College Should Help Students Become Thoughtful, Discerning Contributors to the Democratic Process
U.S. History 101 is not one of my favorite courses. Most of the students attending Montcalm & Wolfe College, where I am the history department, resist learning anything they believe has no immediate practical application in their daily lives. They insist that their courses help them in their careers -- if they even have careers. The College administration directs me to fit my teaching to what the students want. The administration thinks I should focus on factoids, such as the date the Erie Canal was completed, although I don’t see how knowing such factoids would help anyone get a promotion or even a job. I feel that an important professional part of being a college professor is to help students become responsible and effective participants in the democratic process. Therefore, I try to help them acquire or improve critical thinking skills, and to understand how social and political decisions, both past and present, relate to their core values. So, I feel squeezed between pressures from the administration above me and – dare I put it this way? – the students below me.
To illustrate how unpleasant trying to teach U.S. History 101 can become, I’ll tell you about a recent class session.
That day, Adelia Endell, a large, middle-aged black woman, began to cry when I called on her.
No, let me back up a bit. Fifteen minutes before class time, another student, Jason Wilton, walked into my office without knocking. I was preparing the fifth and next-to-last quiz. Of fifteen summer session meetings, so far Wilton had attended two, neither the day of the important midterm exam. "Can I take the midterm tonight, instead of the quiz?" he asked. "No," I told the tall muscular blond man. "I don't have a second midterm prepared and, besides, in the course outline I wrote that there would be no makeup exams. "Why not give me the same midterm you gave the rest of the class?" I was afraid to reply, "You could have gotten the questions from someone who took the midterm two weeks ago. You could have had two extra weeks to prepare." I pictured him complaining to the dean that, without proof, I had accused him of cheating – a violation of the code of conduct in the faculty handbook. So, instead, I said, "I never do that. I have to be consistent with what I wrote in the course outline. As I told the class, the course outline is a contract between me and the class. I have to live up to that contract; I expect every student to do the same." To my relief, he nodded. "I guess that's fair. But it's not my fault that I'm a police detective and drew a special assignment that's kept me busy this summer." "You can still pass the course with a good grade," I told him, "if you come to every class from now on, and turn in all the homework. I don't take away credit if homework is late, provided it is in by the last week of class." He smiled and left. Then he didn’t come to class.
Adelia Endell had come to every class. She was grossly overweight, so much so that she had trouble making her way past the other students to reach her seat near the wall. I had been surprised no one had offered to trade seats with her. Students are usually kind about things like that. I usually find obese women unattractive, but I found her unusually so. I try to like my students, and feel liberal guilt whenever I don’t like an African-American. But Ms. Endell spent her time in class doodling pictures of scantily clad men, turned in no homework assignments, left early without taking any quiz, and did not take the midterm. When, earlier in the summer session, I had called on her to respond to a question I asked the class, she always answered, “I don’t think it’s fair of you to ask me that before I have had time to study that question.” Then she would suck her lips in, making her mouth a thin, lipless line, and look down at her folded hands. After several such non-responses, I stopped calling on her.
That day, I had been lecturing on how the railroad boom in mid-nineteenth century America had put an end to the construction of shipping canals. While I was describing the dangers and discomforts of early rail travel, I notice that, for once, Adelia Endell was paying attention. As I spoke, I walked down the aisle until I was several rows behind her. I could see, then, that she appeared to be taking careful notes, writing in her spiral-bound notebook in what looked like standard outline form. “Ms. Endell,” I said, trying to find a way to reward her for her new effort, “could you summarize for us the last point I made – the point about how dangerous rail travel was?”
To my astonishment, she burst into tears. “I was paying attention!” she sobbed. “You don’t have to pick on me! It’s not my fault I’m fat. Besides, I’m that way again, and it’s all your fault.”
I had no idea what “that way” could mean. Was she menstruating? Was she pregnant? Several young white women in the class were glaring at me. Most of the others were carefully avoiding my eyes.
“I’m not picking on you,” Ms. Endell,” I said, making my voice low and sympathetic. I just noticed what good notes you were taking, and I wanted to give you a chance to earn a quality point in my grade book – for answering correctly.”
That just made her sob harder. “Don’t make fun of me!” She began to cough and choke, ripped the sheet she had been writing on out of her notebook and held it in front of her mouth, as if she were about to vomit. Then, she stood up, and holding the wrinkled sheet over her mouth, pushed past the other students in her row, ran up the aisle and out the door, slamming it behind her. Her notebook lay abandoned beside her seat.
“What did I do?” I said out loud.
A Latina woman, Ms. Ramirez, raised her hand. I nodded to her. “She’s very sensitive,” Ms. Ramirez said. “You scare her with your big words. She thinks you are a genius and she doesn’t belong in your class. She told me last week that she was planning to drop because she isn’t smart enough for college. I told her she should stay, because, if you’ll pardon my frankness, she needs the welfare checks. If she quits college, her checks will stop.”
“What can I do to help her?” I asked.
Ms. Ramirez shook her head and dropped her eyes, reminding me of Adelia Endell.
A young, recent high school graduate, and class suck-up, Anson Sullivan, spoke up: “You could offer to tutor her, or offer to find her a tutor.”
“Thank you,” I said, “that’s a good idea. I’ll call her at home.
Beverly Klinedienst, a 32-year-old unmarried mother of four, spoke up. “Why did you have to wait for one of us to suggest that? Don’t you keep track of who is in trouble? Isn’t that your job?”
I fantasized the class marching in a body into the dean’s office to complain about me. The faculty knew that, because of cutbacks in the College budget, layoffs were virtually certain. If they had to cut back because of budget constraints, my tenure would be no protection. I felt that the dean already disliked me, because I had challenged his plan to require all faculty to contribute one night a semester of “Emergency Back-Up” in the college infirmary. It didn’t seem to matter to him that most of us had no medical background whatsoever. What mattered was that he could save money by letting go the nurse who staffed the infirmary in the evening, and replace her with a faculty person.
“The course outline I distributed the first day of class says that I’ll find you a tutor or gladly tutor you myself if you let me know you are in trouble. The only way I can tell who is in trouble is by seeing your homework or exam papers. Some of you have turned in very little homework and have cut must of the classes when there were quizzes or exams.
“Shouldn’t that in itself be a signal to you that something is wrong?” Ms. Klinedienst wanted to know. I didn’t have an answer to that, so I took a deep breath and said, “Tonight, I’ll telephone everyone who has missed more than half of the quizzes and exams and so far has turned in less than half the homework.
After that, the class seemed to revert to its normal frustrating unresponsiveness. I stumbled on through my boring presentation of growing industrialization in nineteenth-century America. Some students took notes. Some stared vacantly into space. A few whispered softly to each other. Linda Gascon, the brightest student in the class, wrote furiously in her tiny personal journal. Five students left when I started to hand out answer sheets for the quiz.
Adelia Endell’s phone turned out to be disconnected. She never again came to class.
Don’t think that I think this story puts me in a good light. Ms. Klinedienst’s criticism was justified. I had focused too much on getting the students thinking about the social and political effects of the industrial revolution; I had lost track of another important part of my professional responsibility, to help the students learn the course content.
