Lavolta Press wrote:
I assume you do have the routine of giving the lecture and then allowing X fixed minutes at the end for questions, encouraging any really detailed ones to be postponed to conversation with you during one of your standard office hours?
They're encouraged to ask questions at any point in the class (and they do), and they know I would be happy to discuss things later during my office hours or by appointment if we don't have time in class. Since many of my students also work in the costume shop, we end up having discussions there as well.
What level of course are you teaching--upper division seminar in the history department? Or a costume history class tacked onto a home ec/clothing design or theater program? If the latter, you're not likely to get much opportunity to teach a seminar course focusing on metholdology. It's like the professor of freshman remedial math wanting to teach the physics majors--that's just not how the college set that course up.
It is upper level, and it is part of the theater program--part of the major, not "tacked onto" the program. Since I am the only one teaching it, I can teach it pretty much however I want to. I think that clothing history has for the most part been taught as a straight survey course, but this is a disservice to the field and to the students. Putting in some methodology really seems to help the students grasp how and why some of what I'm telling them is important or interesting.
Not that I know much about most of them either. But in light of the fact of how little most people know about most things, and how many "misconceptions" they hold about them, getting self-righteous about being a Guardian of Knowledge because you know the difference between knitting and naalbinding, or something, and Hollywood and/or the general public doesn't, is pretty silly. History is no more important than any other subject, even if it is the most interesting one to you.
My goal as a teacher is to teach. Self-Righteous Guardian of Knowledge? I suppose it's possible--I might come off as self-righteous, and it's my business to further the knowledge of others. But again I say to you that it's not contempt that I have about people's misconceptions, it's frustration that those misconceptions and their way of thinking and learning make it harder for me to teach them as much as I would like to in a semester. Is this a Great Tragedy? No. But I strive for excellence in my profession, however insignificant it may be in the grand scheme of things, and I hope for excellence in my students as well in the classes that I teach. Does the fact that I don't know the inner workings of physics (which of course are important and I'm sure would be interesting) mean that I shouldn't strive for excellence in my classroom and expect the same from my students?
I assume it's the educational system that makes people unanlytical. My memory of formal education up to college is largely that of being expected to sit quietly, not ask qusetions, and spew information back for tests.
I'm sorry to say that this seems to be common and I think is in large part responsible for the passive learning style that most students have when they get to college.
Melanie Schuessler _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
