Urgh Fuck pedagogical fuckups.
I'm running workshops for a course on 'identity', first year undergraduates. 'Identity' is rather thorny turf - so much relevant life experience, but so much room for offence and assumption. I must establish firm groundrules, I thought to myself on the train. Then we can have really good sessions.
Anyway. Turned up to the seminar and thought I was teaching it, but the course convenor was there, and said she was teaching it. I asked if I could sit in, to see what she was aiming at.
She started off with a little excercise to break the ice, the rules of ethical classroom discussion and MY HEAD. She got everyone to write down a few sentences about their identities - an honest summation of how they see themselves. Then she collected them in, and without telling anyone she was going to do it, she read them out, and tried to get people to guess who each statement applied to.
So. We're sitting around and she's saying: 'Come, on, look around! Who's multi-ethnic here?'
And: 'This one likes chocolate, so it's probably a girl - who's *girly*? Who's a girly girl?'
And everyone was silent.
There was this awful moment when she'd read a statement about being Jewish, and when the student in question put her hand up to claim it, she said: 'Reeealllly?' And I thought, if your next statement is 'You don't *look*...' I will WALK OUT.
I'd done a statement, too; I thought it was only fair. She read out 'bisexual' and then said 'Oh, you've put your age! A lady never tells her AGE!' I knew I should have put 'genderqueer'...
On to a few rounds of 'spot the Christian' and 'who looks a bit Ugandan'. Although thank fuck no 'I'm a lesbian but I'm not out' or 'I'm a recovering heroin addict but obviously that's private'.
Later on I found that she was in the wrong seminar group, hers was upstairs waiting for her all the time. If I teach that group, I may have to start the next session with an apology.
And then I returned home to the Shire and Bag End, and found (courtesy of a couple of Barbeloids - ta) that the University where I teach has handed a foundation course over the group that owns the Daily Mail. |
