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To all you jerks who start packing up your notebooks, laptops, and books 5-10 minutes before class is even over… STOP IT!!!!!! It’s extremely disruptive, not to mention RUDE! —J
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2013.
40 Comments
Sorry Teach, wasn’t expecting everyone else to follow my lead when I skedaddled the fuck out of your boring class. Next time, permit me to leave ALONE so as not disturb those who are sleeping.
boo-hoo
There was a class….damn, I overslept.
Its Friday, no classes at SMU.
A LITTLE MORE RESPECT!
For God’s sake Ivan, can’t you show a little more respect?
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
I’m presuming this is about a class in a post secondary education- they’re paying for it, they can leave early if they want. Personally, I was always about value for money in school and stayed until the bitter end but if people leave as discretely as possible, that’s their business.
Well that’s just the issue, isn’t it?
They AREN’T leaving discreetly.
They’re clicking and clacking their books shut, unzipping and zipping their pencil cases or backpacks, and generally disturbing others.
There wouldn’t be a bitch about it otherwise.
I don’t understand why the profs aren’t lashing back at them.
I know they have cushy, tenured, six figure jobs n all but c’mon.
One of The Captain’s professors would assign Math quizzes similar in length to the duration of time people started to pack up before class was dismissed.
One week and we were back “in line”.
That’ll get those ducks in a row…
good on ’em
could just shoot the ducks the second they rise.
with a rubber band of course
do they still have chalk brushes? those can hurt when the teacher wings one at you
some teachers had extraordinary AIM, and of course, the eyes in the back of the head.
better the brush than the strap or the yardstick
I got the strap once. that little bastard kept watching my face to see me cry and I wouldn’t.
hurt like a bugger, though.
whoa
you guys got schooled…
and I bet both of us can sit for an hour in public without fidgeting or sucking on a sippy cup
my brother had it worse than i did, i learned to keep my head down and only answered a question if called upon
My grade 2 teacher bitch slapped me because she was a senile old koot.
WHAT IS TEACHING?
As you can imagine, I have a very sophisticated concept of teaching. Indeed, in addition to having spent some time at the front of a class and, in addition, for the past while, have been attempting to explain my theory of teaching to a correspondent on Facebook who, shall we say, is cognitively challenged, I believe that I can bring enlightenment to all my friends on Bitch. Anyway, for those like him who criticize teachers, an answer to the question, “What is teaching?” must be forthcoming. So then, what is teaching?
Let’s take it, in good pedagogical fashion, step by step. The first step is to understand that teaching is not to be confused with training. Teaching, unlike training, is not directed to acquiring employable skills. Teaching, and its correlative concept learning, has no intrinsic connection to gainful employment.
The second step is understanding what teaching isn’t. Teaching is not simply “telling” which has its natural home in instruction and is found at the elementary level. I am not talking about the elementary level. I am talking about the secondary level. I’m not even talking about teaching at the university level where “lecturing,” at least in the classroom itself, re-capitulates the “telling” found at the elementary level.
The third step is to reflect on the activity of teaching itself. What is going on – or should be going on – in the teacher’s head while he is teaching? What is he about?
Is teaching a subset of the more general concept of “thinking?” I believe that it is, but I think we have gone far enough for this morning’s class.
Ivan, get back to your seat!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
teaching is being able to get into someone else’s brain and grab it with both hands and shaking it til some sense of how to THINK for oneself squishes out of them.
imo
WHAT IS TEACHING? (II)
RSVP
: Good dog Molly (11/09, 12:02PM)
You have made an excellent point Good dog, if only a re-capitulation of my point that teaching is a subset of THINKING. But – you can see it coming can’t you? – the next question is, “What is thinking?” What does one do when one thinks? But in order to answer the question, “What does one do when one thinks?” one must answer the embedded question. Since one is necessarily conscious when one thinks one must attempt an answer to the question, “What is the nature of consciousness?” What does it mean to be conscious?
Here we must depart from psychology which has never answered that question. Indeed, in spite of purporting to study it, psychology has never answered the question, “What is intelligence?” In the psychological literature intelligence is always designated by the letter “g”. It is an “empty concept.” Psychology can offer nothing but a circular definition. In other words, intelligence in psychologyis that which intelligence tests measure. But that’s just empty circularity. No, it is philosophy rather than psychology which must engage our initial question, “What is the nature of consciousness?”
We will start slowly. It is an old but important example, called “the recognition of physiognomies.” How do you recognize the face of a friend and can you specify the manner in which you do so? You will recognize her face immediately, one out of a multitude, but how do you do it? Here it comes! You recognize the face of your friend by relying subsidiarly or tacitly on its multiple features while integrating those features intentionally into its focal or explicit comprehensive entity, the face of your friend itself. In other words, you rely on those tacit elements while directing your focal attention on the comprehensive entity – the face – which those features jointly constitute.
And this is important. If you were to measure every individual feature of your friend’s face down to the level of the millimeter, you would never be able to picture your friend’s face to me such that I would recognize her face in a multitude like you do. I would never be able to recognize her face on the basis of your explicit description. That is because I lack those tacit clues, those subsidiary particulars, upon which you rely.
So we see that consciousness is structured into tacit and explicit awareness. They are neither interchangeable – I will never recognize your friend’s face on the basis of your explicit description without your tacit clues – nor reversible, in the same way that the pianist’s playing will become paralyzed if he concentrates focally on the position of his fingers on the keyboard rather than on the melody he is playing.
So we have taken the first step. We have unearthed the structure of conscious awareness. All consciousness is intentional and is structured in terms of tacit and focal or explicit awareness. We will stop there before you collapse from exhaustion.
Ivan, no you cannot go to the washroom!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
no, don’t fash yourself mm, I won’t collapse. I was having a bit of a lie down. ( I think ivan made wee wee in the corner)
never provide details about the mid term until they have left.
WHAT IS TEACHING? (III)
RSVP
Good dog Molly (11/09, 3:41PM)
It’s good to know that you won’t collapse, God dog, but I wasn’t sure what you meant by “fash yourself.” I trust it wasn’t off-colour.
So then, let us proceed with our question, “What is teaching?” We have seen that it is a subset of the general question, “What is thinking?” which in turn, is a subset of the question, “What is consciousness?” which, as we have seen, is structured in terms of tacit-focal awareness. All conscious awareness, all thinking and, as a consequence, all teaching must be of this sort. However, we are not home yet.
Let’s imagine John who we saw waving his arms about and talking in a loud voice. We asked John what he was doing and in response, John said, “I am teaching.” We then asked, “What are you teaching, John?” John replied, “Oh, nothing, I’m just teaching”. We would say that John was being incoherent. He is being incoherent because the activity of teaching necessarily entails that something is being taught. In the absence of something being taught we would say that John isn’t teaching at all.
So, what is the significance of that which is being taught? It is extremely significant since it shapes the nature of the teaching act itself. In other words, the nature of the subject will affect the manner in which it is taught. Teaching science, for example, while falling under the general rubric of “teaching” will not be the same as teaching history, the subject I have chosen to illuminate the answer to the question, “What is teaching?” Of course, this then raises the further question, “What is history?” Anyone who claims to teach history must be able to answer that question. So then, what is history?
Here a crucial distinction must be made, that between the historical event and the historical fact. If Ivan were reading about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham he would never be wounded by a stray shot. That is because the Battle of the Plains of Abraham has ceased to exist. It is an event which has gone forever. However, Ivan still can read about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in a history book. What, then, is he reading? He is reading a “historical fact.” But if the historical event no longer exists, where is the historical fact located?
The historical fact is located in the mind of the historian who wrote that book. It is there or it is nowhere. All history, outside of a bare chronicle, possesses an interpretation and that interpretation is in the mind of the historian who has selected certain “facts” and not others and who has assessed the historical significance of that event based on his interpretation of it. It may not look like it, but all history is permeated with interpretations of one sort or another. So the study of history must engage the the interpretation of the historian. The study of history is an interpretive study. The study of history is not the simple recording of historical events but rather it must engage the historian’s mind.
But how is this to be done and how does it shape the teaching of history? To answer this question we must engage that embedded question, “How are we to engage other minds?” But answer must wait for the next installment of “What is teaching?”
Ivan, stop pulling the pigtails of that little girl seated in front of you!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
that doesn’t make sense mm. how can you ‘teach’ history? you can present a list of dates and events and tell someone to memorize it. but how could you ‘teach’ history?
I think we should replace the word ‘teach’ with ‘present’ (the voib, not the noun of course)
and hopefully during the presentation of history some methods of learning will have been taught
WHAT IS TEACHING? (IV)
RSVP
: Good dog Molly (11/10, 1:56PM)
Good afternoon Good dog. Sadly, it is your understanding of teaching history which doesn’t make sense. To present a list of dates and events and tell someone to memorize it is precisely what teaching history is NOT. History has nothing to do with memorization. It has everything to do with understanding? But, you ask, understanding what?
One never reads history, at least beyond the elementary level, for information (dates and events) as you seem to suppose. One always reads the historian himself, his interpretation of events, but never just the events themselves. It involves reading the mind of the historian. But how does one do this?
One does it in the same way that one “reads the mind” of any interlocutor, anyone with whom one is engaged in conversation. The same way I “read” your mind. One reads their mind by tacitly relying on those subsidiary particulars – their presentation of the historical facts – while attending focally to the mind behind that presentation. In other words, your “presentation of dates and events” mentioned above is not the terminus of historical understanding but rather it is the beginning, the departure point of understanding.
So, teaching history involves a dialogical relationship between the teacher and student where the teacher relies both on the presentation of the historian and the “clues” offered by the student in the form of his comments on that presentation while focally or explicitly attending to the historical understanding of the student. Let me give an example, one I call “interrogating the text.”
Some time ago I taught Canadian history to Grade X students. We had a text called “Diverse Pasts”. On the first day I said to the students, “I know that you were as shocked as I was by the title.” Puzzlement ran through the class. What did he mean? Why was he shocked? They were engaged. They asked my what I had meant. I told them that the author clearly didn’t believe that Canada had any identity. It was just a hodge-podge of multiple ethnic groups. It was a mosaic but unlike the American melting pot, there was no “pot” to put the pieces of the mosaic in. Canada was just a multicultural jumble.
The class was very upset. Who did the author think he was? Where did he think he was getting off? What I had done, Good dog, was to intellectually engage the class. History ceased to be an arms-length study but, rather, was an intensely involving activity. Questions arose. Was the author right? What grounds did he have for making the claim? What grounds could be produced to establish counter-claims? Other historians must be consulted. They weren’t going to take this lying down. The class was in a fever.
What, by the way, had they learned? They had learned that history was not something carved in stone, that it had not, along with the twelve tablets, been brought down from the mountain. They had begun to see that all history is interpretive, that beyond the mere recording of the historical event, there there is no apodictic truth as, say, there is in science or mathematics. But this is not to say that all history is relativistic. The students must use their judgement – yes, their judgement – to determine which among the competing interpretations, was reasonably superior to the others. Note the word “reasonably.” They must not simply replace one biased judgement with another but be able to support their judgement on the basis of good reasons.
So there you have it, Good dog. Teaching history is not a matter of presenting a list of dates and events and telling them to memorize it as you suppose. It is a dialogical engagement between teacher and student which, while structurally identical to conscious awareness and thinking itself, is vivid, like-like and animating.
Oh, all right Ivan, you can go now.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
well there you go mm, you have illustrated the difference between ‘presenting’ history (which was my lamentation of the usual fare) and truly ‘teaching’ . I would have enjoyed your classes.
RSVP
: Good dog Molly (11/10, 3:36PM)
And I would have enjoyed having you in them, Good dog.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
I am glad to say that my love of history survived the concerted assassination attempts of high school teachers in 2 provinces. In Calgary it was called “Social Studies” and they handed out teaching certification to every beardo draft dodger who applied for landed immigrant status. In Truro in 1979 it might just as well have been called “Why You Should Feel Guilty about the Acadians, the Blacks and the Amerinds” (“Amerinds” being the beigist , pre-PC term for Injuns.
*Throws paper airplane ( an F-14 Tomcat) at Dr. Cato’s back and punches GDM on the shoulder, asking “So, D’ya like me?”*
that’s the thing isn’t it ivan? some of us survived school with our love of learning intact. somewhat tattered but still flyin’.
Indeed. I had some great teachers, especially in Grade 12 at C.E.C.; but I never had a good History teacher.
i spent most of my school life in libraries
I spent most of my jr high years skipping out and hanging around with guys who drove cars with Hollywood mufflers.
and the library.
mr dueck grade 6 (deceased) and mr asper (grade 9 math) and mr neufeld (gr 11/12 physics) taught as a calling.
RSVPS
: Ivan Remembers (11/10, 5:55PM)
As a matter of fact, I taught History in Calgary (Queen Elizabeth High School, Calgary NW) but only for a year. The high point – well, one of them – was at a parents’ night. A mother asked me where I had taught the previous year. “Oh,” I replied, in my best off-hand manner, “that would have been in Rome.” Incredulity spread over her face. In my best form, I had pedagogically engaged her, but sadly she didn’t seem to want to discuss Gibbon’s interpretation of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
While I have taught in Halifax (Halifax West Municipal High School), also for one year only, I have never taught in Truro. Do you think that Truronians (?) would have been engaged by my interpretive/dialogical approach? (I’m sure they would have been since it transcends geographic, class and sexual orientation. Even the buggers take to it like ducks to water.)
I note that your avatar commemorates Remembrance Day. So does mine. You might be interested in clicking on and reading my commentary.
: Paingirl (6:35PM)
The fact that you spent most of your school life in libraries could mean one of two things, one good and one not so good. If you were researching history essays in order to present documented counter-arguments to the received views as contained in the text, then that is good. If you were sweeping the library floors, then that is not so good.
: Good dog Molly (6:48PM)
If you spent most of your junior high years skipping out and hanging around with guys who drove cars with Hollywood mufflers, then that is no so good unless, of course, you engaged them in lively interpretive dialogue designed to engage their minds and elicit their background philosophical values. “Why are you doing this?” might have been a good opening question.
On the other hand, if you also spent most of your junior high school days in the library, then you might have used your contact with guys who drove cars with Hollywood mufflers as field research designed to throw light on their background value structure preparatory to presenting it to the class as a discussion paper. A possible title might have been, “The Search for Identity: Suggested Normative Implications for those Driving Cars with Hollywood Mufflers.” I see this as ground-breaking sociological research and would, no doubt, be footnoted in the current literature.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Very interesting commentary, indeed MM. Do you recall what vessel your Father served in at Jutland? The father of my former boss was a radar technician in the R.N. in WW II. He went to the Far East in H.M.S. Howe, which was a sister ship to the more well known King George V and Prince of Wales. I once built him the 1/600 scale MPC kit (Airfix mould)of a KG V class battleship in Pacific Theatre paint scheme.
I don’t know what Trurites would have made of you , MM. My history teacher at the time was one of nature’s bachelors who never wore the same outfit twice in the course of a school year and whose yogic contortions when approaching an open window (in order to protect his epic combover) were the stuff of legend. I know that moving there in the summer between Grade 11 and 12, I absolutely despised the place. The irony is that I made very good friends at C.E.C., got the best Grades of my life, went on to uni in Halifax, and spent the summers of 1980 & 81 as a news announcer at CKCL. Interesting place in the late 70s; sort of a socio political timewarp – like something out of the Eisenhower era American midwest. Discos at the Legion every Friday night, cruising, secret drinking, hanging out at the A&W. Like Happy Days, kinda. No, I wasn’t Potsie. Nor was I The Fonze.
RSVP
: Ivan Remembers (11/11, 9:56AM)
Many thanks for your comments. As you might have suspected I have done considerable work on my family tree which, among other things, includes an official transcript from the Ministry of Defence. The relevant parts read as follows:
“Thank you for the interest you have shown in the service of your father in the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve and Royal Naval Division. We have successfully traced his records of service and we gladly supply to you the following account of his engagement.
He was mobilized into the Royal Naval Division and his record reads thus:
11.1.15 Drafted to Wireless/Telegraph School Clapham from 1st Battalion Crystal Palace. He then entered service.
Ships/Shore Establishments served on:
HMS DIDO Cruiser 6. 3.15 – 30. 4.15
HMS Royal Naval Barracks,
Chatham 1. 5.15 – 3. 5.15
HMS BERYL II Trawler 4. 5.15 – 30. 9.15
HMS BRILLIANT Cruiser 1. 11. 15 – 18.11.16
HMS SWEEPER Trawler 19. 11. 16 – 14. 3.19
He was demobilized to shore on 14 March 1919.
Ratings held:
Ordinary Seaman 21. 10. 14
Ordinary Telegraphist 1. 5. 15
Telegraphist 1. 11. 15
Leading Telegraphist 1. 11. 17
He was granted one Good Conduct Badge on 20. 10. 17.
Character: Very Good Throughout.”
I have read only one book dedicated to the Battle of Jutland – “The Riddle of Jutland: An Authentic History” (1934) by Langhorne Gibson & Vice-Admiral J.E.T. Harper, R.N. – and was amazed to learn, in the days before radar, that because of heavy fog the German High Seas Fleet and the fleet of the Royal Navy went unknowingly at full steam in opposite directions from each other at a distance of only 50 yards!
Keep your buttocks clenched, chaps!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
PS.
I believe I may have mentioned that I was a newsreader at CHNS in Halifax while attending university there. In addition to reading the news I did scripted commentary on a number of programs one of which I still remember. It was called “The People’s Gospel Hour” and featured, I think, a north-end female black chorus who belted out those old toe-tappers. I was accepted by the CBC as well but they wanted me to go to Sydney. I mean, seriously?
I will draw a veil over my other activities except to say that the Lord Nelson Tavern – there is now a bank on the spot which says something about changing times – was the center of civilization. Yes, the very epicenter! All the problems of the world were resolved at those heavy black oaken tables over quarts of Olands Export. One never, but never, ordered pints. Some poseurs ordered Molson’s, can you imagine? The oak-panelled walls featured the metal crests of the ships of the RCN and good fellowship prevailed, except when it didn’t. Rigid segregation was maintained between the various university groups. Other patrons did not register on our consciousness. (“Who are these people and what do they want?”) Smoking, of course, was de rigeur. Often, even in winter, the heavy windows had to be pulled down from the top to let heavy clouds of cigarette smoke waft their way out over toward the the Public Gardens to asphyxiate the pedestrians passing by who shook their fists at us in impotent rage.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Thank you for sharing that MM. I find it interesting that your Father’s initial trade training involved communications, as did his WW II experience, with cableships. Me own Dad joined the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals as a soldier apprentice in the early 50’s. Strange, or perhaps fitting, that they should have sired such a pair of loquacious wordsmiths.
Yes, you have mentioned your experiences at CHNS. As I recall the Peoples Gospel Hour was fronted by a bully pulpit thumper named Pastor Perry F. Rockwood, who would not have been out of place at Westboro Baptist. For me, the center of my Halifax Universe was the Lower Deck with its long oaken tables, cheap rib steaks, beer and smoke fug, Celtic music and dart playing regulars whose bemused indulgence made it a haven for King’s types dodging Formal Meal.
RSVP
: Ivan Remembers (11/11, 4:40PM)
Yes, “loquacious wordsmiths” as you put it but, since words are not simply free-standing objects which do not just happen to just pop up but rather are the products of extended reflection, I tend to favour the phrase “articulate thinkers.” Welcome to the club, Ivan. It is, as you are no doubt award, a very exclusive club on this site.
I’m not sure of Pastor Perry’s role on “The People’s Gospel Hour” – he may have been featured somewhere along the line – but my attention was drawn to that black, female chorus and their bouncing tunes. Of course, I also reflected on what was unquestionably their magnificent labia.
I have been to the Lower Deck on a couple of occasions but it never managed to replicate, at least for me, the intense exchanges featured at “The Lord.” Of course, there was a considerable time lapse which might have had something to do with my changed perceptions.
You will note that I have changed my avatar to show Queen Victoria on a one-cent black stamp from the early 1860’s. I remember those days well as, at The Lord, we all rose as one and toasted her health over a quart of Olands.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!