Professors Strike Back

Stephanie Rosenbloom writes in The New York Times that professors are now using the web, either via social networking sites, blogs or personal webpages, to reveal information about themselves in the hopes of "becoming more human" in the eyes of students. And there's even a show on mtvu called "Professors Strike Back," which gives the maligned professors to refute the comments in RateMyProfessors.com.

The show has become more popular than the music premieres on that channel. Which only goes to show that for a lot of students, the thought that professors have lives beyond the classroom is almost unthinkable. Sam Gosling, psychologist and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, narrated an anecdote where a female student saw him in the street near the campus and looked absolutely horrified. "Like, ‘Wait a minute, you have a life?’ The idea that I would continue to exist — it was sort of a violation of her expectations.” Gosling goes further to say that students today think professors are not doing their jobs unless they convey information in zany, interactive ways.

Teaching has lost some of its god-on-the-podium status. To teach these days means also means to entertain. It's such a taxing demand, to relay information and to make like a talk show host at the same time. What matters is the ability to teach. But students seem to be under the impression that learning is like being part of a talk show audience. "Here we are now, entertain us," and if you fail to do so, you get comments on evaluations like, "Bring a pillow."I tend to agree with the article that this is an unfortunate trend, this need to know that your professor likes Project Runway or has climbed the rockface in Galera. Some are of the opinion that knowing these little things make for a more comfortable learning experience. Whether the "humanization" of professors come in the form of dishing out jokes or crazy anecdotes along the lines of "I have a life, too, you know" or posting more of the same in blogs or social networking sites, this need for transparency seems doubly unneccessary for me.

And yet, I'm posting this on my blog. So take everything with a grain of salt.

The Mindset List

For the last ten years, Benoit College in Wisconsin hands out what they call "The Mindset List," which not only gives the faculty and staff a whiff of that mortal coil, but it also gives gives them an idea of the student body's perspective.

I think the list is a great indication of culture--the things we use everyday, material and very tangible, i.e., "You can always take the MRT to Makati to avoid traffic." Or, "It's hot/I'm bored, let's go to the mall." There's also how we organize ourselves into our own little tribes, i.e., "What's the need for a stamp when there's always e-mail? Or better yet, everyone is just a text away or I can always look them up in Friendster Facebook/Multiply/MySpace." One can also take into consideration the various ways we celebrate and amuse ourselves: "I don't like this guy's moustache, let's start a massive campaign to vote him off the show."

When I started teaching, Friendster was just starting and it was a hip new thing. I was only a few years ahead of my students, and I was able to pass myself off as one on the first day of class. Last March, the first bunch of kids I had in class graduated. They're about as old as the clothing brand Bench, born the year the first EDSA happened. But as you go along, it becomes more and more difficult to engage people. Cultural references during discussion just fly over their heads and you get eyes glazed with boredom and incomprehension. In a few days, I'll be off again to meet a bunch of kids for whom the Internet has always been there and music is something you download. The Eraserheads and the Apo Hiking Society only existed in tribute and best of albums. Water is something you buy in a bottle. Research means typing something up in the Google search bar.

I wonder how much different this is from the time I was in college, when Martial Law really was something you just read in history books. The divide between generations has always been there. It's not just a matter of technology becoming obsolete. Heck, I wrote my papers in a typewriter, complete with white correction fluid. I lived, my professors lived through it, albeit shaking his head with disappointment at some girls who thought that Les Miserables has always been on Broadway and Lea Salonga was in it and that The Little Prince was something that you could quote in a beauty contest. For that, he made us read the unabridged version by Victor Hugo AND suffer through an oral exam on Antoine L'Exupery. He must have known that we thought him an old fogey. And he was, anyway.

Sooner rather than later, you will become obsolete, a fossilized relic from another era. It's one thing to come inside the classroom armed with this bits of knowledge. But how will it help, really?

Sabi nga ni Captain Planet, knowing is just half the battle.

The other half siguro, you just drink na lang.