Avoid the teacher’s eyes. Never ask questions. Never volunteer to do anything. During my checkered career as a pupil in a big city, public school system, these were the rules I lived by. I remember the knee-pinching desks too small for even the smallest of us, the merciless green walls, and the trees outside shivering in anticipation of an autumn storm. I sat in the rear, as far away from the blackboard as possible. And I remember the drone of history or mathematics or Spanish issuing from the front of the room, presumably from the mouth of a dull but earnest instructor. In essence, the classroom was the arena for a game of stationary hide-and-seek. My passivity as a student, my self-destructive silence, was both a protest and a shield — an example of non-violent direct action, however misguided.
Despite my best efforts, at times I would be called upon to contribute to the lackadaisical discussion. Even when I was fairly certain of the answer to an instructor’s question, or thought I could make a reasonable guess, I was caught in the grip of a vicious academic trap. Answer correctly and be dubbed a “brainiac,” or worse, by my peers. Answer incorrectly and appear the fool. Thus, the terrible silence ensued, saturated with ignorance or fear or both. In the anti-intellectual culture of my childhood — a culture which endures in many quarters today — grades K through 12 were a no-win proposition.
Now that I am a teacher myself, I witness this phenomenon on an almost daily basis: the unresponsiveness of students who are simultaneously ashamed and proud of their ignorance. The following item from one of my standard course documents for developmental and freshman English (“How to Be a Successful College Student”) addresses this issue:
EMBRACE ALL KNOWLEDGE: Never dismiss anything you learn as irrelevant. You never know what may be useful to you in the future. There is a great difference between “ignorance” and “stupidity.” Ignorance is merely the condition of being unaware (and is nothing to be ashamed of), whereas stupidity is the absence of desire to learn (and is shameful, especially for a college student).
It is no revelation to any member of the faculty that too many of our students, particularly those at the developmental level, arrive at Community College of Philadelphia without a sufficient foundation of general knowledge to write a richly detailed essay or participate in a productive discussion of topics that commonly arise in, say, a college English course. Much of their knowledge consists of faulty or unexamined assumptions, vague approximations, arbitrary estimates. When knowledge is imprecise, when a grasp of essential facts is wanting, clear thinking and convincing rhetoric are almost impossible for even the most committed student. This situation is akin to medieval engineers attempting to build cathedrals despite inexact notions of mathematics and in the absence of a standardized system of measurements. Of course, the architects of the Gothic era did manage, somehow, to get their churches up. But how many ultimately collapsed due to the weight of the builders’ ignorance? How many had to be reconstructed, some more than once? How many were abandoned entirely?
Nevertheless, even the flawed or fragmentary knowledge of new college students can enrich the learning experience so long as embarrassment is removed as a consequence of class participation. To encourage a vigorous exchange of ideas and promote critical thinking skills, I have devised for my students a hierarchy of potential responses to instructor questions:
These distinctions, I believe, can be useful. Of special importance are options 3(a) and 3(b). After all, Nashville is the capital of something. A further exploration of this particular “wild” guess can lead to increased awareness of, for example, geography, American history or music. Naturally, in the classroom, wild guesses, if allowed to flourish, can result in time-consuming digressions. Although time constraints and relevance to core course material must be respected, genuine knowledge doesn’t come in a categorical box with clearly defined boundaries. When guesses radically diverge from the main topic of the day, independent research projects may be assigned for extra credit to students who have the courage to speak up when the likelihood of an incorrect answer is high. Urging students to examine topics that they discover on their own, even by accident, can sometimes reinvigorate the desire to learn. Thus, what begins its life as a “wrong” answer can ultimately bear fruit. In one way or another, every student response should be acknowledged and appreciated, including those that are intentionally silly and provide only comic relief. Silence, not fun, is the true enemy of education.
Instructors need to be cognizant of specific shortcomings in their class’s knowledge, the silence of students who are reluctant to own up to their ignorance can be difficult to interpret. Are my students just lazy and unprepared? Are they inattentive? Do some of them suffer from reading deficiencies or other impediments to learning? Or is this silence a manifestation of inadequacies in their education up to this point? A shortcut around this kind of speculation can sometimes be achieved when students feel free to respond to a question with the simple statement, “I don’t know.” To increase class participation and save time, the culture of the classroom must allow this as a neutral option that brings no adverse consequences. Later, a private conversation between the teacher and any student who experiences difficulty summoning factual information may reveal the true cause of the problem. For such a student, circumventing the aforementioned game of academic hide-and-seek may initiate a new self-awareness and a more advanced stage of intellectual development.
Ultimately, with the help of a few inspiring college professors, I did learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of acquiring knowledge. Impressed with the power of my instructors’ minds, I began to cultivate my own. I absorbed their lectures; I read the assigned materials; I participated in class discussions. In the end, I obtained what I believe was an excellent education at an ostensibly mediocre, four-year college. More importantly, I became what college mission statements are fond of calling a “lifelong learner.” A reader of South African literature, of theoretical physics, of Eastern European history. After nearly two decades of schooling, intellectual curiosity had finally superceded my intellectual and emotional insecurity. The fact that this process took so long was, for me, only a setback. But for our at-risk students here at Community College of Philadelphia, their persistent silence in the classroom can result in lifelong regret. It is up to us, the faculty, to disturb the placid waters of fear and ignorance, to create a climate in which students come to realize that withdrawal from academic discourse is not an act of self-preservation, but an act of self-denial.
©Copyright 2005. Contact author for permission
Maintained by Jay Howard,Jan 2005