COLLOQUY Responses
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COLLOQUY Responses
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 Having taught in three humanities departments (English and Women's Studies) at the University of Alabama and in English at the University of Oklahoma, I can attest that I have witnessed other graduate students, particularly women graduate students, experience problems with insubordination in the classroom environment. In seven years of college teaching, I am lucky to have never myself experienced a verbally threatening or violent encounter with a student. Perhaps it is my peculiar blend of intense self-discipline and the intensely high expectations I demand of my students academically which has shielded me from the quite literal "attacks" that some of my women colleagues have experienced. Although I teach in an interactive pedagogical stance, and in a discipline which valorizes personal experience (women's studies), I can attest that the interactive dance is a learned skill. Yet I would not trade the knowledge I have gleaned from my students for the didacticism! of paternalistic authority for any poor barter of enhanced prestige. I agree with one of the colloquy respondents who claimed that too little attention is paid to pedagogical issues in training for higher educational teaching. Only in Women's Studies did I find meaningful focus placed on pedagogical issues in the classroom. Women's studies recognizes the tenuous balancing act of authority and power at work in the classroom, whereas other disciplines would do well to focus upon the delicate negotiation of power and purpose to maximize the developmental potential of our students. Sexism and racism still prevail in many of our classrooms across the country, as recent painful experience has taught me that it continues to thrive in corporate America. Only when we arm our students with the heightened awareness of power dynamics both in and beyond the classroom can we hope to educate our students with the mechanisms all of us need to survive in an economy which values productivity first and individualism last. Yes, power negotiation is difficult in the classroom -- but the avoidance of negotiation via the paternalism of the unidirectional lecturer format which places the professor as demi-God authority and the student as supplicant tabula rasa defies the learning which might be achieved in the other direction, as students so often teach the teacher fundamental rules of engagement, and important issues of etiquette. The strict binarism of "us vs. them" constitutes a combative mentality that shields both teacher and student from maximizing the potential of communication across all boundaries of difference. It is across such barriers of difference that communication as a society and a culture most matters. Bridging differences affirms the common desires of humanity and eliminates the xenophobia which debilitates our culture into turf wars of race and gender. Rodney King said it best "Why can't we all just get along?" If professors will respect the intelligence of their students and challenge their intellectual acumen by daily, pedagogical interaction, I believe that great strides in bridging the many gaps which separate teacher from student (age, race, gender, sexual orientation, personal experience, social class) may be achieved.
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