[As another
semester winds to a close, a week’s series on some of the moments that have
stood out to me and what conclusions I’d take away from them. Leading up to a
weekend post on some of my summer and fall plans. Share your spring follow ups
or summer/fall plans in comments, please!]
On an unexpected
test of my public scholarly goals, its mixed results, and its value.
I’ve written at
great length, not only in
this space but in the introduction to my
third book, about my incredible experiences teaching in the Adult
Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program. I’ve never encountered a
group of students more excited by and committed to everything that happens in a
classroom, nor one who bring more strong and rich perspectives and voices to share
in those conversations. In each of my prior three ALFA courses, those two elements
worked hand in hand to create the best pegagogical experiences of my career to
date. But in this
semester’s ALFA course, in which I both presented the students with five
nominees for my in-progress American
Hall of Inspiration and worked to elicit their own ideas for such nominees,
the two elements were a bit more opposed: a couple of the strongest voices and
perspectives in the group led those students to resist quite seriously my goals
for the course.
This different
dynamic became clear right from the outset: on the first day I made the case
for remembering Quock
Walker and his peers alongside the more famous Founding Fathers in our
collective memories of the Revolutionary Era, and these two students (out of
only eight total in the class) were having none of it. Remembering stories and
histories like Walker’s is fine, they argued, but much of American history has
been driven first and foremost by Anglo (or at least European) Americans, and
to make the case otherwise is to allow revisionist, politically correct
impulses to outweigh our sense of history. (I may be overstating their position
slightly, but I don’t believe so—that was certainly the gist of it at least.) As
the weeks went along, one of these two students seemed to shift in her
perspective somewhat, to recognize the value of learning about the figures whom
we were studying, of reading their works and voices, of adding them to our
collective memories. But the other student very much did not shift—on the last
day, when I was asking them for their own nominees for the Hall, she declined
to answer or participate in the conversation; and on the course evaluations
(which I saw weeks later), she (I believe) wrote that “The instructor allowed
his political perspective to impact the class too much.”
That line,
combined with the moment I highlighted in yesterday’s post, might make you
think that I’m a regular Howard Zinn in the classroom. I don’t think I am, nor
do I believe that my choices and emphases in this ALFA course should be defined
as political in any partisan or even contemporary sense (although of course the
right-wing opponents of the current AP US History standards and exam would
no doubt beg to differ). Yet despite my disagreement with this student, and especially
my sadness that she didn’t feel on that last day like her perspective would
have been welcome (which it would, even if she nominated Joseph McCarthy for
the Hall!), I came away from the experience very glad that it had happened. If
I’m serious about one of my central, evolving career goals—my desire to add my
public scholarly perspectives on America to our national conversations—then I
had better get used to the idea of engaging with a wide variety of audiences
and perspectives, including, indeed especially, those that disagree with me. I’m
not sure I responded well in this particular instance, although perhaps the
shift in the other student indicates that I did all right; but in any case, I’m
very sure that it was great practice for such conversations, and thus an
experience I’ll carry forward very fully and happily.
Next conclusion
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this semester conclusion? Ones of yours you’d share?
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