[This transcript and its audio (podcast) version were never made available to my students of teaching. I still have an uneasy feeling about the level of the language this piece was written in and how direct it is in some places. I also have misgivings about revealing my own inadequacies in coming to terms as a stranger in a foreign land.]
There are very specific limits to my fear and loathing, and I am sure introducing these terms to the intended audience would have caused conclusions not bound by exactly what is said. My fear and loathing are more rhetorical devices to highlight and critique a system than actual personal feelings. This nuance would have been lost to most, and perhaps still will be.
All this aside, the commentary on one of the purposes of education may be of some value. And the exercise to script an instructional podcast in limited space was useful to me in the early days when I was experimenting with alternatives in content delivery. The rhetorical question at the end should be the subject of another piece. Perhaps this was a necessary exercise to get to that.]
This is a download for one of my courses. I am Kevin Mactavish, and I am a student of teaching at the Technical University of Liberec in the Czech Republic. My remarks here are to help students succeed in their studies in English.
The title of this presentation is "Fear and loathing in Liberec".
The title of this rant is "Fear and loathing in Liberec". I fear for most of the students I have had. They will never get it. That is, they will never understand, one sense of "get it". And they will never understand even half of what their education has to offer. They will not capture, that is get a hold of it. They will miss it. They will miss out. They, or perhaps you, in some sense, will be illiterate.
Some days I loathe teaching. In fact, most days I just plain hate it, but loathe is a better word. Why I loathe teaching can be a subject for when we have more time. But to answer this question quickly here, let's just say teaching doesn't work in this environment. Learning works. But teaching doesn't.
But I will start with fear. As I test and examine students--I am not sure there is a difference, but it is clear that the university is an exam factory. . . . My experience shows two things stand out when I ask questions, questions not about language or grammar, but questions about a subject.
1. Students may know a few facts, like dots on some piece of paper.
2. They cannot relate the facts, and often the courses they are taking, to anything within or outside the subject. They can't connect the dots showing relations and the picture the connected dots may reveal.
In short, students have little knowledge and almost no skills with which to understand the little they have. Not a very complimentary observation, I admit. But now, just think about the prospect of teaching under these conditions! Does teaching students who even after courses and courses perform to the level of the least common denominator invite you to start the day? to go into the teaching profession?
What the careful and thorough teacher must do in a situation like this is dot all the i's and cross all the t's, although I know and it is ironic, and perhaps symbolic, that in Czech handwriting, t's are not crossed.
If the teacher has to teach everything in order to get higher levels of performance, that job is thankless, overwhelming, and not doable. And if higher levels of performance is defined from the start as more facts to recall, teaching becomes telling, sometimes explaining. In other words, teaching is just talking. This is not a very interesting or expansive role for a teacher. In fact, if you think about it, it is quite dull. A more familiar expression for the Czech English speaker might be boring. Who wants to bore students with presenting and reviewing and testing facts? Would you?
I fear this role you have for me here, and often I loathe it. But what's the problem? Why do we teachers and students find ourselves in this situation? in this environment? Are students not able? Are they, in their word, stupid? This is a taboo term in my courses. It is not a term I would use, but I use it here because it communicates. I would offer better wording with a more accurate description for this question. Are students less or not capable of better performance? Don't believe you aren't. You are not stupid. You are quite able.
Well, the next question then is, what is it in your environment and history that somehow prevents or doesn't encourage a deeper knowledge of details and better critical thinking? Why is it that you have isolated dots on the paper and no sense of how to connect them to reveal the larger parts and wholes, the beautiful landscapes or portraits hidden from your view?
I suspect it's either culture or schooling--some would say that these are the same, that teachers and schools are culture carriers and that students become part of the culture through schooling. Culture or schooling has not shown you that there are possible numbering schemes for the dots. And numbering suggests something else. The more dots you have, like pixels on a computer screen, the easier it is to make out the picture. And if the dots are ordered well enough in some way, the easier it is to know what the image you see communicates, or means.
These are the objects in education: to see and to understand. You want to see the complete if complex picture and try to understand what it means. Perhaps the fault, if I can use that word, lies with what you have experienced, your history. I believe the system has failed you somehow. And now you are at my doorstep thinking I am unrealistic or crazy for wanting more for you.
Do not assume immediately that what I am saying is totally culturally bound and narrow. If I say in-depth knowledge and the ability to use and expand it are the right goals for teaching and learning but you think your goals are better, whatever they are, I would have you look outside the classroom door and see if the everyday world rewards--that is pays for--people who do less than what I suggest.
Now, after having talked about all of this, I still fear for you and your future based on my experience, or history, in Czech universities. And I sometimes loathe teaching. In this environment I still resist telling you facts and giving simple explanations for words you can look up yourself. You can have a book or a podcast do that job for you. There are dictionaries for people who want to use the language for more than ordering a Coke on some Spanish beach. For this, you don't need a teacher who is interested in helping you put together the puzzle and talk in English about what the puzzle means in your and our lives.
So I leave you with this. Teachers love to stump, that is puzzle, students. The title of these remarks is an allusion to a book in English by a famous, or infamous, author who took his life not too long ago. He lived in a famous American ski town and wrote about, among other things, Las Vegas. Who was this author and what is the allusion? And for the better students, why this title for these remarks?
You can play this download again or read the transcript, or both. Should be a good English lesson for you, if not something to begin to think about: Do few facts and an inability to put together analyses and conclusions about a subject summarize you and your goals for your time spent in school?
Approx 1100 words
June 21, 2006
