Beginning again

First day of term is coming here. Though I've spent the last few weeks furiously putting together websites and powerpoint presentations, things didn't really sink in for me until yesterday when I picked up the keys for one of the electronic classrooms I'll be using. I stood at the front of the room reading through dense pages of instructions explaining exactly where all of the buttons and knobs resided ("the power bar that controls the monitor is just below your right knee"). Standing in front of a class has become a bit of a dog and pony show these days. Students have different expectations. We're not just scholars now. We're also delivering a product to our students for which they have paid handsomely. With daily reminders in the press that we live in a service economy (because we expect to be paid much more than those in other parts of the world who are content -- for now -- to make the ridiculous plastic trappings we think we need to live), professors are servers of a sort. Open up your head and I'll pour in some knowledge. When Socrates said "Education is the kindling of a flame not the filling of a vessel," there was no Microsoft, there were no electronic classrooms and there were no Powerpoint slides. Things have changed so much since I began teaching in universities about 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago, it was not unusual to walk into a classroom with nothing more than a headful of exciting ideas and a piece of chalk. If I wanted to be fancy, I'd bring in an overhead or two for the projector. Now I'm wired for sound and video. The electric professor. Like one of those new Japanese robots, I dance to my inner Ipod.

I'm not always sure what I'm doing up there, in front of that room full of children (every year they seem more like children. This year, my oldest daughter's friends could be in my class). It isn't as if my courses really teach them anything about how to make a living, build a career, or solve a life problem. My job is to help them see the bigger picture of things, to help them avoid the unexamined life, to make them understand who they are. I think that's pretty important, but, more and more, I feel a little old-fashioned. A few years ago, on the first day of class, I reeled off the course requirements, squirmed through the usual questions about what would be required to get a good grade, etc. etc. and then, at the end of all of this, I reminded them that their job in the classroom was not to get a good grade. They stopped writing and looked up. No, I said, their job was not to get a good grade but to actually learn something. They laughed. They thought this was funny. I was depressed for days.

In spite of this depressing context, I can't help getting excited at this time of year. Like the abused puppy that can't help jumping up and down when its owner comes home, even though it knows it will get nothing better than a swat, I'm hopping up and down on my hind legs trying to imagine that these courses of mine will go well. Ok. I'm not really hopping up and down. But I'm trying to convince myself that buried in that big room full of students who think they're there to pay their money, get their notes, and move on to the next step of their careers, there will be one or two who really do want to learn things. I know they're there. I just need to find them. And I will.