Sunday, April 09, 2006
The West vs the Rest
There's news on the Simon's Rock diversity front this week. Not very earth-shattering news, but developments worth noting.
Every year at this time, the faculty who teach First Year Seminar meet to discuss the possibility of changing our curriculum. The rules are that all twelve sections of FYS must read the same four books per semester, and faculty can only recommend changing one of those eight books each year. We get to propose "slates" of eight texts, on which one text can be different from the current year's eight books. We then have a complicated system of voting, which I still do not understand--not a straight majority, but some kind of weighted voting that its proponents say is fairer. If I understood how it worked, I might be able to voice an opinion on that--as it is, I just have to live with it.
Needless to say, this makes for a very slow pace of change--positively glacial, in fact.
At this year's meeting to discuss the "slates," all of the second-semester books (Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and Frederick Douglass's Autobiography) remained untouched. The burning question of the day was which first-semester texts to offer. The three that have been on the syllabus since I began teaching the course 12 years ago are Sophocles, "The Oedipus Cycle," Plato, "The Last Days of Socrates," and Dante's "Inferno." Then there are a couple of recent additions: we offered selections from "1001 Nights" last year, and this year substituted "Gilgamesh."
One of the faculty had brought in a daring proposal: take Chartres Cathedral, the physical place and all it stands for, as a "text" in the first semester, and use it as a way of talking about Medieval Europe and the rise of Catholicism. Most of the gray heads in the room responded negatively. I commented that this would be an interesting challenge, but even more interesting if Chartres were looked at comparatively with, say, Mecca and Chichen Itza, or other holy sites, in the context of a broader interrogation of the idea of sacred space and architecture.
My bringing Chichen Itza into the discussing had an energizing effect, in that it prompted one or two of the stronger voices in the room to raise the question of the diversity of our curriculum. This triggered the usual response from the usual voices among the senior faculty: defensive assertions of the importance of "cultural literacy," by which is meant knowledge of the Western canon.
Why should cultural literacy be limited to the Western canon, one might ask? Because, as everyone knows, the West is the dominant culture on earth, and we belong to this empire, therefore our students' education must be grounded in the West. This delivered in a pedantic, condescending tone designed to make all opposition feel poorly educated and misguided.
Fast-forward to a second faculty meeting last week, when a student petitioned to be put on the agenda, and came before the entire faculty to ask that students be given a greater voice in curricular decision-making at Simon's Rock. He did not advocate any ideological line as far as text selection goes, he just asked politely that an opening to be made so that he and other students could be part of the deliberation process.
He too, got the pedantic treatment: "It's the faculty's job to make curricular decisions," he was told. Basically, he got a pat on the head and was told to run along and leave these weighty decisions to the PhDs in charge.
After this second meeting, feeling frustrated and discouraged, I sent out a global email to the First Year Seminar faculty saying that I didn't think simply tweaking one text a year was enough of a response to repeated calls to update and diversify our curriculum, to make it useful and appropriate for the global citizens our students must become. I didn't expect a response, but I couldn't keep silent about my frustration, either.
Lo and behold, one of the staunchest defenders of the Western Canon flag at SRC did respond to my email and concede that it was time for a "review" of our General Education sequence and other requirements. Now of course, by "review" he probably means that it's time for he and other senior faculty to restate in no uncertain terms why they conceived the course as they did, and why it should stay that way forever more. But it's also an opportunity for dialogue that may lead in directions these eminences grises at SRC can neither anticipate nor control.
Or maybe I'm just a diehard optimist, and need to get over it.
Every year at this time, the faculty who teach First Year Seminar meet to discuss the possibility of changing our curriculum. The rules are that all twelve sections of FYS must read the same four books per semester, and faculty can only recommend changing one of those eight books each year. We get to propose "slates" of eight texts, on which one text can be different from the current year's eight books. We then have a complicated system of voting, which I still do not understand--not a straight majority, but some kind of weighted voting that its proponents say is fairer. If I understood how it worked, I might be able to voice an opinion on that--as it is, I just have to live with it.
Needless to say, this makes for a very slow pace of change--positively glacial, in fact.
At this year's meeting to discuss the "slates," all of the second-semester books (Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Mozart's "Don Giovanni," Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and Frederick Douglass's Autobiography) remained untouched. The burning question of the day was which first-semester texts to offer. The three that have been on the syllabus since I began teaching the course 12 years ago are Sophocles, "The Oedipus Cycle," Plato, "The Last Days of Socrates," and Dante's "Inferno." Then there are a couple of recent additions: we offered selections from "1001 Nights" last year, and this year substituted "Gilgamesh."
One of the faculty had brought in a daring proposal: take Chartres Cathedral, the physical place and all it stands for, as a "text" in the first semester, and use it as a way of talking about Medieval Europe and the rise of Catholicism. Most of the gray heads in the room responded negatively. I commented that this would be an interesting challenge, but even more interesting if Chartres were looked at comparatively with, say, Mecca and Chichen Itza, or other holy sites, in the context of a broader interrogation of the idea of sacred space and architecture.
My bringing Chichen Itza into the discussing had an energizing effect, in that it prompted one or two of the stronger voices in the room to raise the question of the diversity of our curriculum. This triggered the usual response from the usual voices among the senior faculty: defensive assertions of the importance of "cultural literacy," by which is meant knowledge of the Western canon.
Why should cultural literacy be limited to the Western canon, one might ask? Because, as everyone knows, the West is the dominant culture on earth, and we belong to this empire, therefore our students' education must be grounded in the West. This delivered in a pedantic, condescending tone designed to make all opposition feel poorly educated and misguided.
Fast-forward to a second faculty meeting last week, when a student petitioned to be put on the agenda, and came before the entire faculty to ask that students be given a greater voice in curricular decision-making at Simon's Rock. He did not advocate any ideological line as far as text selection goes, he just asked politely that an opening to be made so that he and other students could be part of the deliberation process.
He too, got the pedantic treatment: "It's the faculty's job to make curricular decisions," he was told. Basically, he got a pat on the head and was told to run along and leave these weighty decisions to the PhDs in charge.
After this second meeting, feeling frustrated and discouraged, I sent out a global email to the First Year Seminar faculty saying that I didn't think simply tweaking one text a year was enough of a response to repeated calls to update and diversify our curriculum, to make it useful and appropriate for the global citizens our students must become. I didn't expect a response, but I couldn't keep silent about my frustration, either.
Lo and behold, one of the staunchest defenders of the Western Canon flag at SRC did respond to my email and concede that it was time for a "review" of our General Education sequence and other requirements. Now of course, by "review" he probably means that it's time for he and other senior faculty to restate in no uncertain terms why they conceived the course as they did, and why it should stay that way forever more. But it's also an opportunity for dialogue that may lead in directions these eminences grises at SRC can neither anticipate nor control.
Or maybe I'm just a diehard optimist, and need to get over it.
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Sounds, pretty much, like Simon's Rock in a nutshell. A bunch of people get together to make a decision. They all talk a lot about making the decision. Then the few people in the group who have power make the decision, changing next to nothing (or nothing). Why? Because of these "rules" that they have to stick to (of course, unless they write a petition for exception that is approved by so-and-so person, who just happens to be a friend of these people).
I was very enlighted when talking to two RDs last night at the snack bar. One of them said that it used to be that part of the RA group interaction session (part of the application process) was a card game. Everyone participated in it, but no one could talk. Instead, everyone got a piece of paper with the rules on it. The trick? Everyone got different rules. It took people a very long time to realize that they all had different rules. It's a lot like Simon's Rock. People have to work together, and on the surface, it all seems democratic and egalitarian and such. However, there's a certain level of things about which people cannot talk. This causes a lot of ambiguity about everything, but people still have to live with it and "play the game," without talking about certain things.
I was very enlighted when talking to two RDs last night at the snack bar. One of them said that it used to be that part of the RA group interaction session (part of the application process) was a card game. Everyone participated in it, but no one could talk. Instead, everyone got a piece of paper with the rules on it. The trick? Everyone got different rules. It took people a very long time to realize that they all had different rules. It's a lot like Simon's Rock. People have to work together, and on the surface, it all seems democratic and egalitarian and such. However, there's a certain level of things about which people cannot talk. This causes a lot of ambiguity about everything, but people still have to live with it and "play the game," without talking about certain things.
...the Chartres had such potential! We’ve acknowledged that there seems to be a problem with religious tolerance on campus—in fact, it seems to be a characteristic of the greater collective Academia—it would be the perfect way to address this prejudice and open up discussion about the role of religion in the past and present. And by role, I don’t mean exclusively in the eyes of the pious—I mean its relationship to history, to politics, to education, to art, to medicine, to society, to psychology; indeed, the collective environment—and the consequences religion has effected upon our present civilisation—and what, if any, effect it will have in the future.
It could foster the possibility of conceiving the Religious Other as distinct from the blind ignoramus. (And, no, Plato’s Dialogues don’t suffice—there, intellectual hypotheses reign, and the whole soul of man is not pulled out of hypothesis and into belief—what I like to think of as a superficial and impractical education.)
It could be a catalyst for investigating the nature and ethicality of intellectual elitism—something I think very well appropriate to address for students who obviously value their education if they’re here two years early.
It could be used to facilitate discussions on illiteracy vs. literacy—or, the manners in which humans communicate and their relative limitations, advantages, and effects—foreshadowing, in a way, and preparing students for a more informed approach to, Frederick Douglass’ Narrative in the second semester. ...actually, now that I think of it, the Chartres could lend light to all of the other texts. Like a crash-course in hermeneutics!
It could be an opportunity for students to gain greater understanding of the complexity of the variety of worldviews; to learn the subjectivity of knowledge without resorting to deconstructionism; to be informed of the myriad potential visions our eyes may behold; to, in other words, see outside of themselves with less judgment and more curiosity. If that could be accomplished, I suspect many of the issues with intolerance on this campus may resolve themselves. Intolerance is like a sumac tree—better to strike the root than chop the branches, and hope it doesn’t grow back. Hacking at branches effectively attends to the superficial appearance, not the insidious source.
Best of all, it keeps to the West while granting fertile soil for investigations outside of the institution, thus satisfying both parties.
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It could foster the possibility of conceiving the Religious Other as distinct from the blind ignoramus. (And, no, Plato’s Dialogues don’t suffice—there, intellectual hypotheses reign, and the whole soul of man is not pulled out of hypothesis and into belief—what I like to think of as a superficial and impractical education.)
It could be a catalyst for investigating the nature and ethicality of intellectual elitism—something I think very well appropriate to address for students who obviously value their education if they’re here two years early.
It could be used to facilitate discussions on illiteracy vs. literacy—or, the manners in which humans communicate and their relative limitations, advantages, and effects—foreshadowing, in a way, and preparing students for a more informed approach to, Frederick Douglass’ Narrative in the second semester. ...actually, now that I think of it, the Chartres could lend light to all of the other texts. Like a crash-course in hermeneutics!
It could be an opportunity for students to gain greater understanding of the complexity of the variety of worldviews; to learn the subjectivity of knowledge without resorting to deconstructionism; to be informed of the myriad potential visions our eyes may behold; to, in other words, see outside of themselves with less judgment and more curiosity. If that could be accomplished, I suspect many of the issues with intolerance on this campus may resolve themselves. Intolerance is like a sumac tree—better to strike the root than chop the branches, and hope it doesn’t grow back. Hacking at branches effectively attends to the superficial appearance, not the insidious source.
Best of all, it keeps to the West while granting fertile soil for investigations outside of the institution, thus satisfying both parties.
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