The Classroom and Indoctrination
Maxine Hairston's "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing" continues to infuriate me, even after having read it last semester. I find this idea that the classroom is supposed to be a judgement-free utopia for our students to be incredibly naive and outdated. Our students live in a world where the classroom is far from a utopia: they've grown up doing active shooter drills and watching on the news as other students their age are shot in their classrooms. To continue to pretend that classrooms are somehow exempt from the effects, particularly the dangers, of the outside word is to do an incredible disservice to our students.
I think much of what Hairston and other scholar's like her (shout out to Stanley Fish) fail to realize is that many professors have incorporated politics and argument into the classroom without it becoming a place for them to indoctrinate their students. There is a huge difference between educating your students on current events in an unbiased way and teaching them how to express their own political opinions, and indoctrination. I feel as if the modern professor has been stereotyped to be a young liberal who will shove the socialist agenda down unsuspecting youths' throats. Although I'm sure there are professor out there who do this, I feel like this is not the majority. Indoctrination does not have to be linked to teaching our students how to argue/stand up for themselves politically both inside and outside of the classroom.
This leaves me with a few questions: How do you incorporate politics into your classroom? Do you avoid it? Why or why not? Do you fear the claims of indoctrination in higher ed?
Natalie,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree and hear you. I think there is a huge difference between indoctrinating our students and keeping them unbiasedly informed. I still remember one of my comp instructors from undergrad who managed to go the entire semester without letting any of her students know her political standings, while still allowing everyone to argue the issues we deemed important (it was an argumentative writing course).
Personally, I try to adopt a similar policy. I do not avoid discussing politics in the classroom, but I also try my hardest to never show my students my hand in terms of where I am (on certain issues anyway). They know that I care about people and want everyone to be treated fairly, but I avoid giving my specific stance because I want them to avoid thinking or following a certain mindset just because that is what their professor show. I think there is a huge stereotype in higher ed, and I have even had my family and boyfriend's family make comments and argue with me over it at family dinners because surely you must be an agenda pusher to be in higher ed, right? Teaching our students to think critically in real world terms is far from in line with indoctrinating them. What concerns me about this in higher ed is that the longer a prof seems to teach, the more likely they are to succumb to indoctrination.
Abbie
Hi Natalie,
ReplyDeleteI think to fear the indoctrination claims of higher ed is to continue to let certain people push THEIR political agendas and terrorize us into not allowing our students access to new ideas, perspectives, and information. The people who (generally speaking) push this narrative about higher ed are people who (generally speaking) want to continue indoctrinating *their* belief system by discouraging people from education. For me, it is frustrating to hear these people paint certain views as "opinions" when they're facts. If I have a student who says "immigrants are taking our jobs" I'm going to send them to several sources that demonstrate very clearly that this is just factually inaccurate. Whether the "truth" lines up with a certain political ideology or not, doesn't matter to me. To mitigate that, I do tell my students my bias. I do tell them my political views (if it is relevant) and I tell them why and how I got there. To pretend I don't have a political bias, I feel, is much more sinister than being outright. While it'd be nice to say we can keep politics out of the classroom, even talking about reliability of sources is political. What happens when I have a conspiracy theorist student who doesn't believe any science because it's all "manufactured by the man"? How do we talk about these issues? The other day we had a conversation about who funds research, and what that means for what the research explores/claims. I feel like it all connects. I definitely don't try to push it unnecessarily, but to ignore it, I think, is to disadvantage my students. Just some thoughts.
I love the distinction you made between educating our students about current events and indoctrinating them to believe as we do. This brings to mind two of my history professors from undergrad. They both liked to talk about current events (the news, politics, etc.) throughout their courses and how it related to the past. However, they would often get into heated debates about whether they should be encouraging their students to vote. The one professor argued that as an educated individual and as a member of a democracy, it was his duty to––in essence––argue with students that they should exercise their democratic rights through voting. The other professor argued that doing so was indoctrinating our students in what we personally believed was right. He even argued that education was about allowing students to take their own position on things and make their own choices. Essentially, pushing these political agendas on students was counter to the point of education. That’s not to say that the one professor was pro politics in the classroom and the other was against it. On the contrary, they both incorporated discussions of politics into their classes. It was more about the WAY they chose to talk about politics that differed and I think this is something we have to consider whenever we present information to our students.
ReplyDeleteI am fascinated with Abbie’s comment about how the longer we teach in higher educating, the easier and more likely it is that we will indoctrinate our students. If this is true, it could be that we are more willing to take the easy way out, the easy answer, because we have become too comfortable. I could say a lot more about this, but I should leave it at that. I am going to think about this more....
Cassia,
DeleteYour comment brought to mind a very specific memory of one of my professors in undergrad who offered us extra credit if we showed her proof that we voted. We did talk about politics/current events quite often in that class, and although I wouldn’t say she was trying to indoctrinate any of us, it was obvious where she stood along the political spectrum (you could potentially argue she was trying to gently sway us towards a particular direction?). As someone who also sees the importance of being involved in politics (whatever opinions you hold about them), I do see what she was trying to do in encouraging us to be involved. I was planning on voting anyway, and my experience in her class had no effect on the way I ended up voting, but the whole experience still made me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have a problem reminding students of upcoming elections and their right to vote, but offering extra credit seemed like taking it a step too far. I don’t think this professor was mal-intentioned (I actually really appreciated her as a professor otherwise), but I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable doing the same thing. Maybe it also has something to do with being a professor for a long amount of time and getting more comfortable with (or less aware of) those kinds of actions…?
-Jessie
Jessie,
DeleteI really liked your thought. I wanna chime with you here that I would also like to hold the position in class as a motivator to know them about their rights and duties. Because that is important. The students who come to college, don't come for academic knowledge only. College is the place, where they develop their other wings of knowledge through gaining experiences and making connection of their knowledge to each other. However, I don't want my students to get influenced by my own own beliefs. What I can do in class, let them know about current issues that they should know. They are college students and somehow are going to lead the country in near future. So, they should have knowledge about these issues. But I never appreciate to get biased in class for any thing, specially political issues. They can make their stand through researching and the justifying of their own.
I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with parts of Hariston's article. Academia has come to be the breeding ground of the radical left, leaving many students who do not share those opinions or values to feel ostracized and scared to have a differing opinion. However, the question is "Is it the role of the English composition classroom to provide a space for these political discussions?" It's obviously not our place to educate them on these topics because we are not scholars on everything under the sun. We're scholars on writing. Perhaps, these issues belong in the history classroom, current events classroom, and other forums on campus that allow for education.
ReplyDeleteIt should be the role of the writing teacher to provide a neutral forum for valuable discussion, critical thinking, and values to be shared openly. But, how is this monitored to be neutral, encouraging, and beneficial? The direction we take students in their critical thought should not be out of our own agenda but through their own experience and beliefs that make up each students' character.