On teaching and on appropriateness.

I am an open, enthusiastic person. I make a lot of jokes without pausing for a laugh (this style seems particularly liable to misunderstanding by the Midwestern-born. I'm not sure why). I have something to say in response to most questions and comments, and generally I take everything to be related to everything else. So it happens, naturally enough, that I am just that way as a teacher. I discipline myself mainly with syllabi and prepared notes. The occasional self-injunction little avails; like Jane Eyre picturing herself as a missionary in India married to St. John Rivers, I can do it for a little while and without noticing revert to being as I am and acting as I act -- and like Jane Eyre I'm sensible enough to accept that, however deeply I may wish to change, and however much I admire those who do things in another way, that way is too foreign to my nature to figure in my long-term plans. Efforts to enshrine it there end, soon, in self-reproachful reversion. Jane Eyre considers the constant effort of will required, and realizes that even if to live so would be finer than to live according to her nature, she could not succeed, certainly not without a stronger force (St. John Rivers would do nicely) heating and beating and hammering her metal always into that other shape. So it goes. Jane Eyre is choosing how to live her own life. But my decision directly affects many more people than myself, and perhaps impacts some of them more than it does me. So it is particularly incumbent upon me to ensure that I do my best not just as I conceive it, but according also to standards that are set by others and not engrained in me, by which I have agreed to work. I do. I put a lot of work into syllabus, I prepare material thoroughly before class and write out notes for at least the most important points I would like to get to, I solicit conversation and try to manage the debate. That last is in fact not a part of -- though not incompatible with -- the usual standards for teaching such a class as I have been teaching. In a class of up to -- oh -- twenty, perhaps thirty students, student participation is very much the norm. In a larger class, like mine, too large for us to all face each other, it is not so common to devote most of the class to discussion. The students determine the shape and ambiance of any class that is not pure lecture or nearly, and the more students, the harder it is for the teacher to give them all voices. I have been lucky enough to teach remarkably good students always, so far, throughout my brief career. This term in particular they were lovely (though I suppose I say the same nearly every term). Under my supervision, the students built a running conversation. It did absolutely require my supervision, and on occasions when I let control out of my hands I erred. But it was their conversation. I was more than just another participant, but I wasn't on high or separate, either. I was trying to create a space where we could say anything (relevant); and then trying to manage the process of figuring out collectively what counted as relevant. Here is where we come to the topic of the title. I am always eager to let students know they should not be embarrassed to speak: that their comment is likely not "stupid," since if they are unsure of something probably several other people are, but also that a stupid comment is nothing to be ashamed of -- only something to be ashamed of repeating over and over without learning from it. To this end I used my nature, and showed by example that you can do something silly at one moment and be clever and helpful the next. So I made up silly examples, and used my students in them.* I brought in occasional props. I cold-called and told them just to say if they hadn't done the reading. Twice or three times I asked them all to close their eyes and raise their hands if they believed this or were persuaded by that. I often took attendance by having them call out their own names, so that they would learn each other's names and perhaps get more used to speaking in front of each other. I made jokes constantly (that is, I articulated at least half of the jokes that I wanted to make). I declared "Experimental Fridays" and changed things from time to time. And I told them stories. I told them stories about myself, sometimes true, sometimes untrue or elaborated, sometimes patently, outrageously false. I performed the just-linked monologue for them one Experimental Friday, and finished to an ovation, lots of questions, lots of "great class!"es, and came home to four additional, e-mailed "great class!"es. I would never, ever have felt comfortable doing that with a class that hadn't already been interested and willing and comfortable. (Of course I told them at the end that Daniel Dennett had really written the story and not me.) I let my guard down. That, in itself, is what I have struggled with. No particular possible inappropriate behavior. That I let my guard down so with them. That I told them things about myself when they asked me, or for the sake of examples. I wanted to open them up to talking about what they cared about, and to a large extent I succeeded. Several students have told me that this was their favorite class, and one said that writing the final paper had been the most intellectually engaging project of their freshman year. But I don't know. Socrates made himself the show and managed to draw people in to philosophy. It can be done. But I am no Socrates. I do not regret this, not knowing it's so because I do other things besides initiate challenging conversations with people I encounter. (For one, I go home to h, while Socrates does not appear to have been an exemplary family man.) But even Socrates sometimes was too much the show. Think of the view, crudely expressed in the pseudo-Platonic Theages and sophisticatedly in any number of Plato's dialogues -- the Apology and Alcibiades's speech in the Symposium -- that Socrates is magic. Plato rationalizes his magic to logos, to reason, to argument, to things in principle accessible to all of us by our humanity. Or think simply of the terrific differences between Xenophon's and Plato's Socrates. Xenophon's Socrates is magic mainly in being so outstandingly in self-control, in his being so temperate, so moderate, so tolerant of hardship. This isn't unrelated to Plato's view -- both present him as exceptionally the master of himself and his circumstances. And Aristotle's casually proposing him at Posterior Analytics 97ab? for an archetype of greatness of soul suggests that mastery and majesty remained dominant impressions of him. This is sort of drawing people in, but sort of only drawing them to oneself. And even if Socrates succeeds, surely there's something amiss. It might possibly be effective to interest people in a discipline by showing that some people engaged therein are interesting; would that justify it? It was never my intention to do that. But I worry that I may have depended too much on my nature in teaching, and to some students made myself a sideshow, when I only meant to be a ticket-taker. * Along the lines of "Now, S believes in witches, and I don't. So when the crops fail and my sheep are stricken down, and S says it must be because of a spell or a curse, I don't consider that an adequate explanation. But why not? How could S convince me? Well, he could bring me records of all the alleged curses laid on by witches and of all the agricultural problems in the neighborhood, and pick out patterns of similarity. Or he could show me a witch casting a spell, and hope I learn from experience what I wouldn't believe based on testimony. He could point to a particular witch who is now casting a particular spell, predict that it will be fulfilled, and point out when it is. Or he could show that the presence of witches helps us explain other phenomena, too. For instance, on my account, the crop failures have resulted from unexpected weather patterns, the sheep illnesses from bad luck, and the concurrent phenomenon of many local young women acting suddenly quite different than usual in similar ways, I attribute to a trip the girls took together that frightened them or some water they drank that was poisoned. S explains them all with witches. His explanation is certainly simpler and more elegant than mine, and it coheres perfectly well with all the facts we've given ... So should I start believing in witches?"