Thinking about teaching after the Pandemic
As the term is progressing, I am already seeing my hypothesis coming back in an altered form. Here’s what I initially came up with at the start of the term:
Visual Stimulation is Required
Students expect completion equals quality
Interaction in class is unnecessary
Class is a solo experience
This essay is about the third one, the idea that interaction in class is unnecessary.
If you have a society that valorizes individual accomplishment over the collective advancement of people, you have a classroom that is seen as a site of efficiency rather than necessity. We have classes just because it makes economic sense to educate 30 or 40 people in the same class before the same professor. There’s no other reason.
Of course all of us who value teaching and ponder it often know that the bouncing of an idea around the room, the asking of a question that causes two or three shy students to say “I wanted to ask that,” or someone challenging what another student said are parts of the curriculum.
All of that was lost in the poor transition from the classroom to Zoom University as it was called in the United States. This interactivity showed that the physical presence of students together in a room was essential, even to those professors who don’t think too hard or critically about teaching. The complaints from all sides show the necessity of the classroom.
However it might be the case that students do not think of the classroom as important or vital to an education that is for individual gain. Many students take courses because they have to, or because they are required, not because of any curiosity or interest. They see classes as part of a pathway toward a job or a career of some kind.
The need to participate in class or consider class as a group effort is thwarted by the COVID lockdown experience, the idea that university exists to provide job training and job training only, and a society that values the individual achievement, never telling the story of the people who supported the individual and made their success possible (it’s never the strong individual or genius by the way).
I made this assumption and hypothesis long before the semester started. I’ve found that only in my hybrid course section do I find trouble. But this is probably because the “meet in person once a week and do the rest online” model is a terrible one, motivated by University pragmatics and marketing instead of pedagogy or principles of ethics (Give the customer options!). Many students in there did not choose the hybrid modality but were placed in it. But in my other courses, interaction is good.
I wonder if the interaction is motivated by hearing what one another say rather than impressing the professor or leaving a rhetorical impression. It is still a challenge to indicate to students that the interaction with peers is not accidental but necessary.
The classroom is also one of the few places where we can chip away at this dangerous narrative that we are all singular individuals without connection to a larger society: We are responsible for ourselves and our success alone; anyone who is suffering or struggling is doing so because of their individual choices. To challenge this we need instruction that shows how when someone advances everyone does by hearing that advancement or being privy to that person’s success. This is echoed in David Bohm’s theory of dialogue where he argues that persuasion by one over a group might sway opinions but will not have a value anywhere close to the value of the group suspending this kind of argumentation in favor of an argumentation that encourages everyone to take up an assumption and think about what makes it work.