hardly anyone is qualified enough to sort through it
all and decide a course of action.
I
am glad though to hear from my teacher that she specifically
structures the course and grades easily so that it’s more about you
trying to get something out of the course than being lost and worried
about failing. She, like most teachers, will beg you to come to
office hours. They don’t do it for the money. I just think their
efforts are being subverted. You’re vulnerable when you care and
aren’t thinking about how to fuck people.
I
don’t want to pretend like I don’t see a problem or would rather
ignore it for the sake of my other interests. I don’t want to
resolve myself to adages about how “that’s life.” I don’t
want to think people are more evil than they are. I’d really hate
to think I’m carrying on about something that isn’t a problem for
the sake of knocking down some personal demon I’m hell bent on
making everyone’s problem as well. But it’s like, every time
someone complains about a bad teacher, testifies to how little they
remember or understand in a class, recount all the time they spent on
some topic to barely pass, go into thousands of dollars’ worth of
debt, are unable to find a job, and can, without much prompting, get
teachers to complain just as long and hard about what’s happening
to them, is it safe to say there’s something to try and fix beyond
their subjective experience?
